Everquest has mercenaries for hire

[Herc130]

http://portalhost.servehttp.com/ever...hp/Mercenaries


I am thinking this will be pretty successful for EQ. Lots of people already running around with merc's in tow. I have only tried the highest teir merc that is open to all and at least with the healer mercs, I am happy enough with it's ability that I am thinking seriously about getting rid of my cleric account. I usually 6 box and have even tried 8 boxxing. I have a lvl81 rogue (main), 81 warrior, 80 shaman, 80 cleric, 80 druid, 80 mage and then I added another cleric (lvl70 I think) and bard (lvl71). Also have a 76 enchanter that has become nothing but a buff bot on my warrior account. I am now probably going to go down to 4 accounts only and will have 2 merc healers up for the last two spots in the "group". The merc's do a much better job then I can. One merc healer did an ok job keeping my warrior up fighting mobs that I have to spam heal with my own cleric. 2 made it trivial. I even accidently pulled 3 mobs, merc healer got agro from fast healing my warrior...merc ran around instead of standing there like my cleric would for 5 seconds before death, while the second merc healer healed that merc back up. The two merc's managed to heal and run around enough for me to grab and establish agro back with my warrior and rogue and then proceeded to heal as normal. I know on my own with my normal full bot group, I would have wiped on that...even on my home set-up where I am not confused at what I am looking at (I am playing 4 accounts on my laptop since I am working away from home and each screen split is very small, and I have a very hard time seeing details on it, plus I don't have my X-keys and so on). It was fun to forget about healing all the time. With two merc healers, my warrior's health bar was rarely below 50% and usually above 80% and the mercs were usually near full mana after the fight. I also feel somewhat...cheated, because building up my cleric bot took a bit of effort and now I can just hire a merc that comes well geared with spells and all. And the mercs I am using are not the best in the game. Those merc's will have to be unlocked by questing. The merc's take up a group slot as if they were real players, which means they also take up a share of the exp and they also level up. They buff the usual cleric hitpoint and armour class buffs as well as runes and spell casting haste.

[Kebab]

I was interested in coming back to EQ to see those mercs in action but I went for WARHAMMER. I wanted to play a Necro and solo to max lvl and a lot of AA's and mercs would have helped me for sure. Any videos available with mercs in action on the web?

[Ishar]

The mercs are really cool... If i came back to eq (6boxer also) I would consider just 3boxing with 3 mercs. hmm. I was thinking grabbing a healer and two tank mercs...but you are probably right that 4 + 2 healers would be better.

Thinking about mercs made me realize that my least favorite job in online games is healing. ugg. healing sucks. lol.

anyway, yeah, mercs are really cool for eq.

I did have a crazy idea (more of a theorycraft i guess) about converting my (inactive0 6box two 3 box teams with 3 mercs each, and going to an area ungrouped and trading kills to get fast exp for one group or the other. (stack DPS into one group or the other). Would be better if tehy released more merc types (a DPS type, for instance, which I believe they mentioned they would do).

My only reserverations about switching to a merc healer, is well, im sorta attached to my cleric with 300 days played....lol. Lota work to just...replace with a bot that I can't really control. hehe. (a big part of boxing is building up multiple characters...mercs sort of removes that. oh well).

just my random musings.

[jdpatt]

I'm also a 6-boxer, and have been trying to figure out the best way to use the new mercs. I really don't want to retire any of my toons (although I also hate healing, haha), since I've got a lot of time, gear, and quests into them.

My biggest problem has always been crowd control, since I don't box an enchanter, and my bard is still quite a few levels below my main.

I plan to try building mini raids (3/3 and 3/3) and trying some of the harder mobs that aren't in raid zones (where mercs apparently don't work). First on my list is the Cragbeast queen, to see how it works. Some of the ring events also require CC, and I plan to try knocking a couple of those out as well.

My group is L82 (at the moment) Warrior/Cleric/Rogue/Beastlord/Magician, with a 71 Bard and 67 Cleric in reserve. I figured if I set up my groups as:

Warrior/Cleric/Rogue/Cleric Merc/Tank Merc/Tank Merc and Mage/Beastlord/Druid/Cleric Merc/Cleric Merc/Tank Merc I could probably handle quite a few adds...it's bound to get hectic, but it would be quite a rush keeping on top of it, haha.

Dave

[Zaelar]

I've been lightly considering starting up an EQ box but I didn't want to go with 6. This is making me want to consider a 3 or 4 box. Maybe when I get bored of wow...

[Herc130]

I'm also a 6-boxer, and have been trying to figure out the best way to use the new mercs. I really don't want to retire any of my toons (although I also hate healing, haha), since I've got a lot of time, gear, and quests into them.

My biggest problem has always been crowd control, since I don't box an enchanter, and my bard is still quite a few levels below my main.

I plan to try building mini raids (3/3 and 3/3) and trying some of the harder mobs that aren't in raid zones (where mercs apparently don't work). First on my list is the Cragbeast queen, to see how it works. Some of the ring events also require CC, and I plan to try knocking a couple of those out as well.

My group is L82 (at the moment) Warrior/Cleric/Rogue/Beastlord/Magician, with a 71 Bard and 67 Cleric in reserve. I figured if I set up my groups as:

Warrior/Cleric/Rogue/Cleric Merc/Tank Merc/Tank Merc and Mage/Beastlord/Druid/Cleric Merc/Cleric Merc/Tank Merc I could probably handle quite a few adds...it's bound to get hectic, but it would be quite a rush keeping on top of it, haha.

Dave

I know what you mean. My box "army" has been many years in the making. My cleric took alot of time and effort to bring up. Lots of questing to get some of his items and now SoE has given everyone a bot cleric at least on par to my boxed cleric...probably better and it has it's own AI. Kinda hard to just cancel the account, even though I would never do anything with my cleric account other then boxing and healing was more a chore then anything else.

Also, the merc warrior is not very good. EQ encounters has always been tank limited as in the quality of the tank in your group is what limits you to what you can take on. You can use a lvl44 cleric with complete heal to keep up a level 80 warrior in many lvl80 group encounters, but a lvl44 warrior even with two lvl80 clerics healing will probably go splat fighting level 80 encounters lol. Although the merc healer can keep my tank up in the same fights as I was already doing with my box cleric, neither my box cleric nor the merc cleric can keep a merc tank up very well. And my warrior is only 3200AC and 27,000 hitpoints (buffed) with under 200aa's, so I'd guess the merc tank is around 2500ac and just over 20,000HP.

I am thinking I will keep 6 accounts active. Primary group make up will be Rogue, Warrior, Shaman with the 4th group slot rotating between my druid, mage, enchanter and bard (enchanter being moved to bard account and maybe I will move cleric to an active account as well). I will rotate the 4th slot so each is in the "exp" group when their Lessons of the Devote is up (extra exp bonus). Accounts not in "exp" group will just do outside group DPS. When I get all accounts rotated through using up lessons of devote, focus will be on leveling up 3 primary accounts (rog, war and sham) and my bard. Also, quiet a few spots where 1 merc healer should be enough for me to exp grind in without worrying about healing, so I will use 5 boxxed accounts with 1 merc healer. But..yah, I think I am done playing my cleric and my shaman and druid is going to have to get refocused for being more efficient at casting DPS spells instead of back-up healing spells probably.