Necromancy
| Necromancy | ||
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Basic Necromancy: Creature Gathering, Necropolis only, allows 10% of the creatures killed in combat to be brought back from the dead as skeletons. | |
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Advanced Necromancy: Creature Gathering, Necropolis only, allows 20% of the creatures killed in combat to be brought back from the dead as skeletons. | |
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Expert Necromancy: Creature Gathering, Necropolis only, allows 30% of the creatures killed in combat to be brought back from the dead as skeletons. | |
Necromancy is a secondary skill that allows hero to bring back creatures killed in combat as Skeletons. Typically all Death Knights and Necromancers start with Necromancy skill, and no other hero class may learn it during level up nor can it be learned from University. In fact, non-necropolis heroes can only learn Necromancy from Witch Hut or Scholar, and only if map maker has specifically allowed it. Additionally, Necromancy can be learned from a special event on Adventure Map.
Isra the Death Knight and Vidomina the Necromancer specialize in Necromancy, which gives them 5% addition to the skill for every experience level. See hero specialty for further information.
Description
All enemy creatures that are displayed after battle as casualties can be raised as skeletons, even if this includes sacrificed creatures, cloned creatures, summoned elementals or war machines(!).
When a victorious army contains Skeleton Warriors but no Skeletons, and no empty army slot is available, Skeleton Warriors will be raised instead of Skeletons, but only 2/3 of the usual number.
Heroes with a specialty in this skill
Artifacts affecting this skill
- Amulet of the Undertaker (Neck). Gives +5% Necromancy to a hero's Necromancy skill.
- Vampire's Cowl (Shoulders). Gives +10% Necromancy to a hero's Necromancy skill.
- Dead Man's Boots (Feet). Gives +15% Necromancy to a hero's Necromancy skill.
- Cloak of the Undead King (Shoulders, combination artifact assembled from the other three Necromancy artifacts). Heroes without Necromancy can raise Skeletons as if they have learnt Expert Necromancy. Heroes with Necromancy receive +30% to their total Necromancy percentage on top of the +30% Necromancy provided by the individual artifacts, and can raise Walking Dead, Wights and Liches at, respectively, Basic, Advanced and Expert Necromancy. Note: Available only in the Shadow of Death expansion.
Buildings affecting this skill
Operating principle
The number of skeletons brought back at the end of the combat depends on three main factors:
- Level of Necromancy skill
- Number of creatures in killed stacks
- Amount of health of killed stacks.
First, and foremost, although it is technically possible with artifacts and strutures to have Necromancy skill more than 100%, at combat it is considered to less of equeal to 100%. Secondly, the total number of received Skeletons can never exceed the number of creatures died in combat. And finally, the total health of recieved Skeletons can never exceed the total health of killed creatures. In addition, at least one Skeleton is always recieved from the combat where the winning hero has Necromancry skill of any level and creatures are killed.
These rules are applied to every stack individually, and always rounded down. To draw a conclusion, when calculationg the number of Skeletons received from a battle, the factor two becomes detrmining when the creatures in the stack has good deal of health points, and the factor three becomes determining when the stack has a high number of low health creatures. As can be seen from the example on the right, when calculating the health factor, the total health of the creature stack is divided with the number of health points of Skeleton, which is four. Similarly, the health points can be used in calculation, if the hero is bringing back Skeleton Warriors or is wielding Cloak of the Undead King and raising other low-tier undead creatures. Naturally, the higher the health points are, the smaller is the number of undeads brought back.
The exact number of skeletons raised depends on a hero’s total Necromancy percentage. This is calculated by summing all the Necromancy percentages as provided by a hero's Necromancy skill prior to combat (including any Necromancy specialty), Necromancy artifacts, Necromancy amplifiers and the Soul Prison. Thus, a level 10 Isra with Advanced Necromancy, the Amulet of the Undertaker, two Necromancy Amplifiers and a Soul Prison has a total Necromancy percentage of (10 × 0.05 × 20% + 20%) + 5% + 2 × 10% + 20% = 75%. The maximum percentage is 100%.
The number of raised skeletons is separately calculated for each enemy stack and is not affected by whether either a victorious or a defeated hero had any health artifacts such as the Vial of Lifeblood equipped:
- If an enemy stack consisted of creatures with 6 health or more, the number of raised skeletons from that stack is equal to the number of creatures killed multiplied by a hero’s total Necromancy percentage.
- If an enemy stack consisted of creatures with less than 6 health, the number of skeletons raised from that stack is equal to the total number of health points of the killed creatures multiplied by a hero’s total Necromancy percentage.
The total number of skeletons raised equals the sum of the number of skeletons raised from each separate stack.
To illustrate, a hero with 35% Necromancy will raise 5 Skeletons if she defeats an enemy hero who has fled after losing one stack of 8 Stone Gargoyles, one stack of 1 Gremlin, and 15 Gremlins from one stack of 20 Gremlins. That is, 35% of 8 Stone Gargoyles is enough for 2 skeletons, the stack of 1 Gremlin consists of too few hitpoints to raise a skeleton from, and the 15 Gremlins that were killed provide 60 health, of which 35% (i.e., 21 health) can be raised into 3 skeletons. The total number of skeletons raised is therefore 2 + 0 + 3 = 5.
Finally, when having killed at least one enemy creature, even if it is just a Peasant, victorious heroes with Necromancy will always raise at least one skeleton, regardless of their total Necromancy percentage.
Discussion
Necropolis and Necromancy are often considered to be overpowering, and therefore frequently banned in multiplayer games (and tournaments).
External links
- How does the necromancy skill work exactly? Heroes Community thread started by angelito.