What weapons should you choose for your mercenary in D2R?

Dec-13-2023

 

 

A powerful mercenary can greatly increase the efficiency of farming and monster slaying for you, especially at higher difficulty levels where there are many immune monsters. The difference between a mercenary with strong equipment and one with poor equipment is significant. So, how to enhance the survival and damage output of your mercenary using low-level and cost-effective equipment becomes a concern for many beginner players.

 

When it comes to selecting armor, Treachery is a relatively inexpensive yet practical choice [Runewords: 13(Shael)+ 10(Thul) + 20(Lem)]. Now, let's focus on introducing a very useful mercenary runeword called Obedience.

 

 

 

Obedience

(1) Choice of base material

Since the weapon is for your mercenary, an ethereal item is preferred. The advantage of an ethereal item is that it has higher attack power than a non-ethereal item, and it does not need to be repaired by the mercenary (it does not lose durability). For crafting Obedience, you must use a five-socket polearm as the base material. Here are the recommended options:

 

1. Ethereal five-socket gray or white polearm base material (preferably with enhanced damage, e.g. Giant's Thresher, Colossus Voulge, etc.).

2. Non-ethereal white or gray polearm without sockets (the weapon should not have super strong prefixes). You can use the following formula to create a socketed item:

White base + 8(Ral) + 11(Amn) + Perfect Amethyst = Socketed weapon (the number of sockets is random, such as Giant's Thresher, Colossus Voulge, etc.).

 

3. Non-ethereal white or gray polearm weapon without sockets (can be with or without enhanced damage). The maximum number of sockets for this type of weapon is five, guaranteed by Larzuk in Act 5 after completing the first quest of Act 5. For example: The Minotaur, The Gnasher, etc.

 

(2) Crafting process

The socketing order for Obedience's rune language is 15(Hel) + 18(Ko) + 10(Thul) + 5(Eth) + 19(Fal). This order must not be mistaken, as there are many runes involved. So, make sure to double-check before crafting. If you encounter a situation where you cannot socket the runes, press the “insert” key on your keyboard to open the socket protection.

 

(3) Advantages of Obedience

Obedience has the following highlights:

1. High damage (370% enhanced damage and 40% crushing blow, which means it deals damage based on the enemy's maximum health percentage, making it very effective against small monsters).

 

2. High accuracy (killing monsters triggers level 21 enchant, which can increase accuracy by 200%. -25% target defense indirectly boosts accuracy. In D2R, defense only increases evasion and does not reduce damage, so reducing defense is equivalent to lowering the monster's evasion rate). The second act mercenary's main damage is melee combat, and high accuracy significantly enhances his damage.

 

3. High safety (40% chance to replenish life on striking allows the mercenary to recover quickly when taking a large amount of damage suddenly. Also, it provides a maximum of 30 resist all, which obviously increases their survivability).

 

Besides Obedience, there are many other choices for early-game mercenary weapons, such as Reaper's Toll, which has physical damage reduction and is effective against physical immune monsters, Insight, which grants mana replenishment, and Kelpie Snare, which slow targets by a large percentage. You can choose according to the specific needs of your game character.