Yes, I've gotten reports that hireling with +skills items behaves different, but I can't find any info indicating such in the mpq files, maybe it's hard coded.

The +1 is nice, because then there's no AR check. Fire/Cold arrow always hits, if the monster doesn't move, so the rogue is more efficient.

--Mav

In a test mod I whipped up some equipment for Paige (the Diablo understudy) that let her exhibit some of the the higher +skill levels.
at +3skills

at +52skills she is shooting a single pulse of Diablos LBoD

and again when I pushed up her IAS so that she could spam the Red Lightning

(if you paste the links into your search bar you should be able to see the pics)

Because of the nature of the bug it would not be spotted in the MPQs.

I actually reported on this first at the Lurker Lounge. But if you look at the time stamp on my reply you will see that it is shortly (hours I think) before the forums went down.
http://www.lurkerlounge.com/perl/dcforum/dcboard.cgi?az=show_thread&om=1107&forum=DCForumID3&archive=yes

- wolf
"they that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
-- benjamin franklin (1706-1790), "historical review of pennsylvania"

The rogue has her normal arrow attack, plus a "blank" attack. She has the bow animation, but fires no arrow and does no damage. I've tested this a hit in PvP, and I didn't take a point of damage from the "blank" arrow.

-Griselda

+5 and +6skills are SkMage1 (poison) and SkMage2 (icebolt) respectively.

Actually I find that the merc is fully aware of the range issue (perhaps my merc is smarter ) because they shoot arrows until somethin get close then they do lightning primary, and oddly sometimes I noticed if say somethin is lightning immune they won't use their lightning attack, just arrows.

Perhaps its just me, but it seems that it possibly could be intended.. who knows..

What im surprised about is no one talked about slvl 5 which makes her shoot poison arrows, lightning attack is much more damage, but the poison is rather nice damage (over 2 seconds as far as I can tell), slvl5 is possible to do.. just forget the gear I used.. ahh yes harlequin, +2 magical bow which bought in a shop, and +1 skill armor.

I'm playing an iron-wolf lightning variant, and it would be nice to add in some variety to the character after completing a quest or something.

I can test this out myself, but my char's merc needs to earn maybe 1 or 2 levels before wearing the sword I've picked for him.

-Griselda

Acts 2 and 3 do not have a level restriction for hireing mercs (or resurrecting).

Act 5 does not let you hire a barbarian till you complete quest 2, but you can always get your merc resurrected.

If you get a level 1 character up to the point that they are in one of the later acts/difficulties, the merc that they hire will be level 1 also. The merc that you hire will have the lower of the base level that is available for that act/difficulty or the level of the character.

At CLevel 66, my Zon hired a Barb Merc level 79 in a Hell game, where there were several characters running around at higher levels. I assume that somebody around CLevel 79 accessed the Hire with the vendor before I did. Perhaps this resets after a period, or if everyone leaves town, like the other vendors?

-rcv-

Act 3 hireling has higher minimum life I think.
That's why I did not simply put a floor of 40 in my calculator.
If you have Jamella's editor, I can use some help.

I need info on level 1 hirelings from the individual acts, all hired from Hell difficulty (I think that will allow us to discover the minimum), and info on level 2 hirelings just to confirm (should have the same minimum).

Thanks in advanced for any help I get.

(edit: Note-- I titled this "here you go" because I intended on posting the information when I started the post. I started the post before I actually collected the information-- for some reason I thought all you cared about were the life totals when I first wrote the title. Now I am tired, and rambling on and on and on)

First, yeah you are right about the table needing some interpretation. I was planning on explaining that once they hit the level listed, they start using the new per level values, and how they calculate lower levels by subtracting the per level bonus from the base. I figured your calculator made any explanations I had of my little table obsolete.

I have the info you want about those hell mercs on paper, I will post them in a table tomorrow (I am damn tired). Here is a "teaser": only act 3 mercs gain life at level 2.

Merc Type	Act 1		Act 2		Act 3		Act 5
	Lvl 1	Lvl 2	Lvl 1	Lvl 2	Lvl 1	Lvl 2	Lvl 1	Lvl 2
Life	40	40	40	40	40	44	40	40
Strength	27	29	36	38	24	26	46	48
Dexterity	31	33	20	22	18	19	21	22
Damage	0-1	0-1	0-1	0-1	0-1	0-1	0-1	0-1
Defense	7	8	5	5	4	4	5	5
Resistances	20	22	44	45	40	41	59	60

And here is exp and cost info (different types of mercs do have different exp values):

Merc Type	Level 1 Exp	Level 2 Exp	Level 3 Exp	Cost
Cold Rogue	250	1500	4500	14000
Fire Rogue	240	1440	1560	12500
Any Act 2	260	1560	4680	15000
Cold Sorc	280	1680	5040	27000
Fire or Lightning Sorc	260	1560	4680	21000
Barbarian	280	1680	5040	32000

-LiquidDamage

That minimum 40 life isn't found in the mpq, probably some hard-coded values.

Also, the defense, probably hard-coded to be 0, but the dexterity bonus is what makes the difference.

Now, I wonder if I can assume that the same decode is use for attack rating and provide computation for the attack rating that is not shown on the hireling screen. There won't be any way of easily verifying it though.

On my sheet of paper here it says 4320.

Amazon pikes no workee on my Act II Merc.

I prefer Pikes and Lances anyway.

I figure if I start writing up a table for the merc skills now, Spirea will put up a calculator for it that also washes your car in about an hour and a half.

That is, he will put it up in an hour and a half, The car wash will likely take 5 minutes.

Let the race begin!

I am not sure what you mean, but I am waiting for your table, so I can make the calculator.

>Let the race begin!

I don't like to race, and see no sense in duplication of effort.

I guess I'd better get cracking. I'll have it up in the next hour or two.

(edit: P.S. at bottom. And, yes, I actually used preview this time)

I didn't include the whole "chance" bit, because the table would have been even more unweildy than it is. We can cover that later.

Hireling	SubType	Difficulty	Level	Skill1	Level1	LvlPerLvl1	Skill2	Level2	LvlPerLvl2	Skill3	Level3	LvlPerLvl3
Rogue Scout	All	Normal	3	Inner Sight	1	10	Fire / Cold Arrow	1	10
			25		7	10		7	10
			49		14	10		14	10
		Nightmare	25		6	10		6	10
			49		13	10		13	10
		Hell	49		12	10		12	10
Desert Mercenary	All	Normal	9	Jab	3	10	Prayer / Defiance / Blessed Aim	3	10
			31		10	10		10	10
			55		17	0		18	0
	Combat / Defensive	Nightmare	31		9	10	Thorns / Holy Freeze	9	10
			55		16	0		17	0
		Hell	55		15	0	Prayer / Defiance	16	0
	Offensive	Nightmare	31		9	10	Might	8	10
			55		16	0		16	10
		Hell	55		15	0	Blessed Aim	15	0
Eastern Sorceror	Cold	Normal	15	Glacial Spike	1	5	Frozen Armor	2	10	Ice Blast	6	10
			37		5	5		9	10		13	10
			61		9	0		16	0		20	0
		Nightmare	37		4	5		8	10		12	10
			61		8	0		15	0		19	0
		Hell	61		7	0		15	0		18	0
	Fire	Normal	15	Inferno	6	10	Fire Ball	4	10
			37		13	10		11	10
			61		20	0		18	10
		Nightmare	37		12	10		10	10
			61		19	0		17	10
		Hell	61		18	0		16	0
	Lightning	Normal	15	Charged Bolt	4	5	Lightning	3	10
			37		8	5		10	10
			61		12	0		17	10
		Nightmare	37		7	5		9	10
			61		11	0		16	10
		Hell	61		10	0		15	10
Barbarian	1 handed sword	Normal	28	Bash	4	10	Stun	3	8
			42		9	10		7	8
			75		20	0		16	0
		Nightmare	42		8	10		6	8
			75		19	0		15	0
		Hell	75		18	0		14	0

Here is a brief explanation of the column names and their purpose, except for the obvious ones.

Level: This column is a kind of level benchmark that the game uses to calculate hireling stats based on their clvl (or should I say hlvl?). I don't know exactly how it works, but I believe that it chooses the closest one, and adds or subtracts the values from the perlvl fields.

Level1/2/3: This is the slvl of the skill that the number represents-- Level1 is for Skill1, Level2 is for Skill2, etc.

Lvlperlvl1/2/3: This is the number, in 32nds, that is added each level to a hireling's slvl of the skill it corresponds to. I should have gone ahead and converted it, but I forgot, and now it would be a major pain in the ass to do that and run through the conversions to make this table work and look good in this post (I will write a script for that someday...)

Special things to notice: It seems that the numbers don't quite add up for each benchmark-- adding 10/32nds of a skill level per level from 3rd level to 49th would give a rogue a level 15 skill, yet the table lists a 14th level skill at that level. I do not know if the game tracks based on the closest benchmark throughout the entire leveling process, or if it uses the benchmark that was closest to their level when they were purchased.

Also, as mentioned elsewhere in this thread, some hirelings do not cap on certain skills, like the Might merc, any Rogue scout, the Lightning sorcerer, and the normal and nightmare Fire sorcerers.

P.S. It seems that they intended to include two types of barb mercs at first-- there are double entries for all of their levels, but with different ID columns. They are listed as sub-type "1hs". Perhaps they intended a 1 handed sword user that used a shield, or two weapons, and then decided only to implement the two handed sword user?

-LiquidDamage

It is not quite as linear as BeneVidetur stated it. But that is probably due to which mercs he checked this on and on whether or not they leveled through one of the break points in his testing.

His point 2 is mostly likely a correct assessment of the situation also.

http://dynamic2.gamespy.com/~phrozenkeep/site/guide-hirelingtxt.php

Confucious says: "Man who is on bottom is f*cking up"

Another 'bug' is that Barbarian mercs using a two handed sword displays the damage as being the merc base damage + 1-handed weapon damage + 2-handed weapon damage multiplied by the strength modifier. I don't know if the actual damage is equal to this and have no way of currently testing this.

Mercs exp tables (or breakpoints; the exp needed for next level) is calculated as:

level*((level+1)^2)*ExpLvl

Also, mercs have a cap for how much exp they can get per kill:

(exp needed for next level - exp needed for current level) / 64

Other than that, they follow the same exp formula as players.