Mercenaries of Trarthus League Mechanic Guide (PoE Secrets of the Atlas 3.26)

Introduction

Mercenaries of Trarthus is a league mechanic in which you challenge, recruit, and equip your own Mercenary ally. This Mercenary will then join you as you play Path of Exile, killing enemies for you and granting you additional loot!

Recruiting and equipping a powerful Mercenary in a way that complements your build will help you achieve new levels of power! And then, once you’re all set up, you can focus on killing other Mercenaries for extra loot and craftable items with powerful new exclusive modifiers!

Encountering Mercenaries

Each zone will contain a Trarthan Mercenary NPC. Talking with this NPC will open up a window showing you their equipped items, skills, and contents of their pockets, as well as three options you can choose from: Hire, Take Item, or Exile.

Regardless of which option you pick, you will have to fight the Mercenary. If you win, then you get the outcome of the option you picked. If you lose, the Mercenary will portal away – you do NOT get to attempt the fight a second time.

Hire Mercenary

Hiring the Mercenary costs Gold, and allows you to permanently recruit the Mercenary to fight alongside you throughout Path of Exile.

You’ll want to use this option whenever you find a strong Mercenary that you think is either an upgrade over the Mercenary you’re currently using, and/or has skills that compliment your current build well.

If you already have the maximum of three Mercenaries recruited, you will be unable to Hire new Mercenaries.

Take Item

This option allows you to select a single item the Mercenary has equipped, or the entire contents of their pockets. If you successfully defeat the Mercenary in combat, they will drop that item for you to take!

Mercenaries have well-rolled rare items equipped, and can have Uniques as well. Infamous Mercenaries can even have Rare items with exclusive modifiers – so check Mercenaries closely, especially early on in progression!

You can quickly select an item to take by pressing ctrl+clicking on the item you want.

Exile Mercenary

This option allows you to banish the Mercenary, and block any Mercenaries with its Attribute type from appearing for the next 10 zones. Only two Attribute types can be blocked at a time.

This allows you to block entire groups of archetypes from spawning, making it easier to find the specific Archetype of Merc you’re after.

Group Play

When playing in a party, party members may choose to participate or stay out of Mercenary encounters. For each party member that chooses to participate, the difficulty of the Mercenary encounter will be scaled up.

Party members that participate in defeating a Mercenary have a 50% chance for an additional item to drop for them, which is usually from the Mercenary’s pockets, but can also be any equipped item.

Using Mercenaries

Once recruited, you’ll be able to choose a Mercenary to accompany you throughout Path of Exile. There are no restrictions on where you can take them, and there are no wages that have to be paid. Once you have a Mercenary, they’re yours forever!

Mercenary Party Scaling

Mercenaries count as half a player for the purposes of party scaling. This means that enemies will be slightly stronger – as though you were in a party of 1.5 players. However, enemies will also drop more loot, once again as though you were in a party of 1.5 players. If you have a well-geared Mercenary, the power they offer more than offsets the difficulty increase – so you just get additional loot simply by having a Mercenary with you!

Mercenary Death

When a Mercenary dies, it isn’t permanently gone. They will return to town, and in order to continue using your Mercenary you’ll have to pay a Gold fee to revive them

Mercenaries that are killed won’t return to the instance in which they died in, regardless of whether or not you revive them – you’re on your own until you get to the next zone or map!

Mercenary Loadouts

Once recruited, Mercenary’s stats and gems can be viewed, and their equipment can be swapped out via the Mercenary Loadout UI.

Mercenaries cannot have their gems changed, and have a variety of restrictions on the equipment they can use. For more details, check out the “Equipping Mercenaries” and “Notable Equipment” sections of this guide:

Equipping Mercenaries

Notable Equipment

Mercenary Differences

While Mercenaries often work just as players do, Mercenaries have a few key differences and restrictions placed on them.

Avoidable Ability Damage Reduction

Mercenaries have a built-in damage reduction on abilities that deal overwhelming damage that are designed to be avoided by the player. This is the same damage reduction that player minions have, as it’s impossible for the player to micromanage their Mercs and minions to avoid these attacks.

Restrictions

Mercenaries have a number of restrictions placed on them. They cannot use skills that are “Granted” or “Triggered” by equipment you give them. They also cannot Rampage – even if given kill credit via Gravebind.

Early testing seems to suggest that IIR on Merc’s gear does NOT affect drops – that it simply uses the IIR stats of the associated player the same way minions do.

Mercenary Archetypes

Each Mercenary has an Archetype, which influences the Mercenary’s AI behavior, Skills, Supports, Equipped Items, Uniques, and Infamous Modifiers.

You’ll probably want to recruit specific Archetypes to best compliment your build – so keep an eye on what each Archetype has to offer!

Renown

Renown is a mechanic that rewards you for engaging with the league mechanic as intended – and punishes you for looking at a Merc’s inventory without dueling them.

Successfully defeating a Mercenary will grant you one rank of Renown – to a maximum of 3. Losing a Duel, or looking at a Merc’s gear without dueling them will cause you to lose a rank of Renown.

Your odds of encountering Infamous Mercenaries increases with your Renown rank – meaning you’ll want to keep it as high as possible!

Infamous Mercenaries

Rarely, you’ll encounter “Infamous” Mercenaries. Infamous Mercenaries have far better rares items than usual, better currency in their pockets, and at least one unique item. In addition, the Rare items equipped by Infamous Mercenaries are the only source of the exclusive Infamous Modifiers.

Increased Item Quantity on Map Areas increases your chances of an encountered Mercenary being Infamous, as well as having a higher Renown rank.

Special Rewards

In addition to well-rolled items and a Mercenary accompanying you, there are a number of exclusive rewards you can only get from Mercenaries.

Trarthan Gems

Mercenaries can have Trarthan Gems in their pockets – these are new variants of existing skills, similar to Transfigured gems.

Exclusive Unique Items

Mercenaries can also have some new, Unique items equipped, that cannot be obtained from any other sources. Make sure to at least glance over their equipped items for anything interesting!

Infamous Modifiers

The Rare items from Infamous Mercenaries can have exclusive Infamous Modfiers on them. Some of these modifiers are quite powerful, and these rare items are valued for crafting or Recombination. So be sure to look through every item on Infamous Mercenaries!

• Minions convert 100% of Fire Damage to Chaos Damage
• Your Blink and Mirror arrow clones use your Gloves
• Your Travel Skills Critically Strike once every 3 uses
• Curses on Enemies in your Chilling Areas have 15% increased Effect
• 20% reduced Curse Duration / 15% increased Effect of your Curses
• Debuffs on you expire (80 – 100)% faster / You are Debilitated
• Inherent loss of Rage is 20% slower
• Your Skills that throw Mines reserve Life instead of Mana
• Skills that leave Lingering Blades have +(5 – 10) to Maximum Lingering Blades
• 20% increased Mana Reservation Efficiency of Skills Supported by Spellslinger
• Minions created Recently have (60 – 100)% increased Critical Hit Chance
• (50 – 90)% of Damage taken while Frozen Recouped as Life
• 30% more Area of Effect with Bow Attacks that fire a single Projectile
• (20 – 40)% chance on Skill use to not Sacrifice Life but still gain benefits as though you had
• Unaffected by Shock while Channelling
• Skills used by your Traps and Mines Chain 2 additional times
• Skills have +(2 – 3)% to Critical Strike Chance for each Warcry Exerting them
• Each Projectile created by Attacks you make with a Melee Weapon has between 50% more and 50% less Projectile Speed at random
• Minions have 20% increased Cooldown Recovery Rate
• Enemies Maimed by you take 10% increased Damage Over Time
• 40% less Mana cost of Lightning Skills while Shocked
• 30% less Life cost of Skills while on Low Life
• Gain (5 – 10) Life for each Ignited Enemy hit with Attacks
• Projectiles gain Impale effect as they travel farther, causing Impales they inflict to have up to 40% increased effect
• Nearby Enemies take 1% increased Physical Damage per two Fortification on you
• Consecrated Ground you create grants +(1 – 3)% maximum Chaos Resistance to you and Allies
• Your Warcries cover Enemies in Ash for 5 seconds

Conclusion

Be sure to check out the other pages of this guide, covering even more topics related to Mercenaries of Trarthus! This guide will continue to be updated in the future – if you have any feedback, or find something cool you want to share, head on over to the PoE Vault Discord, and let me know!

Good luck, and have fun farming Mercenaries of Trarthus!