Mercenary System

Introduction

Mercenaries are companions you collect as cards. Buy card packs, open them, then call up to two mercenaries to fight at your side for a few minutes. Each card is a unique version of its mercenary, with its own bonuses and passives, and you can raise it up to 6 stars.

• 17 mercenaries, in 5 grades from C to SSR
• 5 cards per pack, the last one with doubled odds
• 2 mercenaries out at the same time
• 5 minutes per call, paid in zeny
• 50 cards per account, shared by all your characters

The old mercenaries and their contract scrolls are gone: a contract scroll now only shows a message and stays in your bag.

Getting mercenaries

Card packs

The Mercenary Dealer in Midgard City (208, 215) sells card packs for Bronze Coins. Double-click a pack in your inventory to open it: the pack tears open, 5 cards come out face down, and you click each one to reveal it. A mercenary you did not have yet shows a NEW badge. Pull an SR or SSR and it gets its own big reveal.

Pack	Price	Who can come out
Offensive Starter Pack	25 Bronze Coins	Offensive mercenaries: Ren, Lyra, Kael, Shen, Exodus, Wren, Tobin, Bowman, Fencer
Defensive Starter Pack	25 Bronze Coins	Defensive mercenaries: Aldric, Garrick, Spearman
Support Starter Pack	25 Bronze Coins	Support mercenaries: Neris, Elea, Silas, Mira, Novice
Silver Mercenary Pack	20 Bronze Coins	Any of the 17 mercenaries
Grey Mercenary Pack	10 Bronze Coins	Common and Uncommon only: Spearman, Bowman, Fencer, Novice, Mira, Tobin

Each card first draws a grade, then a mercenary of that grade among the ones the pack holds. If the pack has no mercenary of the grade drawn, you get one of the grade just below.

The Grey Mercenary Pack has its own odds: 67% C / 33% U, and 34% C / 66% U on the 5th card.

Packs are bound to you: they cannot be traded, dropped, mailed, auctioned, put in a cart or in the guild storage. A pack only opens if you have room for its 5 cards (45 cards or fewer on your account).

Guild mercenaries

Four guilds each hire out one base mercenary, once per account, for 1,500 zeny. These cards are neutral: no attribute bonus or penalty.

Your cards

Every card you get is a separate version of its mercenary. When the card is drawn, it rolls:

• 2 attribute bonuses (+15% each, on two different attributes) and 2 attribute penalties (-15% each). Both penalties can land on the same attribute (-30%). A bonus and a penalty on the same attribute cancel out.
• Its own passives, drawn at random among the 51 passives: none for a C card, 1 for U, 2 for R and SR, 3 for SSR.

Your cards and fragments belong to your account: all your characters share them. You can hold up to 50 cards.

Stars and fragments

A new card starts at 1 star. To add stars, you spend fragments of that mercenary. You get fragments by sacrificing a card: a 1-star card gives 1 fragment, and a card with more stars also gives back every fragment spent on it. Fragments of a mercenary work on any card of that mercenary.

Each star above the first adds 5% Merc Power (see Stats).

Lock the cards you want to keep: a locked card cannot be sacrificed. A card that is out fighting cannot be sacrificed either.

The MERCENARIES window

Open it with the round Mercenary button (a helmet) among the round buttons at the bottom right of your screen, or with @mercenary. It shows all your cards with their grade, stars, bonuses (green), penalties (red) and passives. You can filter them by grade and theme, sort them, and hide duplicates.

Click a card to see its details (Merc Power, attributes, skills, passives, fragments), then:

• Merc 1 / Merc 2: make it your Mercenary 1 or Mercenary 2. You cannot change a slot while its mercenary is out, and the same mercenary cannot be in both slots.
• Upgrade: add a star with your fragments.
• Sacrifice: turn the card into fragments. The window tells you how many before you confirm.
• Lock / Unlock: protect the card from a sacrifice.
• Max level: the highest level your mercenaries come at. A lower level costs less zeny.

Mercenary 1, Mercenary 2 and the max level are saved per character, so each of your characters can pick its own.

Calling a mercenary

Hover over the round Mercenary button (click it to keep the list open): it lists your two mercenaries with their level and cost. Click one to call it, or click it again while it is out to dismiss it. You can also set the keys Call mercenary 1 and Call mercenary 2 in Shortcut settings > DARO tab (no key by default).

• Cost: level² × 5 + 1,000 zeny, where the level is your base level, or the max level you set if it is lower. The zeny is not refunded.
• Contract: 5 minutes, then the mercenary leaves.
• Recharge: 30 seconds on that slot after you dismiss your mercenary or after it falls. Resting (Activities > Camping > Rest) ends the recharge.
• Out of combat only: you can't call a mercenary in the middle of a fight. Wait until you have the initiative again.
• Party of 5 at most, mercenaries included. Alone, you count as a party of 1. If a party goes over 5, the last mercenary called leaves, and a player cannot join a party that would go over 5 with its mercenaries.
• Your mercenary follows you to other maps. It leaves if you log out.
• Monsters it kills count as yours: you get the EXP and the drops.

In battle

The mercenary frame

Each mercenary out gets a frame under your character's frame: portrait, grade, stars, level, HP, SP, a gold ring with the time left, and its passive stacks. The cross dismisses it. Below your mercenaries, your other summons (homunculus, Kugan summons) each get a line with their HP and time left. Your pet has a small frame of its own to the right of your character's frame: click it to open the My Pet window.

Under each frame you find the mercenary's skills (2 to 4, all at their max level):

• Click a skill: the mercenary casts it right away, on its target (or yours if it has none). If the target is too far, it moves closer first.
• Right click a skill to switch it between AUTO (the mercenary also uses it on its own) and MAN (only when you click it). This choice is kept for that mercenary.
• Keys: Mercenary 1 skill 1 to 4 and Mercenary 2 skill 1 to 4, in Shortcut settings > DARO.

Mercenaries pay SP for their skills: without enough SP, they only use normal attacks. They recover 0.5% of their max HP and SP every 6 seconds.

Potion slots

Each frame has 2 item slots. Drag a healing item from your inventory onto a slot, then click it (or use the key Mercenary 1 item 1 / 2, Mercenary 2 item 1 / 2): the mercenary drinks one from your inventory. Healing items only, at most once per second.

An ally like any other

• Your mercenaries show a green HP bar, a blue SP bar and their name, and your party sees them too.
• The mouse passes through them, so they never get in the way of your clicks. While you aim a skill, you can target them: heal and buff them like any ally.
• Ctrl + left click on one of your mercenaries or summons selects it (a gold ring). Your next Ctrl + right click gives an order to it alone: attack a monster, or go to a cell.
• Alt + right click gives the order to all your summons and mercenaries at once. On yourself, it calls them back.

Stats

A mercenary comes at your base level (or at the max level you set). Its stats grow with that level like the summons' do, shaped by its attribute order, then scaled by its Merc Power: HP, ATK and MATK × Merc Power, attributes × (Merc Power ÷ 2 + 50%). The card's bonuses and penalties apply after that.

All mercenaries are Neutral 1, Demi-Human and Medium. Their class sets the rest: DEF and MDEF (which grow by 0.2% per level: 60 becomes 71 at level 99), attack range, max SP and Finesse, a bonus to Perfect Hit and Perfect Dodge. Max SP is (50 + 2 × level) × the SP rate below, then +1% per point of INT.

DEF and MDEF above are the values at level 1. Garrick wears a Knight's look, Wren a Hunter's: they fight like the class shown here.

The mercenaries

A few skills work their own way on a mercenary: Shen keeps his own spirit spheres (Zen fills them to 5, Throw Spirit Sphere and Snap use them), Kael uses Cloaking to reach a far target, Tobin hides when his HP runs low, and Lyra's Wind Walker is copied onto you.

Passives

Each card draws its passives at random when you get it (0 to 3 depending on its grade). Stacks last 7 seconds and are renewed by each new stack, up to 30 stacks, at most one every 0.5 second. The common statuses are the ones listed in Common & Uncommon Status (Poison, Burning, Bleeding, Stun, Freeze, Sleep, Stone, Curse, Silence, Blind, Confusion...). Allies of an aura are you, your party and your summons, mercenaries and homunculi within 4 cells of the mercenary (9x9); two copies of the same aura do not stack.

Offensive

Defensive

Support

Enhancement

Warlord

The Knight specialization Warlord (Kugans 3500 to 3509) is built around mercenaries: its skills act on both of your mercenaries.