Shadow Knight Class Guide - Champions of Norrath
This page includes my Shadow Knight class guide for Champions of Norrath. In this guide I will talk a bit about the strengths and weaknesses of the Shadow Knight as a class and give you an overview of all their skills - breaking them down and explaining what's good and why. Any of you who have played Everquest will already know a decent bit about this class since it's kind of the same in both games.
Shadow Knights are a combination of the Warrior and Necromancer classes and they have skills that revolve around this concept. In this game Shadow Knights are one of the more tanky classes but thankfully still have enough DPS to not be boring. You'll have various spells you can use on this class including a pet that they can summon which is great.
As for how I built my Shadow Knight, you'll have to choose between Slashing or Blunt Weapons. I picked slashing but it really doesn't matter, just pick one and stick to it so you benefit from the skills. I recommend putting a lot of your early skill points into this skill. When you unlock Life Tap put a single point into it but don't do anything else for now.
You'll want to unlock both Disease Bolt and Engulfing Darkness when you are able to and keep putting points into it as you level up. I found these to be my bread and butter skills for most of my first play through. Disease Bolt you'll mostly be using for a single boss, Shelox - the final boss of Act 1. There are some enemies in this game (like Shelox) that you are going to struggle with if you stand toe to toe with them in melee combat.
Engulfing Darkness will become your boss killer skill later in the game because there's a chance that it will inflict confusion when it hits an enemy. This will cause them to stop attacking for a few seconds allowing you to get in precious hits. Disease Bolt will still have some niche uses throughout the game as there are enemies that you'll get stomped by if you try to melee them, so put a point into it every once in awhile to keep it relevant.
Aside from these skills I put points into Summon Skeleton and Bind Wound. Below is a list of each skill that I used on my Shadow Knight as well as a little bit of information about it.
Blunt Weapons: You choose between 2 different weapon types on your SK, either Blunt or Slashing Weapons. What you choose is completely up to you, you'll get plenty of both weapons throughout the game and I don't think it really matters what specialization you pick.
Slashing Weapons: You choose between 2 different weapon types on your SK, either Blunt or Slashing Weapons. What you choose is completely up to you, you'll get plenty of both weapons throughout the game and I don't think it really matters what specialization you pick.
Bind Wound: All this skill does is increases your Health regeneration. I'd personally recommend you put points into this after you've maxed out your more important skills.
Disease Bolt: This is one of your 2 boss killer skills. There are 2 bosses in this game that are extremely difficult to melee, Shelox (Act 1) and Innoruuk (Act 5). For these bosses the only way you will reliably beat them is to use ranged attacks like Disease Bolt or Engulfing Darkness.
Life Tap: I think this skill is a one point wonder. How it works is occasionally a blue or red "soul" will appear after you defeat an enemy. It'll start to float away the moment it appears and you'll have to hold down your block button in order to 'catch' it. Even with max Life Tap the chance of one of these appearing is low and the type of soul you want isn't always what you'll get. Sometimes you'll need health and only get mana ones. All in all like I said, this is typically a one point and done skill.
Engulfing Darkness: This is the best ranged attack that Shadow Knights get and is what I would consider to be their main boss killer ability. When you put enough points into this skill it will confuse targets that it hits - including bosses. Once a target is confused you'll have a very narrow window during which you'll be able to attack them without worrying about them hitting you back.
Endurance: Every class in this game gets the Endurance Skill; all this skill does is increases your Carry capacity by +15 per point you put into it. Shadow Knights don't really need to put any points into this skill since we'll be spending so many Attribute Points into Strength anyway. All the points we put into Strength will give us a solid amount of Carry capacity.
Summon Skeleton: As the name of this skill suggests, it allows you to summon a Skeleton. In order for this skill to be at all useful you will have to raise it each time you level up which is probably the biggest downside of it. Each point put into this skill will increase the chance of your Skeleton wielding an enchanted weapon when you summon it which will make it significantly more powerful. All in all I like this skill and use it along with Engulfing Darkness.