The Glade 4.0

Quick question: I noticed my merc's timer always sets itself to, like, 22 seconds remaining whenever I suspend her. Is this functioning properly?

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I haven't watched the merc timer closely, except to weep at all the money, but mine stops at the time I suspend him. It doesn't go to a fixed number every time, it's whatever time is still unused. I think....

Hmm. So mine might be bugged, then. I suspended her at 13 minutes and change, and then looked up while she was suspended and it was 22 seconds. Next time I suspended her, it was also reading 22 seconds.

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

That seems odd.

I don't completely understand it but I'm pretty sure there is some kind of mechanic built in that prevents you from suspending/unsuspending more than once without the merc getting paid. I gave up trying to figure it out.

One other thing. There is a Vet Rewards item called Bayle Marks (I think?) that cover your merc fees, regardless of the amount. I forget the details of the reward (time required, and # of tokens), but it is can help defer some merc expenses).

Jemi suggested that these would be better used at higher levels when the merc costs are higher, but I guess you have to weigh that against your characters ability to make cash at their level.

Meh. I've still got 30 some odd plat, so I'm not worrying about it at the moment.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Yea, it seems to be that with a little effort, its definitely possible to keep enough money on hand to keep the merc happy.

At level 52, a quick pass through the goo and bear caves in mesa can yield 300p or more, and takes me about 30-45 min to clear both (with my woeful DPS).


It's enough to keep me in potions and mercenaries :p~~

BTW, some of you probably know this, but you can use Passive mode on your merc to avoid some costs, while keeping the merc available in an emergency. You can't suspend or unsuspend Mercs if you are in combat, but you can change their status.

Of course, if the merc is out of passive mode at point during the 15 minute timer, you get charged, but if its passive the entire timer, the merc waives the fee.

I keep mine out a lot of the time just in case I find something interesting to try while running through zones.

Aha, I did not know this, thanks, Ladas.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I did not know that either Ladas- that's awesome.

But yeah, you get charged basically every time you un-suspend your merc- so if you have a lot of time left when you suspend, it sets it to a short time so when you pull him/her out, you pay promptly.

Basically to keep you from almost never paying your merc by pulling them out for a few seconds to heal/buff and then re-suspending them.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

Fyi to everyone, I cashed in some of my Loyalty Tokens for a bag of plat, so I'm sitting on about 15k that I don't really have a use for. Totally available to anyone who wants/needs some plat.

All,

McDuff (Ranelagh) has started Alchemy lessons, and has put a few stacks of Skinspikes IV in the guild bank. I think these are level 15'ish potions, so feel free to use them.

I'd encourage everyone to support his efforts here, as we can all benefit from them.

He is one of the unfortunate ones who didn't get any Loyalty love and so he's trying to skill up on alchemy the hard way :p~

I looted a pair of Intricate leather gloves today doing the hotzone quest in Bloodfields, that I'm going to sell, and will donate the proceeds to his efforts (hopefully about 2k). I consider it a worthy investment, especially considering that Raz will benefit greatly from his efforts.

This is *really* helpful information.

I'm still trying to de-mystify how the various group roles (Main Tank, Main Assist, Puller, etc...) along with merc stance (Passive, Balanced, Aggressive, etc..) affect merc behavior... it's hard to detect any consistency, especially with the tanks..

Edit:
Can't vouch for accuracy, but this answered some of my questions
http://everquest.allakhazam.com/wiki/eq:mercenaries

Some of that information is misleading... especially the comment about the cleric Merc changing itself between balanced and passive... Merc's don't change their stance on their own. The cleric mercs will sit and med though as soon as the extended target window is clear.

I can give a little bit of info though, based upon my use of the cleric merc.

Passive - Merc won't do anything under this, except follow you around. I use this to save money while leaving the option to fight open when moving through zones. I will also switch my merc to Passive right after she res's me if I'm in the GL. Even though it doesn't matter much, I'm still particular about my buff order, and putting it in Passive after the res keeps her from buffing me until I'm ready.

Reactive - Merc will basically treat every fight as a hard one and not attempt to conserve mana by using longer casting heals. I use this 95% of the time. However, if the fight is over and you are still hurt, but over 50% (from what I can tell), the merc won't heal you to top you off again.

Balanced - Close to reactive, but the healing spell choice is a bit different. If you have two cleric mercs in the group, usually one is set to Reactive and one to Balanced so you get a better overlap of the healing, which helps cut down on damage and heal spikes.

Efficient - I tried this stance once and died because the merc tried to use their most mana efficient spells only, which are also the longest to cast, and it was too much damage between heals. I honestly don't know the point of this one, since the mana pool on the mercs is pretty good, even in reactive you can go quite a while without issues.

I don't know very much about the tank stances, except that one basically make the tank assist the MA and not try to pull aggro, and one that makes them always try to get aggro.

I've only been in one group with a DPS merc, a wizard, and it was utterly annoying, but I was the tank, the MA, CC and the puller for the group and the merc would assist and nuke things I was trying to root park while tanking another.

The group roles are pretty handy.

Main Tank - I honestly don't know what impact this has on merc, but I think it supposed to make the merc look for damage there first. Under the Reactive stance though, I've never had issues with the cleric mercs getting locked on the MT and not healing anyone taking damage. This may impact merc assignments for other roles (see below). If you are using a tank Merc and make them MT, I think it automatically puts them into taunt mode, so they will spam taunt to keep aggro.

Puller - If the person with this role has a merc in the group, this tag will cause the merc to stop following the puller and instead "reassign" to another group member when it comes to following. That way the puller can move away from the group and not worry about his merc healing him at the wrong time, or getting in the way. If you are solo, your merc will sit down at the spot you gave yourself the Puller role and not move... if you zone in someplace with the puller tag, the merc will sit at the zone line. I haven't yet figured out who the merc decides to follow... sometimes I think its the next person in the group list, and sometimes it seems random.

Main Assist - Pretty obvious role, but this is great for the targetting circle it provides around the mob being attacked, which makes CC a lot easier. It also means you can make your assist key as "/assist main" and it will work in any group or raid (if the GL/RL has the LAA) without constantly changing the name in the hotkey. This is also how the DPS merc know who to kill.

To be fair, the wizard merc was only annoying because he was assisting the main assist. It strikes me as a bad idea to designate somebody who can/will be root parking as MA.

Seems like a problem of misdesignation of group role, rather than a flaw with the merc.

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

There is more info to that sole experience of mine that I didn't include. This should help it make sense.

The "group" started out as just me moloing yellow con Traitorous mobs in Cooling Chamber for the first in a 3 quest achievement task. While I can do consistently, its risky, and it takes a while for me to kill them this way, since I'm using a shield. Its also pretty mana intensive for me, as I'm basically mana dumping each mob to make up for my lack of melee DPS.

A relatively new guild Berzerker logged on that was looking for something to do, so I invited him so he could get some much needed AA and I could get some help. He brought his cleric merc as well.

Shortly after that, a guild BST logged on looking for something to do, so he joined us. We finished that first task and started the next one, which is a "group" task. He brought out his Wizard merc to help with DPS since we had tanking and healing covered.

The next task called for collecting drops from a yellow con version of the goos that inhabit the caves in Cooling Chamber. The goos are normally blue cons and non-KOS, but are linked in groups of 3, so you will always get 3. Sometimes, the individual goos in each group can spawn as KOS yellows.

However, all the goos, except the rare named, can be rooted, which makes breaking them into manageable chunks much easier, since some groups overlap, so you get 6-9 in a pull.

Since I was pulling, I made myself Puller in the group task so my merc wouldn't follow up me into the caves and just wait at the rest of the group. I did not assign the roles of MA or MT.

I don't know how the wizard merc was picking targets to nuke, since it seemed somewhat random. However, on more than one occassion it nuked a yellow con goo I had rooted off while we killed another yellow con it was linked to, breaking my root.

Another time, it wiped us when we had 3 goos (1 yellow) plus a Traitorous add, then a second Traitorous add. I used FB to KB the 2nd add and blur it, but before the blur could take effect, the wizard nuked it (I had already switched my target back to the first add), breaking my root and killing the blur effect. We wiped right after that, since the 2nd add was now in summon mode and dispatched the clerics before FB refreshed.

I could have made someone else MA I suppose, but the BST was debuffing the rooted mobs while his pet did DPS, so his target was switching, and the Berzerker was sometimes helping to tank until I could FB KB a loose mob.

It was an effective group... finished all 3 tasks and got them some needed exp, but the wizard merc was dubious helpful. In several cases, I think we would have been better off without it.

I use a DPS merc (rogue) on my shaman, and a healer merc on my Ranger.

I find that with both of them, hotkeys to swap to passive are exceptionally useful- I use them to modulate the merc behavior- ie, setting the DPS merc to passive as soon as I swap mob focus to one I don't want them whaling on.

At 81, I find the cleric merc in effecient is more than enough to keep me up- it's basically just a perm. Promised Renewal bot.

I have a hotkey to swap it into reactive when the **** hits the fan- but I find the main problem is that in reactive it never casts promised, even when I have more than enough time for a promise to heal me all the way back up- it sticks to blast heals and goes OOM fast.

The cleric merc really makes me miss my 80 cleric bot....

Tank merc has three settings: Assist (doesn't taunt, assists the MA), Aggressive (focuses on aggroing everything that's aggroed on any group member), and Passive (self explanatory).

_________________
Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

I keep mine in Reactive and it casts Promised and Elixers on me, scaling the heals based upon rate of damage... doing Lights and if needed, 12th Hour when the mobs are tougher.

The guild bank looks a lot better. Thanks to whoever cleaned it out. Hopefully some of the proceeds will go to support tradeskills. There is still a bunch of the Blightfire Armor quest stuff in there. If no one is doing those, that stuff can probably be vendor'd.

I dropped some items in the bank from my adventures in ToFS and CoM tonight. One level 51 Necro spell, a cleric spell (?), and some ornate plate pants, arms and bracer.

I also had a Mace of the Shadowed Soul drop from the Mighty Golem in City of Mist. It's SHD only 1hb. Not so uber any more (19/29), but it's tradeable, so Zyerne can use it to skill up if she wants, and/or or we can leave it there for the next SK alt. It has no level requirement, so it would wtfpwn at low levels for sure.

Why are the defiant armor drops so skewed towards plate (other than pants apparently)? Leather, and especially cloth seem exceedingly rare, and chain seems rare too.

I've already got one of those maces on Zy.

Kaffis, I'm going to drop that 2 hander in the bank for you right now. Sorry I didn't get to it already.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I cleaned out the crude stuff since there was so much and it's so lowbie. Jemi and I had flawed plate legs drop in karnors so they went to the bank and I had ornate cloth shoes and something else cloth drop in stone hive, they went in too.

I got a Flawed Defiant Cloth Hat thingy last night, in the bank. Saw Tobi's corpse =(

are you guys doing epics?

Probably should. If i could work out how to get to ocean of tears.....

You can get to Ocean of Tears via boat from either Butcherblock Mountains or East Freeport (depending on which island you need to go to).

I'll probably start on the Rogue and Druid epics at some point. Not terribly motivated to do it other than for the novelty of it.