Merc Bugs

[Kartoffelsalat]

Hirelings will not gain experience once they have reached your level. They will begin to gain experience again once you level up.

This seems to be the same as we've all experienced.

[adeyke]

Indeed. The only exception is that, even if you're 99, the merc will be at most 98.

Now, if you had a merc with a higher level than you, or a merc with level 99, that would be something out of the ordinary.

[Kartoffelsalat]

Apparently PMH doe snot work on mercenaries. Some more info is here, but i've yet to see concrete reasoning.

[Kartoffelsalat]

When your mercenary levels, his HPs are reset to his new base max. This means the highest without BO or any other HP-adding skills (maybe items, too?). When my barb's merc levels, he loses half his life :angry:

[librarian]

Heiho,

OTOH the mercs now gain profit from the Battle Command Cry, and they gain life via Battle Orders after their resurrection when they die in a game without having to rejoin.

From a short view to the hireling screen it seems that the old bug concerning +max/+mindam equipment is still around. They seem to get the bonus still on both, the weapon damage and their inbuilt minmaxdam. But I have to re-check that when I'm in a better mood for some maths ;-)

[ryan4nayr]

Some time ago an MPQ expert looked into the various skills used by mercs (i.e., rogue's ltng hose), & discovered that, depending on the merc, gear with certain +skill tab stats affected the skill lvl. Is this still the case?

P.S: After the level up, I just feed a red pot to my merc, so he's back to normal. Very annoying however while in the middle of a brawl.

[adeyke]

In 1.10, mercs aren't affected by any +skilltabs equipment.

[Nadreck]

ShadowHM:

his screen had something like this:

Experience 1,795,500
Next level up 1,787,000

i.e. He had surpassed the experience needed for his next level up.

This difference persisted a bit, but then cured itself when I next returned to town. Then he gave the announcement that he had leveled over his head, and his character screen showed an appropriate clvl, experience level and experience needed for next level-up.

I experienced this at least once in the 1.10 beta and again today in 1.10 final. Both times, what I first noticed was that the mercenary had disappeared, and was not teleporting back. When I returned to the rough area where he had disappeared, he wasn't there either.
The mercenary continued to gain experience while he was gone, and it was while he was gone that he surpassed the experience needed to gain the next level. When I returned to town, the mercenary reappeared and as with ShadowHM's experience, the merc leveled up. I also noticed that the merc's experience was lowered to near the minimum required to gain his new level (47 above the minimum this time, I didn't check as thoroughly the other time).

This occurred (this time) with a level 21 or so skelemancer with a level 15 blessed aim merc in the great marsh. The previous occurance may have been with a skelemancer with a blessed aim merc in nomal arcane sanctuary. (During beta something like this happened to me twice, but only one of those times I investigated it thoroughly enough to be sure it was the same thing happening as happened now. I can remember that one of the incidents in the beta was with a skelemancer with an act 2 merc in the arcane sanctuary, but I can't remember which incident for sure)

I still haven't figured out exactly what triggers this bug, even though it has happened to me at least twice.

[Twelvebar]

merc can be the same level as you, but he tops out at 98, one level lower than you do.