Welcome to the Bone Spear Necromancer Leveling Guide. With a spear of bone in your hands, nothing can stand in your way! Bone Spear pierces all enemies it hits, then breaks apart when it collides with an object, reflecting back three or five shards of shrapnel.
This incredibly strong skill alone allows you to snipe enemies, chase and defeat Treasure Goblins, defeat bosses, and do sufficient Area of Effect (AoE) damage to demolish anything in the game, even on World Tier 2 - Veteran. Terrifyingly powerful on its own? Yes. But this build guide equips you with every utility skill and damage increase to take the Bone Spear Necromancer build to its absolute limits.
Even better, you don't need to rely on an army of useless skeletons to help you out. You quickly sacrifice these minions for focusing all of your might through the power of Critical Strike Chance with Bone skills.
The satisfying part of this build's leveling experience is that it does not depend on any random Legendary drops! Making use of the Codex of Power is enough to get you to the endgame, but if you find some key Aspects during your journey you can incresae your damage tremendously.
Best of all, this build prepares you for Necromancer's endgame builds, the Bone Spear Endgame Necromancer with a minor respec. Then, your enemies will truly know the terrifying power of Bone.
This build guide takes you through the Campaign and Early Game up to Level 50. Check out Endgame Guides in our Necromancer Guides section!
- Good AoE
- Fast Resource Gain
- Instant Vulnerability
- Best Single Target Damage
- Corpse Reliant
- No Mobility Skills
- No Health Regen, Fortify, or Barrier
Season 3 - Season of the Construct
Recommended Stones
- Gyrate - High upfront damage with an AoE component and low cooldown.
- Resource Support - Helps out with generating Essence during combat.
- Initiative Support - Lets the Seneschal Construct gap-close and keeps the downtime between Gyrate casts low.
- Mockery Support - Groups and keeps enemies at a distance for you to deliver your damage more easily.
- Tempest - Sounds like the most broken Governing Stone in the game and has insane potential on paper.
- Arcing Support - Increases the amount of enemies Tempest can damage.
- Swift Support - Decreases the time between pulses.
- Registered Damage Support - In combination with the previous Tuning Stones this really sounds like the Barber all over again from Season 1.
Alternative Stones
- Swap Resource Support for Gripping Support - As soon as you reach Late Endgame, Essence is no problem and therefore frees up a slot.
- Swap Registered Damage Support for Duration Support to have your Tempest out for longer.
- Swap Swift Support for Voluminous Support to cover more area with your Tempest.
Skills
Bone Splinters
Bone Splinters is a fast and easy skill to start off your build, giving you decent Essence generation. Even at higher levels, this synergizes with other Bone skills and aspects quite well.
Skill Tree & Gameplay
Generators
You use Bone Splinters to recover Essence and increase your Critical Strike Chance by 8% for 4 seconds by hitting the same enemy at least 3 times with the same cast of Bone Splinters.
Iron Maiden is an incredible Essence generator in high density encounters but can only generate Essence when it hits a non-cursed enemy.
Bone Spirit has become an absolute Essence generating machine with the new Shattered Spirit's Aspect introduced in Season 3. By using Bone Spirit whenever you are at 0 Essence, you generate 30% of your Maximum Essence and on top of that the Bone Splinters generate 6 Essence per enemy hit. This forces you to get closer to the enemies whenever you are about to use Bone Spirit. NOTE: Only use Bone Spirit when you are at 0 or low Essence.
Grim Harvest also generates 6 Essence every time you consume a Corpse with Corpse Explosion.
Bone Spear
Bone Spear always travels a fixed distance while piercing every enemy and then splits into 3 or 5 Bone Shards that return a portion of the distance travelled. It is important to hit as many enemies as possible with both portions of the Bone Spear. You can bounce your Bone Spear off a wall to limit the distance travelled, which is especially useful against Elites with the Suppressor affix.
Use the slider on the bottom to see the Skill progression
Corpse Explosion & Corpse Tendrils
Corpse Explosion serves multiple purposes while not using Essence but Corpses instead. First and foremost it is used to finish off enemies and cause a domino effect. Once you begin detonating Corpses, you generate more Corpses by killing enemies, which can then be used to detonate and produce even more Corpses. Secondly it generates Essence with Grim Harvest and increases your damage with Fueled by Death. Use Corpse Explosion on your way out of the fight to finish off remaining enemies and activate Reaper's Pursuit to get to the next pack faster.
Corpse Tendrils may be the best source of Crowd Control (CC) in Diablo 4. It Slows, Stuns, applies Vulnerable or generates Blood Orbs and pulls every monster (except Bosses) into a single space so that all of your AoE damage becomes infinitely more effective. With a few of your modifiers and Passives, these statuses become great sources of damage scaling as well. NOTE: Corpse Tendrils does not consume Corpses.
Bone Storm
Bone Storm mainly functions as an awesome buff that gives you 15% Damage Reduction and 20% Critical Strike Chance during its duration. You do not really care about the damage it provides.
Key Passive
Unlocking the Ossified Essence Key Passive massively increases your damage by making Essence over 50 a damage multiplier. From this point onwards +Maximum Essence on your gear becomes more valueable.
Check out our Renown Guide to unlock all your additional rewards efficiently.
Book of the Dead
The Bone Spear Necromancer does not rely on its minions at all and powers up by making use of the sacrifice bonuses. During leveling you can choose between sacrificing Skeletal Warriors - Skirmishers and Skeletal Warriors - Defenders depending on how your resistances look like.
Unlocking the Book of the Dead
You're able to summon Skeletons as early as level one, with the ability to customize your Skeletal Skirmishers starting at level 5, when the Book Menu unlocks. From there, you unlock more types of Skeletal Warriors, Skeletal Mages and eventually Golems as you gain levels. The Golem requires you to complete a Quest, which is detailed in this resource post. You must put the Raise Skeleton and Golem skills on your skill bar to summon them.
Learn more details in our full Book of the Dead Guide.
Gear Progression & Global Stat Priorities
Ultimately, the best weapon for leveling a Bone Spear Necromancer is a Two-Handed Sword or Scythe for as much damage as possible. Always go for higher DPS (Item Level) over the rest of a weapon's stats during leveling.
If you have multiple weapons with the same DPS prioritize the one with these stats:
- Intelligence
- All Stats
- Core Skill Damage
- Vulnerable Damage
Hint: Press SHIFT over an item to compare it to what you're wearing!
Armor
Armor typically grants you Defense and Utility stats, except the Gloves, which offer a multitude of Offensive options. Here are the important stats to look for:
- Helm:
- Maximum Life
- Lucky Hit Chance while You Have a Barrier
- Maximum Essence
- +xx% Total Armor
- Chest Armor:
- Maximum Life
- +xx% Total Armor
- Damage Reduction
- Damage Reduction from Close Enemies
- Gloves:
- + Ranks to Bone Spear
- Critical Strike Chance
- Lucky Hit Chance
- Lucky Hit: Chance to Restore Primary Resource
- Attack Speed
- Pants:
- Maximum Life
- +xx% Total Armor
- Damage Reduction
- Damage Reduction from Distant
- Boots:
- Movement Speed
- Essence Cost Reduction
- Intelligence
- All Stats
- Ranks of Corpse Tendrils
Jewelry
Jewelry provides powerful Offensive and Defensive stats that help you on your leveling journey. Pay close attention to the rolls as higher leveled pieces aren't always better:
- Amulet:
- Movement Speed
- Essence Cost Reduction
- + Ranks of the Evulsion Passive
- +xx% Intelligence
- Cooldown Reduction
- Lucky Hit Chance while Barrier You Have a Barrier
- Rings:
- Critical Strike Chance
- Lucky Hit Chance
- Maximum Essence
- Maximum Life
- Critical Strike Damage
- Vulnerable Damage
Read more about itemization in our Damage Explained, Defense Explained, and Stats Explained articles.
Legendary Aspects
The Codex of Power is a collection of Legendary Aspects you can imprint onto Rare or Legendary items at the Occultist. They unlock after completing specific Dungeons located around Sanctuary. For leveling, there are a few Aspects that can significantly help you if you have the funds to imprint them:
Top Codex Leveling Aspects
| Aspect | Dungeon |
| 1. Splintering Offensive Aspect | Guulrahn Slums |
| 2. Resource Aspect of Torment | Black Asylum |
| 3. Aspect of Grasping Veins | Corrupted Grotto |
| 4. Wind Striker Mobility Aspect | Shivta Ruins |
Learn everything about the Codex of Power here.
Helpful Legendary Aspects
Here are all helpful Legendary Aspects for the Bone Spear Necromancer that can either be found in the Codex of Power or Extracted from an item drop. Note that all Legendary Aspects can be found from item drops, and that these can roll better and often significantly better than ones sourced from the Codex of Power.
- Shattered Spirit's
- Unlocked by completing Chapter 1 of the Seasonal Journey.
- Exposed Flesh
- Unlocked by completing Chapter 2 of the Seasonal Journey.
- Serration
- Unlocked by completing Chapter 4 of the Seasonal Journey.
- Umbral
- Generates Essence whenever you Slow an enemy with Decrepify.
- Disobedience
- Helps you out defensively by increasing your armor when you hit enemies.
- Do not gamble for this during leveling.
- Might
- Reduces the damage you take while active but forces you to press your Basic skill every two to six seconds.
- Do not gamble for this during leveling.
- Slaughter
- Gives you a burst of movement speed between packs.
- Do not gamble for this during leveling.
How To Level
You level in Diablo 4 by completing the Campaign, collecting Grim Favors for the Tree of Whispers, grinding Dungeons, or interacting with Seasonal mechanics. While there are many ways to level up in Diablo 4, not all of them are made equal.
Campaign Leveling
- For your first character in Diablo 4, completing the Campaign provides the best gameplay experience and gives you access to key unlocks like your Mount.
- If you don't have your Mount, you MUST progress the Campaign until you complete the quest Donan's Favor at the start of Act 4.
- After obtaining your Mount you can skip the remainder of the campaign at any time.
- The Campaign is the slowest way to level, but it's worth experiencing the Campaign and Diablo 4's storyline at least once.
- To play Seasonal Content you need to have completed or skipped the Campaign.
Seasonal / Alt Leveling
- Complete the Seasonal questline, progress your Seasonal Journey to unlock Legendary Aspects and work on your Seasonal powers.
- If your account is below Rank 5 Renown in each zone, focus on completing your Renown.
- This only needs to be done once per realm (Softcore / Hardcore).
- Complete the Dungeons needed for any Legendary Aspects from your Codex of Power.
- From level 1-50 you should focus on getting experience in Helltide by combining Helltide activities with Grim Favors for the Tree of Whispers or complete Gathering Legion Events.
- After level 50 you need to balance leveling up, Glyph Experience and participating in Endgame activities like Helltide, Tree of Whispers and Bosses. The fastest experience possible is completing Nightmare dungeons with monsters exactly 10 levels above your current level. Check out our Nightmare Dungeon Tier List for the best Nightmare Dungeon layouts!
- Around level 30-45 you should move to World Tier 3.
- Around level 50-65 you should move to World Tier 4.
- Alternatively: Get boosted by a friend to World Tier 4 then leech experience/loot and Glyph exp (post 50), in Nightmare dungeons.
Leveling Tips and Tricks
Let's look at some tips and tricks to remember when leveling up!
- Level Up Your Potion. You need to farm materials to upgrade your character's potion.
- Make sure you collect all materials as you explore Sanctuary, especially Gallowvine which is used in many Elixir recipes!
- Compare your Items... Literally. Press Shift over an item in your inventory to compare it to what you're wearing.
- This makes it easy to determine what is and isn't an upgrade.
- Don't Imprint Your Best Aspect Onto Your Weapon. The most critical piece of gear while leveling up is your weapon, which gets replaced constantly.
- This makes imprinting a Legendary Aspect that CANNOT be found in the Codex of Power onto your weapon a bad idea in the long run.
- While leveling, only imprint Legendary Aspects from the Codex of Power onto your weapon if any at all.
- It is a better idea to put your best Offensive Aspect on your Amulet, which can be used for a long time.
- Sacred is just better. Between level 30 and 50 you're able to beat the Capstone Dungeon and enter World Tier 3, you gain access to powerful Sacred items which have higher item power and better stats. Getting a Sacred weapon significantly improves your farming speed.
- The same happens with World Tier 4 and Ancestral gear at level 60.
Next Steps
Necromancer Guides
Video Guide
Summary
- The Bone Spear Necromancer specializes in single target damage, and can annihilate enemies when their back is against a wall.
- Keep your Essence high so that Serration and Ossified Essence function at peak capacity.
- Resource Aspect of Torment, Splintering Offensive Aspect are key to ensuring this build achieves its true potential.
- Start off with a few Skeletons, but quickly Sacrifice them. Where we're going, we're going alone.
- Read the Next Steps above to continue your journey.
Credits
Maintained by Chronikz.
Originally written by Echohack.
Reviewed by Macrobioboi.