Necromancy is a new skill to RuneScape 3, which will be launched in 2023. While Jagex has been teasing the community for a while now with little news about the introduction of Necromancy to RuneScape 3, they have left the bulk of the details for a later date but have invited a selected number of the community members to playtest the skill.
On May 30th, as promised, Jagex released the first preview of the skill and footage of the gameplay, as well as more details about Necromancy and what you should expect from this skill.
Combat Skill
Necromancy is an upcoming stand-alone combat skill that does not affect or belong to the already established combat trio from the game but represents an alternative to the classic combat styles: melee, range, and magic. While using Necromancy, you won’t be weak or strong against any existing combat styles.
Necromancy is a new and independent combat style that you can level up to 120. However, even if Necromancy represents a stand-alone combat style, leveling it will still affect your combat level and everything that goes with it. Before adding Necromancy, you can hit a maximum combat level of 138, and maxing out Necromancy will bring you to a maximum combat level of 152, provided that you have already maxed all the other combat skills.
While RuneScape 3 has seen the addition of new skills before, this is the first time that Jagex is adding a new combat skill to the game. The skill is exclusive to members only, but as a free-to-play, you can get a taste of Necromancy and access the first 20 levels of the skill.
Excellent for Low-Level Players
Necromancy has been designed to be great for new players and accounts. This is because it will be beneficial for you to first train Necromancy out of the combat skills to help with your progression and to make training the other combat skills easier as you will increase your combat level through Necromancy. This basically makes the new strategy first to level Necromancy and then the other combat skills if you want to be as efficient as possible.
Besides this, together with the release of the skill, Jagex is bringing loads of in-game tutorials that will teach you how to use the skill and related quests that will allow you to learn the skill while following an in-game story that will give you the lore of the skill and will teach you the basics.
How to Unlock Necromancy Abilities
You can unlock some of the abilities by leveling up your Necromancy skill. Still, you will only be able to unlock the rest of the Necromancy abilities from the talents interface after you have performed specific Rituals and have earned enough talent points. In the talents’ interface, you must carefully choose which of the new unlockable abilities you want to gain access to permanently. However, once you master the skill, you can unlock all of the Necromancy abilities. Alternatively, you can perform rituals that give you progression with the Well of Souls, giving you access to unlocking new Necromancy abilities.
Training methods
Jagex is aiming to have the Necromancy skill appeal to all types of players, including those who do not like combat, so even though Necromancy is a combat skill, you can either level it in combat by killing monsters on slayer tasks, Dungeoneering, or bossing, as you’d level any other combat or you can level it outside of combat. Also, remember that Necromancy is a skill that’s fast to level up.
Combat Training
To use the skill and level the skill through combat, you will need to wield a Necromancy-specific weapon, the Death Guard, which is required to access the Necromancy abilities in the first place.
To use the conjuring abilities, you must also use the Necromancy-specific offhand: the Spirit lantern. The conjuring abilities will let you conjure underworld creatures like skeletons or zombies to fight alongside you.
Rituals
If you hate combat and would much rather train Necromancy safely, you can perform rituals that will give your Necromancy XP. These rituals often involve new types of runes, which will be introduced in the game once Necromancy gets released: bone runes, spirit runes, flesh runes, and miasma runes. There are 12 different rituals that require different runes and other components, such as candles or glyphs and a different focus object around which you will need to place the candles or glyphs. Performing a ritual will give you different rewards, including Necromancy XP, but they will also give you points in the well of souls, which you can use to unlock new abilities.
Necromancy Items
When training Necromancy, you will need to use Necromancy-specific items. If you choose to train Necromancy out of combat, you will use bone runes, spirit runes, flesh runes, and miasma runes, which you can only Craft in the Underworld.
After the tutorial, you will get the Necromancy-specific weapon as a level 1 weapon, and you will need to upgrade it up to level 90. Later on, you will be able to receive stronger Necromancy weapons as drops from bosses, for example.
