As a necro you will be soloing.. a lot. Groups for dungeons, especially places later on like Sebilis, are
damned near impossible to find because everyone envies your soloing ability. (That's what I think at
least.) If you're a lone wolf, the neverending soloing isn't a problem. If you're a people person, either
veer away from the class or make a few friends that you can hunt with all the time. Clerics are a good
choice because they have:

1) HP buffs which give you more HP to trade away from precious mana.
2) Heals for when the mob is aggroed on you and your pet isn't taunting because it's out smoking up
under a tree or somethin.
3) Fears so that I can spend mana on dot'ing.
4) Ressurections! Great for those times when you were just trained to death or when you accidentally
pulled a summoner and got totally owned the second fear dropped  

If ya can't find a cleric partner or if you just want to put together some sort of crazy uber soloing
group, get a shammy and/or druid. Both have nice regen spells which stave off the pain caused by our
lich line of spells and both can heal if needed. Druids have a better snare than necros, have dot's that
stack with ours, and they can track. Shammies have better disease and poison dot's than we do, so let
them use those lines, you have others to choose from. They can also slow the mob so that it doesn't
beat you to death as fast as usual if it gets in close.

The race you play determines what items you'll need to find, most people will jump for playing an Iksar
necro because of the natural regen which will further help with the lich line, but then you lose the ability
to wear several good pieces of armor. Dark elves and gnomes have good night vision as well as good
starting stats, while humans have good all around stats, but no night vision. I personally chose an
Erudite because of the high starting int, which would mean less int equipment and I could build up other
stats or resists. Remember, int = mana for us necros, so that's where the starting points are going.

The beginning levels are the same as every other class, take out rats, bats, decaying skels, and such.
Avoid buying the level 1 pet unless you're twinked and have plenty of cash, it's a waste of money. Sure
it only takes 1 bone chip to summon, but, like Bamor, it can't tank a large rat.  

At level 4 you get a good pet as well as darkness and fear. You can now practice the art of fear kiting,
which will soon become your best friend. The higher level darkness spells take a longer time to cast,
they won't zip off like this one, so practice pulling with darkness first, followed by sending the pet and
then fearing. Your pets will continue to improve with your level and you'll get more dot's. At level 8 you
get Dark Pact, which is your first spell in the lich line. This spell will trade your HP for mana over time, so
be ready to use your life drains to replace your lost health. At level 12 you get the next darkness,
slightly longer casting, and costs more mana, but you also get the first in the leach line, which is a dot
life drain. Continue using darkness to pull, but now cast leach after it to make up the HP you lost to
Dark Pact.

At level 16 it's time to start research, either talk to me and I'll research the spell for you if you bring me
the words.. if you don't want me to research the spell for you, prepare to spend money buying the spell
from someone else who researched it or be ready to learn why researching is pure hell. If you're going
to research your own spells, prepare to be disappointed when trying to make that spell you absolutely
require. Prepare to have a few backpacks filled to the brim with words. And prepare to run to EVERY
merchant in the city you just entered, scouring every corner for words. Gods, I hate research.. On a
brighter note, at level 16 you get Feign Death, woot! This spell will save you when you mess up or you
get trained. However, be on the watch for the message "<Character name> has fallen to the ground." It
means you failed and you're just lying on the floor. You should probably get up and wait for the spell to
recharge to cast it again, or run like hell, depends where you are.

At level 20, you get your next lich spell and you gain the ability to specialize. I personally recommend
specialization in Alteration. It's the basis for fear, all our life drains, the heat blood line, the heart flutter
line, and the powerful Splurt spell. Remember, only one specialize skill can go over 50, but you need to
put a point into everything to get that one skill over 50. Either get Alteration up to 50 and then go put
a point into the other specializations and cast alteration spells until the specialize skill goes up, or put a
point into all specializations.. and sit there casting lich spells for a while until you go over 50 with
specialize Alteration.

Avoid the skin spells (Leatherskin, etc.) until Steelskin, which was the best one I found because it
absorbed about 300 points of damage before dropping for the cost of a jasper.. the others don't
handle much damage, and it's only like 2, maybe 3 hits before they drop. For the cost of the gem that
you have to burn on each cast, it's not worth it.. of course, if you have lots of money, it doesn't
matter. The level 29 darkness, Dooming Darkness, is the best darkness you have. Darkness is our
most resisted line of spells, the 29 one doesn't cost much mana and casts faster than the higher level
ones, plus it slows the mob's movement more than the others. REMEMBER, Darkness is meant as a
snare, it has a damage component, BUT IT'S A SNARE! If you're using darkness as a dot and not just
for the snare part, look at your other spells, you can be doing a lot more damage for less mana.
Dooming Darkness lasts for about 1 minute 30 seconds... so start recasting it after 1 minute 10
seconds if it looks like the mob is going to still be living at when darkness will wear off. Also at 29, you
get Vampiric Curse, your latest leach spell. You can use your leach line to time darkness if you follow
darkness with the leach spell immediately, when the leach spell drops, get up and start casting darkness
ASAP.

At level 34 you gain your next lich spell, Call of Bones. Be careful with this spell, it takes more HP than
past lich spells, so never go AFK with these spells on, unless you're grouped with a healer.. and if you
do go AFK, then make sure to let them know. Also, be careful when using this spell because it will
change your faction with most NPC's because it gives you the appearance of a skeleton. Most cities will
become kos to you, with the exception of the outpost in Overthere. Becoming a skeleton here will
actually improve your faction with the people in town, which makes getting that precious teleporting
hammer that much easier.. too bad gotta wait until 50+ before it procs.

At 39 you can get the spell Summon Corpse, however, from a necro standpoint, this spell is useless.
The jade inlaid coffin used to cast the spell is not stackable and costs about 150 plat, I think it also
counts as a container. The only reason I have this spell is because someone forced me to take it. Wait
until level 57, you get the spell Conjure Corpse (Scroll says New Summon Corpse) which uses tiny jade
inlaid coffins, which are stackable and only costs about 75 plat each.

On raids and groups in dungeons, try to stay low on the hate list. Let the tank do his job of getting
beaten up and staying high on that hate list, the cleric will take care of keeping him alive. The level 24
spell Screaming Terror, aka ghetto mez, is useful indoors. When lacking an enchanter, you get to take
on the role of mezzer, but remember that you can only keep 2 mezzed because of recharge time on the
spell, and that's switching targets just after casting with nothing resisting you. If there's an enchanter
present, let them use their mez, it's much better and you can probably do things elsewhere. The
subversion line of spells give mana to your target, on raids and some groups, you will be asked to spike
or dump the a cleric/chanter. Two spells you will not use on raids or dungeon groups are Ignite Bones
(level 44) and Chill Bones (level 55). These spells do about 500 DD and change the target into a
skeleton. They're meant for fun in outdoor places. NEVER USE THEM ON A RAID. The tanks need that
creature to be at normal size so they can crowd around it, also with the amount of people on the raids
you'll be on when you have these spells, it's hard to find a little skeleton corpse in a sea of people.
Dot's are fine for groups in dungeons, but on a raid, don't use them. Pretty sure they fixed the
problem with the corpses poofing, but with that many people if everyone tried to use dot's, they'd just
overwrite each other. Druids get to use their epic dot, but it's good, so let em have it. Also, on raids,
use clarity 2, yes, our lich spells are better than it, but clarity 2 doesn't take kill HP, which is important
on raids. Try to take care of your own HP because the clerics are worrying about the tanks getting
smacked for hundreds with each hit, don't make them worry about you too. Remember, if those tanks
drop, you're probably screwed and getting healed won't help because you'll be dropped in a few hits.
Also, if you think you're going to outaggro other people, get in melee range before casting your spells.
One of the worst things that can happen is ping ponging a mob, the tanks can't taunt it off the people
involved and those who are ping ponging will probably die.

Finally, unlike other classes which will take beatings (tanks, clerics) AC isn't that important for us. We
have many things to avoid getting beaten, such as Harmshield (invulnerability like cleric Divine Barrier
spells) and Feign Death. On raids, if you're aggroed on and the tanks can't pull it off fast, should
probably be zipping off Feign Death so the mob will leave you and switch back to the main targets of
the tanks. I know a certain necro who built up his AC, he kept getting killed while I lived and boggled at
how fast he was getting owned. When out in the world and not in a dungeon or raid, the thing you're
fighting is feared most of the time, so you don't need to worry about being hit.

And remember, if you ever group with Preacher, he's at fm when he has 2 bubbles of mana!  Take
care all.

Raljah Milinko
Warlock of Mithaniel
"Inc! 2... 3... 4... 5... uh oh, I pulled a Mult, RUN!!!!"