The Necromancer
A Class Invoking Innovation and Terror
Elder Scrolls Online’s Elsweyr DLC needed a big showstopper feature to draw attention. With the DLC focusing on undead antagonists, I was tasked with creating a class invoking the horrors of the undead: The Necromancer. Working alongside leadership, art, engineering, and lore, I helped shaped not only the class’s abilities, but its identity as well.
Class Identity
What is the appeal of the undead?
I read through fantasy stories and played games with Necromancers on the forefront. A few things stood out immediately: using death as a resource, draining life, fear and terror tactics, and summoning skeletons, zombies, and flesh made monsters. Elder Scrolls Online already had a summoner class, the Sorcerer. So how can I differentiate the Necromancer from the Sorcerer while still remaining true to the player expectations?
I explored how Necromancy was depicted in Elder Scrolls history. Unlike games like Diablo and Dungeons and Dragons, Elder Scrolls Necromancers don’t summon leagues of undead hordes, instead preferring to use the bodies of the decease to create temporary constructs to assist them while they cast bigger spells.
After discussion within the Combat and Lore team, we came up with a solution: unlike Sorcerers, Necromancers can only summon minions for a short window while using other spells to bring death and destruction. But death became a new resource, including the death of their minions, leading to new gameplay opportunities!
Prototyping
How to test a brand new mechanic?
Early Necromancer discussions wanted to test the idea of consuming the corpse of the recently deceased. This would require time to engineer and we needed a guarantee that this mechanic would be fun.
An older class, the Templar, has one ability where it can consecrate the dead, granting buffs to the player. I took the targeting system from this ability and attached it to offensive, defensive, and utility abilities. When cast, these abilities would perform a “consecrate check” and if it found a monster’s dead body, it would empower your Necromancy abilities.
First playtests were rough. Players could “consecrate” the same bodies again and again, but even so, the results were positive! Players liked looking for bodies and positioning their test characters to “consume” them.
Second iteration limited one body “consumed” per player. Third iteration turned the Necromancer’s minions into dead bodies. Finally, the “Corpse Consumer” mechanic was fully programmed.
Final Result
The Most Adopted Class in ESO’s History
The Necromancer released on May 2019 as part of the Elsweyr DLC. Players rushed to try out the new class and the multitude of playstyles; from summoning skeleton minions, to becoming an indestructible fortress of bone, to sacrificing the life of you and your enemies to bolster your allies.
I created 22 abilities for the Necromancer, one of which was prominently featured in the launch trailer for Elsweyr. To this day, the Necromancer is one of my proudest achievements, combining scripting skills, inter-disciplinary collaboration, and my natural love for all things that go bump in the night.
