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is it your first time? Enable the option that mercs are always online. Play tutorial Ernie Island with these guys. They should cover most of the skills you need.
a) Barry - explosives expert
b) Livewire - mechanics and hacker
c) MD - doctor
d) Igor - marksman early game, later melee or take Ice for marksman
e) IMP - leadership, AGI, DEX, WIS stats 80. Decide if you want to go melee, sniper or whatever to pick either STR or Marksmanship 80
f) Mouse - Stealth marksman
I got Buns and Meltdown after Ernie Village, but on my new save, I tried Ice and Blood and I think they're well better for how I play. Still using them long after.
Playing Impossible with the extra settings for the achievement.
Hardest diff, Ivan and Igor.
Or if you wish to try and Solo I suggest to enable legendary mercs and try a solo run as Magic or Shadow. Super fun and doable :D
Even with non Legendary like Blood its fun and doable.
- imp (max wis, mm, ldr, dex, agi; zero exp, medic, mech; ~40-50 in str) (LDR)
- barry (obviously) (EXP)
- fox (double stealthkill + 69 (nice) medic (70 medic test in hunters camp)) (MED)
- livewire (aka lemonwire) (WIS + MEC)
- steroid (STR) (first i´d drop if money is a problem; carry mule is nice tho) (fox will get annoyed, but she´s only there for double stealthkills, so whatever)
- kalyna (3-5 days (get the rifle, train ernie island milita for quest); overall she´s good early game; salary increase + low wis late-game she´s questionable in comparison)
all early skillcheck bases covered
move to A2 first, get raider (ldr) following behind + train milita
get flay + larry (med+exp) for squad 2.
maybe raven, however i´d put her in squad 1, bc squad 2 barely will do any fighting. the negative AP modifier on lemonwire (doesnt like raven) barely is relevant bc prone + sniper > 1 AP
i´d also get ice, nails, blood + meltdown (ordered in usefullness); later on magic for the ice+blood team.
Q + len later on for squad 3.
putting barry into squad 2 to get nails (STR, EXP) (even tho mine-diarm might fail) in squad 1 (bc fox-pair-up) is ok. also barry fits well in a raider, raven, steroid, *flay or whatever*
yes, larry doesnt fit in well but having 2 EXP (or whatever) in a squad is likely to happen anyway, so whatever.
since bobby rays is available, getting g43s is easy
MD is following in another squad for completing some later quests requiring his MED attribute. Not needed when you start the game.
I put Blood in my second squad around 2/3rds of the way through the playthrough when I was finally making enough money, and he just didn't really seem to be good at anything I wanted him to do. Not great marksmanship compared to others, barely any leadership, and plus he kept begging for more money which was kind of annoying lol.
same on run 1.
bipod silenced sniperrifle, win.
(if one includes melee stealthkills (paired with ranged stealthkills and a 2nd stealthkill due to fox), obviously the amount of melee usage goes up drastically)
you can do brokenly strong melee builds, but they wont work in every situation, unlike sniperrifles.
also sniperrifles (bipod) make a top shooter out of everyone (including blood)
for LDR you have your imp, raider and that´s it.
if you want to leave someone behind to train milita, that´s why smiley exists.
now why is blood good?
the knife-throw-walk is broken aF in the early game, simply because that´s the little extra free damage that can stop the enemy from shooting back.
also:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3007594221
ice likes blood and ice is great.
when money isnt an issue:
magic likes blood and magic is great.
reaper likes blood and reaper is great.
thor likes magic and thors pills are a huge timesaver (when you carry lemonwire around).
so that´s 5 mercs who all get +1 AP, include a medic, 3 shooters and one guy that clears the fighting pit in landsbach, including 93 wisdom, 61 ldr, 72 med (8 books for red rabies... oof), 91 mec.
all that´s missing is an explosives expert to cover all bases (ignoring LDR; however an LDR + EXP + MM merc is possible)
(or fauda is like risky explosive checks)
also with those guys HLT stats, resting somewhat becomes a luxury (or to get a rested +1 AP buff on top), bc thors pills can keep them going for a lot of sectors.
again with a bipoded sniper, even MD becomes a crackshot without training, so there wont be an issue with blood.
yes, this means regrouping at some point (probably before the prison / port cacao (if you go A2-> commietown -> mfufu -> further south)) to rebuild squads.
all that said: bloods knifethrow ability comes pointless late-game, but that´s the case for a lot of mercs.
early game (before everyone has a sniper) it´s pure gold.
mid game when you bring shortended winchesters to maximize killspeed, it´s a pure buff and free movement.
late game... meh
yes, +1 AP is a lot when rocking 4AP winchesters.
also the wage haggling stops if you combine the right mercs, not that money would be an issue.
obviously the same argumentation could be made for every single merc (except shadow and scully) and having a 5 man squad somewhat set isnt doesnt leave a lot of room for experimentation, but it´s also a strong winning team that has almost all bases covered without giving it any thought and permanently has positive buddy morale and zero whining and b*tching.
not that anyone would care what lemonwire thinks, but trying to build this with ... lets say
gruntry, igor, ivan, buns, scope and sidney... there are a lot more wholes skill-wise.
so yeah detroit-ghetto-psycho-murder-squad > (semi-)professional squad
yep, reaper is the 90s ultra edgemaster, that´s why his name is reaper.
also reaper has excellent combat stats. probably top 5 (without checking).
fauda thicc armor with shotgun & nade multi-hit... breaks the game - in the right situations. the only problem is her bad explosives skill. that said, low armor high mobilty with snipers obviously wins against heavy armor + shotguns, but 1 agi book for another AP and a bipoded sniper with the option of going shotgun&nade range and simply tanking the hits, that´s a good option.
looking at some army invasion screenshots, faude would do excellent at solo clearing some (single squad) waves.
if i can afford it, why should i pick vicki over magic? (again, money easily becomes a non-issue as soon as one hits ports cacao and only escalates to basically unlimited money soon after.
a unbreakable lockpick? since bobby rays, one is swimming in lockpicks for cheap. pointless.
auto-repair? but still not enough repair so that one has to take repair-breaks (when doing resting breaks)? not good enough.
80 wisdom is the sweet-spot for checks. vicky having 85 is pointless. from a field-training perspective, skillsgains are very much forceable so whatever.
15 LDR vs 33 LDR. neither one will be the LDR nor the milita trainer.
vicki is nice in combination with len + Q + spike, possibly gus. decent squad 3 and Q has his issue for red rabies + landsbach arena (if blood is too far away).
also +50% crit when shooting from higher ground is situational? ... i think you meant it´s forceable if you have to luxery to move and take positions and also completely broken. not that it would be needed when going silenced snipers, but certainly better than a not-good-enough auto-repair.
again:
money is no issue for ~75% of the game.
I had always one small squad sitting on some crossroad, stoping enemy squads and training themselfs, so even Steroid become lethal sharpsooter.
P.S: amazing team was Shadow with (!I am not sure) Bill
In general in any squad you definitely want one medic to heal everyone after a tough battle, one explosives person to defuse mines and craft ammo (really useful when you start needing more AP ammo and can never find/buy it anywhere), and one mechanic to mod and repair weapons/gear. I like sniping so I round out the rest of my squad with marksmen or good all-rounders like Wolf.
I find that pretty much anyone, even mechanics and explosives guys, will eventually become decent snipers if you give them a good sniper rifle and let them use it a lot. If everyone has suppressors then it makes life quite a bit easier because you can shoot someone and not have the entire map charge at you.
Early on when you are strapped for cash you kind of have to put up with who you can get, and it takes a while to get the free mercs like Larry. After taking two or three mines you can start putting a second squad of mercs together, but it takes a while to assemble them and to get good weapons for them.
Fox is definitely one of the best mercs in the game. She's a medic, and she's an amazing sniper because she can basically get two shots off at the start of combat. Give her a good suppressed sniper rifle and she can almost singlehandedly slowly wipe out all the enemies that are at the edges of the map.
Wolf is another good sniper despite being just an all rounder. I don't find his speed up actions skill to be useful, but he always seems to have good movement range and hits his target. And Fox loves him.
Kalyna I quite like, she starts with a G38 rifle which is really handy, she's a decent sniper and mechanic, and her leadership stat lets her train militia and move around on the map faster. You can make her a one-woman unit and just have her travel around training militia.
Barry is really good for explosives considering his low cost. He doesn't have much movement range in combat but with a good sniper rifle he's a good sniper for me. His shaped charges come in handy when enemies bunch up or are behind destructible cover.
Buns is quite a good sniper and has high wisdom but otherwise she kind of falls off in utility as the other mercs become better snipers and start hitting their targets more reliably.
Everyone else I've tried is just kind of generic. Tried Ice, Omryn, Ivan, Raven, Larry, Livewire and a few others and none really stood out. Ivan and Ice do have a lot of movement range which can be useful in certain battles. Larry and Livewire seem pretty hopeless at shooting but hopefully they can rank up and get better.