GhazzyTV's Necromancer levelling Guide(PoE Secrets of the Atlas 3.26)

Introduction

Hello and welcome to the Necromancer levelling walkthrough.
The object of that guide is to help newer players, or players unfamiliar with minions, succeed with the campaign. This guide is likely to be fleshed out further over time. Should you have questions about its content, please do not hesitate to contact me, as you’re likely not the only one with that question.

The first thing I think it’s important for you to understand is that the minions are doing all of the real work. Our job is simply not to stand in the fire, drink potions and summon them. This is not an extremely active playstyle, but it does have a few buttons. It is also important to understand that we need to do a few levels before we can really be minions.

With that, let’s get started!

This guide will assume that you have PoB installed to follow the tree. If you do not, you can find a guide on how it works here

The PoB for this build can be found here: https://pobb.in/TmCu9dbIL5sg

Act 1

We will start our journey on the beach with a fireball gem. Proceed along the beach and don’t fight anything. Open the chest, grab the support gem and equip it linked to your starting gem. Follow the beach until you find Hillock. Drown him in Fireballs and move on to town.
Upon entering town, you open Nessa’s interface and purchase a Rolling Magma gem. Replace Fireball with it. Speak to the other NPCs and enter the next zone. You want to avoid the fire rain unique monster, as it is incredibly annoying. Make sure to grab the waypoint before you enter the Mudflats.
Don’t stand still and tank the Rhoas, move as they charge and then kill them. This is by many veterans considered the hardest zone in the entire game, so don’t feel bad if the Rhoas get you. Finish this zone, enter the cavern and take the waypoint back to where you entered Mudflats. Take the path down and enter the Tidal Island. After finishing the quest here, you loot him, and then you log out to the character screen. Log back in and spawn in town.
You take Summon Raging Spirit as your quest reward, and you go to Nessa and purchase Holy Flame Totem. You also grab Summon Phantasm Support as your quest reward for the other quest. Link the totem and the phantasm.
You need to put Summon Raging Spirit somewhere so it can level, but it’s not super effective yet.
If you have the currency, you also pick up Shield Charge and Frostblink. If not, you can come back and get them later. Make sure to keep Frostblink low level (you can right click the gem when it pops up to make the popup go away).

As we progress the game from here, make sure to be on the lookout for an item with BBR links. Helmet/wand/shield/boots/gloves – does not matter. We need BBR for later, so be on the lookout for that.

Progress until you enter prison and go back to town. Speak to Nessa and take Minion Damage Support and purchase a Melee Splash Support. This is where that BBR link from before comes in, link SRS – Min Damage – Splash.
At this point, discard Rolling Magma. We are minions now. If you can afford to, pick up Vitality and Clarity. Try not to level Clarity too high, Vitality won’t be a problem as we discard it early next act.

Proceed through Prison, making sure to pick up the Trial along the way. The Trial is located in Prison Level 1. So not leave this zone until you finish it. Walk up and kill Brutus.

Proceed through the next zone and get to the ship Graveyard. Find the ship graveyard cave, but do not enter. Leave a portal here. Proceed to find the Cavern of Wrath, enter and take the waypoint.
Waypoint to town and speak to Nissa. Take Absolution as your reward. Purchase Flesh Offering and Added Lightning Damage Support from Nessa. Replace the gems in your BBR item with Absolution – Minion Damage Support – Added Lightning Damage Support.
If you do not have a cold resistance ring yet, check Nessa and see if she will sell you one. If you have a spare gem, you can always purchase an Iron Ring and sell this spare blue gem (none of the ones mentioned here) to her with the iron ring for a cold resistance ring.
Take the portal back to the cave, pick up the quest item and leave through the door. Beat up fairgraves and take the waypoint back to the cavern of wrath. Proceed until you find the boss.
Remember to use your Flesh offering to boost the Absolution minions’ cast speed and kill Merveil.

I would personally advise you to get a Bone Offering and put it in your second weapon set.
In case you are very new to ARPGs, you have two weapon sets. The “main set” that we actually use, and the “secondary set” that we only use to level gems. Grab any item with a blue socket, press X, put the item in, add bone offering and press X again. Now it’ll level without wasting your sockets.
You can repeat this with other gems later if you get socket issues, so the gem doesn’t fall behind. You can, and most players do, skip this and come back for these gems before they hit level 44. However, as PoE is overwhelming and you might forget, I suggest you grab it now. You do you.

This concludes Act 1.

Act 2.

As you enter the Forest Encampment, you are presented with two choices: go left or go right. We go left.
Proceed through the Fields until you reach the Crossroads, make sure to take this Waypoint.
Go north, find the Chamber of Sins. In Act 2, there’s a trial; make sure you find and complete this. Kill Fidelitas, then portal to town.
Take Skitterbots as your reward for this quest. If reservations are tight (and they probably are), drop vitality. If your clarity is level 5 or so by now, stop levelling it.

Portal back to Crossroads. First, go kill Kraytin, then portal back to town and once again go to Crossroads. This time, you’re going south towards the Crypt.
You will find the Trial in level 1 of the crypt, and the quest item in level 2. Portal to town after picking up the quest item and doing the trial.
This time we’re finally headed left (or west if you will). Try to follow the road as it makes it impossible to miss the waypoint. When you reach the broken segments, frostblink over them.
Go north to Riverways, find Oak and kill him. Take his amulet, find the area’s waypoint and waypoint back to the riverways. Go west, find the Western Forest.

In this zone, there are three things we want to find. Follow the road until you find the waypoint. On the side of the road the waypoint is at, go directly to the edge of the screen (or until Alira’s camp appears). Find it, speak to her and select “Help Alira”. Do not kill her, we want the resistance.
Go toward the bottom of the map, find the blackguards and insert the quest item they drop in the wall. Follow the map up the other way until you find Weaver’s Chambers. Kill Weaver, pick up the quest item and go to town.
Pick up Faster Casting Support and replace Added Lightning Damage Support with it. Purchase Minion Life Support for your Zombies and Desecrate, which you put in whichever green socket you have. Keep this as low level as possible, for spawning corpses cheaply.
Desecrate is a simple gem that spawns corpses. We use this to fuel our Flesh Offering and to spawn corpses for our Raise Zombie should they die.
Teleport back to Riverways and enter the next zone.
This area is straightforward it’s just run ahead until you find the ziggurat.

This zone seems confusing, but the doors are almost always diagonal to each other. If you enter from the lower right, the next door is top left. And so on and so forth. Proceed until you reach the apex, and kill the boss.
Leave the act.

Act 3

Pick up the recipe as you enter and follow the buildings on the water edge. You find and help Clarissa, stay around until she is on her feet and can talk to you, then talk to her. Follow the water to town.
Enter the next area, locate the ! Mark and then proceed to walk onwards until you find the Crematorium. In this zone, there is a trial; find and complete it. Once you do, go find and fight Piety. Bring the quest item back to Clarissa.
You will take Purity of Elements as your reward here, and it is now your Priority 1 aura. This helps fix our resistance and is massive Quality of Life as it means we no longer get frozen, chilled, ignited or shocked.
As you may have overleveled a bit and might already have Eldritch Battery by now, I am mentioning this early. Once you get EB, you drop Clarity as you no longer need it. You should try to make sure you have some energy shield on gear from this point, so EB functions.
Once you have taken the reservation nodes, you replace Summon Skitterbots with a new damage aura, Zealotry.

At this point, you might find a 4-L item with BBBR, and if you do, add a fourth link to your Absolution. Controlled Destruction Support is the obvious choice.

From here, I will start to shorten things down a little bit, you’re probably getting the gist of things. Don’t worry, I’ll still mention gem swaps and trials. But I think it’s important you explore the game a bit on your own, and I’ll focus on making sure the important things take place.

For the most part, Act 3 is very straightforward. You progress through zones and do quests, you can’t go the wrong way.

Convocation

Feeding Frenzy Support

Physical to Lightning Support

1. Convocation is a fantastic utility gem that lets us yoink our minions to us if we start to move away from this. This is the point at which veteran minion players start to shield charge ahead and pull the minions after them with Convocation. You do not have to do this, but I think you should know about it.
2. Feeding Frenzy Support is a buff support that we link to Raise Zombie. It will make all minions faster, not just the Zombies. So this allows the zombies to not only be meatshields, but also provide a damage buff to the Absolution Sentinel’s.
3. Physical to Lightning Support Replaces Controlled Destruction Support if you have a four link, and f Faster Casting Support if you are still on a three link (i hope you’re on four though).

It may be tempting to attempt the Labyrinth now, as you will get the text prompt after finish the Trial in Gardens. Don’t, it’s needlessly hard for a new player at this point.

Instead, this is an excellent time to talk about the crafting bench. For those of you who played PoE 2, prepare to have your minds blown by this.
You got a Hideout from Helena in Act 2 when you did Chambers. Go to a waypoint and teleport to your hideout. Find the picture of the chair (Hideout decorations) and find the crafting bench (should be one of the few things you have). Place it somewhere in your hideout and close the interface.
Click the crafting bench, and start looking at your equipped items. Any item you have that doesn’t have a resistance on it, but has an open suffix (hold down ALT to see this), can have a resistance added to it through the bench.
Especially if your lightning resistance is god awful, craft it somewhere. If you’re at 60% for most of them, that’s fine.
Finish the act, but remember the crafting bench. Adding rolls to gear as you progress will make your life a LOT easier. It’s immensely powerful, and a new player should not ignore this. The bench will be your friend through your entire stay in PoE 1, so you might as well become familiar with it now.

Act 4

This act is again pretty straightforward, and there’s very little trickery to be done here.
Once you get the waypoint in Crystal Veins, I would suggest you go do your Labyrinth. You will have to go back to the Act 3 town to open the labyrinth. It is located directly to the right as you come up the stairs; the best way I can describe it is a green, glowing door.
Before you enter the labyrinth, I would advise that you make sure you have somewhat decent health potions. It’s likely also helpful to know that traps are the number one killers in here, and that doubling back in panic is what usually kills new players.
Finish the Labyrinth and ascend as a Necromancer. Take Commander of Darkness as your first node.
Teleport back to Crystal Veins and do Daresso’s and Kaom’s realms, respectively, in whatever order you prefer. Then speak to Dialla and go back to town. Petarus and Vanja will now give you Spell Echo Support as a reward.
This replaces Faster Casting Support on your Absolution link. It will feel a little bit clunky at first, but it’s too big of a damage upgrade to pass up.

Once you finish this act, take Summon Stone Golem as your reward when you come back to town, both of its buffs are very helpful for us. Our database is not updated yet, but it has two buffs. Trust me.

Act 5

If you somehow do not have a four-link by now, you need to start checking vendors often. It’s becoming a problem.

There are no Trials or Gem changes in this act, so just keep things as is. If you have acquired an item with RG linked and thus can add Faster Attacks Support to your Shield Charge, I would suggest you do so. If you don’t want to go fast, this doesn’t matter. Feel free to take your time if you prefer.
At the end of it, you will fight Kitava. After you beat him, you will get a -30% resistance penalty. It’s important that you keep this in mind and upgrade gear to preferably have extra resistances, or that you upgrade your worst pieces and use the crafting bench to cover this resistance penalty.
From act 6 onwards, the game will assume you have 75% resistance, and it will penalise you quite heavily if you do not.
Simply put, if the game wanted to hit you for 250 damage, it would send a hit of 1000 as the elemental resistances reduce it by 75%. What this means is the difference between 75 and 50% resistance is quite literally taking double damage. Taking double damage is bad!

Act 6

This act has a host of optional quests, two of which grant skill points.

The first of them is the quest to the left of the act’s town, I would suggest you do this first, then progress with the act. This unlocks the vendor Lilly Roth, who sells almost any basic gem in the game, and she’s extremely handy.

In the first zone, do not instantly progress. If you find the exit at the end of the road, don’t take it. Instead, find the valley of the fire eater and beat the God hiding here. Then proceed.
There is a Trial in the Prison, find and complete it. Then progress.
Keep going until you reach The Riverways. Once you find the Waypoint in this zone, proceed directly to the left of the waypoint until you find The Wetlands. In this zone, there is a boss called Ryslatha. Kill it and portal back to town.
Deliver both quests, take both skill points and teleport back to the waypoint in The Riverways.

Finish the rest of the act. As always, make sure your resistances stay as high as possible, preferably 75%.

Act 7

In this act, you will find a Trial in the Crypt and the Chamber of Sins, level 2.
Leave town and head to Crossroads, pick up the waypoint. Head south to The Crypt, do the trial as you progress through this area and get the quest item.
Teleport back to Crossroads, then head North towards Chamber. Find the waypoint in the middle of it, and insert the quest item into the map device (the giant circular thing). Finish the mini quest here and kill the various bosses, hand the spider goo to Silk and get his key.
Proceed down to level 2, do the Trial and move onwards through the Den to The Ashen Fields. Kill the boss here and move to The Northern Forest.
Stick to the lower walls of this zone as you progress through it, find the Dread Thicket and explore it. You need to collect all the Firelies here. There is a crater in the middle of it. Kill the boss down there and then leave The Dread Thicket.
Head North to The Causeway. Proceed through this waterway-filled hellhole until you come out to a zone exit. Make sure you get the quest item in the box.
Now, it is time for The Vaal City. One of the most hated zones in the game. You are going to get lost, and this is going to take time. Nothing you can do about that, I’m afraid.

Find the temple, and proceed through it. Similar to the previous temple, diagonals are the thing here. Lower left, upper right and so on. There are exceptions to this rule, but most layouts work like this.
Kill Arakaali, and exit the act. Take the waypoint. At this point, I would normally do my second lab, but as we’re taking mistress, it’s not important yet. You can if you want to, though.
If the lab turns out to be hard, you can put it off for later; that is fine.

Act 8

Once again, we’re faced with a left-right situation in this act. I’ll explain further.
Initially, we head straight into the Conduits and fight Doedre. As we exit her Arena, we head left, to the Grand Promenade and into the Bath House.
Find and kill the special NPC charging around in the middle of this zone, and the waypoint (we will need this waypoint later).
Find and complete the areas’ Trial, then exit. Do not go to the High Gardens. Proceed to Lunaris Concourse, and head left to the Lunaris Temple. Kill the boss, take the orb and go back to town.
Back into Toxic Conduits, this time heading right. As you enter the Quay, you stick to the water’s edge. You will eventually find a long, thin bridge. Walk across it and pick up the quest item in the box in the middle.
Continue along, along the water (it’ll feel like heading right) until you find the special arena with Tolman, Clarissa and the zombies. Kill everything in here (you can’t kill Clarissa, don’t worry). Then proceed north to Grain Gate.
In the Grain Gate, there is a group of mercenaries dressed in black. They are usually easiest to find if you hold a top-right angle, in my experience. Kill them, then exit the area.
Through the fields to the temple, kill this boss and take his orb. Back to town again.
This is going to sound weird, but we’re teleporting to the Bath House again. This time we are headed to the High Gardens. Find and kill Yugul, the reflection boss.
This zone is a royal pain in the ass due to porcupines, they might get you a few times. This is fine, don’t worry about it. If your gear doesn’t have sufficient evasion/armour, you can sometimes die.
Once Yugul falls, you teleport to town and take the waypoint to Lunaris Concourse and head right towards the bridge. Halfway across, there’s a door, enter and use your orbs. Kill the twins.
Exit into the Blood Aqueducts.
You may or may not have been given some awful advice by a friend to grind this zone for a t Tabula Rasa. Do not do this, it’s not worth it.

Act 9

Act 9 has a lot of choices and optional paths. I’m not going to suggest you do exactly what the entrenched players do, because it relies on how speedy they do things.
Instead, I will suggest the easiest and most foolproof path. If you’re a seasoned ARPG player, and you know the normal route, take the normal route.

Proceed through the Descent until you get to the Vastiri Desert. Take the waypoint, find the quest item (it’s a giant circle with a ! in it, hard to miss) and win the fight. Then head north towards the Foothills.
Hold to the right through this zone, following the mountain surface. Take the waypoint, do not go to the boiling lake. Change direction to the north-west and find The Tunnel. There is a trial in the Tunnel; find it before proceeding.
As you exit into The Quarry, run straight ahead towards the middle and find the waypoint (we need it for later).
Then head southwest on the map until you find the Shrine of the Winds, fight the boss here and take her quest item. Go back into the Quarry, and go searching for the Refinery.

Refinery is an important zone for us, as it contains a craft we sorely need. Unfortunately, it is not very well marked, and you might have to search for it a bit. It’s hidden in an unmarked underground area, the door is a square blue field. If you come across it, click it and go down into the cellar and click the crafting recipe.
Proceed to kill the area’s boss.
If you have not done your second lab, go do so now. Take Mistress of Sacrifice as your Ascendancy. At this point, you are going to want a GB link on your wand, preferably a wand with minion modifiers. Go to your hideout, craft “trigger a socketed spell when you use a skill”. Put your offering and your desecrate in this item.
Replace Flesh Offering with Bone Offering. This is a minor DPS loss, but the block you gain from this makes everything a lot more comfortable.

Having finished this, we go back to town. We speak to Petarus and Vanja, and Sin a few times, until we get a Bottle item. We go back to the Vastiri Desert waypoint and head to the far right of the map, looking for the Oasis. There’s a scorpion boss here, which we murder.
Then portal to town, waypoint to The Foothills and enter The Boiling Lake. Find and murder this area’s boss and loot it. You have assembled all you need, teleport back to town again and take the waypoint to Quarry. Proceed through to the end boss (this will take some time).

Act 10

Thankfully, there’s not too much that can go wrong path-wise in Act 10, so if you get lost, you will eventually end up where you need to go. I’ll still give you some directions, though.

Climb up the ladder to Rooftop and save Bannon (left side area), then exit his little arena and run across the whole rooftop.
Exit onto the square, and head south. You’re looking for the Control Blocks. Take the waypoint, then find and kill Vilenta. Then portal to town and the portal back to the start of control blocks.
Head directly North, pick up the waypoint outside the Ossuary. Enter the Ossuary and locate the trial. Complete it, and locate the quest item.
Exit the ossuary and head to the right. You will eventually come to The Torched Courts, proceed through them and find the Deserated Chambers. You kill this boss and pick up his staff.
Portal to town, and hand in various quests NPC’s have for you. Make sure you speak to them until all! marks are gone, so that …a certain something happens and two NPCs swap places. You’ll know when this happens.
At this point, you should go do your third Labyrinth and grab Mindless Agression as your Ascendancy. Remember to bring a copy of the gem you are you are looking to play later, as you do this Labyrinth, as it has an increased chance of giving you transfigured gems.
If, for instance, you’re looking to play Skeleton Mages, you will be bringing a skeleton gem. You might get skeleton archers, you might get skeleton mages, or you might get something random. Bring it regardless, it’s a good opportunity for the transfigured gems you’re looking for.
The same goes for any transfigured gem you are looking to play, the skeletons are merely an example here.

Take the waypoint back to Square and walk a few meters to the right, you’ll find a familiar NPC here, and he will open the way for you to move forward.
Proceed through the Canals and The Feeding Through. These zones are somewhat long and might take you a few minutes.
At the end, you will be met with a waypoint, which is the second and final Kitava fight. As before, you will get a -30% resistance penalty for winning this fight.
I would strongly suggest you take a second to look over your gear before fighting him, so you don’t start out your adventures in maps with bricked resistances. Ideally, you want to be 30% above each elemental resistance cap, so he puts you down to capped.
If you can’t quite get there, that’s unfortunate, but it’s mostly fine. Go kick his ass.

Prologue

You will end up back in the harbour, talk to Lilly to be sent to the new base. As you get here, you will meet Commander Kirac.
He’s going to send you on various missions into maps, but that’s a bit too involved for this guide.

At this point, you should begin transitioning to the build you actually intended to play, both in terms of gear and talent points. Most minion trees are pretty similar, so you shouldn’t need too many respecs.
If you need more than the campaign provided, you can respec with gold through Faustus.

Questions?

To guarantee that my guides are tools you can utilize to enhance your experience in Path of Exile, you may have questions. Please join the “PoE Vault discord(PoE Vault Discord)”: https://discord.gg/arpg-vault and they will attend to them as soon as they are able.

Final notes

As much as I love making build guides, it is very crucial in a game like Path of Exile that you play the game the way you enjoy playing it. With that said, if you’ve made any tweaks to the build compared to what I’m showing in this guide I would love it if you share in my discord! It’s an effective way to show other approaches and it helps me grow as a build guide creator!

I hope you found the build guide useful and I wish you all many Divine Orb drops!