Unique Mercenaries

[allanlim77]

How do I know whether a unit is a unique mercenary?

Is there some sort of unique symbol beside it?

And should I not recruit normal mercenary to save money so that I can afford to recruit unique mercenary?

Are normal mercenary worth recruiting in the first place?

[Talana 💃]

They all have nicknames or a title , like e.g. "Lady Clarimonde " or "Centhos the Muse" .Also, the names are written in orange colour, same as unique items.
Here is a guide to most of them :
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2870421162

[abyssalfury]

Mercenaries give you access to higher tier units that already come with skills, at the cost of having higher initial party cost.

IMO they probably aren't worth it if you're playing without Permadeath. I haven't played through with it, but I'd imagine they'd be far more useful if you need to potentially fill gaps in your army left by casualties.

Unique Mercs generally have some additional benefits or rare skills that make them more worthwhile on their own merits.

[watcherzero]

Yeah, the uniques have high starting stats and come with an extra rare skill which means they are great for putting into an existing squad but require a higher unit cost, you can mitigate that by having them as the leaders of their own squads initially but their leadership is usually middling (45-50 ish) and not enough to form anything other than a mid sized unit until after serious grinding.

I would say the exception was Dragon squads, dragons take up two squad slots and require a higher unit cap, however its still usually less than two normal soldiers which means your squads will be smaller in size and require a lower leadership score to fill out anyway. Stick 3 dragon riders in a squad and make sure the other 3 members dont all have the same movement type and the squad will gain flying movement which is really useful.