Corpse Explosion Necromancer Leveling Guide

Welcome to the Diablo 4 Blood Corpse Explosion Necromancer leveling guide! The Necromancer holds the balance of Life and Death in their bony hands. Wielding power over the very blood surging through their enemies bodies, then up-cycling their useless corpses to summon minions and as macabre artillery rounds.

This leveling guide combines the two strongest skills in the Necromancer's arsenal for the early-progression of the game. Blood Surge applying Empowered on every other cast, hitting the entire screen for MASSIVE damage, which nicely lines up a few corpses for the true star of the show: Corpse Explosion!

Leveling Checklist

Before we jump into the guide, you may be wondering what you should be doing in the Beta to power up. Let's go over the activities in detail that will get you as powerful as possible.

1. Complete the Act 1 Campaign (the Yellow quests). This will teach you the story and take you around Sanctuary. You should be level 12 by the end of it if you skip every other activity along the way.
2. Complete the first 3 levels of Renown. Renown is your fame in Diablo 4 that has massive rewards. You can complete the first 3 levels in the Beta since the others are locked by higher difficulties. This means you should be spamming Dungeons, Side Quests, Altars of Lilith and Strongholds. Also don't forget to uncover the entire map and activate every Waypoint!
3. Kill Ashava, the World Boss. She spawns 9 times during the Server Slam. Here are some critical tips:
   1. Her Circular Wing Swipe Attack is deadly. The best way to avoid it (even for ranged characters) is to get right next to her as she does it. This is telegraphed by her holding her wing up in front of her face right before she spins twice.
   2. She is level 25, so you cannot contribute to the fight if you are under leveled. This world boss only allows 12 people to fight her, so if you show up as a level 10, people will hate you, and you won't be able to earn the Cry of Ashava mount trophy. Don't engage her until you are level 20.
   3. Craft a Poison Resist Elixir before you fight her to make the fight easier!
4. Go Explore and Have Fun. Explore the world and look for events. Make an alt and try another build. Go back to some of your favorite dungeons and look for more Legendaries. Do whatever you see fit and have fun!

Warning: You can only complete 33/35 Side Quests (29/35 if you're not willing to farm for dropped Side Quest starting items) and 22/23 Dungeons in this Beta. DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME TRYING TO GET THEM ALL, BECAUSE YOU CAN'T!

Skill Progression

Getting Started (Levels 2-3, 2 Skill Points)

First, we need to unlock our primary Basic Skill and it's first enhancement. During the first few levels, your Skeletons help to absorb damage and put out a little DPS of their own. We use Hemorrhage to apply single and multi-target damage while generating our Resource. Make sure to pick up Blood Orbs while you fight!

Level 2: Hemorrhage

Level 3: Enhanced Hemorrhage

Unlocking Blood Surge (Levels 4-7, 4 Skill Points)

Blood Surge seems pretty benign to start. The initial pulse damage hits the entire screen and drains a bit of Life to keep you topped off. The second, smaller pulse, does much more damage to monsters in closer range. But once you fully unlock it's potential, you are almost always dealing Overpower damage on every screen and that's when your build really starts to perform. Acolyte's Hemorrhage is the last point we need to unlock Corpse Explosion and helps by increasing our Resource generation.

Time for Corpse Explosion (Levels 8-17, 10 Skill Points)

Stop wasting those precious Demon bodies on summoning spindly little skeletons, those bodies are fodder for the great Corpse Explosion domino machine! Your rotation becomes quite simple. Blood Surge to pepper on some damage and drop some Corpses, Hemorrhage if you need to form another Corpse and then hold down the Corpse Explosion button until the entire screen is covered in the blood of your enemies! We also pick up Decrepify, which applies a Slow to monsters, increasing our Corpse Explosion damage from Plagued Corpse Explosion.

A Dash of Crowd Control (Levels 18-20 + Renown, 5 Skill Points)

Now let's grab the last tool we need, Corpse Tendrils. This pulls monsters into a single space so all of our Skills can be used to their maximum efficiency! It's great for survivability, DPS output, and a massive tool in group play for others as well.

Final Hints

Let us throw a few general hints your way to make life easier in the Beta:

1. Level Up Your Potion. Many players don't know that 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 recipes!
2. 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.
3. Renown is your Friend. While exploring, take time to gather Renown along the way. It has long-term benefits for your entire account, including more Skill/Paragon points and Potion charges. Renown is gained by activating Waypoints, finding Altars of Lilith, completing Side Quests/Dungeons and rescuing Strongholds.
4. Don't Imprint Your Weapon. The most critical piece of gear while leveling up is your weapon, which gets replaced constantly. This makes imprinting a Legendary Aspect on it a waste of resources. Instead, put your best offensive Aspect on your Amulet, which can be used for a long time.

Alternative Builds

The build presented above gives the smoothest leveling experience and is overall best for any farming you might want to do after reaching level 20. However, there's still plenty of other builds that can clear all the content just fine without being the best.

Now the good news is that you can fully respec your Skill Tree for just 2,000 Gold, which is basically nothing. You can also use any of these builds from level one but costs you 1-2 extra hours to reach the max level.

Summon Necromancer Build

This build seeks to maximize the damage output and viability of your summons. It puts the Necromancer in a more supportive role, applying AoE and Channeled Shadow Damage over Time and Crowd Control.

Full Blood Necromancer Build

This build answers one simple question... What if you could paint Sanctuary Red? We explore Blood Lance instead of rehashing Blood Surge, and then pick every skill that empower our Blood-based damage dealers. Corpse Tendrils and Decrepify help to CC monsters and group them up for better AOE damage potential! This build is VERY DIFFICULT to pilot on Controller. You have been warned!

Bone Spirit Necromancer Build

I'll be honest with you, this build SHOULD absolutely melt crowds of monsters and bosses alike... If you can manage to generate enough Resource fast enough. The power of Bone Spirit requires you to be at maximum Resource when you cast it and we're built to reduce its cooldown as fast as possible to spam it. So if you have the Resource, you're in the clear. DON'T try this build until you have the gear to support it! Corpse Explosion actually becomes a Resource battery by consuming corpses with Grim Harvest.

See You in the BETA!

The entire Maxroll team will be blasting all BETA long, so lets team up and purge Sanctuary of evil. Enjoy your first taste of the new chapter in Diablo and we'll see you in game! If you haven't already, head over to our Discord and select the D4 role in #roles to stay up to date with our content development. Sanctuary here we come!