Mercenaries (CoS)  

Very little of this information is accurate after the 2.7 patch, which almost completely revamped the Mercenary system. We will rewrite this page as soon as feasible. In the meantime, see this post on the official forums.

City of Steam Wikibase™ Guides

At level 10 you receive a new Guide quest, [Guide] Mercenary Tutorial.

A Mercenary is like a pet, or a teammate, that will follow you around and fight for you. He will only attack what attacks you and cannot be sent into battle.

Mercenaries will not follow you into PvP battles.

Mercs come in Common (white), Uncommon (green), Superior (blue), Extraordinary (purple), and Magnificient (orange) qualities. Purple and Orange Mercs have only a single name, such as Glaive or Doomsledge. All others have a name and number, such as Musketeer 1, Striker 4 or Protector 3.

Mercenaries have a Level and a Rank, and both start at 1. Increase level to improve the mercenaries stats (such as Damage), increase his Rank to improve the bonus he gives his player.

Important Note: The single-target damage of an Area of Effect Mercenary is only 30% of his Base Damage!

Recruit

Each time you Refresh you see four new potential recruits and get a chance of finding five Blue, Purple, or Orange Keepsakes. You can employ a maximum of 20 Mercs, but the number of Mercs you can receive bonuses from is limited by your level (See Rank Circle). Each Refresh will cost you 3000  or 50 ($0.49) . You get 10 Shilling Refreshes and 10 Electrum Refreshes, per day.

When you have Blue Keepsakes x100, Purple Keepsakes x100, or Orange Keepsakes x100 you can click the Keepsake icon on the bottom which will refresh your applicants and guarantee that at least one of them will be of the quality color of the Keepsakes. Using 100 Keepsakes to recruit does not cost shillings, nor does it consume one of your 10 daily Refreshes.

If you find an applicant with the exact same name (name and number) as one you already have, you instantly gain +1 to your Mercs Morale. You don't have to do anything to get this... in fact you can't, as the Recruit button becomes the message "Morale + 1!" All new recruits start with a Morale of 100. Morale increases your Mercenary's stats. For each point above 100 your Mercenary gains 1% to all stats.

	Subscribers get more Daily Recruiting Electrum Refreshes. 15 for Bronze, 20 for Silver and 25 for Gold. Just remember, each refresh costs 50 ($0.49) .

Level Up

Your summoned Mercenary will earn a mirrored portion of all the EXP you earn, so in the normal course of things your summoned Mercenary will level up with you. This includes EXP from Events such as Scribe's Maze and Challenges (even those you Vanquish). If you recruit a new mercenary you will probably want to use Mercenary Exp Crystals to get him up to speed faster, but he should catch up on his fairly quickly because of the gradated EXP required to level up. Mercenary Exp Crystals can be gained from the Transmuter (among other ways).

Each time you click on Level Up it does not raise him an entire level. Rather, it gives him a random amount of Level EXP. Each time there is a chance the EXP gain will be Critical which gains a large bonus of EXP.

At the EXP Exchange (next to the Honor Shop in Arkadia) you can trade 20,000 EXP for a Mercenary Exp Crystal, thus converting EXP to Merc EXP. To a level 60, 1% is somewhere around 20 Mercenary Exp Crystals.

Rank Up

Rank controls the bonuses that your mercenaries give you (Rank Bonus).

To Rank Up your Mercenaries first select a merc on the left. You will see his info on the right. Now click one of the Rank Up button, up to the maximum of the Daily Rank Up Times, to raise your Mercs Rank. The Rank Exp bar shows how far each Rank Up moves his EXP, and how far he has to go. When spending Shillings, your merc gets 10 EXP for a normal click, 100 and a bonus click for a critical. If you use Electrum the EXP gained is doubled, 20 for a normal click and 200 for a critical.

Rank cannot exceed your Mercenaries Level.

	Subscribers get more Daily Rank Ups. 40 for Bronze, 50 for Silver and 60 for Gold.

Formation

To add a mercenaries Formation Bonus, drag the merc's icon to your Formation. As your level rises the number of slots in your Formation grows, to a max of 10 at level 60. You will receive the cumulative Formation Bonuses of EVERY mercenary in your Formation!

You can stack Mercs with the same bonus or go for one Merc for each Stat.

Attention, Citizens! Rampaging Brood have damaged this portion of the Libre Arcanum. Your assistance is therefore commanded to recover this datum (free ZAM account required)! That is all. For the Paragons!

Pre-2.7 Mercs

The original Mercenaries, listed below, are still in the game and players who have them can still use them, but as they can no longer be recruited their Star-grade cannot be raised and so they are essentially obsolete.