Welcome to the Bone Spear Necromancer Leveling Guide. With a spear of bone in your hands, nothing can stand in your way! Bone Spear pierces all enemies it hits, then breaks apart when it collides with an object or the end of its travel distance, reflecting back three or five shards of Bone Shards.
Bone Spear Necromancer Leveling Guide for Diablo IV Season 12 - Slaughter
This incredibly strong skill has screen clearing area damage, pinpoint accuracy for deleting bosses, and a visually appealing spray of bones!
The only challenge is maintaining Essence. With the tools listed below you can overcome this challenge and be on your way to speeding through your leveling grind.
The satisfying part of this build's leveling experience is that it does not depend on any random Legendary drops! Making use of the Codex of Power Dungeons is enough to get you to the endgame, but if you find some key Aspects during your journey you can increase your damage tremendously.
There are more things to unlock later down the line which are explained in the Bone Spear Endgame Guide. Until then, this guide teaches you all about how to reach the endgame in Diablo 4 with the Bone Spear Necromancer. Let's get started!
Check out our Leveling Builds Tier List to see how this build compares to others.
赛季主题与构筑适配
The Season 12 theme brings Killstreaks and Bloodied Items to Diablo 4. Slay enemies in succession to begin a streak that grants increasingly greater benefits based on which affixes you roll on your gear in addition to seasonal reputation and experience. Tiers are divided as follows: Killstreak (0-99) - Carnage (100-249) - Devastation (250-499) - Bloodbath (500-999) - Massacre (1000-9000) - Fresh Meat! (9001+). For most instanced content types, you can typically expect to reach up to the 4th tier (Bloodbath). Additionally, you can find Bloodied Sigils for Nightmare Dungeons, Infernal Hordes and Lair Bosses that offer greater challenges and rewards (introducing "pseudo Torment 5").
Bloodied Items
Bloodied affixes are bonus affixes that can randomly roll on gear and come in three categories: Rampage (armor), Feast (weapons), Hunger (jewelry). The first two offer minor combat effects while the latter boosts specific loot drops, which doesn't impact your build. Recommended affixes for this build are:
- Rampage: Critical Strike Chance, Attack Speed, Core Stat % Maximum Life
- Feast: Restore Essence, Gain Berserking
- Hunger: Rune Drop Chance, Gold Drop Rate, Hunger Drop Rate
There is more to discover including the new seasonal Slaughterhouses and how to transform into the Butcher himself. Learn more details about the season theme in our full Season Guide.
技能与玩法
Getting Started
Very early on you will want to utilize Bone Splinters for essence management until you reach Soulrift and replace that on your toolbar.
For early leveling, Iron Maiden grants free Essence on any un-cursed enemy. You will transition this to Decrepify as you progress further.
When Soulrift is active, you have a constant flow of Essence
Bone Spear itself provides Essence with its innate Lucky Hit Chance when you temper on Lucky Hit Chance to Restore Essence
Bone Spear
Bone Spear always travels a fixed distance while piercing every enemy and then splits into 3 or 5 Bone Shards that return a portion of the distance travelled. It is important to hit as many enemies as possible with both portions of the Bone Spear. You can bounce your Bone Spear off a wall to limit the distance travelled, which is especially useful against Elites with the Suppressor affix.
Corpse Tendrils
Corpse Tendrils may be the best source of Crowd Control (CC) in Diablo 4. It Slows, Stuns, applies Vulnerable or generates Blood Orbs and pulls every monster (except Bosses) into a single space so that all of your AoE damage becomes infinitely more effective. With a few of your modifiers and Passives, these statuses become great sources of damage scaling as well. NOTE: Corpse Tendrils does not consume Corpses.
Soulrift
Soulrift Provides Barrier, Essence Generation, and a huge damage multiplier.
Blood Mist
Blood Mist makes you Immune in dangerous situations but is has a long 24 second cooldown. Only use it when absolutely necessary!
Key Passive
Unlocking the Ossified Essence Key Passive increases your damage and provide a good boost to essence generation
Final Journey to Level 60
Approaching level 60, most of the key synergies are unlocked and the gameplay loop is almost complete. As you level up, you unlock a lot of extra points that go into various offensive and defensive passives or max out certain skills. Check out the skills progression above to see where to put your points as you go, but feel free to deviate from the order displayed as necessary. For example, you can sacrifice Skeletal Warriors - Defenders instead of Skeletal Warriors - Skirmishers if you find yourself needing additional defense
Endgame Swaps
The endgame build looks different from the leveling build due to additional synergies you unlock later, leading to several adjustments on the skill tree and in the Spirit Hall choices. To find out more details, check out the Bone Spear Necromancer Endgame Guide.
You can unlock 12 extra skill points for a total of 71. Check out our Season Rank Guide for more details.
Necromancer Book of the Dead
Warriors : Skeletal Warriors - Skirmishers provide a nice boost to your Critical Strike Chance
Mages : Skeletal Mages - Shadow grant a substantial amount of much needed essence generation during your leveling journey
Golem : As with most Necromancer builds, Golems - Iron provides a massive damage multiplier
Learn more details and how to unlock this system in our full Necromancer Class Overview.
Gear & Stat Priorities
To get started as a Bone Spear Necromancer, focus the most on upgrading your weapon as its damage is the base for all further damage calculations. Otherwise, follow the priority list below. While you don't have all of the desired temper manuals available, simply try to get anything useful on your gear until you acquire the right ones. For example, % Damage, Damage to Close, Vulnerable Damage, etc. all work as long as you activate their conditions. Likewise, you can temper multiple defensive options such as Resistances, Life, Armor to fill gaps in your survivability. Tempering low level gear is relatively cheap and the results can be very impactful.
Tip: For the early game, Elemental Surge Weapon Tempers are very powerful due to their high base damage, especially if you are twinking. If you find these, you may want to keep imprinting them on your weapons for an easy time.
Read more about itemization in our Beginner Articles about Damage, Defense and Stats.
Legendaries & Uniques
The Codex of Power is a collection of Legendary Aspects you can imprint onto Rare or Legendary items at the Occultist. They unlock after completing specific Dungeons located around Sanctuary or salvaging items with these powers. Check out our Map Tool to locate these Dungeons.
For leveling, there are a few powers that can significantly help us if we have the funds to imprint them. In addition, keep an eye out for powerful Unique items you may find for this or other builds.
Must-have Dungeon unlocks
- Grasping Veins (Corrupted Grotto - Kehjistan)
- Decaying Humerus (Hive - Scogslen)
- Torment (Black Asylum - Fractured Peaks)
Nice-to-have Dungeon unlocks
- Splintering (Guulrahn Slums - Dry Steppes)
- Disobedience (Halls of the Damned - Kehjistan)
- Umbral (Champions Demise - Dry Steppes)
Other useful Aspects (drop/gamble)
- Protector
- Hardened Bones
- Shielding Storm
- Serration
- Decaying Humerus
What to Gamble
| Offensive | Gloves |
| Defensive | Chest, Pants |
| Utility, Mobility | Boots |
| Resource | Rings |
Great Uniques for this build
- Deathless Visage
- Indira's Memory
Jackpot Drops
As you level up, you may get lucky and find some great random drops. Some of these can massively amplify your power and speed up the leveling by switching to another build. Keep in mind that there are many more Aspects and Uniques that can be useful to multiple builds; this just lists some of the most impactful ones. While we usually recommend starting with Endgame Builds at level 60, you often can make them work earlier with these drops:
Build-defining Uniques
- Gravebloom (Enables Golem Necromancer Endgame Builds)
- Kessime's Legacy (Enables Blood Wave Necromancer Endgame Builds)
Learn more details in our articles covering the Codex of Power and Unique Items.
Runes
You can have up to two Runewords in your setup, each consisting of one Ritual and one Invocation Rune. Socket them in Two-Handed Weapons if your build calls for them, otherwise place them into your Armor pieces to replace normal gems. The Bone Spear Necromancer focuses on the following combos:
Best in Slot
- Cir + Gar - Helps with Critical Strike Chance which is a major stat for this build as you are obtaining gear
- Cem + Lum - An easy solve for resources that you can just refill when evading
Alternative choices
If you have access to higher level runes, you can also explore the following options:
- Que - Earthen Bulwark helps with defense
- Igni - Another good way of generating offering
- Tam - We spam our core skill all the time
- Thul - The Freeze adds more defense and an extra damage buff
- Mot - For even more defense.
- Zec - Good option early game when your Soulrift is not yet permanent.
- Jah - Allows us to go faster with free Teleport
Learn more about Runes and how they work in our dedicated Runewords Overview
Mercenaries
Mercenaries are unlocked during the Vessel of Hatred campaign and assist you in battle. There are 4 separate Mercenaries to choose from, each with their own skill trees and abilities. You can have one hired (permanent) mercenary during solo play and a reinforcement who assists you from time to time in certain situations.
Hired: Varyana
She grants extra attack speed with Hysteria and provides a huge amount of healing through her Taste of Flesh
Reinforcement: Raheir
Provides a huge damage reduction when you become injured
Learn more about Mercenaries and how they work in our dedicated Mercenaries Overview.
How To Level
In Diablo 4, you can level by completing the Campaign, collecting Grim Favors for the Tree of Whispers, completing Helltide activities, grinding Dungeons, clearing Strongholds, fighting in the Undercity of Kurast or interacting with the Seasonal Mechanics. While there are many ways to level up in Diablo 4, not all of them are equal.
Campaign Leveling
- For your first character in Diablo 4, completing the Campaign provides all the background lore information but is not necessary.
- The original Campaign is the slowest way to level, but it's worth experiencing the Campaign and Diablo 4's storyline at least once.
- To play Seasonal Content you need to have completed or skipped the Campaign.
- After finishing the campaign, you should focus on earning experience in Helltides by combining it with Grim Favors for the Tree of Whispers or completing Gathering Legion Events.
- Strongholds provide a big boost of experience for little time investment. Make sure to clear all of them after around level 50.
Vessel of Hatred Campaign
- This is the fastest way to level up in a fresh season.
- Stay on Normal difficulty and skip as many monsters as possible while rushing all main objectives for massive XP spikes.
- You can also just partially complete and skip the remaining Campaign at any time from the main menu to get an early boost until your build is online.
- After finishing the campaign, you should focus on earning experience in Helltides by combining it with Grim Favors for the Tree of Whispers or completing Gathering Legion Events.
- Strongholds provide a big boost of experience for little time investment. They are a good choice to finish the final levels quickly.
- Find the most efficient way of leveling your character in detail with our Speed Leveling Guide.
Seasonal / Alt Leveling
- Complete the Seasonal Questline in order to progress your Season Rank to unlock additional perks, loot and work on your Seasonal Powers.
- Preferably stay on Hard difficulty or above to benefit from the extra XP multipliers as long as your clear speed remains fast. Use power jumps (e.g. key passive, legendary drops) to bump up the difficulty.
- Complete the Dungeons needed for any Legendary Aspects from your Codex of Power.
- From level 1-60 you should focus on earning experience in Helltides by combining Helltide activities with Grim Favors for the Tree of Whispers or completing Gathering Legion Events.
- Strongholds provide a big boost of experience for little time investment. Make sure to clear all of them after around level 50.
- If you're playing an Alt, make sure to use Tempers when you have the materials to do so.
- Find the most efficient way of leveling your character in detail with our Speed Leveling Guide.
Tips and Tricks
- Imprint Important Aspects on Amulet
- It is a good idea to put your best Offensive Aspect on your Amulet, since it is usually not replaced as often as other gear.
- Compare Your Items
- Press Shift to activate item comparison. Use this build guide's Stat Priorities section to identify potential upgrades.
- Choose an Easy Difficulty
- Ideally, start on Normal or Hard difficulty for the extra XP modifier, then try to go higher when it's way too easy. If that slows you down noticeably, it's better to stay on a lower difficulty.
- Use Your Materials
- There's no point in holding on to your gold or materials for later. Use everything to speed up your journey to 60. If you're twinking, make sure to craft the Allowance Caches from the Alchemist at level 20 and if available, equip your Mythic Uniques at level 35 to make the leveling a breeze.
Speedrun Route
- If you're looking to min/max your time spent on the way to 60 instead of following a generic guideline, you need to use a specific strategy.
- This usually includes farming certain activities up to a specified level and then switching to other tasks while gathering XP in high density areas and pushing the difficulty as high as you can.
- We update this strategy seasonally in our Speed Leveling Guide.
Endgame Transition
As you approach level 60 with the Bone Spear Necromancer, you unlock higher item power gear that represents a massive jump in character power. This is a good time to refresh your setup with new tempers and imprints.
After reaching level 60 and finishing the second Capstone Dungeon, Paragon Levels and The Pit unlock. Complete Tier 10 to enter Torment 1, where Diablo IV's Endgame begins.
At this point, your setup should look roughly like this before you dive into min/maxing with Aspects, Uniques, Mythics and more. With better gear, more levels and Glyphs, you can push further and eventually unlock higher difficulties for increased rewards.
This step marks the end of the leveling guide. Below is the Paragon setup to get you started in Torment difficulty but ideally you should now transition towards the endgame version of this build or choose another of your liking.
巅峰与雕文
Glyph Leveling Priorities
To Level 15
- Abyssal
- Eliminator
- Gravekeeper
- Essence
- Dominate
To Level 46
- Gravekeeper
- Essence
- Eliminator
- Abyssal
- Dominate
Learn more details about this system and how to unlock all points in our in-depth Paragon Guide and Season Rank Guide.
视频演示
COMING SOON
BD 总结
The Bone Spear Necromancer is an iconic, fun to play leveling build that scales very well into the lategame.
- Grouping enemies with Corpse Tendrils allows you to maximize your damage output from spear and it's shards.
- Bone Spear is your bread and butter for this build. Not only is it your main damage dealer, but the Lucky Hit Chance that it provides activates multiple passives from Corpses to Fortify.
- Once you have a stable amount of essence generation, nothing can stand in your way during your leveling journey.
- A build that smoothly transitions into end game for a powerful build fully functional for all end game content.
- Go pew pew pew!
作者寄语
Written by SerocIfkre
