Which Mercs to take ?

[Alrik]

I tried a first Play and come to conclusion, that i took the totally wrong Mercs. So have to quit and Start a new Game. So before i make the Mistakes again: Which mercs are goot to take from Beginning so i can play effective and easy ? And should i make my own custom Merc or not and if yes which stats should i put in. ? Thanks

[juppsen]

Definitly get your IMP Merc! 30 Leadership, 0 Medic, 0 Tech, 0-10 Explosives, str as high as possible wirhout maxing it. Wisdom, Marksmantahip and Agility always at 85!

You should have at least one Merc with high medic and one with high tech, maybe one with explosives, if no other merc of your choice is at least at 50+.

I started with Thor, Livewire, Ice and Red. If you wish to keep your Mercs, Wisdom is important, because a high stat will make them learn faster. That's why I prefare Thor and don't take Fox, but she or MD are other good choices for the medic.

[sandman25dcsss]

Originally posted by juppsen:

Definitly get your IMP Merc! 30 Leadership, 0 Medic, 0 Tech, 0-10 Explosives, str as high as possible wirhout maxing it. Wisdom, Marksmantahip and Agility always at 85!

You should have at least one Merc with high medic and one with high tech, maybe one with explosives, if no other merc of your choice is at least at 50+.

I started with Thor, Livewire, Ice and Red. If you wish to keep your Mercs, Wisdom is important, because a high stat will make them learn faster. That's why I prefare Thor and don't take Fox, but she or MD are other good choices for the medic.

Leadership 85 is a must for IMP, this way you can train other mercs efficiently and travel fast on strategic map.

[LArc7thHeaven]

The Meta starter is usually livewire, Barry, and MD and your IMP character. Main reason is they fill your toolset basically mechanic, explosive, and medic respectively and they're cheap at first with giga wisdom so you can train them and made them become gus tarball without the cost. Your IMP merc should maxed at marksmanship, wisdom, agility, dexterity, leadership. Dump mechanic, medic, and explosive since those hired merc will fill that position and get the trainer perks so you can teach your merc the marksmanship and leadership. Also trainer perk gives more benefit when training merc

[Solaius]

if you want the most cost effective mercs that will train to be really good anyway Barry for explosives, Livewire or Steroid for mechanics, Fox or MD for medical. Fox and Steroid don't like each other if i remember right. My favorite starter for marksman is Buns. pick a combo of those and you can't go wrong. Once you've improved i'd play around with other more expensive mercs. A few of my favorites are Blood, Shadow, Reaper, Ivan and now Fauda.

[Sviothiod]

Blood is an amazing melee beast! He's quick, so he'll get to the enemy quickly and he has the special ability to have up to seven knife attacks in one go. If he hits, he turns every enemy to minced meat.

[[{JimPanC]

fox, mouse, md, barry, livewire, buns are really strong, even better than some higher tier mercs
IMP is really strong early on
you can do the first island with just barry, livewire, buns and IMP, add MD or fox if you need a real medic

[HippieShopper]

I had a lot of fun running with Grizzly and Omryn. The latter has the ability to make his overwatch a full 360 degrees and that saved my bacon a lot.

If you go with Fox, she has a thing for Grizzly.

[Dorok]

Originally posted by sandman25dcsss:

Originally posted by juppsen:

Definitly get your IMP Merc! 30 Leadership, 0 Medic, 0 Tech, 0-10 Explosives, str as high as possible wirhout maxing it. Wisdom, Marksmantahip and Agility always at 85!

You should have at least one Merc with high medic and one with high tech, maybe one with explosives, if no other merc of your choice is at least at 50+.

I started with Thor, Livewire, Ice and Red. If you wish to keep your Mercs, Wisdom is important, because a high stat will make them learn faster. That's why I prefare Thor and don't take Fox, but she or MD are other good choices for the medic.

Leadership 85 is a must for IMP, this way you can train other mercs efficiently and travel fast on strategic map.

Agree consider more IMP 85 Leadership.

Suggestions:
1. Default difficulty.
2. In not now then at 3dt try consider pick the Indulgent mode option, so you have more margins and choices on mercs hiring.

Then some comment:
- Consider support all those skills: Mechanic, Explosive, Medic.
- Consider support all skills adding dialog options: Psycho, Negociator, Scoundrel. Many mercs has one, Psycho could have more issues with mercs hired so pick it for IMP is a good option.
- Don't bother keep a lot of money in reserve, I'm not sure 1K is even useful, or it's to hire some more merc along first days, like start with three mercs only.
- Consider build a team hired for 2 weeks not 1.
- Consider build a team of 5 including IMP merc, eventually you can start with 3 or 4 and reserve some money for 2 more.
- Barry is a must have, not just to manage explosive skill, but also as a great overall merc, plus an issue to lower some combats difficulty with his unique grenades. If he isn't available at start, and you don't want scam restart, try reserve in a slot and money for a later hire when still in island.

For skills support at the start:
- Explosive skill: If Barry isn't an option for explosive skills, you can consider Red but he is an elite cheaper than multiple Veteran but more expensive than all Recuits. And if neither Barry nor Red are available, then consider a temporary explosive skill support, I felt it was annoying to choose the IMP for supporting explosive skill but it's definitely an option. Otherwise perhaps Hitman or Meltdown.
- Mechanic skill: There's many good possibilities. Kalyna but she is constantly increasing her salary so it's just for first weeks. Likewire quite less good in combats but better for hacking intel, and for mechanic check. Steroid lacking a bit of AP but still a solid combat mech and quite good for Mechanical.
- Medic skill: I doubt it's important in first steps to have a very high level Medic, so a first choice replace later is an option. So start with Burns or Blood is a fair enough start. But Fox is a fine choice too. MD is definitely a fairly good option, but he is very special, on start he certainly has a stealth penalty and you need manage it, secondly it isn't good for combats so you'll need consider training.

Some other comment:
- Igor is good for stealth and close range, and a good start merc option. Morever if you hire him first and Barry after then Barry won't request a salary augment at first hire.
- Meltdown, Burns, Ice, Hitman, Red are a very solid start merc choice. For sure You can't pick many to start, target more one of them.
- Blood is more to exploit melee, but it's a bit questionable when for now there's a doubtful infinite melee attack hole, and without the hole I doubt he would be so popular.
- Igor, Steroid, Grunty are ok second choice to stay in budget and fill the squad.

But then this is a lot about a start merc group with 5 including IMP, clearly 4 is another option.

[VoiD]

Many combinations can work, as long as you have all bases covered you should be fine with whichever mercs you prefer.

That being said, here are some personal opinions based on the mercs I've used:

Fox - Best Stealth specialist, as she can have a 2nd try if her initial attack fails, her accuracy isn't that great at the start though, and forget about her ambidexterity, dual weapons kinda suck, try to get her a silent rifle ASAP and grab stealth kill perks.

Livewire - Cheap mechanic, great unique skill, kinda bad accuracy and very squishy, she's nice early on, and later on there aren't many high mechanics other than Vicki so you might feel forced to take, or re-take her eventually.

Kalyna - Starts with a rifle, that alone makes her worth taking early on, she can cover as your team's mechanic for a while, but her stats really aren't that good, and I heard she keeps asking for raises, so you might not want her as a long term merc.

Grizzly - Decent, cheap merc, gets a lot better when/if you can get him a LMG, but, then again, ammo will be an issue.

Barry - I've slept on this one, the free grenades he produces are GREAT, and I mean, capable of wiping out entire patrols in a couple of throws kind of great, he's also the cheapest explosives expert, Barry is awesome.

Igor - Good melee merc early on, kind of a pain to level up if you try to take him later on.

MD - Bad fighter, can work as your medic if fox isn't avaliable.

Buns - Can replace fox if stealth isn't your thing, the skillset is rather similar.

Blood - Another melee expert, with better reliability if you don't ♥♥♥♥ up.

Grunty - Cheap merc, good for ambushes, if you give him a sniper he might kill a random 2nd target along with your stealth guy before combat starts.

Hitman - Cheap elite merc with high accuracy and bad aiming bonuses (dex), pretty good fighter.

Anyway, just make sure you have a decent medic, a very good (90+) explosives expert and a very good mechanic, the rest is personal preference, I've also played a bit with the higher tier mercs, Raider+Raven are permanent additions to my team and they work really well together, the legendary mercs seem to be very strong too, but I don't think they are worth going bankrupt over, if I couldn't afford to I'd at least get Scully and Reaper.

[Caged Nicolas]

Make a custom merc with good leadership (for training militia), marksmanship, and some medical. Put points into wisdom and agility.

LiveWire is a must hire for mechanical. Same for MD for medical. Both are very cheap and improve marksmanship quickly.

Barry is also super cheap and the best explosives person for the whole game. His homemade explosives will win a lot of fights by themselves.

If you get a 5th merc, pick one of the cheap ones that have good agility and aim. Igor is pretty solid.

Steroid is a pretty good pick for mechanical if Livewire isn't available, and he has the biggest inventory space b/c of his strength. Not super useful in a fight and not a good learner as the game goes on.

* you should make your custom merc a woman, as several women (Mouse, Vicki) will demand more pay to join, or flat out hang up on you, if you have an all-male team

[Dorok]

Originally posted by Caged Nicolas:

* you should make your custom merc a woman, as several women (Mouse, Vicki) will demand more pay to join, or flat out hang up on you, if you have an all-male team

Lol, never tried hire Mouse or Vicki.

With Burns at start when testing, I failed decipher why sometimes she asked for higher salary and sometimes not. For Igor I suspect it's NOT hire before him some higher level merc that triggers his request for higher salary. For Barry it seems it's only hire Igor before that avoid he requests higher salary.

[Alrik]

ok good now i do have an Idea for my strategy. Thanks

[Spaceman_84]

Make your IMP a Leader, because all the high leadership mercs are expensive. Drop their Mechanics, Explosives, and Medical to 0 (you can train them up later) and use the extra points to round out whatever build you're doing for your IMP. Keep in mind you need 70/80/90 in each stat to take its bronze/silver/gold perks as you level up. I built my IMP as a CQC/Melee character, so I maxed Health and Strength first and filled in the rest as evenly as I could.

As for starting mercs, I went with Buns, Livewire, Barry, and Fox. Buns is a great marksman and a good off-medic, and once you get a rifle in her hands she'll be popping heads left and right. Livewire is hands down the best early game mechanic and her passive is broken as hell (you can always see enemies if you have intel on a zone). Barry for an explosives expert, because his passive lets him make his own special shape charge grenades. You can either Fox or MD as your medic, but my personal preference is Fox because she also has the stats to be your stealth expert down the road. Also, Buns apparently hates Fox and will straight up refuse to join if you already have her on the team, so hire Buns first.

Starting with your IMP + 4 mercs should keep you financially stable for a long time. Later on, I would suggest picking up Meltdown and using her as your machine gunner. Meltdown also has Psycho, so between her, Buns, and Livewire, you'll have the three social perks covered (Diplomat/Scoundrel/Psycho).

Oh, and hire your mercs for 2 weeks, you'll save a ♥♥♥♥ ton of money.

[sandman25dcsss]

Livewire, Barry, Fox. Each has cool and very powerful unique ability.

[LArc7thHeaven]

Also important is wisdom stat, always try find merc that had 90 wisdom because you can train them more effectively and can catch up their lowest stat through training. Try having buns or your IMP merc with teaching perk to train the rest of your merc