KeeperRL – Advanced Necro Tips

Pro Tips to Use Undead

Your mount units (skeleton wolf, slasher, bone dragon) can all use the melee training balsams. Normally beasts don’t train… but it’s a loophole you can use. It’s less useful on the wolf with their 1 balsam slot though.

Make a “janitor” minion (a skeleton archer or skeleton warrior) with a set of wings and infinite carry balsams. You can use this minion to dump unwanted trash in lava or deep water, and pick up corpses that ran out of pillage range during your raid.

The “swarming” balsam is hilariously strong. Every unit with the “swarmer” trait adds +1 attack/defense to every other unit with swarming nearby. Throw a ton of swarming vampires in a small area and they’re virtually immortal.

Assign some guard posts to archers up on ground level, out in the wilderness. They’ll shoot any wildlife that wanders too close, which can give you a somewhat steady supply of easy corpses.

You need to kill a dragon and collect it’s corpse before you can create a bone dragon.

Skeleton and Zombie Kings are completely worth making, but you should save up 199 body parts before doing so. A fully ‘grafted’ king starts with stats over 100, and they don’t have to worry about losing a head as much when they have 73 of them. While the Zombie version is a bit stronger, it’s also weak to sunlight. If you want an Assault King make a skeleton.

Phylacteries are expensive, too much so for mass use. Your Necrokeeper, bone dragon(s), and Skeleton/Zombie Kings should have one though. Their uses justify the cost.

Carefully consider the balsam you upgrade your units with, for example archery. It’s ok to make some skeleton warriors into hybrid archers if you want, but don’t add archery training to skeleton archers. They don’t learn Bypass Allies anyway, so instead of gaining 9 ranged attack from 3 balsams you could gain 15 ranged attack from three Advanced Ranged Damage balsams.

In reverse, don’t use attack/defense balsams on melee fighters. A skeleton warrior can hold 3 balsams, so lets say you pick Swarming and have two spots left. You could add 5 attack and 5 defense with the advanced stat balsams, or you could add 6 attack and defense by using two melee training balsams.