So Far So Good?

It's my first time playing Diablo 2 and I decided to roll a Necromancer for my first playthrough. I'm about to fight Andariel and my stats are as following:

Level 16

Str: 43

Dex: 28

Vit: 33

Energy: 60



Summoning:

Raise Skeleton: 6

Skel. Mastery: 6

Poison/Bone:

Teeth: 1

Corpse Expl.: 1



Curses:

Amp. Dam.: 1

Weaken: 1

Any tips/improvements? Any help would be great.|||You probably don't need a boost versus Andariel, but the following might be useful later:

Invest a single point into clay golem, it will slow down enemies when hit which is particularly useful versus bosses. All remaining skill points go into raise skeleton, but keep in mind to invest a single point into further curses later.

Pass a heap of gold to a L1 character and go shopping for a wand with +3 raise skeleton, preferably with a skeleton masterybonus. Both are L1 skills, so the lower the level of the shopping character is, the higher the chances to get one. Leave town and re-enter to reset the shop inventory. In addition, pick up necro heads in early act 1 with your necro, they can have the same bonuses on top of that. Any head with a RS or SM or corpse explosion bonus is good, as you cannot buy them in a shop, so it will take a bit more time to get one.

Kill everything in the room before Andy without using corpse explosion yet, then lure her into there, so you can blow up the corpses on her while keeping her amped and maximizing your army. Don't forget to summon a new clay golem when it dies.

Welcome to the forums BTW!|||Thanks for the help! I've started saving up gold and looking for an appropriate wand.

Are Skeletal Mages any good? I was about to invest a point into them but it didn't seem worth it for their damage output, etc.|||You will either have to maximize that skill or not use it at all, else they won't deal enough damage. I for myself think that aren't very useful. You will curses will either boost physical damage (amplify damage) or elemental damage (lower resist), so it's better to concentrate on one of the two types of skeletons. Also, the mages tend to block narrow paths, so the warriors cannot enter melee.