Dead Rails has added two new Class Masteries for the Horse and Necromancer classes. Both bring new abilities and passive effects that change how the classes work, with the Horse mastery focusing heavily on movement and team mobility while Necromancer gets better ways to keep its undead army alive and bring more zombies into the fight.
The Horse mastery is especially interesting because it rewards you for maintaining momentum. As you keep moving, you can build up multiple speed tiers, while some of the new abilities let you charge enemies or leave a trail that affects players and enemies who walk over it.
Necromancer, meanwhile, gets two abilities built around its minions. One heals your existing undead allies, while the other can temporarily raise nearby enemies and turn them into additional fighters. Here’s everything you need to know about both new masteries.
Horse Class Mastery
The Horse mastery is built around speed, momentum, and supporting your team while moving across the map.
It adds new passive effects and two active abilities.
Horse Mastery Speed Passive
The first Horse mastery passive adds a speed meter at the bottom of your screen.
As you continue walking, the meter gradually fills and gives you up to three tiers of speed.
The longer you maintain your movement, the faster you can travel.
How the Speed Tiers Work
The important part is maintaining your momentum.
If you make smooth, gradual turns, you can continue moving at your higher speed.
However, making a sharp turn causes you to lose speed tiers.
With the mastery fully upgraded, a sharp turn only removes one speed tier, allowing you to recover your maximum movement speed much more easily.
With less mastery progression, turning sharply can cause you to lose multiple speed tiers at once.
So if you’re trying to travel quickly, avoid constantly making sudden turns.
How to Keep Maximum Speed
The easiest way to maintain the speed boost is to plan your movement ahead of time.
Instead of turning your character sharply whenever you need to change direction, make wider turns whenever possible.
This allows the speed meter to remain useful for longer and makes the Horse class much faster when traveling across the map.
Horse Mastery Wild Horse Passive
The Horse mastery also adds another passive involving wild horses.
While you’re traveling around the map, wild horses can begin following you.
The useful part is that your teammates can ride these horses without needing a saddle.
This gives the Horse class an additional team utility role, especially when you’re traveling with friends and want everyone to move around the map more easily.
Horse Charge Ability
The first active Horse mastery ability is a charge attack.
Activate it to charge toward enemies and deal damage to them.
The ability can remove some of an enemy’s health as you run into them.
However, the charge isn’t always perfectly consistent.
Depending on how you hit an enemy, you may sometimes pass through them, while other times your character can become stuck next to the target.
Because of this, it’s better to treat the charge as an additional attack rather than relying on it as your primary combat option.
Horse Speed Trail Ability
The second Horse ability leaves a special trail on the ground behind you.
This is particularly useful for supporting teammates.
Effect on Allies
When an ally walks across the trail, they receive a speed boost.
This makes it useful when your team is traveling together or trying to move away from danger.
Effect on Enemies
Enemies that walk across the trail can be slowed down.
This gives the ability both offensive and defensive utility.
You can use it to speed up your teammates while making it harder for enemies to chase them.
Horse Mastery Speed Limitations
The Horse speed boost isn’t permanent.
You can lose your speed tiers if you:
- Use a weapon
- Get attacked
- Make certain sharp turns
Using a weapon can remove the speed boost and all three tiers at once.
Because of this, you need to decide when maintaining speed is more important than attacking.
For long-distance travel, keeping your momentum is useful. During combat, however, you’ll often need to sacrifice the speed boost to fight.
Necromancer Class Mastery
The Necromancer mastery introduces two abilities focused on maintaining and expanding your undead army.
The mastery is still being developed, so some of its mechanics may receive additional changes or improvements in future updates.
For now, the two main abilities are Healing Wave and the ability to reanimate nearby zombies.
Necromancer Healing Wave
The first Necromancer mastery ability is Healing Wave.
This ability heals the minions currently fighting alongside you.
If you have zombies in your team and they have taken damage, activate Healing Wave to restore their health quickly.
How Healing Wave Works
The ability affects your existing minions rather than simply damaging enemies.
For example, if you have a zombie fighting alongside you, you can activate Healing Wave to heal it and keep it alive for longer.
This is particularly useful if you rely heavily on your minions for damage.
Instead of constantly replacing damaged undead, you can use the healing ability to keep your existing army alive.
Necromancer Reanimation Ability
The second Necromancer mastery ability is focused on raising nearby zombies.
If there are multiple zombies around you, activate the ability to reanimate them.
The affected undead then become part of your team and fight alongside you.
This can potentially give you a much larger army during a fight.
Temporary Zombies
There is a limit to how many permanent minions you can normally have.
However, the reanimation ability can temporarily raise additional enemies beyond your normal minion limit.
These extra zombies don’t stay permanently.
After the temporary duration ends, the additional reanimated enemies eventually die again.
This makes the ability particularly useful when you are surrounded by a large number of undead and want to turn the situation in your favor for a short period.
Horse vs Necromancer Mastery
The two masteries serve very different purposes.
| Mastery | Main Focus | Abilities |
|---|---|---|
| Horse | Speed and team mobility | Charge, Speed Trail |
| Necromancer | Minion survival and reanimation | Healing Wave, Reanimation |
The Horse mastery is primarily about movement and momentum, while Necromancer is focused on building and maintaining an undead army.
Horse Mastery Tips
Avoid Sharp Turns
If you’re trying to maintain maximum speed, use wide turns instead of suddenly changing direction.
Save Your Speed for Travel
The movement boost is especially valuable when crossing long distances.
Don’t waste it unnecessarily if you’re about to enter an area where you’ll need to fight.
Use the Trail for Your Team
Place the speed trail where your teammates are likely to run through it.
This lets your whole group benefit instead of using it only for yourself.
Remember That Combat Can Remove Your Speed
Getting attacked or using a weapon can remove your accumulated speed tiers.
Keep this in mind before relying on the movement boost to escape an enemy.
Necromancer Mastery Tips
Keep Your Minions Alive
Healing Wave becomes more valuable when you have multiple strong minions fighting alongside you.
Use it before your undead army gets completely overwhelmed.
Use Reanimation Around Groups of Zombies
The reanimation ability is most useful when several zombies are nearby.
Instead of fighting them normally, you can temporarily turn them into allies.
Take Advantage of the Temporary Army
The extra reanimated zombies won’t last forever, so use them while they’re active.
They’re particularly useful when you need additional bodies to overwhelm enemies or help during a difficult encounter.
Remember the Minion Cap
Your normal minion limit still matters, but the reanimation ability can temporarily push your army beyond that limit.
The additional undead will eventually disappear, so don’t treat them as permanent replacements for your regular minions.
Which Mastery Should You Focus On?
That depends on how you like to play.
If you spend a lot of time traveling, moving between objectives, or helping teammates get around the map, the Horse mastery gives you more mobility and team utility.
If you prefer having an army fight for you, the Necromancer mastery gives you more ways to keep your minions alive and temporarily increase their numbers.
Both masteries add something different rather than simply providing a stronger version of the original class.
The new Horse and Necromancer Class Masteries give both classes some interesting new tools in Dead Rails.
Horse becomes much more focused on maintaining momentum, with three levels of speed, a charge attack, wild-horse utility, and a trail that can speed up allies while slowing enemies.
Necromancer takes a different approach by strengthening its minion-focused gameplay. Healing Wave keeps your undead allies alive, while the reanimation ability lets you temporarily turn nearby zombies into additional members of your army.
The Necromancer mastery is still being worked on, so its mechanics may change as the developers continue updating it. For now, though, both masteries provide new ways to approach movement, combat, and team play in Dead Rails.