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Mercenaries (EQ2)  

Mercenaries are NPCs for hire. Hire a mercenary that takes up a group slot, has a monetary fee and takes a small slice of experience from fighting.

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Cost

A mercenary's purchase price varies by level. This is a large upfront fee the first time you acquire that mercenary. The mercenary will then charge you an upkeep fee every 30 minutes; this amount also is increased as you level up.

Like any group member, mercenaries take their cut of experience, but they do not take coin (aside from the upkeep) or loot items. If you do not have enough money on you to cover their upkeep, they will leave your service.

If you are changing mercenaries you will have to pay the new mercenary their hiring fee, even if you have hired them in the past.

Mechanics

Currently there are ten regular mercenaries to chose from. No need to guess, their icons show their archetype, and hailing them will tell you their class. Available types are Tanks, Healers, Melee DPS, Caster DPS, and Support mercenaries. Healers have a chance of actually rezzing you!

You can manage your merc's appearance clothing via your persona window. Add any armor you want to your mercenary to display, but remember that they will get no additional benefit from it. It's akin to equipping a mannequin; the armor will remain with you.

The suspend timer is 2 minutes. If you suspend your merc (or they die), you'll have to wait 2 minutes to unsuspend/resume them. When a merc dies he becomes suspended. You can resume him from the mercenary window in your persona or you can type /merc resume. You cannot unsuspend a mercenary in combat.

A mercenary will lose confidence, panic and suffer from a stat decrease if you don't keep them healed.

Mercenary Slash Commands

  • /merc ranged
  • /merc melee
  • /merc resume (unsuspends the merc)
  • /mercname
  • /merc attack
  • /merc backoff
  • /togglemerc (this will toggle the merc window on and off)
  • /cl_ignore_merc_chatter [true|false] - toggles mercenary group chat on and off.

Mercenary Slots

Mercenary slots is a feature releasing in Game Update 68, launching concurrently with the Tears of Veeshan expansion. These "slots" have a one-time unlock fee of 250 Station Cash if you re-hire a mercenary from your mercenary tab on the character screen. Senya explains how these work in great detail over on the official forums: [1]

It's not really a "slot". You can always run to town and hire any merc you want for no station cash. It's the switching between mercs that you've ever hired that runs into a lot of station cash. For the record I think it's a really poor implementation but I'm going to try and explain it as best I can.

You have Stamper already (no station cash charge)
You find Matri up so you opt to hire her (no station cash charge)

You need a healer merc for something so you want to switch back to Stamper instead of keeping Matri. You have 2 choices here:

You can go back to where Stamper hangs out to rehire him for no station cash.
You can rehire him directly from the merc tab with an unlock for 250sc.

Now you want Matri back. You again have 2 choices here.

You can wait to find her up again and rehire her for no station cash (not really much of an option).
You can rehire her directly from the merc tab with an unlock for 250sc.

So now you have unlocked Stamper and Matri. You can switch between Stamper and Matri from the merc tab at any time and it won't cost you any more station cash.

But now let's say you find Kenny up and hire Kenny.
You are in an instance and don't need a healer. You decide you want to use a different merc besides Kenny. You can now:

Switch from Kenny to Matri from the merc tab (no unlock because Matri has already been unlocked)
Switch from Kenny to Stamper from the merc tab (no unlock because Stamper has already been unlocked)

So now you have Matri back, but you need a healer. Since Kenny is the elite merc you prefer to use Kenny.

You can switch to Stamper from the merc tab (no unlock, Stamper has been unlocked already)
You can switch to Kenny from the merc tab (250sc - Kenny has not been unlocked yet).

Locations

If you see one mercenary hanging around, there's likely more nearby. It is possible to sneak into other cities and hire their mercenaries. The mercenaries from cities of opposing alignment to you will appear in either Qeynos or Freeport once hired, but Elite mercenaries will not (you would have to find them again out in the world if you dismissed them).

Standard Mercenaries

East Freeport:
Seafarer's Roost:

Outside/Upstairs

  • Brenin Stoutheart - Militia Soldier Mercenary (Guardian) - ( -220, -55, -3 ) .
  • Stamper Jeralf - Archon Mercenary (Inquisitor) ( -237, -55, 14 ) .
  • Bellut Shortsong - Songspinnar Mercenary (Dirge) ( -252, -55, -13 ) .

On the harbor side of the Seafarer's Roost is a staircase leading down. At the bottom ( -243, -65, -10 ) you can enter a room where many mercenaries hang out.

Qeynos Harbor:
Fish's Alehouse and Inn:
Outside

  • Jennis Proudhilt - Antonican Guard Mercenary (Paladin) - ( 816, -23, 67 )
There are mercenaries throughout the Inn, on all three floors.

Gorowyn:
On the platform near the City Merchant at 2626, 66, 1169 .

Neriak:
In Indigo Hollow, just inside the gate and to the east:

Kelethin:
In Jysolin's Pub:

New Halas:
In Coldwind Hall at 92, 153, -174

Ancient Mercenaries

Perrin (Elite Merc) in Withered Lands
Perrin (Elite Merc) in Withered Lands
To hire these mercenaries you need an Ancient Skyshrine Control Wand which is obtained in the Underdepths group instance from the second to the last named. Mercenary locations are from EQ2 Maps.

  • Laborine Construct - Monk - Lyceum of the Recondite at 350.68, 0.01, 40.77
  • Archon Construct - Inquisitor - Dracur Prime at -342.64, 1.55, -18.73
  • Demolisher Construct - Brigand - Covenant District at 97.88, 0.55, -376.28

CoE Looted Mercenaries

These are obtained by looting a mercenary token and consuming them, after consumption the merc can be found and hired. The token description says which class the merc is and the general area where the merc can be found.

  • Captain Bloodstain' - looted in Dreadcutter (heroic) Beserker mercenary. Hired on the beach in Obol Plains at 310.60, -5.28, 930.73 .
  • Dolsie Songspinner - (looted in ?) Troubador mercenary. hired somewhere on the docks in Obol Plains.
  • Kilphin - (looted in Throne of Fear) Assassin mercenary. Hired outside Temple of the Faceless in Eidolon Jungle.
  • Raghnagt the Gnawer - (looted in ?) Brigand mercenary. Hired from Wurmbone Cleft in Jarsath Wastes.
  • Yadeht Fohctac - (looted in ?) Warden mercenary. Hired near the cave opening to Chelsith: the Ancient Vault in Jarsath Wastes.

Elite Mercenaries

Elite mercenaries are rare, expensive and more powerful. Note that they despawn for a while from the world when hired so there will be gaps between players being able to find them. These mercenaries are much more expensive then normal mercenaries (reported costs are 30p  to hire and 3p  every 30 minutes for upkeep -- UPDATE: on July 9, 2013 we noticed that elite merc upkeep is now only 50 gold for a level 90+ character). The elite mercs are hybrid type classes. [2] These mercenaries are estimated to have a reset timer of 3-4 days once one is hired.

  • Matri Dut - Nayad Brigand/Wizard - found in Stonebrunt Highlands
  • Kenny - Billy Doll Guardian/Mystic - found in Nektulos Forest
  • Perrin Wanderhoof - Corrupted Satyr Fury/Warlock - found in Withered Lands

Lets just say these guys do not spawn the same way everything else does in game. So if they are not up in one place that doesn't really mean if you wait long enough they will show up. Multiple players can have them at the same time one player having one will not stop it from spawning somewhere for others to hire.

When these mercenaries were first added they shared a spawn across zones. Thus you could never really know which zone they were in. This caused some issues if noone was in one of the zones so we pulled it down to them only spawning in one zone. Each of them have well over 20 different spawn points across the entire zones not just two or three as some have reported. There was an issue a week or so back where they were spawning much faster than they were supposed to but this has been fixed and they are back to spawning at the rate we wanted them to.

Tips: You can track these mercenaries (or use the Ranger merc from Kelethin to track) or you could try asking local guards for Matri, Kenny, or Perrin if guards are available in the zone!

Special Mercenaries

According to Holly "Windstalker" Longdale [4]:

  1. Mercs are per character. You can choose either the Templar or the Paladin Lujien (werewolf) in Freeport or Qeynos mercenary dens. They will both be available for you to hire on all your characters.
  2. The Collector's Edition mercs have significantly higher stats and confidence than the standard mercs (they can take a lot more of a challenge before they cower/debuff).
  3. The Collector's Edition mercs will cost the same to hire as the standard mercs.

Upkeep Table

These are known upkeep costs for regular mercenaries. Upkeep is charged every 30 minutes that a mercenary is active (not suspended).

The prices were changed in 2013; please help update the information!

Level Range Cost
1-10 1s 
11-20 2s, 50c 
21-30 8s 
31-40 25s 
41-50 50s 
51-60 5g 
61-70 8g 
71-80 20g 
81-92 20g 

Official Behind the Scenes Video

December 6, 2011

Game Update #68
Game Update 68
ETA: November 12, 2013

ZAM would like to thank Senya for the mercenary slot explanation.

  1. ^ Senya's post detailing Mercenary Slots on the official forums
  2. ^ Gninja on the official forums, May 22, 1012
  3. ^ Gninja talking about the vampire mercenary on the EQ2 Forums
  4. ^ Windstalker, October 30, 2012, On the forums

Categories: GU68 | EQ2 Dev Quotes | EverQuest II | Age of Discovery
This page last modified 2013-10-28 22:10:19.
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