Hi all, I recently jumped back into EQ after a many...many...many year break. I grabbed a heroic character to jump right in and I'm taking my time getting familiar with the changes, mercs being one of them. When you go all access do you immediately get access to ALL mercs, or do you then need to quest to earn/find them? All the information I can find says you get access, not necessarily whether you have them available immediately or need to earn them. If you do need to earn them, would someone mind linking me to a page/website that has a guide for doing so? Thanks for the help!
You still have to do an in game quest to get the J5 Mercs . There is an old old quest and a newer one. The newer one is in Feerott the Dream http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/quest.html?quest=7485 As for dps caster, melee dps, tank, healer you get access to all classes of merc right away the quest is just to be able to hire the Journeyman 5 mercs.
Do the new one. It is short and sweet. You can go back and do the long quest later if you want the J 2-4 mercs.
Ah, thank you both for the answers. I'm going to bookmark the quest link and start with the J5. I appreciate it!
I think you're asking about the tiers of mercenaries. While you maintain an All Access account, you will have access to all tiers of Apprentice mercenaries and Tier 1 of the Journeymen mercenaries. At level 75, you can do quest lines in the Seeds of Destruction expansion to gain access to tiers 2 - 5 of the Journeymen mercenaries. It's possible to do only the line of quests for the J5 mercenaries, which is probably all you'll ever need. As others have said, there is a short quest in Feerrott, the Dream that is available at level 85. Doing this quest flags your character for Journeymen tiers 2 - 5 (not only tier 5). Note that as long as you meet the level requirements of these quests, you can do them with free accounts to flag your character for access to the higher tiers of the Journeymen mercenaries. However, you will not be able to actually hire or maintain Journeymen mercenaries without an All Access account.
My bad. Did the Feerrott quest always flag for J2-5? I could have sworn it only gave the option of J5 but it's been quite a while since I had run it.
I'm not sure if it's always given access to all tiers. When it was introduced, I had at least assumed it would only grant access to J5 mercs. Maybe 2 years ago, I was surprised when I had access to all journeyman tiers after doing that quest on a character that had not done any SoD quests. I can't recall if that character was heroic or not, though.
Just went all access and did my quest this past weekend. I now have a (poorly named) J5 healer to help my mage pet. Thanks for all the assistance everyone! Is there any difference between the races you can pick from-meaning are certain races better for certain roles, or is it all the same (that includes those special mercs that I don't know how to get). Cheers!
Not really sure but I've read here that the races make no difference. I personally believe that my Bixie merc which came with an expansion (don't remember which) is much better than a merc bought in PoK.
This is my question, too; I do not find anything that clearly tells you: - are the racial differences meaningful for mercs? - if so, how (i.e., do racial benefits apply to mercs, etc) - what benefit(s) come from contracts for different types of merc (if any other than appearance)? Would appreciate and be thankful for any links to information of this type, if it exists. Thanks!
Nope - all mercs are created equally. The only difference is the tier journeyman - apprentice. The race of your merc has no effect upon anything other than appearance. The model differences are purely aesthetic. per Maddoc the Wayfarer, Assistant Lead Designer http://everquest.fanra.info/wiki/Mercenaries
Also, the models determine the possible classes of mercenaries you can hire. For instance, you can't hire an Ogre caster damage mercenary since Ogres can't be wizards.
