To find out more general information about leveling as a Necromancer in Diablo 4, you can check out our main Necromancer Leveling guide. Or you can go to our Necromancer Builds page for a list of other leveling and endgame Necromancer builds for you to choose from.
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Build Introduction
The 
Bone Spear Necromancer leveling build is a high damaging ranged build that brings high, consistent damage to the battlefield, ensuring high DPS output even when building up Essence to continue casting Bone Spears. This makes it an incredibly smooth build to level your Necromancer with!
Due to the high damage output, this build will take you from the start of the game all the way through the campaign with ease, as well as being capable of soloing the Cathedral of Light Capstone dungeon.
Solo play can be fun and playing with friends can be great, if you have the right spec! The high damage output makes the build very attractive to have in a party with friends, and it also makes enemies consistently Vulnerable, allowing the rest of your party to benefit immensely for having you with them.
Skill Tree Points and Skill Bar
Bone Spear 
Corpse Explosion 
Decrepify 
Summoning Skill 
Bone Splinters 
Blood Mist 
At this point in your character progression it is optimal to move all your points in 
Blood Surge over to Bone Spear, as both are located in the Core cluster. This allows you to utilize Corpse Explosion to clear any extra enemies the Bone Spear did not kill without forcing you to move into close range of your enemies.
Mechanics and Playstyle
The build starts off with casting Blood Surge as your main source of damage output coupled with Corpse Explosion. This works very well, but does force you to position yourself close to the enemies. This is later solved by moving your points over to Bone Spear which will be our main source of single-target damage. However, thanks to the combination of exploding corpses and the passive 
Grim Harvest, we can easily use Bone Spear to kill initial enemies and finish the remaining mobs with our Corpse Explosion, building our Essence pool back and creating a very smooth playstyle and leveling experience.
When fighting bosses you essentially want to dump all your Essence by casting Bone Spear. Thanks to your Reaper Skeletons providing corpses, as well as the passive 
Hewed Flesh, you should always have an abundant amount of corpses around your enemies to create a wave of explosions with Corpse Explosion. Aside from re-summoning your skeletons if needed, this rotation rinses and repeats like clockwork!
Should you find yourself completely out of Essence and with no corpses, you’ll resort to using your Bone Splinters to create corpses and regain Essence.
Book of the Dead
Necromancer’s class specific ability is the Book of the Dead, which provides three different type of minions that unlock by leveling up. Some of these choices comes down to personal preference, so we will outline our preferred setup for leveling this build.
- Melee Skeletons – We’ll want to run the Reapers. The second effect choice from these bad boys allows them to have a 15% chance to create a corpse on hit. Seeing as our build thrives on both damage output and Essence gain from corpses this is the ideal choice.
- Mage Skeletons – In the early leveling process, you can choose to run the Cold version of the Mage Skeletons to regain Essence on Hit. We are not aiming to invest anything to have them survive long term, as this would cause them to take up more time being resummoned rather than providing something beneficial for your build. Our choice here is to sacrifice them as Cold Skeletons, providing us with extra damage against Vulnerable enemies.
- Golem – When you first gain access to the Golem, we would strongly recommend using him as an actual tank. The Golem doesn’t go down easily and helps taunt enemies, enabling you to safely do damage from a distance. Use either the
Golem (Bone), which provides corpses when the summon takes a certain amount of damage, or the Golem (Blood), which redirects a portion of the damage you take yourself, as both are great choices during this time frame. Towards the end of the campaign, we would opt for sacrificing the Golem (Iron), which provides Necromancer with extra Critical Strike Damage.
Legendary Item Aspects
To unlock Aspects in the Codex of Power, you must complete the corresponding Dungeon where the specific Aspect drops. Visit the Occultist to imprint this Aspect onto an item. Aspects from the Codex of Power can be used often on weapons.
There is really only one Legendary Aspect that is truly powerful and worth mentioning for this build, which is the 
Splintering Aspect, unlocked by completing the Guulrahn Slums dungeon in Act 3, Dry Steppes.
This Aspect allows us to make enemies Vulnerable, which in turn allows us to remove the Supernatural Bone Spear and change it into Paranormal Bone Spear. Most importantly, we are now able to make large groups of enemies all reliably become Vulnerable. The Aspect is there more for the effect rather than the increased damage it also provides.
Aspects found on dropped Legendary Items have stronger effects than those applied from the Codex of Power. Additionally, it is important to know that certain Aspects can only be obtained by finding them on a legendary item, and are not accessible through the Codex of Power. Extract Aspects from unusable Legendary Items to imprint them onto well-rolled Rare Items. Avoid imprinting valuable extracted Aspects onto weapons, because weapons they get replaced often while leveling. We recommend strongly that you apply this to one of your Rings; this will allow you to have more free room to equip upgrades (in case of a great Ring drop, you can replace the Ring without the Aspect) without wasting precious materials re-applying the Aspect every time you find an upgrade.
Outside of the obvious Blood-bathed Aspect other aspect powers can be of great use to further scale the efficiency as you’re leveling:
We have a dedicated in-depth Aspect and Codex of Power guide that you can check out for more information.
Gear Choice and Stat Priority while Leveling
Prioritize a higher total damage output when it comes to your weapon, as the higher it is, the better. It should be kept in mind that if you find a higher Item Power 1-handed weapon, it could very well be better than a 2-handed weapon if coupled with an off-hand or even a shield, as shields scale your main-hand weapon by 80%!
Outside of this, you’ll be on the look out for the following modifiers, in no particular order:
- Critical Strike Chance;
- Critical Strike Damage;
- Lucky Hit Chance, which is very effective as this helps generate more corpses to keep the rotation of Bone Spears & Corpse Explosion going.
- + Level of Bone Spear
- Attack Speed
Gems
Listed below are the best Gems to socket into gear for each slot type.
- Weapon:
Emerald for +#% Critical Strike Damage. - Armor:
Ruby for +#% Maximum Life. - Jewelry:
Diamond for all Resistance or any gem that provides you with the resistance type you lack the most.
Elixirs and Health Potions
To gain an edge in your adventures, head to the Alchemist in any major town, and craft Elixirs that enhance your stats and experience gain for 30 minutes. Remember to gather the necessary crafting materials by foraging plants. Select an Elixir that provides the resistance you need most, or try the 
Assault Elixir to boost your Attack Speed.
Return to the Alchemist again when you reach Level 20 and 30 to upgrade your potion. The extra healing is essential to survival.
Early Paragon
Once you hit Level 50 with this build, you will be ready to tackle your first Capstone Dungeon and unlock World Tier 3. We recommend using the following Paragon boards and Glyphs for your first few levels after 50, as you transition into your preferred endgame build. Please keep in mind that the information provided is just intended to assist you in spending points for a few levels, and we strongly advise you to choose an endgame build guide to truly enjoy the game at world tier 4 and beyond.
Starting Board
The generic approach for Necromancers starting board is to rush the socket node via the right-hand side and picking up the surrounding Magic nodes then rush upwards towards the second board. At this point you really need to check the endgame build guide you want to engage with as they can all have their own specific way of pathing here!
Paragon Board images courtesy of d4builds.gg.
Changelog
- May 12th, 2024: Guide updated for Season 4 Loot Reborn.
- January 22nd, 2024: Guide updated for Season 3 Season of the Construct.
- October 15th, 2023: Guide made ready for Season 2 patch 1.2.0
- August 7th, 2023: Guide made ready for Patch 1.1.1
