After automaton crafting was added to KeeperRL last year, someone suggested that a necromancer could similarly craft zombies from the body parts of fallen enemies. This was the evilest thing I could imagine, so I started working on a playable Necromancer faction right away. Unfortunately even though the mechanics were super fun, I wasn’t able to come up with enough new content to make something releasable.

Around the same time the prolific modder Swish released his Unholy Mod that contains a necromancer and a lot of interesting undead creatures. I’ve reached out to them recently and we decided to collaborate on an official Necromancer Keeper, to be released on Halloween.

As a Necromancer, you’ll choose recipes from a fine bouquet of undead creatures and use special balsams to mold them to your liking. Two special minions will be, as mentioned above, assembled from severed body parts.

While designing the Dwarves I wanted to create a feeling that each minion is unique and irreplacable. The Necromancer faction will be completely opposite to this. Your undead will be created in large numbers (there are no population limits), will fall easily due to weak defense, and the available balsams will let you specialize them against specific foes or even explicitly shorten their life in exchange for stat boosts.

This craziness will be countered a bit with phylacteries, special constructions that can renew a chosen minion’s life.

The Necromancer is currently undergoing polish, and balancing, and will go live (but smell funny) on October 28th. If you are super curious or want to help out with testing before the official release, drop by on Discord!