Hiring mercenaries

A mercenary fights at your side for the whole run, always at your level. Hire one from Kashya in camp: four kinds open as your heroes beat the acts, each with D2's gear for his type and two skills you pick. Any of them adds about 15% to your boss damage.

	Name	Hire cost	Joins at level	Hired once	Fights	Starts with
	Rogue Scout	10 gold	3	Blood Raven falls (the first is free)	Ranged	Fire ArrowInner Sight
	Desert Mercenary	35 gold	9	Andariel falls	Melee	JabPrayer
	Iron Wolf	100 gold	15	Duriel falls	Caster	Fire BallInferno
	Barbarian	900 gold	28	A hero reaches Act V	Melee	BashStun

Hiring

• Your class's first Rogue Scout is free once Blood Raven falls; after that a Scout costs 10 gold.
• Desert Mercenaries open once Andariel falls (35 gold), Iron Wolves once your save has beaten Duriel (100 gold), and Barbarians once a hero reaches Act V (900 gold).
• Each class keeps its own hirelings. Hire another kind and the first waits in camp; switching back costs nothing.
• He joins once your hero reaches his first level (3, 9, 15 or 28); until then his portrait stays dimmed.

Picking his skills

In camp, pick his two skills from his type's pool. Each opens at its D2 level, and he can carry at most one aura. He casts them at his own level, which follows yours.

Rogue ScoutDesert MercenaryIron WolfBarbarian

Starts with

Fire ArrowInner Sight

Skill pool

Name	Opens at level
Inner Sight Passive	1
Fire Arrow Skill	1
Cold Arrow Skill	6
Exploding Arrow Skill	12
Freezing Arrow Skill	30

Gear and stats

• He wears D2's gear for his type in four slots (weapon, helm, armor, shield), with D2's level, Strength and Dexterity requirements. Gear he can't use yet reads red and does nothing until he can.
• O opens his panel beside the inventory, with his gear, stats, the damage his blow deals and his two skills (RT on a controller, or Party on the mini panel).
• His life is D2's on Normal and doubles from Nightmare on. In Terror it climbs with the tier, as the monsters' hits do. Each kind's page lists his stats by level.

When he falls

• He's healed at each act's start, regains life slowly, and drinks the same share of your potions as you do.
• A fallen hireling stays down until he's resurrected: at Kashya, or mid-run at each act's smith by the portal (Charsi's after Baal or a Terror tier).
• The price is 0.75 × your hero's level² in gold, capped at 5,000: 75 gold at level 10, 1,875 at 50, 5,000 from 82.