Looking at playing with a friend who's pretty new to MMO's. Do you get mercs as a Free account with whatever the free download is? Looking for some suggestions on a good duo combo for free players to check the game out. Neither of us are very fond of healer classes, so if mercs are available, we'd probably run with a single healer merc and a dps merc. If we can't play for free with mercs and one of us needs to heal, what's the most fun healer?
Mercs are not free, even for subscribed accounts. You can buy access to them off the market place. It is a permanent unlock for the entire account. After that you can hire any merc with any additional 'real' money cost.
Thank you for the response. Can someone please elaborate? How much SC? What expansions do you get when you start as a bare-bones free account? Do you need to buy the latest expansion pack to unlock Mercs? Currently playing EQ 1 and mercs are there for you as a free player without any cost or upgrade needed.
Just for downloading the game you get Desert of Flames, Kingdom of Sky, Echoes of Faydwer, Ruins of Kunark, The Shadow Odyssey, Sentinal's Fate, Destiny of Velious, and the three little adventure packs (Bloodline Chronicles, Splitpaw Saga, Fallen Dynasty). Age of Discovery feature pack expansion is available for SC on the marketplace as a whole or in bits. It's the one that gives beastlords, mercenaries, dungeon maker, reforging and tradeskill apprentices. If you buy the whole of it is 4000 SC ($40 or less depending where you get your SC and if you are getting any bonus SC). If you buy the pieces individually it'll cost more in the end if you buy them all, but it's a smaller upfront charge. I think it's like 1000 ($10) or 1500 ($15) for mercs. I think 2500 for beastlords, can't remember for anything else. Chains of Eternity(last expansion) comes with Tears of Veeshan (the newest expansion). Both are high end expansions so really unnecessary even though between them they have a couple of things lower levels can use, it wouldn't be worth buying right off the bat IMO unless you planned to level to cap really fast. EQ1 mercs are free because the expansion that gave mercs is 6 or so years old and included in the free to play expansions. As a free player you only get the bare bones mercenaries there though as I recall.
"Most fun healer" is by definition extremely suggestive. It depends 100% on the style you want. I will advise you not to try a Channeler first off, if you decided to get access to it. As a first toon it's just not a good idea, as they are really bad at low levels. If you like fast paced, reactive (for the most part), and aggressive healing, pick one of the druids. Fury for spells and more DPS, Warden for melee and less DPS. (Though at the lowest levels Wardens pwn Furies in DPS too.) If you like calm, preventative healing, choose a Shaman. Mystic does DPS, Defiler hits like a wet noodle but heals much harder. I personally think Clerics are somewhat in the middle. For lots of mobs or fast hitting mobs, they can be fast paced, for a few slow hitting mobs, they are more calm. Inqy for DPS and Templar for more healing. (Templar is the lowest DPS class AT LOW LEVELS. At 95, they are not so terrible with right side prestige, but you will not have this while leveling up.
This is just my opinion, but you don't have to have a merc or healer at low levels. Anything under fifty or so? You'll be ok as long as you use a little strategy and smarts. It was fine for me at least ( we had no healer, nada, nuthin, zilch in the guild at the time) and we did great. It was occasionally a little comical, but hey, it taught me to rely on my abilities and how to gauge a battle. Now once you get high up, 90+? It gets a lot more complex, I still solo and molo without a healer but I have some heal tricks up my sleeve in the form of charms, potions, etc. In short? Play what's fun. The rest will work itself out.
SK and Warden would go together nicely, I suspect. SK can mostly take care of their own hps, and the warden can add dps and cure as needed. When a little more is needed, change a couple toggles and you have decent heals.
