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For fun I hired a mercenary in Chapter 3. He is quite powerful and has better stats even though I am a level above him. Here are my questions:

1. Am I correct in the fact that the encounter experience is divided evenly between this mercenary NPC and my PC? Or does my PC get the majority of the experience?

2. The reason I ask these questions is because ever since I hired him we have been going through Chapter 3 fairly easily and I am at the last Quest of Chapter 3 and I am only at Level 29. This means I won't even be L 30 when I begin Chapter 4.

Is level 29 too low if I begin chapter 4 solo? By the way, how does one un-hire a mercenary??? Thanks

Level 29 is more than enough to start chapter 4 with. You need not worry.

Hiring a mercenary will not effect you experience gain in any way, everything he kills will get you the same amount of experience points as if you had killed it yourself.

There is no way to sack a mercenary without hiring a new one. If you don't want him then the only thing to do is to kill him and don't resurrect him.

Thanks, Dottie. I was concerned about level because I've read where people had their PCs in the 60+ level range and beyond. I thought I was doing something wrong.

Level 29 is actually about perfect if not a bit overkill for act 4, every time I've ever played the original Diablo 2: LoD (An unmodded version) I'm always like level 26 or 27 by the start of act 4, and then I get the last tier of spells by the time I'm ready to go kill diablo.

Oh, and as for mercenaries, unless you really just don't want that dividing of XP between you, I'd keep it, depending on what you are and what the mercenary is.

I've always found that if you get a mercenary that's the exact opposite of you're expertise, it makes life a lot easier in the game. Like a sorceress would get a paladin or barbarian mercenary, if you're an assassin you might go for a rogue or something.

All very true. I played a paladin mostly and stuck to my iron wolf (act 3 merc). Great combination. I'd advise the act 2 merc for every other class though personally. The auras really help you a lot.

Well I am in Act 4 now with my Paladin at level 29. I took my merc with me but I died on the Plains of Despair! My merc, with his low AI, couldn't get to me to help. Now I am alone again. If I am correct, no one is avaliable to offer Mercs for hire in the Fortress of Pandemonium, right? Anyway, I haven't found anyone...

Ferrick wrote:Thanks, Dottie. I was concerned about level because I've read where people had their PCs in the 60+ level range and beyond. I thought I was doing something wrong.

Nothing wrong att all. Characters in the 60s and beyond are characters that have finished normal difficulty and continued on nightmare and hell.

Ferrick wrote:Well I am in Act 4 now with my Paladin at level 29. I took my merc with me but I died on the Plains of Despair! My merc, with his low AI, couldn't get to me to help. Now I am alone again. If I am correct, no one is avaliable to offer Mercs for hire in the Fortress of Pandemonium, right? Anyway, I haven't found anyone...

Izual will resurrect your merc, but if you want to hire a different one, you will need to go back to a previous act.

the_bogan wrote:Izual will resurrect your merc, but if you want to hire a different one, you will need to go back to a previous act.

Erm, you mean Tyrael. Izual is the dude Tyrael sends you to kill.

My assasin was level 27 in Harrogath and I killed Diablo fairly easy with an iron wolf but in Harrogath it got pretty bad.

Siberys wrote:Erm, you mean Tyrael. Izual is the dude Tyrael sends you to kill.

Um... little known secret that he does resurrect mercs? Too bad most people just try and kill him.

Note to people who might believe the above post. This is sarcasm, and I stuffed up my names on the previous post but just don't want to admit it.

Siberys wrote:Level 29 is actually about perfect if not a bit overkill for act 4, every time I've ever played the original Diablo 2: LoD (An unmodded version) I'm always like level 26 or 27 by the start of act 4, and then I get the last tier of spells by the time I'm ready to go kill diablo.

It's not over kill to start act 4 on level 29 if you are playing /players 8.

Caden wrote:It's not over kill to start act 4 on level 29 if you are playing /players 8.

But if you play on Bnet you can't do that, so then I think it's perfectly fine to start Act 4 as lvl 26-ish.

Caden wrote:It's not over kill to start act 4 on level 29 if you are playing /players 8.

Yeah, but that's a console code specifically designed to make the game tougher to the player, and sadly /players 8 isn't worth it diablo 2 and LoD. Reason being is because it's not simply 8 times everything (Monster health, damage, defense, level, XP, etc). There's a specific formula for each of the /players code increases, and you're actually screwing yourself if you go with more than /players 4 by mid Act 2 and beyond into all difficulties.

Though, that code to the max in the secret cow level is just NUTS for item drops, good stuff good stuff!!!

/players 8 gives you way more experience and monsters, though. So I think it is well worth it. I don't see how you are screwing yourself going into higher acts on /players 8. The more experience you get means the more firepower you have. It also means more loot.

And I wasn't making an argument that it wasn't fine to be 29 (or 26ish) on act 4. My only arguement was that it wasn't overkill.

No, it doesn't. Again, Players 8 isn't just a simple multiplication formula where it multiplies the XP you get by 8.

It multiplies everything about the monster by 8 except for the drop rates and XP. XP I believe is 4.5 and drop rate is 2.75 in /players 8. Players 4 however, multiplies everything including XP by 4 and drop rates by 2. If you weigh it in, /players 8 is not worth the effort and players 4 may not get you as much XP but it will give close enough to /players 8 and halve the effort you have to put into killing monsters.

Anyway, we've detracted from the original post, lets get back on topic.

You are mistaken, my friend. Every added players increases XP by .5 or 50%.

This means /players 2 equals 1.5 XP, /players 4 equals 2.5 XP, and /players 8 equals 4.5 XP.

Increasing players only affects the monsters stats by increasing their HP. It increases their HP by the same ratio, 50%. /players 8 equals out to 4.5 the HP on monsters.

This works the same way on bnet. 8 players in a game equals out to 4.5 the XP and monsters with 4.5 the HP.

In /players 8 or with 8 players on bnet, you will also fight more monsters and have a higher drop rate than on /players 4.

Though, not 8 times the monsters or 8 times the drop rate. Which you know, I'm just showing that I do as well.

This topic is going off track but I still wanna add my 3 cents...
I play single player and I only play on players 8, I enjoy the massive drops and experience but it boils down to personal preference.

I usually finish act 1 at level 20, act 2 at level 26, act 3 at level 32, act 4 at level 40 and act 5 at about level 50.
Nightmare often leaves me at 70ish and I still haven't finished Hell mode but have a level 88 in act 5.

~

Back on topic though, mercenaries shouldn't take any experience from you, anything they kill is added to your experience score. You can check this by simply killing with either your character sheet open or the mercenary tab open.

In the higher difficulties it might be worth having a Mercenary to keep the nasty brunt of monsters off. Stygnian Dolls are extremely nasty to find toe to toe but fail to affect hirelings.

I just finished playing through Normal and I noticed that with only one exception my mercenary never encountered damage to his equipment/weapons at all. We could be in a huge battle with all kinds of damage being dished out and received and his equipment was perfect. Of course he would die from time to time, but overall he would fair better than me.

Another thing I also noticed was that we could be of the same level, with the ability to deliver the same amount of damage, and he would dispatch an enemy in two to three strokes on an average and I would be wailing away hitting, hitting, and more hitting.

Hirelings are good in that their equipment never degrades, which means if one finds a powerful piece of ethereal armour or weapon it's a perfect piece for the hireling.

~

If you're not doing more damage than your hireling then I would probably say your current build really isn't working for you, that or your equipment is horrendous. If your hireling is a Barbarian from act 5 then, it's possible they he can keep up with any damage dealt though.

It's mostly in the skill point distribution, I do thousands more damage than my hirelings all the time, I tend to use them a more meat shields than anything