Fixed Mercs for non-membership accounts

'FREE' accounts were restricted to Apprentice Rank 1 or 2 Mercs
'SILVER' accounts were restricted to Apprentice Rank 5 Mercs
Maybe no one tested with a brand new account and all the test accounts are silver?

Unable to play with any merc on Free to play accounts. On my gold / silver they are available. They are unable to purchase / unsuspend the current ones they've had for days without "upgrading the account's membership"

It is not the intent. We are looking into it. Thank you for the extra data, it helps.

But on the other side of the coin, All Access accounts can apparently still hire either apprentice or journeyman

That is intended. We don't want to tell you what to buy!


Anyway. We found where the free account issue is. I do not know yet when the fix can go in, it is to early to tell yet when we can get fixes in.

If it matters, this passed us by because I didn't know (remember?) that on our Beta server (which we use for our testing) "free" accounts are default Silver. And I didn't notice :/ I made a new free account, didn't pay for any membership on it, and tested. And... saw no issue!

The silver account worked as expected!

But music still broke. Have not heard the original eq sound in weeks. Is it even still in the rotation?

Logged in my druid to check for Hunters after the Patch. 110 lvl Silver account. The lvl 110 Druid died to lvl 78 mobs. Now I understand after reading the change in Mercs.
The Apprentice Merc Tank is ABSOLUTELY USELESS to me NOW.

As like my other reply to your other post. Silver accounts had access to A5 mercs. The current Apprentice merc is the A5 merc. There was no change there.

21:38 hours EST, free to play character was unable to unsuspend merc, so I dismissed it. Went to PoK Erudite to purchase a new Erudite healer. Apprentice caster and healer was visible, but tagged all access, and can not buy the merc. When trying to purchase an apprentice healer erudite merc, I get the message "You do not have a high enough membership level to purchase this mercenary."
I guess I can't play without a merc, so will have to wait for this major game disabling bug to be fixed.

Now I can't do my overseers as my merc will not get the experience since I do not have one to unsuspend !!! times all my accounts

Well if its any consolation they made it so your merc doesn't need to be out to get merc xp. How that interacts with being unable to actually have a merc remains a mystery I guess

had same Merc for 86 lvls, now i cant use him, i thought that the update ment i had one to high so i dismissed him and can not buy a new one

I have same issue posted in Pic above.

Same issue as everyone else. free accounts can't unsuspend mercs and can't hire new ones.

The price payed for 15 Minutes ist upped x2.5. Now my mecrs wants 92 Plat for 15 minutes. For a returner its pretty high cost 368 plat for only one hour.

I noticed that my mercs seem to have lost all their buffs after the patch. If your merc lost the buffs it had before the patch and you didn't notice, that may be why it was underpowered.

https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq...update-notes-may-18-2022.282966/#post-4136145

"Refactored the way buffs/debuffs are stored on characters and NPCs, enabling an increase in hostile NPC's maximum from 97 to 200. This required a one-time clearing of saved buffs on mercenaries and pets."

Free accounts should be able to get apprentice mercenaries now.

I did check for buffs. The Tank had GL buffs. Plus 110 Druid buffs. Thing that bothered me was, a 110 Tank not able to handle lvl 78 mobs. Sad panda day.

Also, the merc's AA's were maxed for its class. All Lceanium geared for its class