While I’ve not been going at breakneck speeds things have been progressing so I thought I would chime in an update before the weekend hits. I’m getting to a point now where I understand the necromancer gameplay and how to scale the damage. I also just feel very comfortable moving and clearing maps with it.

Interesting Game Mechanics For Minion Damage

Ah, the necromancer quite an interesting playstyle in Path of Exile. It is one of those that do decent on its own as a league starter but if you can put some currency into things get amazing. Great thing so far is the most expansive thing I bought was only 140 Chaos Orbs. Granted I could sink a few exalts into getting a 6-linked and getting perfect rolled items would cost more than what I spent as well.

Gear

One of the harder things to think about is getting amazing damage output. I mean you can get gear for yourself that increase critical strike, higher damage on weapons, and so forth. As far as your minions well that an interesting one to think about. Since I myself don’t do damage it’s all form the minions quite a few things people are willing to spend on are quite worthless to me.

In my last update Leveling Up An Alt I explored one of the mechanics of buffing and beefing up your army of death mostly for my skeletons. You can use an Animated Guardian and they can wear gear so you put some stuff on have group armor or passes buffs along to the minions. You also can cast your own aurora and have it pass along to them as well with the right setup.

Passive Skills

When searching the skill tree for the term “minion” I count about 28 or so skills. While that might sound like an amazing amount it really is not. Without having specialized gear affecting my minions they are just not picking much in the skill tree at least at first looks.

Four skills are all about passing along the stats you have on your shield to the minions expect I have a two-handed staff so that is out of the question. Besides skeletons only last a few seconds before you need resummons them anyways. So having them just stay along longer with having an increase block chance is not really needed.

As you can see in the above screenshot of my passive skill tree I have searched for Jewel sockets in my passive tree. You can see a bunch of little whitish blue circle (not that giant one as well there one included in that as well). I’ve connected to a few of them and in fact, quite an amazing amount of power can come from these. Since you can buy ones from the market that give minions bonus damage, among other things. Leaving you just open to paying a higher price for something special or rolled perfectly.

If I really wanted to spend I could get rare gems with blind on hit or taunt for minions. Since they are abyss jewels you can get a belt with a socket on it (which I’ll get one day but I need a lot of resistance hand life so they are expansive). You can also get a helm with sockets but you can already get up to 40% minion damage from a helm so there not point there.

This left me thinking how amazing the passive skill system in this game really is. While I’ve used and had a need for jewels in the past. I never felt quite like it has such an improved impact on a build I was playing to this degree. Other night for the first time I finally started buying and filling my extra slots with minion damage ones. I originally was just going for To Dust so I was holding off on buying any but prices have not gone down too much.

Update On My Progress

Gear Upgrades

I did spend 140 Chaos Orbs other night on a Kaon’s Heart body armor. It has a base of +500 life with my current passive skills that was well over 1k life by wearing it. Bumping me up to 5,700 life along with some other upgrades I bought. The downside of that chest is no sockets but I have that two-handed staff. I also spent 120 or so Chaos Orbs on jewels and some item upgrades. I could still spend a few hundred on getting gear with higher life and all resistance.

Temple of Atzoatl

I’ve not had any amazing luck on items of high-value dropping. The most expensive thing I’ve sold was for 15 Chaos Orbs. Most of my income this league has been doing Chaos Vender recipe of turning in a full set of yellows at the correct item level.

Labyrinth

I also ran my Merciless Labyrinth and no clue why I waited so long to do it. I had so much damage and defense I could have done it in my sleep. I’m also just one trail away (I need to find it randomly) from unlocking Eternal Labyrinth a goal I had for this league.

Incursion League Economy

I have an Exalted Orb but with how fast it’s been jumping in price I’m glad I secured one in the first week and I’ve been holding off on breaking it into Chaos Orbs. As such, I felt it was just better to farm as I go and keep it.

Final Thoughts

I’m still really loving this Incursion league I already want them to make it part of the core game. It is a bit much and more than their normal add to core kind of content but it’s amazing. It feels like something thought out enough to be just a part of the game and it really is not intrusive to the player if they want to skip over it.

The Necromancer has been amazing so far. I’ve not felt like it’s been a struggle after I got that new body armor and some jewels for minions. I’m hoping over a week to get up to tier X maps and see how it handles in them.

It’s been great I can't wait to play some more. Have an amazing weekend!

Other Content

• Path of Exile: Temple of Atzoatl
• Why I Enjoy Playing Path of Exile

Information

Screenshots were taken and content written by @enjar. Screenshots are from a game called Path of Exile.