Mercenaries of Trarthus League Mechanic Guide Equipping Mercenaries

Mercenary Management

The Mercenary UI offers a lot of details on each Mercenary, and can be accessed by speaking to a Mercenary you encounter in a zone, or by speaking to a Mercenary you’ve recruited in Town.

Mercenary Level

Each Mercenary has both a level, but unlike players, Mercenaries do not gain levels, and are stuck at the level you recruit them at. The only way to get a higher-level Mercenary is to recruit a better one.

Mercenary’s levels are based on the area level you ecounter them in. As a result, you’re going to want to search for strong Mercenaries in the highest-tier maps you can!

Mercenaries can equip gear as long as they meet 70% of the item’s level requirement.

Attribute Restrictions

Each Mercenary has one, two, or three Attributes they focus on. These attributes determine what gear Mercenaries can equip, but have no other inherent effect.

If a Mercenary has a single attribute, then they can equip any gear that shares an attribute with it. If a Mercenary has two attributes, then they can only equip gear that have any combination of those two attributes. Mercenaries with three attributes can equip gear with any attribute requirements.

For example: A STR Mercenary can equip STR, STR/DEX, and STR/INT gear, while a STR/INT Mercenary can equip STR, INT, and STR/INT gear.

Mercenaries don’t have to meet attribute requirements of gear in order to equip them as long as they have matching attribute types.

Equipped Items

Mercenaries you encounter will have a full set of gear. If recruited, you are able to replace your Mercenary’s gear with any item you have – gearing them up just as you would gear up your own character.

Any gear you give to your Mercenary can be retrieved later. However, any gear that the Mercenary came with is overwritten – it cannot be returned to the Mercenary once replaced.

For more information on what equipment is very powerful when given to Mercenaries, check out the “Notable Equipment” section of this guide:

Notable Equipment

Weapon Restrictions

Mercenaries can only equip weapon types that match their preferred weapons – usually the weapon types that they can use their skills with.

Static Effects

Static effects from equipment DO work with mercenaries. This means that effects such as Doryani's Prototype‘s “Nearby enemies have lightning resistance equal to yours” function when given to a Merc!

Passives and Keystones

Passives and Keystones granted to Mercenaries by equipped gear function as normal. This allows you to customize Mercenaries in some pretty interesting ways with anoints and certain uniques!

Skills and Links

Mercenaries have up to six Skill Gems with linked Supports – just like players!

Unlike equipped items, equipped skills cannot be changed after recruitment – they are fixed and permanent. If you want better skills… you need to find a better Mercenary!

Merc skills don’t count as being socketed in their gear. This eans that gear with affixes that affect socketed gems will not affect any of the Merc’s skills.

Granting Additional Skills

It is not possible to give your Mercs additional skills for them to use. Mercs cannot use skills from items that “Grant” or “Trigger” skills – these effects on equipment simply do nothing.

Skill Costs

Merc skills do not have any associated costs. This means that equipment that affects costs, mana, mana regeneration, etc have no effect on Mercs.

Gilded Supports

Very rarely you can find Mercenaries with Gilded Supports equipped. These support gems are significantly more powerful than regular supports – and it seems they may often grant bonuses to the player in addition to the Mercenary.

Stats Page

Recruited Mercenaries have a detailed Stats page you can pull up, allowing you to see detailed stats. This is important for min-maxing your Mercenaries… as well as making sure their resistances are capped!

Missing Stats

You’ll notice that many player stats are absent from the Merc Stats page. This is because many player stats… simply don’t affect Mercs in any way!

This includes things like Mana and skill costs. Make sure you only focus on the stats that Mercs can actually make use of!

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!