Mercenaries

Three Mercenary Guilds hire out temporary allies. Pay the fee, pick a grade, and a mercenary follows you for 30 minutes of fighting, healing or tanking depending on which one you hired. No quest and no special unlock, just zeny and a base level.

This is the stock rAthena Pre-Renewal system, unmodified by us. It matches the original iRO mechanic closely, with three small differences noted at the bottom of this page.

The three guilds#

The Manager hires the mercenary. The Goods Merchant next door sells the potions that keep one alive, see below.

Hiring#

Talk to a Manager, pick a grade from 1 to 9, and confirm. Higher grades want a higher base level and, from grade 7 up, a Loyalty rating with that specific guild.

Loyalty rises the more you hire and fight alongside mercenaries from that guild. The top grades belong to players who hire regularly rather than players who saved up zeny for one big purchase.

Hiring hands you a scroll, one per grade and guild. Double-click it and the mercenary appears at your side for 30 minutes, refreshable by hiring again before the timer runs out.

Spear mercenaries#

The tankiest of the three lines by a wide margin. Rodin at grade 1 already carries more HP than a fully upgraded Sword or Bow mercenary, and Pinaka at grade 8 knows Scapegoat, which lets it eat a killing blow meant for you.

Sword mercenaries#

The best-rounded line. Luise learns Benediction at grade 3, which cures status ailments on the spot, and Thierry at grade 8 brings Bowling Bash, one of the hardest-hitting mercenary attacks in the game.

Bow mercenaries#

The glass cannon of the three, and the only one that supports rather than tanks. Elfin at grade 4 learns Magnificat, an SP regeneration field that helps you as much as the mercenary itself, making the Bow line worth hiring even for classes that never touch a bow.

Keeping a mercenary alive#

The Goods Merchant next to each Manager sells five consumables, all usable on the mercenary rather than on you.

Item	Zeny	What it does
Mercenary Red Potion	2,500	Restores HP
Mercenary Blue Potion	5,000	Restores SP
Mercenary Concentration Potion	800	Hit and flee bonus
Mercenary Awakening Potion	1,500	ASPD bonus
Mercenary Berserk Potion	3,000	Damage bonus, HP regen off

None of them are cheap in bulk, which is by design. A mercenary is meant to help for a session, not to be babysat indefinitely.

Common questions#

Do I need a quest first? No. Walk up to a Manager, meet the level requirement, pay the fee.

Can I have more than one mercenary out at once? No. Hiring a new one, even from a different guild, replaces whatever you already have summoned.

Does the timer pause when I log out? No. The 30 minutes run down in real time regardless of whether you are online.

Is this affected by the server's 5x rates? No. Zeny costs and mercenary stats are untouched. Mercenary skills aren't on the Class Changes list either.

How this differs from the original iRO system#

Three small gaps between what rAthena ships and what the real kRO mechanic did. None of these are choices we made, they come from the same stock script every rAthena server runs.

Grade 9 wants base level 95, not 90. The original scroll needed base level 90 to summon a level 95 mercenary. The script's formula (5 + Grade × 10) applies the same rule to every grade without the grade 9 exception, so on this server the requirement lands on 95 instead.

There is no Grade 10. The real system sold a tenth "Superior" scroll for 400 Loyalty Points, summoning a level 99 mercenary (Wayne, Sukye or Roux depending on guild). The data for these three still exists in the mercenary database with the correct stats, but no NPC on the server sells the scroll, so grade 9 is the practical ceiling here.

The potions cost more. Roughly 40 to 45 percent above the original prices, across all five:

Potion	Original price	Here
Mercenary Red Potion	1,750	2,500
Mercenary Blue Potion	3,500	5,000
Mercenary Concentration Potion	560	800
Mercenary Awakening Potion	1,050	1,500
Mercenary Berserk Potion	2,100	3,000