Mercenary Card Feedback

[XuaXua]

For general Merc Card feedback.

So... I got a merc and it was fun till I got abyssed and never came back.

It was nice getting him equipped, but as someone who has played Beoghite, I have a concern: Cursed Weaponry

Since there is absolutely no way to uncurse a Beogh orc directly with the remove curse scroll (the orcs won't even use it!), Beogh orcs who pick up cursed weaponry are not necessarily screwed because eventually Beogh will gift them attack or defense power and that removes the curse.

Not so with mercs. Is this going to be handled/addressed? One would assume, not so with a base orc, that a merc who negotiates a price for services would be intelligent enough to use a scroll to uncurse himself.

[DuxOrbis]

I've just gotten a nice Tengu, but even with Ctrl+t set to the most liberal rules he won't switch his weapon out for a better one. I assume this is because he is a durable summon. I was really hoping not to see this because it seems to me this buffs evocations and nemelex without the potential for a good player that does not train evoc or follow nemelex to train his 'weaker monster' mercenary into a better fighter than that higher cost monster. I think this is desirable because it opens up their use for all players, and in general reduces the risk of an ally's obsolescence due to lack of gear. Whether this obsolescence becomes an issue over a long period of time I haven't tested yet, get back to you on that one.

Basically since those not specialized to use decks will end up seeing the lower level mercs as less useful I would love to see this lowly kenku start gearing up for the dungeon with me, I'm not sure if he gains experience yet either, I've not seen the 'he looks more experienced' message that I often see from my random ice beast kills XD

More than that though I wish my Tenku buddy could fly and make use of his speed, water battles would be far easier with a flying ally and he would be able to hold his own in higher level combat, all the more experience for him to become a formidable ally instead of dead weight.

That said I haven't gotten him killed yet, so once I do or ascend I'll give an overview of our time together. Oh, his name is Kemeh! Love the name generation so far!

EDIT: Kemeh looks more experienced! Now if only I could get him to grab that flaming scimitar to replace his vanilla one...
Would having some UI that tracked your ally's XL be useful? Right now I'm going to just keep tally marks or annotate somewhere. I'm not sure exactly how the commands for allies work, but I love that 'follow me' is basically RETREAAAT! when in combat.

So far Kemeh kicks ASS. He can chop down orcs and ogres with impunity after his first level up, so he definitely starts out skilled. I do wish that the experience sharing would work both ways. If he does 50% of the damage, and I kill the thing, I should get 50% experience, but so should he. He also has no problem walking into my Conjured Flame clouds....

He got hit by an arrow of disperal from a centaur and shouted "I'll never leave you!" as he blinked, a bit dramatic as he blinked a few squares away XD but I imagine him being swallowed by a tear in reality as he shouted, only to be a bit embarrassed as the centaur blinked me away in front of him.

I'm pretty sure Kemeh died to the arrows of a centaur warrior on d13, got separated from my demonic horde by that centaur warrior and a hill giant. Nearly died myself, Kemeh drew their fire. The last message I received was Kemeh waving at me. Yep. Dungeon Crawl is now a game that can make you feel every emotion now. I'd call mercenaries a success.