EQ:Mercenaries  

Mercenaries were added with the Seeds of Destruction expansion in October 2008. They are player-controlled NPC's which act as group members.

Contents [hide]

In-Game Description General Information Purchasing a Mercenary Ranks and Tiers Progression Healer Tank DPS Hotkeys

In-Game Description

Mercenaries are NPC's for hire that will aid adventurers in their heroic endeavors. Their levels and abilities will scale appropriately and they will think and act for themselves with limited player guidance. They are designed for extra support or extra muscle in PvE encounters.

Unlike player pets, these NPC's are not directly controllable by players, though the player can give them general orders, but rather function like a normal party member including taking up a group slot and taking a share of the experience.

Mercenary Liaisons can be found in all starting cities and will allow you to hire mercenaries based on their race. The Liaisons within the Plane of Knowledge and Oceangreen Village will allow you to hire mercenaries of any player race. These merchants can be found using the Find ability.

Seeds of Destruction
The Seeds of Destruction expansion is required to access this content. Live: October 21, 2008

Before purchasing a mercenary be sure to read the descriptions, cost value, and restrictions. There are different levels and tiers available. Some mercenaries may not available until you have completed certain content but there are some apprentice and journeyman ones available to all. There are three classes of Mercenaries available - Tank, Healer and DPS.

Healer Mercenary: Healer mercenaries prefer to heal their owner and others in the group rather than engage directly in combat. These mercenaries can also resurrect players upon death.

Tank Mercenary: Tank mercenaries prefer to melee. They will taunt if it is set to the main tank role. Though it will still attack and behave as a secondary tank if it is not set as main tank.

DPS Mercenaries: DPS mercenaries lend good DPS to a group or a solo player encounter. Currently there is a Rogue-type and a Wizard-type.

Mercenaries can be suspended like a pet. There are some zones that will automatically suspend your mercenaries upon entering the zone.

General Information

There are currently three classes of mercenaries: Healer, Tank and DPS. The Healer and Tank mercenaries are similar to the Cleric and Warrior classes, the two most needed classes in the game. The DPS classes available are similar to the Rogue and Wizard classes.

The Healer and Tank classes having been seen to be viable alternatives to grouping (as opposed to being preferred over grouping), the DPS class has now been added to the original two. Between them these provide viable alternatives to grouping (please see bottom of this page to see added DPS mercenary details).

This will allow any two classes to get together, and instantly have a group with a viable tank and healer, or a Melee to hire a healer to "Solo" or a healer to hire a tank, again to "solo", etc. Alternatively, the DPS class can be used to flesh out a duo for faster kills.

There is a platinum cost associated with purchasing a mercenary. There is also a smaller recurring charge associated with upkeep (charged every 15 minutes). You can see the costs before hiring them. The amount you'll pay should be recoverable through normal experiencing and vendor-loot drops.

Mercenaries level up as you do. As you both increase in levels your recurring cost will adjust to the new levels.

[1] In addition, they continually upgrade their own gear without ever leaving your side. You will see them change weapons and shields as YOU advance in levels. (They seem to advance in level the same time as their owner.) As you ding levels they become progressively more efficient at what they do. Even more importantly, the healer merc has apparently have pre-purchased all his spells. I watched him change from casting Valor on everyone to casting Temperance on everyone (and pets.) Oh, and my healer merc started casting Temperance when the owner dinged lvl 42. His mana pool, dmg mitigation, etc was also continually increased as his owner advanced in levels.

Efficiency: I never had any merc run away afraid. Granted all three of my mercs were all Apprentice 5, which was plenty efficient for me since I take care to be careful anyway. My (now) level 47 trio of warrior/shaman/necro have had a total of one death (shaman) between them. The mercs take care of you if you watch the healer mana bar and dont over pull. Us six often had two yellow mobs, a white mob and a blue mob all at the same time and handled them all with just slows and cripples for mitigation.

Purchasing a Mercenary

Mercenaries can be hired from various Guardians in the Plane of Knowledge as well as from NPC's in starting cities. You can use the find command (CTRL + F) to locate such vendors.

Ranks and Tiers

Your Mercenary can come in three skill levels, and of those three levels, they are further subdivided into 5 tiers.

• Skill Levels
• Apprentice - on par with single group geared players, on spells and abilities that have a rank, it will have rank 1. It will have HP, Mana, and Endurance on par with characters that do not have the gear to acquire rank 2 spells and abilities.
• Journeyman - On par with single group geared players, however, have rank 2 spells and abilities, slightly better damage mitigation, etc. Also Journeymen are less likely to "Lose confidence" then an Apprentice(see below)
• Master (guessing on this one, I have not personally seen one) - On par with raid geared players, additionally, have rank 3 spells and abilities.

• Tiers
• Tier 1 - has a ~25% chance to "Lose confidence" in your group based on the number and /con of the mobs being fought. Adds and Crowd control methods will additionally modify this percentage. Once confidence is lost, the mercenary is effectively worthless in a fight, unless crowd control methods come into play, creating a chance for it to regain its confidence.
• Tier 2 - has a ~20% chance to "Lose confidence" in your group.
• Tier 3 - has a ~15% chance to "Lose confidence" in your group.
• Tier 4 - has a ~10% chance to "Lose confidence" in your group.
• Tier 5 - has a ~5% chance to "Lose confidence" in your group.

• Tip: To prevent a mercenary of ANY tier from fleeing battle (losing confidence), set the healer and/or tank merc on passive before an incoming pull reaches camp. Once all/most of the mobs have settled in on the camp, activate the mercs. They will immediately jump into battle and STAY in battle for the duration of the fight with 100% confidence, no matter how many mobs were pulled on the initial incoming pull.
• It is possible this trick works by simply bypassing the confidence check altogether.
• This trick allows you, for those that can, to pull massive amounts (7 or more) of ANY con mobs all at once and Area Effect/Damage Shield their health down for great solo or group experience.
• This trick will allow the owner of healer merc to take control of a bad situation by preventing their merc from running.
• Note: unexpected adds each have a chance of causing a merc to lose confidence and flee:
• If you can act before the add(s) apply themselves to the hatelist (aggro), you can prevent the mercs from fleeing by simply setting them to passive, then active again after the add(s) aggro. They will continue to fight as if no additional mobs had joined the battle.
• If you don't act quickly enough, and the mercs flee, then just try your best to kill a couple of the mobs out of the bunch until their numbers are back down to that of the intial pull; at which point the mercs should rejoin the battle.

Progression

Completion of Oceangreen theme gives Journeyman Rank II

Completion of Kithicor theme gives Journeyman Rank III

Completion of Field of Scale theme gives Journeyman Rank IV

Completion of Rathe theme gives Journeyman Rank V

I.e. if you complete only the Rathe theme you will have Journeyman rk 5 available for purchase, but not rk 2, 3 or 4.

Healer

Healers are very similar to Clerics, in that they cast a lot of the same buffs and spells. they are not as good as a real PC as the AI is not as skillful as a person has the potential of being. That being said, they are better than not having a healer in general.

A healer will buff your group, keep the group healed as needed, primarily focusing on their owner and then the MA.

[2] If you have a party member, (not mercenary,) that needs to be rez'd, then you will need to drag the corpse over to your healer mercenary and give it time to cast a 50/90/96 whatever rez is appropriate for its level. Also, you need to remember that your healer merc with heal its owner first. I had my warrior hire the cleric while the shaman and necro hired tanks. The only time ever that my mercs died was when I was fighting no less than seven mobs and had five more adds throughout the fight. The healer merc kept my tank (its owner) healed to full, even when the other two tank mercs were at 20 and 10 and zero health.

The healer merc has no 'dont heal the necro' button either. He was continually doing celestial heal on the necro right before I was about to nuke tap and DOT tap health from the mobs.

The healer merc does a good job of healing whomever is most wounded (amongst non-owner group members including pets and other mercs.)

Important: Your healer merc will decide what to do without you telling him. My healer merc knew when mobs arrived with buffs on and he was the one that dispelled the mob buffs!!!! In addition to that, he started blasting away with Condemnation-whatever if no one needed healing. He swithches on his own between 'Balanced', and 'Passive'. Meaning you can manually put him to passive if you want him to just sit there, but he sits and meds when he needs to and always stands during a fight.

So if you want him to be at full mana for a big fight, you need to sit quietly in a corner and let him finish buffing and everything before you pull.

Tank

Tanks are similar to Warriors, in that they use a lot of the same Disc's. As with the Cleric, they are never as good as a real player, however, they are much better than a silk class tanking.

You can assign your Mercenary Tank the "Role" of "Main Tank", however, you cannot make them the "Main Assist".

They will try to keep Aggro if designated the Main Tank of the group, and they seem to be able to use their discs to the groups advantage.

If another group member is assigned Main Tank, the mercenary tank will try to keep just under the MT on the hate list.

Tip: you can "control" the tank and tell it what mob to focus on by setting it as main tank, and setting yourself as main assist. It will attack anything you target, and gain agro on that mob. This is good for situations where the healer or dps has taken agro and the tank is not intercepting fast enough.

[3] Example: When I pulled a mob with my toon, the tank mercs ran out to greet the mob before it arrived at the group. They dont wait until the mob arrives or even enters melee range of the group. I would even pull with a bow from 250 range and run the opposite direction and the tank mercs, (not hired by me,) would still race out to greet the incomming mob when it arrived in the mercs own assist range of about 75 or so.

I had to pull a mob from behind us while the tank mercs were busy to our front in order for the mob to arrive at the group location. In this case the tank mercs would race back to the group to taunt the new mob off of a group member, and bring their mob with them in tow. In this case, if both mercs were fighting a single pull, they would not leave their mob until the new incomming mob was in about 50 range or so.

For testing, I stood in the middle of a roamer-zone in Kunark and bow-pulled mobs clockwise from around our tight group of 3+3. First mob aggroed and arrived within 75 range and both mercs took off out to get it. While both were engaged, I bow-shot the next mob 45 degrees off to the right. As that 2nd mob started arriving to our group, it was greeted by one of the tank mercs while 100 range out. This is because mercs engage aggro'd mobs according to range from the merc and not range from the puller. Now the one merc who grabbed aggro on the 2nd pull turned around and raced back to the first merc on the first mob. Now both mercs were on the first mob and the 2nd mob was beating on the tagger.

Then I pulled another mob from 90 degrees off to the right. As the 3rd mob started arriving, one of the mercs ran over to tag it and pull it back to finish off mob#1. So now both mercs had 3 mobs aggroed and they all were far out to our right front. SO, I pulled another mob from exactly behind us. It arrived at the group and I proceeded to get aggro with all three of us. Then the two mercs brought their three mobs all down off the hillside and both of them came back to fight for aggro on the 4th mob.

I did this intentionally, because I wanted everyone and everything back at our base. Had I not got melee aggro with both the necro and the shaman, then one of their mercs might have stayed on the hill and not come back. Since tank mercs go all out to protect their owners, I knew both would come back.

You will need to carefully consider this when fighting indoors because they will race through doors and over walls go get at any mob aggroing the group, ESPECIALLY if the mob has targed their owner.

I left no-one as designated main-tank since my group was warrior/shaman/necro with mercs of cleric/tank/tank. This meant that both of the the two tank mercs were fighting for control over every mob and neither was worried about getting over-aggro. They both engaged every mob, (unless I had pulled 6 hehe,) and continually kept trying to taunt every mob off of their owner first, their owner's pet next, and then other group members next, and then member pets last. The necro's own tank merc seemed to be the one to save the necro pet the most often.

If your puller has a tank merc, then the puller will have to switch the merc to 'Passive' every pull. Then switch back to 'Aggressive' when back at the camp. Otherwise the merc will follow the puller out to the pull area and start engaging any mob with aggro OUT THERE.

In my experience, setting the puller to the "puller" role prevents the mercenaries from rushing out too soon to engage. The exception to this is if someone other than the puller, say a Ranger opens up with the bow at max range. The Mercenary knows that it can't engage the puller's mob until it gets so close but as soon as someone else in the group enters the hate list, all bets are off, as the mercenary ignores distance for all but the puller regardless of who owns it.

DPS

(Melee, Rogue-type) These are very similar to Rogues, in that they employ some of the same tactics and abilities. Once again they are not as good as a real PC as the AI is not as skillful as a person has the potential of being. That being said, they do a decent amount of damage, and will position themselves opposite to the designated main tank (if you designate one) so that they do maximum damage from behind the mob. They also appear to keep at maximum melee distance and I haven't seen mine take agro from the Main Tank.

A DPS (Rogue) type Mercenary will add an aura to your group to improve accuracy and will prime their weapon with poison. The dark elf one also /hides between pulls.

Hotkeys

The following hotkeys can be used to direct your mercenary:

/mercassist on - Turns on Mercenary assist.

/mercassist off - Turn this off.

/mercassist - this activates the merc when /mercassist is on.

/stance passive - puts the merc in a passive stance.

/stance aggressive - this puts your merc in the aggressive stance.

New Types of Mercs:

Human = Added Wizard and Rogues to Human

Drakkin = Added Wizard and Rogues to Drakkin

Half Elf = Added Wizards and Rogues to Half Elf

Dark Elf = Added Wizard and Rogues to Dark Elf

Vah Shir = Added Wizard and Rogues to Vah Shir

Gnome = Added Wizard and Rogues to Gnome

High Elf = Brownie Rogues, Wizards to High Elf

Wood Elf = Orc Wizards, and Wood Elf Rogues

Erudite = Kobold Rogue, and Wizards to Erudite

Guktan = Old Froglok Rogues, and New Guktan Wizards

Dwarf = Goblin Wizards, and Dwarf Rogues

Iksar = Goblin Wizards, Old Froglok Rogues

Troll = Added Orc Rogues, Old Froglok Wizards

Ogre = Added Wizard and Rogue Lizardman

Halfling = Added Bixie Wizards, and Halfling Rogues

Barbarian = Added Orc Wizard, Barbarian Rogues

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