Merc leveling question

[oooAPHRODITEooo]

I am a level 75ish Lagromancer and I am trying to find out the best place to level a level 51 merc. I don't want to go into hell until my merc has a bit of a higher level, mainly because his Might aura will be stronger and my skellis will kill faster. Is NM Cows the best place to level him, or should I level him some where else and then level him in Cows once I get to a certain level? All help would greatly be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

[dubious]

NM chaos sanc is also pretty good, depends where you are the fastest at killing if cows is then stick with that.

[weedkilz]

without a doubt nm eldritch and shenk runs, mercs level really fast there all the way up to 70 and you get to try to find stuff too.

[Afro AmeriZON]

In 1 game do NM cows, eld/shenk/pindle, at lvl51 you'll net your merc about 2-3 levels a game and get yourself a ton of charms, items and flawless gems. Or just do full act5 runs which will give him a bunch of levels also. You can usually do all these until he is about lvl74 before exp is really slow.

[Baboon]

Chaos sanct. in an 8 player game where the other players are somewhere else. You should do the killing yourself, you get enormous xp because of the 8 players, your merc gets 1/3 but that's still a lot.

Don't go where the other players are, the merc doesn't get exp from party members.

[HCTwinJava]

Chaos Sanc. is not a nice place to level up a *Might* merc. He will kill himself once in a while. he'll also "help" your skellies kill themselves once IM'ed. This is very annoying.

the best way of leveling him up is to pretend to forget this, and just do your regular leveling work *on your own*. As long as its on your own, your merc will get enough exp to quickly level up. For a lvl 51 merc, most places from act2 to act5 will be good, and the best places are where you can find most easy-to-reach, easy-to-kill monsters. Do Lister runs. Clear act5. Maybe cowing too.

[WingBlade]

I find that running NM Halls in A5 whehter solo or in pubs.... is a great place to lvl a merc... just start with Pindle and his buddies... then actually enter the doorway behind pindle instead of going back 2 the red portal.... there are 3 lvls there... but the 3rd lvl is where Nith is... u just need 2 do the Halls of Pain / Anguish.... alot of open space for a necro and his minions to move...


Good luck with the lvling...

[STINGER]

Flayer Jungle NM!!! There are a bazillion midgets to kill then go to River and CoD (City or the Damned) Skip CS as Im will more than likely smoke him 2-6 times a run. If you do that run say once or twice tyou can then probably do Act 5 very strongly wihtout worries of him dieing.

The Eldritch/shenk/Pindle runs are always good also.

[HCTwinJava]

In fact, based on all my exp with this type of necro build, a lvl 51 might merc shuold be good enough if you can get his resists reasonably covered in Hell. If your necro is a very laggy lag-mancer, your most natural way to level up your merc is to start from the very last wp in NM act5, and quest through to hell act1 on your own. He'll surely catch up by the end of Hell act1. if i were you, probably i wouldn't worry about him at all.

well, 25 lvl difference between your necro and merc, your necro perhaps did many xp runs in big parties. if you want your merc to catch up quickly with no big pain, remember to give him a better chance to kill monsters. reducing the size of the army, playing solo in big games, etc., may sometimes help a lot.



the dmg boosts for your minions by the might aura of a lvl 47 merc and that of a lvl 98 merc are not very different because it only works on your skelly warrors/revives' base physical dmg. In fact, even without your merc, your skelly army will kill roughly at the same speed in most places in hell. But your merc alone can easily pack up 2k - 5k dmg in evey hit he can land. because of this, (and in a secondary sense, also because of his aura), his absence will significantly reduce your killing speed only if you take on toughest bosses in Hell like Diablo, Izual, etc.

[ZounceHC]

I find NM cows good for merc leveling but haven't done it with a Summoner. Also he'll die really fast when surrounded so you have to constantly monitor his health and act accordingly which can be kind of annoying. As HcTwinkjava said the best thing to do is try and forget about your merc and just do mf/quests/lvl otherwise it can become quite tedious merc lvling.

[oooAPHRODITEooo]

Thanks for all your help guys.