Done leveling your Necro to its Fresh Level 70? You wonderin’ what to do next? Well… Look no further. You’ve found “it”. Builds, items to look for, and all sorts of advice to get past the early game lull and transition smoothly into the endgame! (Not 70? Necro leveling guide)

In Season 25, the Necromancer free set is: Grace of Inarius.

Season 25 and YOU. How does it affect?

S25’s unique mechanic is the Soul Shard system. Let me provide you a quick TLDR right here. There are 7 special “gems” (Soul Shards) this season. Three for head sockets (Prime Evil), and four for weapon sockets (Lesser Evil). What makes these gems so powerful? Mainly things:

STATS: A lot of em. Each soul shard has the stats of “every possible gem” combined. Plus a rerollable one!

TWO Unique (legendary-esque) Passives: Each soul shard has a corresponding unique that’s always there. Then, furthermore, they can each roll 1 of 3 possible sub-unique powers. Imagine a “double orange text” for each one of these.

There are essentially 9 new head gems and 12 new weapon ones, given the possible combinations of the Main and Sub powers. Of course, not all are “amazing”, but what do.

For this guide though, the free set doesn’t matter (but we WILL be able to beat the whole Seasonal Journey, don’t worry), as we’re rushing with LoD. Why? We want to get out of the early and early-mid game, freeing up for us to transition STRAIGHT into high-tier speedfarming or tryhard builds. More why? S25 Soul Shards give L100 augments – skipping a huge “mid-game” lull we’re used to. Another reason is, selfishly, I want to have a baseline LoD setup for Fresh 70 classes, and this seems like the best time to do it.

Step 1) Initial Build & Getting Legacy of Dreams

Don’t get stressed out, yes, LoD builds might seem a little daunting but let me tell you that it’s a fun and exciting process. Ultimately you need two things right now: The actual LoD gem, and a basic build to get you going.

Generic Starter build (slightly related to our ‘final build’)

Necromancer Fresh 70 No Set Build
Skill & Rune
Bone Spike (Open) Blood Spikes
Bone Spear Shatter
Corpse Lance (Open) Blood Lance
Blood Rush Molting (Potency)
Devour Any
Command Golem Flesh Golem
Passives
Dark Reaping Stand Alone
Swift Harvesting (Fueled by Death) Overwhelming Essence (Open)

The above build is meant to be in the middle of two things: Easy to edit – that hopefully game-changing legendaries can fit in no matter what. Related to our ‘final build’ – it’s a rough basic version of our “goal”, so it feels more natural as you transition towards it. Have a look down there for the final build preview to see what we’re going for.

Getting Legacy of Dreams ASAP

It’s simple, you need this GEM so get it ASAP.

Get 3 rift keys → Run 3 rifts → Wear three gemstones on your gear.

The first three gems will always be Bane of the Powerful, Legacy of Dreams, and one random one. So thankfully, there’s no RNG there.

Step 2) Easy power-ups. Huge gains for little effort.

You can go all of these things “simultaneously”, basically small tasks here and there that you should keep in mind right now that will greatly increase your power for little to no effort.

Make a Reaper’s Wraps: Speaking of no effort to big returns… Make this ASAP. Plans drop from any Torment Malthael.

What three Legendary gems?

Your next goal should be getting at least L25 on your three most important gems. Just get rift keys and spam GR’s until you get them, and do the absolute minimum level you need to level them up. Get them and level them quickly – do not feel pressured to “maximize” your rift keys by inflating the difficulty.

Legacy of Dreams is mandatory, as mentioned in the basics segment! Level this up as much as you can.

Bane of the Powerful is great early on. Later on, Enforcer becomes your premium DPS gem.

A defensive gem early on will greatly help you (double if you need it). Esoteric Alteration > Gizzard / Moratorium are your choices.

Can’t ever go wrong with leveling up a Boon of the Hoarder for speedfarming. (Need a refresher? Basic offensive: Powerful, Trapped. Basic Defensive: Esoteric Alteration, Molten Wildebeests Gizzard)

Legendary Items in ALL SLOTS

LoD gets stronger with each legendary item you have equipped – so get to it! You should aim to get this done “passively” by natural item drops, but you can also craft items if you’re desperate.

Spending Blood Shards is “OK”, but only use Death’s Breath to fill up the slots if you’re absolutely desperate. You’ll get an item for each slot in no time (you can even craft them). Save your resources for finding SPECIFIC items that will greatly boost your power. We talk more about this in the next segment, refinement.

Ancients DOUBLE this bonus, and they’re a welcome boost to consider.

Defense Type & Gems

Wizards / WD’s / Necros are INTELLIGENCE classes (they get free ALLRES from INT). So, in the face of all this free allres, your prime defensive stats are ARMOR > VIT. So try to reroll Armor on your gear if you need defense – it’s your best defensive stat by FAR.

So your gemming strategy (body and legs) should be slotting your best Rubies or Emeralds, as they give Armor.

In S25 your head and weapon gems should be Soul Shards ALWAYS.

Basic Rerolls

Since legendaries are a little expensive to reroll EARLY ON, try to make the most by REMOVING GARBAGE STATS, and getting anything “remotely usable”.

Life per Hit is great early on, and thankfully it’s found in all weapon soul shards.

Bone Spear% is found in Helm and Boots.

The Element% you want is Physical, found typically in Bracers and Amulet.

Remove useless stats

  • Life Regeneration – garbage for any build.
  • Attack Speed – it usually an endgame tune-up stat.
  • Excess Resource Cost Reduction – Is a crutch, and only niche builds need it.
  • Excess Cooldown Reduction – Only useful for an endgame “need”.
  • Unused skill% – literally USELESS.
  • All Resists – Useless for us, take Armor and VIT instead.

Take better stats

  • INT VIT– can’t go wrong with these. Your core stats!
  • ALLRES/ARMOR Life% Great defensive stats.
  • Sockets are essentially MANDATORY.
  • Life per Hit – Great early game sustainability.
  • CRIT Stats (CHC / CHD) – More for endgame, but I’d take this over garbage stats.
  • Skill and Elemental% – that you use.

FOLLOWER GEAR!

Do not forget to fully equip your follower for farming. You can start by crafting Sage or Cain’s NOW and worry about the rest later.

Step 3) Refining, Using Resources -> ‘Full Build’

If you haven’t made it by now, please craft a Reaper’s Wraps!

Full Build Preview

So you can easily see what items you’ll need, and you can get an idea of what we’re trying to do here.

S25 Fresh 70 Necro: Early Game LoD Bone Spear speedfarm
Head Leoric / Pride’s Fall / Any Skill Rune
Shoulder Razeth’s Volition Bone Spikes (Open) Blood Spikes
Chest Requiem Cereplate Bone Spear Shatter / Teeth
Arms St. Archews / Stone Blood Rush Potency
Legs Blackthorne’s Bone Armor Dislocation
Boots Steuart’s / Ice Climbers Simulacrum Blood and Bone
Belt Goldwrap / Dayntees Devour Devouring Aura
Bracer Gelmindor’s Marrow Guards Passives
Amulet Haunted Visions Stand Alone
Ring Krysbyn’s / Zodiac Dark Reaping
Ring Unity / Lornelles Fueled by Death (Open)
Weapon Scythe of the Cycle Final Service (Open)
Offhand Any Phylactery —
Kanai’s Cube Legendary Gems
Maltorius’ Petrified Spike Legacy of Dreams
Reaper’s Wraps / Dayntee’s / Goldwrap / Any Bane of the Powerful / Enforcer
Krysbyn’s / Unity / Lornelle’s Esoteric Alteration (Hoarder)

Get CORE ITEMS asap. The heart of your build

The absolute core of your build are these:

  • Scythe of the Cycle and Maltoriu’s Petrified Spike- use Death’s Breath.
  • Gelmindor’s Marrow Guards – use Blood Shards.
  • Haunted Visions is super important, but its a damn amulet… the most difficult to “force”.

Spending Blood Shards and Death’s Breath

Blood ShardsDeaths BreathRings, amulets

Here’s advice on how to spend your blood shards with Kadala, roughly in order of importance:

  • Gelmindor’s Marrow Guards (Bracer)
  • Razeth’s Volition (Shoulder)
  • Goldwrap / Dayntees (Belt)
  • Requiem Cereplate

You can look for the other ‘unimportant’ things in the build preview after these (IE Ice Climbers, Gloves etc)

Here’s advice on how to get your weapons from Deaths Breath rare item upgrades (Kanai’s Cube Recipe: 25x Deaths Breath convert a rare into random legendary of same type), roughly in order of importance:

1h Scythe for Scythe of the Cycle is the “lesser hassle” of the pair, so try for it first.

2h Scythe for Maltorius’ is next. The increased Essence Cost is something you have to consider…

Amulet for Haunted VIsions. Yep, It’s that important- even with such a low drop rate.

Nothing else is really WORTH spending DB’s for, and would rather spend to try and get jewelry you might not have yet.

Rings and Amulets are tough to get from either BS or DB’s (due to the large amount of possible outcomes), but if you’re done getting your core items from these currencies – and you haven’t got your core accessories, it’s a viable way to spend them. Typically you’ll just find these as you grind – then use currency if you’re desperate. Anyway, if I had to rank the importance of your rings and ammys…

HAUNTED VISIONS is core, but it’s an amulet and very difficult to “force”. Your best bet is DB’s.

No rings are truly core to your build but Lornelles is great for defense, and Krysbyn’s is amazing for DPS.

Unity is a decent defensive option, but you need the follower immortality relic, and another Unity for the follower!

As an aside – Ring of Royal Grandeur and Avarice Band are BOUNTY ONLY rings (respectively ACT I and III), which DO NOT APPEAR FROM any other source. They, like any other bounty item, DO NOT DROP from monsters, gambling, upgrades or any other source outside of their respective BOUNTY CACHE.

Follower Gear odds and ends

More of a reminder than anything, once you start farming you will be running into those little bonuses for your follower farming build. Keep an eye out!

Summary & Outro

Welp, that’s about it. I have to say these Soul Shards are weirdly exciting, and S25 is a little spicier for it. From here, you can easily do the Seasonal Journey if that’s your thing, or transition into literally any other build you like – the it’s exactly what the S25 fresh 70 LoD builds for each class are made for.

GL out there and check out our D3 Guide Directory if you need anything else!

39 COMMENTS

  1. Great guide! I appreciate the detailed steps for leveling up the Necromancer. The tips on gear and skills really helped me optimize my build. Can’t wait to try out the strategies in my next run!

  2. Hey, sorry if the question was already answered, but what do we use the Taeguk for?
    In every source I could find online it was said that the the gem doens’t work with blood syphon. Was it reworked?

  5. This was an awesome guide. I started as a beginner completely new to this game and in a month of casual playing I’ve acquired everything in the guide and am now paragon 500. My question is, I’m currently hitting a limit at GR 60 and I’m wondering if I should continue to improve my gem rank/start augmenting/obtain ancients OR if I should start going into other builds. If so, are there any recommendations or guides for hitting GR90 (somewhat comfortably).

  6. Hi, i wanna ask, on the guide it says to get % army fo the dead on shoulders/chests, but its actually impossible to get that affix right now, i double checked with d3planner

  7. Hi, I know the comment thread is pretty old, but I have a quick (and hopefully) easy question.

    I’ve used this guide from level 1 to 70 (w/ +60 paragon) and it worked beautifully!, Thanks very much!

    Throughout this page (Necromancer fresh level 70 guide), the Land of Dead runes listed actually belong to the Army of the Dead spell. Did I miss something, or is this page referring to an earlier patch?

    Thanks again for the awesome guide and I’m loving my 6-piece Rathma set.

  8. What would you recommend for off hand after getting the amulet if the main weapon is 1h Scythe of the Cycle? since there is no bone armor (cold rune).

  9. Thank you for this clear and very well laid out guide. Aside from the LoN/LoD confusion (which a quick google search resolved) I was able to start my journey towards building the masquerade set in a fun and enjoyable way.

  11. HI

    i am still farily new – but there doesnt seem to be a legacy of nightmare gem but that is a set right ?
    do I get that or do i get the lehacy of dreams gem ?

    • Oh boy… HC is a different animal… I hate that your main enemy is against the server. Basically I would add more defense than I would usually – and add the free death passive.

      The main advice? If your free death is down, play safe or GTFO.

      IDK, the topic of HC is a complex one…

  13. In the setting up portion you first say allres is useless so get armor but then a few paragraphs down you say the opposite. So which is it?

  14. It took me forever to find you guys have a DFans build for a gearless 70 necro. Please update this page with a secondary gearless guide like you have for the other classes for other people to have an easier time. Otherwise your guides have been pretty great so far, more fun builds than icy-veins.

  15. Thanks for work you do, thanks to your guides my wife and I have noth been able to get our season sets and have ideas on where to go next. Keep up the great work!

  16. Hi
    Thanks alot for the starter build, I used 2 guides before this one to get the pieces I needed, got them after a bit of struggle but this helped a great and awesome deal for starting Grifts. And ofc speedfarming, and not to mention the guides for the set dungeons, you guys are truly awesome!!! Thanks a bunch the Grace of Inasrius set was exactly like stated brainless. The demonhunter one was challenging but still got it thanks to the awesome guides and maps with routes provided!!!

  17. Thank you for the guide, it helped me, and not only to follow the prescribed steps, but to start figuring out some bits for myself. I’m a casual player, my non-seasonal paragon is only 123 or so.

    I have two questions.
    How high my thorns amount must be for starting out with 4-piece set, striving for 6? I have 12350 now, is that ok to start with and what’s an okay amount to have in the process?

    About trag’oul – I got myself a surprisingly nice pieces of free set, I mean, a lot with armor, which is good for trag’oul, one piece has death nova percent… but how should I reroll the secondaries on it? Should I eliminate all the resistances it has? Should I roll for sockets? Thorns? etc.

    Thanks again

    • try upping your thorns (at least while you’re completing the free set) to around 50k minimum. Get them for your secondary stats for now… Sockets for head (to put in yellow gem for more thorns) and weapon for that added armor.

      • I want to tell the story of how it was for me after all. Didn’t want to reroll for Thorns on my trag’oul pieces having a little experience on which stats will I use/need after the season.

        After all, starting from TI-II it wasn’t easy in terms of dmg. I haven’t got a lot of great legendaries to cube/use on char and materials to upgrade rares (and I have an issues with disconnects, so that is really not helping to do challenges). No Reilena’s, no Bloodtide, no Trag’oul’s fang – I had no dmg. I ended up not using much Thorns and not adjusting my build for them, but I had Heart of Iron which raised its number to ~21k I think, which is near to the number you have in the guide, and I couldn’t see how raising it can improve my speed with Golem I used for corpses tanking the mobs a lot. After all, relaying on thorns dmg takes more time (for mobs to hit you) I think, and time is luxury in GR.

        I had a lot of armor and previously cubed Aquila cuirass and Lornelle’s sunstone, which gave me the ability to survive anything pretty easy – as you’ve said in your guide, it was really a defense overkill. But I had no dmg = no speed for pushing GRs. Of course, there’s Spreading malediction + frailty, but it wasn’t enough and it’s useless against standalone bosses like rift guardians, which can just ruin GR run in the end because of the time you’ll need to wipe RG in the end. And I had to come up with something else.

        So when I found Thunderfury, it was at least something – I cubed it immediately which helped me with packs and speed. I had Lost Time in off-hand, and Devil’s tongue (leg wit no special effect on it but good stats), on which I rerolled AD% to socket and inserted highest emerald which gave me an additional 90-100k dmg which was a real save there.
        And after that I found Oculus ring – chance to create an area of power on monster kill which raises dmg by 73% while standing in it. I already had better jewelry, but thankfully I figured out that it works on follower too, so I gave it to Kormack. It was a final stroke to my improvised build 🙂 Imagine what was like playing it 🙂 I doubt that all that jumping would go well without blood rush.

        So thank you again, your guide inspired me to go for it and search for resolving seasonal goals with what I had in hands, almost literally 🙂 Got my 6 piece, wings and frame.

  18. Maybe a stupid question. But how would you recommend to geht rid of the corpses? In the full set build there is no corpse consuming skill.

  19. TeamBRG, TeamBRG… jus’ wanna shout out for an excellent guide.

    I jumped into the season waaaaay late and Rhykker pointed me towards your build guides. I used it along wit a couple others for reference, but once I hit 70 & started amassin’ the starter set, I found your guide the best of the bunch. And while I had crafted Reapers & cubed the RoRG I got, it was the closin’ remarks of the “Necro Fresh 70 Rathma 4 piece GR 20” section that spurred me on to some of the most fun I’ve had in DIII. Period. As Craig once posited, “…but peer pressure is a MF’er.”

    So, some 8 gameplay hours after dingin’ 70, seven (7) GRifts, countless deaths and a whole lotta learnin’ ’bout DIII & the class lata, my Necro has claimed the 6-pc Rathma’s.

    And how was the diligence to finish it “raw” rewarded? A legendary version of the chest dropped on the killin’ blow AND I got regular versions of the iconic Jesseth set along the way.

    Thanks for the guide… thanks for the motivation… but most of all thanks for the great fun I’m havin’ in DIII as a result.

    • Wow, thanks for the very kind words MrXzavy! Helpin’ people out is our goal, after all!

      On a side note “completing it raw” has been a point of pride for me and princess. It has been done for every class, and ever set, even when the community at large said it was impossible. Peer pressure is a MF’er indeed!

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