The Geodesic Necromancer Set

These items will drop from a future dungeon I’m making! It will be a combat/exploration dungeon with three bosses (chosen from random each run) themed around Eldritch mumbo jumbo, drawing inspiration primarily from the Colour Out of Space (and lots of names from the Color of Madness as placeholder) with an interesting dungeon structure mechanic…

Click here for the dungeon’s WIP thread!

Overall, this set is meant to take Necro’s useless WIS mod (seriously, 4 damage per point of WIS over 70 and .5 heal radius for every 10 above 50 is not great) and just grind it into the dust with a cool theme! The items are all powerful in unique ways, but are offset by the on hit proc that destroys all WIS and MP loss, making it a very risky pick for most classes…unless you have the skull.

Staff of the Shard





A simple staff with little ornamentation besides the single shard, yet constructed with an impeccable frame of unmistakable craftsmanship. You feel a strange vigor when you stare into the lights that flicker around it…

Tier: UT

On Equip: +10 HP, +2 SPD

Range: 8

Shots: 2

Damage: 60–70

Projectile Speed: 20 tiles/second

Lifetime: 0.4 seconds

Range: 8 tiles

Amplitude: .2 tiles

Frequency: 8 cycles/shot

Rate of Fire: 125%

Fame Bonus: 6%

Feed Power: 1000

Shot pattern:

Drops From:

The Thing From the Stars

Notes:

The staff lacks the Madness proc that I use later (I guess the shard is on a stick and not close enough to fuck your head?) and instead has reduced range and higher damage fall off in exchange for much tighter shot spread and consistency.

(I slightly lowered damage from 65-70 to 60-70 to make it not out DPS vital at 0)

DPS chart to compare to other staves:

XML if you want to test the shot pattern out yourself but stats may not be up to date (sprited from existing in game items since idk how to add sprites)

Skull of the Sleeper

Madmen whisper stories of a great power within the skull of the great calamity, yet any who have tried to use it became mad themselves. Perhaps that is not so bad?

Tier: UT

On Equip: +65 HP, +3 DEF, +3 SPD

Eldritch Volatility: On hit: 30% chance to gain Madness for 5 seconds

Can be charged for up to 3 seconds, increasing radius in exchange for healing and damage

Damage scales inversely with WIS

While Key Held:

MP Cost: 30 MP/second (2.5 seconds max effective charge)

When Key Released:

MP Cost: 100

Damage: 325 - WIS at no charge, 275 - WIS after full 2.5 seconds charge

Defense Ignored: 40

Radius: 2 with no charge, 4 after full 2.5 seconds charge

Heal: 130 at no charge, 95 after full 2.5 seconds charge

Heal Range: 4 (+0.25 tiles for every 5 WIS above 70) tiles

Fame Bonus: 6%

Feed Power: 1000

Madness : Set WIS to 0 (similar to slow, daze, etc but WIS, can’t go negative)

Drops From:

The Sleeper

Notes:

So this is the meat of the set. The skull is really neat in that it offers a ton of role compression, as it can act as a good single target skull, a good crowd clearing skull when charged, and it has decent healing for both. However, the skull is not the best at either and is beaten by tiered skulls and the Sealed Crystal Skull for healing and radius. It also has nice stats, but still much less HP compared to tiered skulls.

Assuming base 75 WIS, the skull does a decent 250 to a worse 200 damage after fully charging, with fully charged doing 5 less than the Sealed Crystal Skull with a much smaller area, and tiered doing 30 more damage with a much, much larger area.

However, if wearing the rest of the set, you have 65 WIS, and instead do 260 to 210 damage while Sealed does 175 max and tiered does 240 max.

The synergy between this skull and the set and the anti-synergy between using traditional items will hopefully encourage the use of the set in its entirety as it effectively turns all of its negatives into positives, especially the madness proc. The Madness effect that usually cripples inferior other classes and, to a lesser extent, Necro, turns into a great boost to damage.

There is the issue of people simply not maxing WIS to exploit the inverse scaling with WIS, but I would argue that never being 8/8 for 30 extra points of damage when you’re probably going to be under the effect of Madness often anyway would be enough to dissuade people from scumming it.

Alternatively, I considered making the skull scale with WIS much slower than tiered, rather than a strict inverse scaling. I ended up going with this scaling because it felt more unique and enabled the whole set more effectively.

(-50 MP on equip was removed as per suggestion by @Nameness, moved +1 DEF and +1 SPD from robe to here to align with other UT skulls and balance robe)

Robe of the Visitor

A curious stonework robe that folds like fabric. A vein of crystal runs through it, filling the body with unearthly energy, and the soul with unearthly echoes…

Tier: UT

On Equip: +11 DEF, +90 HP, +5 ATK, -30 MP, -5 WIS

Eldritch Volatility: On hit: 20% chance to gain Madness for 5 seconds

Fame Bonus: 6%

Feed Power: 1000

Drops From:

The Visitor from Beyond

Notes:

A robe with great stats that include more HP than Soulless, a slightly above average attack boost, a touch of SPD, and ok DEF that is offset by a large opportunity cost for MP and WIS. -30 MP is bad, but when considering other robes’ boosts of around +55 MP, you’re essentially missing out on 85 total MP. The proc also threatens to randomly make your WIS abysmal if you’re getting hit a lot, which is exactly when you need it the most. Ouch. But considering the other boosts of the robe, and the fact that the skull encourages bursts instead of spam, the loss of MP shouldn’t be as painful with the skull.

The robe is still usable without the skull as long as you don’t spam your ability too often and want great durability with a little ATK.

(+25 HP and +2 SPD was moved to this robe from the staff as per suggested by @Platformz and in part by @HorusKane and +1 SPD extra because @Platformz likes his items with just a hint more of speed then I increased proc chance from 10% to 20% to compensate, then I removed 10 HP and lowered MP to -30, moved +1 DEF and +1 SPD to skull and +2 SPD to staff to further balance robe )

Mesmerizing Geode

A hypnotically beautiful geode, cracked from the assault on the beast that was holding it. You feel powerful while holding it, but your thoughts seem to slip away from you…

Tier: UT

On Equip: +120 HP, +7 DEF, +7 ATK, -120 MP, -5 WIS

Eldritch Volatility: On hit: 20% chance to gain Madness for 5 seconds

Fame Bonus: 6%

Feed Power: 1000

Drops From:

Mini bosses(?)

Notes:

A fantastic ring that is essentially a “better” Bracer, but suffers a net loss of 160 MP and 6 WIS compared to Bracer. The Madness proc is just the cherry on top. But with the set, you won’t be spamming too much and thus won’t be as hurt by the MP loss, and the lack of WIS is a good thing. Other classes can make good use of this as long as they can bear the WIS and MP.

(Buffed from +120 HP, +6 DEF, +6 ATK, -100 MP, -5 WIS, per @Platformz ! Big thanks! I moved -10 MP to the robe and +10 HP to staff)

Set Comparison

Total set stats: +21 DEF, +11 ATK, -10 WIS, +285 HP, -150 MP, +7 SPD

Tops + Deca: +13 DEF, +4 ATK, +6 WIS, +280 HP, +75 MP

Cultist Necro: +17 DEF, +5 ATK, +20 WIS, +166 HP, +50 MP

ST Necro set: +17 DEF, +20 ATT, +2 DEX, +100 HP, +65 MP, +20 VIT

(T14 robe adds 1 DEF, 1 ATK, 1 WIS, and 10 MP compared to T13 robe)

Overall, you are trading huge amounts of WIS and MP (plus a hefty 70% total madness proc on hit) for more DEF, a good amount of ATK, and more SPD.

Without the skull (so other robe classes), you have a much lesser Madness chance of 40% that can still mess up WIS mod classes badly.

Final Thoughts

Well that’s it. I am still iffy on some parts, like the MP loss being a drawback, but overall I am just glad to get this down on paper/screen. I apologize for any weirdness, and I will probably revise these for my actual dungeon idea. This is also my first time making a set (besides my… unfortunate candyland assassin set that I wrote while waiting at a swimming pool more than 4 years ago…) so I’m especially looking for some feedback!

Apologies for the deluge of edits btw, I’m just fixing a lot of stuff that should’ve been drafted out lol and also feedback I’m getting from you guys and Discords

Thanks for reading!

Major Sprite Edits:

Thanks to the Ideas Discord for the suggestion to improve these!

Changed robe sprite from this:



to this:



Changed geode sprite from this:



to this:



Added Madness status sprite!

Changed to per @platformz’s suggestion

Thanks to @GammaGamer for the big push to put some effort into the sprites! I had to sit down and just work on this for almost two hours! I could barely sit still! (My 35th edit too, not sure if I’m proud of that though)

From this:



To this:

I still kinda like the old staff

I removed a shade of grey, a shade of black, two shades of blue, and completely redid the skull and robe thanks to the suggestions of @GammaGamer and @Aurum respectively!

I also stealthily just adjust the robe and skull sprites again a little

Thanks to Icky on the main discord for the feedback that pushed me to finally redo geode!

To this:

6/27

adjusted single pixel on staff

