Khadgar42: Do you need to upgrade your necromantic spells?
Why do you need a Nova or an AOE in necromancy? (except maybe bone armour)
What is the difference between the undead you can summon?
I found four
Mr. Mace Guy.
Mr. Shield and Scimitar
Mr. Lazy Crossbow
Mr. Badass Teleport Mage
who is who?
Why is nobody telling me what they can do and stuff and why do they look so similar?
It's really difficult to tell them apart. Even more so when the enemies are pesky undead too.
What does this retaining thing mean when you have more than three? Is this kind of a storage which of the three you can keep? Why doesn't it last longer? Weird stuff...
Hi again!
Okay, here we go.
Yes, you need to upgrade you necro spells. The strength of your minion is directly tied to your necromancy stats. So, your fire-damage undead minion will do more damage based on you necromancy destruction numbers and not your fire numbers.
No, you don't really need your nova or AEO spells but they add more flexibility to the necromancy sigil. For example, your necromancy target spell could be destruction base, nova could be control based, and AOE could be mastery based. This way, you have the freedom of raising either a destruction, control, or mastery based minions.
Necromancy has several category of minions:
Melee minions are the mace and sword n' shield guys. While these ones have more health than the rest, in my opinion, they suck at dealing damage. However, they can gang up on an enemy and apply control or mastery fairly well. Otherwise, they act just like any meat-shields.
Ranged minions are quite good. All of the ranged enemies in the game are op so having ranged pets of your own is quite handy. They are not as hardly as the melee ones but can attack from a distance. They are okay at damage and great at applying control/mastery effects.
Caster minions are the banshee (floating undead) and the teleporting necromancer/lich. The banshee just plain sucks as far as I know. It doesn't seem to do anything (no ice screams, summoning...). The teleporting lich, on the other hand, is superb at dealing damage. They are mobile, have the super strong green lob attack and can probably use their short-range drain/ lighting attack.
Since your minions have some sort of shimmering aura, it can be difficult to tell them apart. I usually, retain the one with the crossbows or the one with the magic staffs (liches). When you retain a minion, it will stay with you until it is permanently killed. Everyone who is not retained, will disappear after the battle and you have to re-summon them again by tagging and killing those tagged enemies. Unfortunately, since the fights are so frequent, within 30 seconds of each other, it can be quite tedious to keep re-raising the minions.
I hope this was helpful.
