How to Beat the Necromancer in Darkest Dungeon — Ruins Boss Stats and Plan

The Necromancer is a 215-HP Champion boss in the Ruins with 0% PROT, no dodge on Apprentice, and resistances so soft that almost any damage type works. On paper he is one of the easiest bosses in the game. In practice he ends more runs than the Hag, because his speed is 8 / 9 / 10 and he acts before most of your party every single round.

This page uses the stat block cached in darkestdungeon-bosses.json, parsed from darkestdungeon.wiki.gg. The numbers are the boss’s own; the adds he fights alongside are drawn from the Ruins enemy table in darkestdungeon-enemies.json.

The Necromancer’s stat block

That table is unusual in one specific way: the resistance column does not scale. Almost every other boss in the file gains resistance with difficulty — the Hag goes from 100% to 145% stun resistance, the Swine Prince from 100% to 140%. The Necromancer stays flat at 75% stun, 20% blight, 20% bleed.

Flat resistances mean a strategy that works on Apprentice still works on Champion. You do not need to rebuild the party for the final tier, which is not true of the Hag or the Prophet.

Speed 10 is the actual boss mechanic

Turns in Darkest Dungeon are ordered by speed plus a roll. A boss sitting at 10 speed with a size-1 body is going to take the first slot in most rounds, ahead of your Plague Doctor, your Vestal, and anything else built to sit in the back.

What that costs you is the first move of every round:

• Your healer cannot react to damage that has not happened yet.
• Your stun hero gets its turn after the boss has already acted.
• Your damage dealers are always one action behind.

“The Necromancer is an Unholy/Eldritch boss that appears in the Ruins.” — darkestdungeon.wiki.gg, Necromancer stat block

The fix is not speed trinkets on everyone — it is accepting that you will eat one boss action before your plan starts, and building a party that survives it. Two heroes above 8 base speed change the shape of the fight more than any damage trinket you own.

75% stun resistance is the opening

Compare the boss-tier stun numbers in the same file:

• Necromancer: 75%
• Heart of Darkness: 87.5%
• Fanatic: 45% / 65% / 90% by tier
• Hag: 100% / 120% / 145%
• Swine Prince: 100% / 120% / 140%

At 75%, a stun skill that already carries a strong stun chance lands often enough to build a plan around. This is the boss where stun-locking is a real plan rather than a theory, and it is the single biggest difference between this fight and the Hag fight — same HP curve as the Prophet, completely different answer.

Stunning him does not just deny damage. Because he is size 1 and acts first, a successful stun removes the earliest action in the round, which reorders everything behind it in your favour.

Both damage channels are open

Blight resistance 20% and bleed resistance 20% at every tier, debuff resistance 40%. There is no wrong answer here, which makes the Necromancer the natural place to bring whichever damage-over-time hero your roster already has levelled.

Practical split:

• Blight shines because the boss has no PROT and blight ignores what little armour the Ruins adds bring.
• Bleed shines against the Bone adds, whose bleed resistance is dramatically worse than their blight resistance (see below).
• Raw damage is fine at 0% PROT and only 22.5% Champion dodge.

The one thing that does not work is spreading damage. 215 HP is not a large pool, but it is large enough that chip damage across four targets loses to focused damage on one.

The adds, in real numbers

The Ruins roster he shares the region with is in darkestdungeon-enemies.json, and their Champion-tier numbers explain which adds to kill first:

Three patterns hold across that table and they apply to the whole Ruins:

1. Bleed is dead weight. Every Bone enemy sits at 240–245% bleed resistance, so bleed builds nothing. This is the opposite of the Hag, whose bleed resistance is 65% at Champion.
2. Blight is the Ruins damage type. 50–70% resistance is the softest channel available.
3. The dangerous ones are fast and unarmoured. The Bone Courtier has 21 HP, 0% PROT and 10 speed — it acts before your party and it is a stress dealer. The Bone Captain has 68 HP and 33% PROT but only 2 speed.

That third point is the whole target-priority lesson of the Ruins: kill the 21-HP fast thing before the 68-HP slow thing. The enemy priority guide builds the general rule from these numbers, and the undead counter guide covers the resistance side in more depth.

Party and turn plan

A party that beats him on all three tiers:

• Two sources of back-rank damage. Size 1 means he can be pulled or shuffled, so reach matters more than raw output.
• One stun. 75% resistance is the invitation.
• Blight, not bleed. Both work on him, but blight also handles the adds.
• Stress healing. The Ruins grind is the real cost of a long fight.

Turn plan per round:

1. Stun the boss if your stun is up, otherwise stun the fastest add.
2. Kill the highest-speed add still standing — usually the Courtier at 10 speed.
3. Apply blight to whatever survives.
4. Only spend single-target burst on the boss when the adds are already dead or stunned.

If stress crosses 70 on two heroes, leave. The stress guide has the thresholds, and when to retreat explains why a boss at 60% HP is not worth a dead hero.

How he compares to the other Ruins boss

The Prophet sits in the same region with identical HP — 105 / 158 / 215 — and the same 0% PROT. The difference is entirely in the resistance row and the auto-actions:

• Prophet stun resistance: 100% / 120% / 145%. Necromancer: 75% flat.
• Prophet move resistance: 300% / 320%. Necromancer: not listed, so shuffling is possible.
• Prophet fires an auto-action at the start and end of every round, per its stat block. The Necromancer has no such entry.

Same health, opposite solution. If you can beat one you have most of the answer to the other, and the boss guide tables both side by side.