Path of Exile Secret of the Atlas 3.26 Mercenaries – Explained
Time to make another you and double that damage!
Even though Path of Exile’s Secrets of the Atlas league has many new and interesting features, Mercenaries take center stage. The in-game league name is even called Mercenaries.
These mercenaries subtly change how you’ll want to approach the game, mainly from the looting perspective.
Apart from that, you might be wondering about the new mechanics revolving mercenaries, such as hiring, reviving, replacing, and more. Here’s everything you need to know about mercenaries in Path of Exile 3.26.
How to Revive Mercenaries in Path of Exile
Since you’ll most likely be here because your mercenary just disappeared, here’s how reviving mercenaries works in the game. Even if you find the revive button, you’ll notice that the mercenary still doesn’t appear after pressing it. There are cases where it does work, but there’s a mechanism that prevents it from happening.
First, to revive a mercenary, you must press the mercenary button on top of the shop button and your skill bar. If it has a red and darkened icon, it means your mercenary has died, and clicking the button will revive your mercenary for a certain amount of gold.
Second, you’ll have to pay attention to where your mercenary died. Your mercenary will only get revived if you go to another area or instance where they haven’t died yet.
So, if you are fighting a boss or you are on a map and they won’t revive, you’ll have to go through your next map or area to see them again.
There are weird interactions with it where, if you revive them in an area or instance where they have already died, they won’t even come back to you in the next area. However, you can still go back to your hideout or town to tell them to accompany you. It doesn’t seem intended, and they could fix that issue soon. For instance, if you use the revive button on another area, they’ll always spawn next to you.
How to Hire or Release Mercenaries in Path of Exile
To hire mercenaries, you must interact with them when you see them in various areas and instances. There’s always one per area, and you can either hire, exile, take an item, or ignore them completely. To recruit them, select hire when you interact with them. There’s a gold value next to them, which you’ll have to pay. Afterward, you’ll have to earn their respect and fight them. If you win, they’ll join you. If you lose, they’ll disappear, and you’ll have to find the next one. You’ll lose the money on the attempt, but it shouldn’t be a big deal if you lose a few times.
You can only have three mercenaries, all found in any town or your hideout. If you have three already, the game will ask you who to replace upon attempting to hire one again.
Only one mercenary can be activated at a time, so if you want to switch, you’ll have to go back to town and interact with your preferred mercenary.
Tip: Hiring mercenaries during the campaign and the early endgame is almost useless. They don’t level with you, so if you progress a bit, they’ll easily get powercreeped by the enemies, making them a money dump if you keep reviving them. Just look at their items for currency and gear. If they don’t have anything good, ignore them. They give some of the best gear during the campaign, and you’ll most definitely get most of your gear from mercenaries in the campaign. Some of their items could be rares with five to six modifiers as early as level 30, which is insanely good.
How to Gear Up Mercenaries in Path of Exile
If you have noticed the gear equipped on your mercenaries has a lock symbol, that doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t equip new items. Even with the lock symbol, you can replace those items.
You have to prepare the item before equipping it on your mercenaries because you cannot technically remove an item from them.
If you drag an item to a desired slot in the mercenary’s inventory screen, it should replace the current item with your new item. The item you replaced disappears unless that item really came from you.
When replacing items with your mercenary, you’ll have the freedom to unequip those items, as long as they came from you already.
They just added this feature to prevent players from hiring a mercenary and stealing all their gear to hire a new mercenary again. If this wasn’t added, there’s no point in choosing the “take items” option when seeing mercenaries.
