Olden Era Necropolis Faction Guide: Necromancy, Attrition, and the Undead Grind

Necropolis is the faction that wins the long game. It doesn’t blow you off the map on turn three. It bleeds you. It curses your stacks, drains your health, and grinds the fight into an attrition war where, win or lose, the Necropolis army walks away bigger than it started. If you have the patience for it, it’s one of the most relentless armies in Heroes of Might & Magic: Olden Era.

Where it sits in the current Early Access build: the GamesRadar faction rating puts Necropolis at B tier. That ranking is about pace, not power. Necropolis is slow to come online in a meta that rewards fast aggression, and that’s the whole story of its tier placement. Give it time and it’s a problem nobody wants to face.

What Necropolis Actually Is

Necropolis is the death faction, an army of skeletons, wights, liches, and vampires fighting on death terrain. Being death-native means no movement penalty on that terrain plus a first-strike edge there. The theme is attrition: you don’t burst the enemy down, you outlast them with curses, drains, and an army that refuses to shrink.

Two things define this faction. One is a faction skill that turns every victory into reinforcements. The other is a quirk of undead morale that quietly removes one of the biggest headaches in the game.

Necromancy

This is the engine. The Necromancy faction skill raises a portion of the units that died in a battle you won, converting fallen stacks into fresh undead for your army. After every winning fight, you come out with bodies you didn’t have to recruit or pay for. Some heroes and skill ranks push this further, converting a slice of the enemy’s strongest stack instead of just reclaiming your own dead.

Stack enough Necromancy and your army grows on its own. Every fight you win feeds the next one. Pair it with a second hero collecting units while your main keeps fighting, and the faction scales from two directions at once. The catch is that none of this is fast. Necromancy is a compounding return, and compounding takes time to matter.

Fearless Undead Morale

Here’s the underrated perk. Undead units always sit at neutral morale, no matter what. In Olden Era, mixing factions in one army drops your morale, and low morale means your stacks can freeze up and lose turns. Necropolis sidesteps that entirely for its undead. You can build a sprawling, mismatched army and never eat a morale penalty on the undead portion of it. That’s real freedom when you’re splicing in stacks from Necromancy conversions and picked-up neutrals.

It cuts both ways, though. Neutral morale means your undead also never get the lucky double-turn that high morale grants. You trade the upside for total consistency. For an attrition faction, that’s the right trade.

The Roster, T1 to T7

Here’s the tier ladder so you know what you’re building toward:

1. Skeleton (T1)
2. Wight (T2)
3. Undead Pet (T3)
4. Graverobber (T4)
5. Lich (T5)
6. Dread Knight (T6)
7. Vampire (T7)

Skeletons are your cheap, endless backbone, and they’re the unit most Necropolis players scale first because Necromancy refills them best. Liches bring ranged punishment and curses. Vampires and Dread Knights are your heavy hitters, with vampires in particular leaning into the drain-and-sustain identity. For exact stats, drain values, and ability details, check the in-game cards, since EA keeps adjusting them.

How to Play Necropolis

Accept the slow start

Necropolis is weak early relative to the aggressive factions, and you can’t change that. Don’t pick fights you’re not sure of in the opening, because you don’t have the burst to bail yourself out. Play tight, win the fights you take, and let Necromancy start its compounding. Every clean win is a deposit.

Grind, don’t race

Your battles should be attrition fights. Curse the enemy’s key stacks, drain their heavy hitters, and trade bodies you’ll get back through Necromancy against bodies they can’t replace. You want fights to go long, because long fights favor the side that refills its army afterward. That’s you.

Run two heroes

This faction loves a second hero. While your main keeps fighting and converting dead into undead, a support hero sweeps the map collecting units and shuttling them to the front. The army grows from combat and from collection at the same time. With a Diplomacy or recruitment plan attached, this is how Necropolis goes from underdog to unstoppable.

The Honest Tradeoff

The short version: Necropolis is a marathon faction in a meta that rewards sprinters. Early on you’re the underdog, and a fast aggressive opponent can end you before Necromancy ever snowballs. The whole skill is in surviving that window. If you reach the midgame intact, the compounding undead army becomes a wall the other factions struggle to break. Patience is the cost of admission, and it’s a steep one against players who attack fast.

Quick Reference

• Tier: B in the current EA build (GamesRadar). Strong ceiling, slow start.
• Home terrain: Death terrain. No movement penalty, plus first-strike edge.
• Faction skill: Necromancy. Raises a portion of fallen units after wins; some ranks convert enemy stacks.
• Undead morale: Always neutral. No mixed-faction penalty, but no lucky double-turn either.
• Playstyle: Attrition. Curse, drain, grind, and refill. Two heroes for double scaling.
• Weakness: Slow to come online. Vulnerable to fast aggression before the snowball starts.

This is all built on the current Early Access build, and Hooded Horse is still tuning the numbers. Treat the tier rating and the exact Necromancy percentages as a snapshot, not a promise. Check the in-game cards and the official wiki at wiki.hoodedhorse.com for live values before locking in a build.