what do you think about mercenaries

[headcrab0803]

personally i just love them. when i have a chance, I buy every single deck of war and use them up to get a friend. I just get so attatched to them

[XuaXua]

I think the ones from a legendary deck can be quite expensive and unexpected (whoops, a $3500 Elven Blademaster!)

[Maynot]

There should be a slave/merc shop at least once per dungeon. That way you don't need to rely on decks of war.

[duvessa]

i press N and kill them

[Siegurt]

Yeah, me too, I've never had a situation where I was tempted to say "Y" for anything other than novelty value (or in one case a "If I don't say "Y" this thing will probably kill me")

Mercenary's don't seem worth it to me, they're too expensive when they'd be useful and too fragile to spend the money on when they're affordable. Plus dragging around and keeping followers alive is annoying as crap.

[dck]

Mercs are if anything stupidly overpowered.
My muck for example ran into an ornate deck and used merc with zero evo, got a plain Mf and actually hired it by Lair: 2.
By Lair: 3 he had killed enough dudes that he became an impaler. He eventually died in D: 16 to a dragonslaying skelewarrior since he was a golden dragon by then.

Tengu right now are probably even better since you can get god damn reavers for the 200 gold you paid the initial plain Te, although you probably have to care about them in the regular Te phase and that's awful.

[Siegurt]

Perhaps I'm just too lazy to level them up to the point where they're useful, care and feeding of allies is something that always feels overly aggravating to me.

[dck]

(the merfolk was the one leveling me up the to the point of usefulness)
also I didn't play any differently than I normally would have.

[Baldu3]

I've always though it could make the game more lively to get a mercenary with healgod.

[XuaXua]

he was a golden dragon by then.

I don't understand how a merfolk progresses to become a golden dragon. Was is because you were a chaos knight?

[dck]

xom

[Hirsch I]

oh my god, so can you polymorph high HD until they become goddamn titans or Golden Dragons or something? fucking awesome.

[duvessa]

he can also polymorph them until they become useless shapeshifters

[cerebovssquire]

oh my god, so can you polymorph high HD until they become goddamn titans or Golden Dragons or something? fucking awesome.

You can't because polymorphing dudes is a hostile action (they will be polymorphed but they will attack you afterwards), xom can because that's not a hostile action from you.
There are (used to be? I hope they were removed because they are really dumb) mutagenic clouds which also polymorph dudes if you can get them to walk in there.

[Sar]

I think that vault that places a bunch of good items behind glass and forces you to walk through mutagenic fog to get them is still in.
Fleshworks exists, too.

[Hirsch I]

awn
well, you can always drop the wand near some monsterso it poly the merc for you. but I guess that will not be that easy. having a pet Titan would be awesome!

[duvessa]

Mutagenic fog is still around, but it no longer polymorphs monsters. It just makes them "misshapen and mutated" like wretched stars do.

[XuaXua]

Fleshworks exists, too.

Is that the magic workshop portal? You can't get allies to enter a portal with you.

[Sar]

Wizlab, and I was talking about mutagenic fog existing in general.

[I want to believe]

There should could be a dungeon sprint where you get 5-7 random mercenaries, and you need to heal and polymorph them to keep them alive till the end...Though that'd get boring after too long, and I don't see a way to prevent the player from surpassing them in skill...

[dck]

That's kinda zotdef except a lot worse I think.

[Igxfl]

Mercenaries would be great if I had the patience for them. They remind me of old Yred/Beogh/TR.

[bryanpeddy]

I have had some interesting ones. They are usually not worth it, unless you want to hunt for some decent stuff to drop for them to use. I got a big kobold as one once and managed to keep him alive until D:12 by giving him decent armor to wear.