MM X - Hirelings (what would you change?)

[Panda Tar]

The question now is what do you think or the current hireling system? Do you think any of them need a tweak, if you like/dislike when Quest NPC hireling are forced into your team, costs, any new one you wanted to add and so on.

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Someone complained somewhere that he was keeping many items with the horse's inventory. When the DLC was triggered, the horse was taken. When he got the items back (and the horse), items were nowhere to be found. I'm not sure if it's meant to be this way - you drop the horse, he drops your items, but I find it would be simply normal if your secondary inventory was kept intact, given that you BUY the horse.

For those who want to know what each hireling do, you check here.

The list is missing some effects, like Dunstan (he will increase your exploring vision range by 1 tile) and Maximus (which, if I'm not mistaken, seem to work like Vilma's ability, not sure if 4 blocks or 2, though. Someone correct me).

It did bother me having Quest NPC hirelings occupying forcefully those slots. Maybe because I'm still used to MM 7 having as many quest NPCs joining us as possible without taking the place of the 2 we use for bonuses.

Although it bothered me, I reckon it's mainly to avoid stacking many bonuses, if you happen to have too many Quest NPCs available. Even so, I was never carrying more than 1 and 2 once.

What irritated me most was when we have Crag Hack with us for 5 minutes and then he leaves us, and no one else can be with us throughout the very last dungeon (not DLC) in his instead.

So, what do you guys think?

[Arret]

They patched it so you can't dismiss the horse if he has items on him now.

The horse is far too essential. None of the hirelings seemed very useful other than maybe the scholar or to a lesser extent the smith or treasure hunter.

I understood the idea of carrying the quest npcs around, but especially in act 4 it was infuriating to miss a hireling slot the entire time because Crag Hack is there for the first 10% or so. and you can't go back. I think the idea was to allow you to Spriit Beacon out, but that is disabled now.

It also seemed dumb to have a free scholar npc until you finish an optional quest and then have to pay 7% for one. It basically tells you to not do that quest until you are ready to finish the game.

Overall they seemed too weak. There weren't any +skills, +stats, and the abilities seemed too rigid with not enough usefulness or variety.

[Panda Tar]

Overall they seemed too weak. There weren't any +skills, +stats, and the abilities seemed too rigid with not enough usefulness or variety.

My thoughts exactly.

The range of things that could have been done is pretty wide. You could have, in addition to the Guardian, one that could even additionally physically or magically attack the enemies, maybe performing retaliations.

The casters were not so useful, specially the ones that cast defensive magic. Their spellcasting was in a low level and not usable during the fight. So you must use it before entering it, and then you have to move (already losing 1 turn in the process) so then the bonus be useful.

In older MM games, there were plenty of hirelings which would increase your skills directly, elemental, body-mind-spirit, armsmaster, stealing, etc. There would be a Town Portal caster.

I think some of the current ones are indeed pretty interesting and useful, such as the alchemist, the shop-guy you can sell items to, the treasure hunter, the horse, the wolf, the healer.

[hellegennes]

First of all, they were too few of them and their abilities were not that great. Having to have one slot less for an npc that just follows you is stupid. MM6 was that way and I hated that. Then they changed it in MM7, precisely because it was stupid. You'd think Limbic would get the clue.

I do agree with Arret, the abilities were weak and there was no variety. Spike the wolf was a nice companion which filled the gap of not having dark magic, until of course you get the permanent whispering shadows ability by defeating one of the elemental lords (I don't remember which but I guess it was the Dark elemental lord).

[Panda Tar]

Yeah, that one and even Spike helped with the % of success of opening those secret areas, which was better than the Blessing bonus itself (not considering resistance).

[magritte2]

Yes, other than the horse they seem kind of pointless. I was particularly disappointed by Sana --I though OHH, this hireling is a special reward must be good, only to find that the bulk of her spell effects last only two turns and you can't cast them in combat, so they're a waste.