New to Chapter II – Mercenary Madness

Mercenaries are on their way! This is Jared Saramago from the HEX R&D team, and I’m excited to share that the complete mercenary feature will be arriving with the launch of Chronicles of Entrath: Chapter II. The mercenary system has gone through a few changes since our last previews in order to make the gameplay as fun and interactive as possible. Today, I’ll be detailing all the ins-and-outs of the updated system and giving you a sneak peek at some of the individual designs so that you’ll be ready to get the most out of your mercenaries on launch day!

So… What’s a Mercenary?

For anyone who’s unfamiliar with the mercenary system, mercenaries are campaign characters that you can collect and trade as items. By owning a mercenary item, you will be able to add that character to your adventuring party during the campaign. Each mercenary will have its own exclusive charge power and a few additional passive or active abilities, providing a unique gameplay experience when compared to your other characters. You can assign mercenaries into a number of party slots that will expand as you progress through the campaign.

You can assemble your adventuring party in the updated campaign deck-builder screen.



You will be able to build a unique deck for each mercenary in your party (more on that below). At the start of a battle in the campaign you will be able to select which party member to use for that encounter. When you decide to have a mercenary step in for a fight, they will bring along the deck you assigned to them, including any slotted equipment. This creates a great deal of flexibility in the mercenary system and lets you use them as powerful ‘reserves’ tools in dungeons. With careful preparation, you will always be able to swap in the most ideal deck and powers for any situation.

The ‘Prepare for Battle’ screen allows you to select which party member to use in the coming fight.



I Feel a Change Comin’ On

Those of you who have been following us since the beginning know that we have released several pieces of information about the mercenary system since the HEX Kickstarter campaign. As we have further developed HEX, our team has constantly come back to mercenaries and their overall role in the campaign experience. As we’ve implemented new features and built out all the various game systems, we have regularly revisited our initial mercenary plans to make sure they were filling their intended purpose. To that end, we’ve made some improvements to our initial designs. So what are some examples of those changes?

One thing that has changed since we last talked about mercenaries is that they are no longer limited to being used once per dungeon. You can use each of your party members as much or as little as you’d like in each dungeon, even against dungeon bosses. There may be some very specific encounters where using a mercenary is not allowed (for story or gameplay reasons) but in general we want you to be able to use whichever party member you want against any opponent. Defeating an enemy with a mercenary will still grant your main campaign champion all the experience, gold, and other rewards from that encounter.

On the Adventure Map HUD, you will be able to see your current party configuration and party leader.



After our last mercenary preview article, we heard a lot of feedback that many of you disliked how mercenaries would bind to your account when used. Well, we decided to rework the system a bit and I’m happy to say that mercenaries will no longer be attached or bound to your account! Acquiring a mercenary item in your inventory stash will allow you to use that mercenary in your party for as long as you still own that item. You can feel free to try out any mercenaries you collect without fear of being unable to sell or trade them later.

Because you can’t have the same mercenary in your party more than once, you won’t need multiple versions of the mercenary item in your stash. Feel free to send your extra copies to your friends or sell them on the auction house.

Coming on Strong Now

Mercenaries have upgrades (again)! You may remember that the original Kickstarter versions of mercenaries could be upgraded, but in the last update the upgrades had gone away. We wound up really missing the sense of progression upgrades provided in the campaign, so we decided to bring back a single impactful upgrade for each mercenary. Let’s take a sneak peek at one of the mercenary designs and an example of an upgraded power:

Example of a Mercenary Upgrade – Lobo’s upgrade is a passive power called ‘Anticipated Arrival.’ When upgraded, he will gain this power in addition to his other abilities.



But what does it take to upgrade a mercenary? Mercenaries don’t gain XP like your campaign character, so the process of upgrading them is a little different. Whenever you enter a dungeon with a mercenary in your party, a node in that dungeon will be assigned as a ‘Mercenary Challenge’ encounter. Defeating this encounter with a mercenary rather than your created campaign character will provide you with a mercenary gold bonus which effectively doubles the amount earned from that node! When you defeat two Mercenary Challenges with the same mercenary, you will be able to pay gold to upgrade that character. Your upgrade progress for each mercenary will be tracked via the champion select UI in the campaign deck-builder.

When you upgrade a mercenary, the bonus is not applied to your mercenary stash item. Instead, the upgrade is applied to your account, allowing you to use the upgraded version of that mercenary on ALL your campaign characters (including ones created in the future). This means that if you were to upgrade Lobo, trade it away, then buy a new one a week later, you would still have the upgraded version of Lobo available for use.

The champion selection screen has been updated to show your Mercenary powers as well as their upgrade status.



When it’s Time to Party

All mercenaries also have a ‘party passive’ power, AKA a Party Buff. While they are in your party, but not active, they will provide your active champion with a small bonus effect (usually at the start of a game). This party buff is only applied to the OTHER party members, not to the mercenary themselves. When building your adventuring party, you may want to think about using certain combinations of party buffs that either work well together or that can mitigate the shortcomings of your other characters.

Speaking of building your party, mercenaries have a shard alignment grid that they must follow in deckbuilding, just like your normal campaign character. The difference is that mercenaries will also have unique deckbuilding rules in addition to their alignment. In many cases, a mercenary’s deckbuilding rules and their shard alignment will conflict. In these situations, the deckbuilding rules win out. For example, a deck building restriction might say that you can’t include Necrotic troops in that mercenary’s deck. So even a Necrotic troop that meets the shard alignment required cannot go into that deck.

Other deckbuilding rules might allow you to play cards that the shard alignment restrictions would otherwise prevent. As an example, consider a shard alignment that allows only two copies of non-Sapphire cards with a deckbuilding rule that says, ‘you can include up to four copies of any Quick cards in your deck.’ With this rule, you could still run a playset of four Burns, Repels, or Kills in the deck if you wanted, but your non-Quick, non-Sapphire cards would still be limited two copies.

Let’s take a look at the total picture of Lobo, Reader of Streams, including his party passive and deckbuilding rules.

Lobo’s party passive will buff the top troop of your deck, but only when Lobo is in your party and not the active champion. He also has two special deckbuilding rules, allowing any Coyotle but no Shin’hare troops.



Making New Friends

When you first set out into Chapter II, you will not automatically have access to the mercenary system. To begin using mercenaries, you will need to meet one of two specific characters in the Alachian Sea region who will challenge you in battle. If you defeat one of these characters in combat, they will agree to join you on your adventure as mercenaries (You will earn them as mercenary items). You can encounter these characters in any order, and you only need to defeat one to unlock the mercenary system. You can (and should) eventually find and defeat both, as defeating the Chapter II mercenaries will award you with bonus party slots. Party slots are account wide unlocks and once you have at least one party slot you will be able to add any mercenaries you’ve collected into that slot across all your characters.

While there are many different mercenaries that you can hope to have join you (including a few more hidden throughout Chapter 2) these first two are special. These mercenaries can only be earned once, but will come with their own pre-built decks when acquired. You can choose to use them in your party with their pre-made decks or edit their deck to your liking. Other mercenaries will NOT come with pre-made decks.

Since we’ve talked so much about these two characters, let’s take a look at them, shall we? Introducing Katsuhiro and Augustine:

Earn the loyalty of Katsuhiro and/or Augustine in campaign Chapter II to unlock the mercenary system.



A ‘Stashe from the Past

Before I go, I wanted to give you Kickstarer backers out there a chance to see the most up to date version of one of your coming backer reward mercenaries. Check out your fungal friend, Mooof:

The current version of Mooof coming with Chapter II of the campaign



Well, that’s about it! I hope this preview has you as excited as I am to build a campaign party and tackle some new dungeons with mercenaries! Keep an eye out for more mercenary previews coming soon. Let us know what you think by clicking the forum link below.

Until next time!

Jared Saramago, HEX R&D Team

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