Oblivion Mod: P&B Nec Guide - the perfect cow hunter

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DarkKiss
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Joined: Thu Feb 12, 2009 9:52 pm

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Hey guys. I want to share with you all my favourite build for cows. It's a poison & bone Necromancer which I believe you're all familiar with. However in our mod there are new items which unlock new opportunities. The most important one is the Hell's Ward charm - thanks to it I can easily remove the otherwise first-choice Enigma and replace it with Bramble. But I'll get there later.
Skill Point Distribution
  1. Summoning Spells
    • Raise Skeleton: 1
    • Clay Golem: 1
    • Golem Master: 1
    • Raise Skeletal Mage: 1
    • Blood Golem: 1
    • Summon Resist: 1
    • Iron Golem: 1
    • Revive: 1
  2. Poison and Bone Spells
    • Teeth: 1
    • Bone Armor: 1
    • Corpse Explosion: 20
    • Poison Dagger: 20
    • Bone Wall: 1
    • Poison Explosion: 20
    • Poison Nova: 20
  3. Curses
    • Amplify Damage: 1+
    • Weaken: 1
    • Iron Maiden: 1
    • Terror: 1
    • Life Tap: 1
    • Decrepify: 1
    • Lower Resist: 1+
Summoning Spells: Having Golem is a must for every Nec. Revive from other side is optional. Personally I don't mind wasting few skill points there as leveling in Oblivion isn't that hard anyway. Having 20 revives around you gives you the opportunity to play kamikaze - you can easily teleport in the middle of melees and they will serve as shield for you.

Poison and Bone Spells: Poison Nova and its synergies are maxed as obviously this is our main attack. Corpse Explosion is what makes this build more efficient than any other when it comes to cows so it should be maxed too.

Curses: Not much to say here. Lower Resist is needed when we attack with poison and Amplify when we use Corpse Explosion. This build needs 98 skill points (level 87). You can put the rest of the skill points on either Amplify Damage or Lower Resist, depends what you're using your Nec for. Mine are on Amplify.
Stat Point Distribution
  • Strength: Enough to wear its gear. Mine has 61 basic.
  • Dexterity: None
  • Vitality: All the rest
  • Energy: None
Gear
  • Helm: Kira's Guardian - 2 skills, cast, all res & cannot be frozen. That's my first choice. Harlequin Crest is a decent alternative.
  • Amulet: Mara's Kaleidoscope. If you don't have some nasty rare or craft Nec amu, this is good choice.
  • Weapon: Death's Web. The absolutely favourite. Nothing can replace these 4 skills and 50% poison damage. No other weapon comes close to it. Can't see any alternative, sorry.
  • Armor: Bramble (Runeword). Same as above, 50% poison damage is insane. If you don't have Hell's Ward, you can use Enigma I guess. Teleport is quite important though so it's highly recommended to have at least 1 of these 2.
  • Shield: Boneflame. 3 skills and res. Not bad at all. Darkforce Spawn and Spirit (Runeword) are options too if you want to reach your cast breakpoint.
  • Gloves: Trang-Oul's Claws. Can't imagine poison Nec wearing any other gloves. 2 Curses skills, 25% poison damage, cast, cold res.. And on top of that - quite cheap.
  • Rings: 2x Stone of Jordan. 2 skills and lots of mana.. Sounds good to me. You can play with the rings as per your needs though.
  • Belt: Arachnid Mesh. Skill, cast & mana.
  • Boots: That's where you have most options. You can use whatever you need here. My Nec wears Waterwalk but that's mostly cause it's all I can afford :)
  • 2nd hand: Call to Arms + Spirit.
Mercenary

The merc I've got is from Hell's Act 3 - Cold with Meditation aura. Both Revive and Corpse Explosion require lots of mana (45 & 61 in my case) so it'd really benefit you if your merc could help you to balance that. To be honest, these types of mercs aren't fighters and they'll likely hide behind you most of the time so their gear isn't that important in my opinion. We simply need them because of their auras. That's all. Mine has Crown of Ages, Duriel's Shell and Phoenix (Runeword). The idea behind the Phoenix was to get extra health from its aura. Unfortunately it didn't make much of a difference - ~200 HP. If I knew exactly how much it'd give me probably I wouldn't spent Jah+Sur there.
Inventory

Again, not much to say here. Get yourself the best you can find :) My Nec has few (5) P&B skillers, Annihilus (19/15/10), Torch (Nec 3/10/15), Hell's Ward (3/7/5/7/6) and unfinished Counter Charm. Around them I've got few life charms, nothing impressive.
Overall Review

Damage: 15k (Poison Nova)
Life: 3k (including Redemption), Mana: 921
Resists:
  • Fire: 80 (100)
  • Cold: 80 (100)
  • Lightning: 70
  • Poison: 75 (182)
My Nec doesn't have Light res max though but I the gear I have ca be improved anyway. My Annih & Torch are far from max, my Mara's got just 24 res, Boneflame 24 instead of 30 and so on and so forth. Ideally if you have perfect gear probably you could take off Kira's Guardian without sacrificing resists.
FCR: 56%. FHR: 70% - these two are where a lot can be done, if that matters to you. Here's a very useful table containing the FHR/FCR breakpoints if you aim to reach them: razvitiq-i-taktiki/topic9115.html

I've recorded a short video demonstrating how good this Nec actually is. It's recorded in a private game where I'm alone but trust me, it's equally good in a full game with 8 players.
The strategy is quite simple - use Bone Wall to gather around you as many cows as you can, then Low Res them and cast Poison Nova until at least couple of them die. As soon as you have some corpses curse the rest of the cows with Amplify Damage and blow them away with Corpse Explosion. My Nec is far from being perfect yet but this build overall I truly believe has the potential to be named as No.1 when it comes to farming cows.

Thank you for taking time to read this topic. If you have any ideas or suggestions how it can be improved please share your thoughts below and I'll gladly update the original post if needed.

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