Unique mercenaries - Help me catch them all!

[ThisOldWorld]

First off, it's great to see the developers paying attention to these discussions, taking on board some of the suggestions and commenting on the posts. You've developed a wonderful game, I had a great time playing it and it truly is a worthy successor to the Ogre Battle series, of which March of the Queen is one of my all time favourite games.

One thing I don't remember the Ogre Battle games having is the unique mercenaries you have added randomly to shops and bazaars. They are a great addition and help to add more flavour and tactics to squad compositions.

In my warlord playthrough, without save scumming, keeping high gold reserves to ensure I could afford them. I was lucky enough to get 13 of them. From what I can gather on the forum here, there seems to be 17 in total. I know 13/17 isn't bad, but I still feel a bit bummed that I ended up missing out on 4 of them through no fault of my own (I was always able to buy whoever showed up - once I think I had to sell artifacts to do so - and I finished the game with over 140k and a bunch of unused arena tokens).

The 4 I didn't get that I am aware of are Sir Rolante, Lady Clarimond, Lt. Archibald and Cloudrender Athelis - I'm not sure whether this is because of their rarity or not

I don't want to save scum and won't do it, but then feel a little bit cheated that some people will and do reroll the shops each level until they are able to get all the unique mercenaries...

To address this issue, I hope that the developers can formulate a plan that allows those of us who are not save scumming to not feel like we are missing out a little. With that in mind, I offer these suggestions to consider:

1 - guarantee it - give a fixed slot to them in the shop - maybe tied to the skill tech tree - keep it randomised, maybe jack up the price a little in the shop, while perhaps giving a discount in the bazaar.
- I'm aware this could have the effect of taking away their uniqueness if they are showing up all the time,, but if they are more expensive then you are paying for that uniqueness.

2 - Allow the arena to be used after a certain point (say when the sidequests become available) to reroll the shop seed if desired. This would allow more chances for the unique mercenaries to show up and added incentive to do more arena runs later in the game.

3 - Allow the unique mercenaries to randomly show up in maps throughout a playthrough - perhaps each with target objectives that must be met before they will join you (liberate this town, have Sybil meet them, defeat other members of squad to force surrender, meet within 5 turns etc.)
- This might be too much work but could also allow them to say their quotes that appear under their character profile and add an extra layer of replayability to story maps.

4 - Allow the unique mercenaries to randomly appear as neutrals/rescue timers/enemies in the arena. I can't remember how many platinum arena tokens there were, but each one of them giving you a chance to meet/fight/rescue a unique mercenary would add an extra layer to the arena and help to get more unique mercenaries into more playthroughs.

5 - Go nuts and increase the unique mercenary pool to some crazy number like 50 or something. An unattainable number perhaps linked to a fixed slot on the shop( or presence in the arena) would remove the fear and disappointment of missing out. To make this work with balance in mind, you could make them of varying quality - I mean I would still pay top dollar for Doofus the Unskilled - who must remain a basic soldier for the rest of the game. - simply because he has a quote and feels a little more unique and personalised.

6 - Take some out of the recruitment pool and instead give them as easter eggs or mission rewards. For example when I noticed my gold was sky rocketing I was kind of hoping that reaching 100k would allow me to unlock and buy a unique merc. Steam achievements are great and all - but rewarding in game skill with in game rewards like unique mercenaries would be even better. Examples could be random unique merc - will join after 5 flawless missions - will join when you complete a map without using resurrect. - will join after MC gets x number of kills/surrenders/liberations - Will join after leadership reaches x, Will join after x. number of proof of merits used.

I'm not sure how viable some of these options are, but there are surely others ways to integrate them as well. They are a great addition and the randomness of their arrival helps add replayability to the game. I feel like you can keep that replayability by keeping the question of 'when they show up' random, but can eliminate the 'if they show up' question, to allow each playthrough to be blessed by all of them :)

Sorry for the long post, thank you for your time

[cav_scout85]

I found a samurai General in my current run so keep an eye out for him.

[The Kaiser]

Basically it takes alot of save scumming. Alot. Also, a bit of luck too. You don't get shopping in about 4 chapters I think, and the first 2 chapters you wouldn't have enough money anyways. I did get them all in my last run I did, but it was definitely brutal to do. They also didn't come in the order that would have been beneficial.

Warlord Tatar and General Bizen for instance are good to get early as they're cheap (relatively speaking) and make good squad leaders. Bizen due to his archer captain ability and Tatar because he starts with over 60 leadership. Centhos the Muse is also good as he's high 50's for leadership and being a prodigy will gain leadership fast, also being silver tongued, if you make his squad strong enough he'll surrender units left and right. I think those 3 are the best early ones and if you're fortunate to get them before chapter 12, you're doing good.

Ones like Renalin Steelheart and Cloudrender Athelis, Lady Clairmonde and Matriach Rosalie are great, but they're prohibitively expensive. I just got Cloudrender in a bazaar on chapter 10 in my current game, I was off by 3k to hire him. But, that would have made it hard for me to try the chapter 12 challenge as I need the money to get either cannon fodder or save scum for some artifacts.

Edit: I also forgot Sir Rolante. He's a Knight one and about as expensive as Tatar and Bizen. He's pretty good too as he has a knight captain trait like Barnabas. If you get him also, the two of them could have mobile Knight squads. Very useful.

[Vexillarius]

The unique mercenaries are pretty much all made to be squad leaders. You quite simply do not get enough materials to make 17 extra units in a play through. You can disband there squad when there horrible mercenary debuff goes away and whack them in another of your squads. But then you just have units that cost like 10k instead of 200 and have mercenary/archer captain on them and you are just wasting it.
Don't think your really supposed to get more than a hand full in a single play through.

[The Kaiser]

Originally posted by Vexillarius:

The unique mercenaries are pretty much all made to be squad leaders. You quite simply do not get enough materials to make 17 extra units in a play through. You can disband there squad when there horrible mercenary debuff goes away and whack them in another of your squads. But then you just have units that cost like 10k instead of 200 and have mercenary/archer captain on them and you are just wasting it.
Don't think your really supposed to get more than a hand full in a single play through.

I wouldn't use some of them as leaders. The magician ones aren't that great with low leadership. They're powerful in that they seem to have higher magic stats and some traits. Konrad the Cold and Kaffi the Curious together with Beatrix is just bonkers. Granted I admit that squad was probably overkill.

[ThisOldWorld]

Originally posted by The Kaiser:

Basically it takes alot of save scumming. Alot. Also, a bit of luck too. You don't get shopping in about 4 chapters I think, and the first 2 chapters you wouldn't have enough money anyways. I did get them all in my last run I did, but it was definitely brutal to do. They also didn't come in the order that would have been beneficial.

Yeah I figured it would be a total pain, not to mention time consuming to save scum. I've also only been through the game once so far and had no idea how many unique mercenaries there were, or how their recruitment was implemented into the game. The idea is in my head to get them all in one playthrough now though, so hopefully the devs are able to help out and make it possible without the dreaded save scum option. I figure I'll play through the game again when lunatic mode is released and if no changes have been made by then, I'll probably end up doing it with certain conditions attached to keep the balance of the game and stop my army from being too overpowered too early.

To do this, I'd basically stagger them as best I could - taking into account the amount of possible chances there are to recruit them from shops and bazaars, keep their order randomised, and prohibit myself from buying rerolled artifacts.

Originally posted by The Kaiser:

Edit: I also forgot Sir Rolante. He's a Knight one and about as expensive as Tatar and Bizen. He's pretty good too as he has a knight captain trait like Barnabas. If you get him also, the two of them could have mobile Knight squads. Very useful.

In my playthrough, the way things worked out by the later stages, I had 11 squads in total,
with only 1 horse squad and 1 dragon squad - Getting the 4 mercs I missed - who are all mounted from what I understand, would have allowed a second horse squad for a bit more variation.

For a Lunatic playthrough I'd probably need to flesh out the roster a bit more than I did, and the unique merc's leadership and leadership traits would need to play a more prominent role. At end game only Deadeye Domak had his own squad (I wanted a cannon squad, so he just became the default leader as a warbow). Other than that Rosalie had a squad for a while but that ended up being Ravagi's, maybe one or two of the others were also temporary squad leaders for a little while, but their leadership traits went largely unused.

[ThisOldWorld]

On a side note to this - I've just seen an artifact list - and I'm pretty sure I managed to collect all the legendary and epic artifacts with multiple copies in some cases - which probably shouldn't be the case for the legendary artifacts or even some of the epic ones (any extra copies of items that were surely intended to be singular I sold in my playthrough).

Still if a single playthrough without save scumming allows all the artifacts to be collected, then surely it should also allow all the unique mercenaries to be collected as well.

I assume it's easier to get all the artifacts because there's also loot boxes, mission and arena rewards - and like I mentioned earlier, perhaps the unique mercenaries could benefit from these other avenues as well.