Sure its a nice system, however no ancenstral items ever get offered, when you select certain aspect caches they never hold ancestral items either, so whats the point. Yellow items on the other hand still get offered even after you have maxed all mercs out.
Considering how hard it is to get the max on certain aspects, i feel the barter system could and should be improved.
What do you think?
How often did you barter at the girl in the den? Of course she is offering Ancestral Legendaries. Not every time. You also have to use her “restock supply” option often.
I did a handful of pits yesterday and have some small change to barter (12k palemarks).
I started for the fun of science and to show that the fairy tale of no ancestrals legendaries in the den is not true.
Results:
But if you need Ancestral UNIQUES then you get plenty at the Purveyor of Curiosities.
Honestly I just like the battering vendor, she’s cute, her voice is so nice but the items she sells are expensive and useless.
I bought a few caches from her about 5 or 6 times and didn’t come back because it was a waste of time for me to salvage the items right after.
I think it would make more sense if she sold Undercity Tribute, Boss summon mats, and Seething Opals… 
The cute girl also got “summon mats caches” in stock from time to time.
For Undercity Tributes. If you do a couple of pits to reach paragon lvl 300 you will swim in tributes.
If you want a nice bartering experience just hoard your pale marks until you have 10k. And THEN spend them all and carefully look at the offering. Boss Mats, caches with small chances (very small) to get runes… theres plenty of stuff even masterworking mats. Try it again but dont get there with a few palemarks you can count on 5 fingers.
Yep! I already bought “summon mats caches” but didn’t have “Mucus-Slick Egg + Shard of Agony” or was I unlucky… 
Still not reach lvl 300, but if she could sell Legendary Undercity tributes that so nice.
And I’m holding around 7800 right now so I’ll try again. Thanks!
i went there a lot, like a lot! all comes down to rng ofc, some ppl are lucky like you, others not so much.
I finished my 12k pale mark bartering. Nice amount of boss mats, 5x 2GA Anc. Legend. i stocked for alternative chars. And look:
i happen to get some nice stuff every now and then 1 pair of boots for my rogue and a nice offhand for my necro i still use.
Also the boss mat caches are pretty nice.
On the aspect chaches i happened to be rather unlucky, i just thought they cant drop ancestral aspects, but i guess Bitslappa proved me wrong ^^
I think my mercs have about 1000 unspent caches… that tells me the system needs work
It’s truly underwhelming. Like most systems in D4 it’s simply there so that Blizzard can pretend like they are offering you something while not really offering you something.
They should add an option to hide the Mercenary progress.
Maybe just collect the coins automatically at max level, there are no alternative options anyway. And the purple text popup makes me think the boss dropped a mythic, only to be disappointed.
For the Bartering they should buff some options for sure. The Masterwork cache is a joke, what is it, like 40 obducite? Same for other materials. Ancestrals should become more common there too but maybe at a higher price.
Lol funny you mention it. Indeed i must admit that purple text kinda makes me nervous haha
Most likely due to not gaining enough xp for the vendors due to the build you use. You can keep roll the vendor menu till you get ancestral gears if you have a lot of XP from a very efficient SB build.
I have seen an ancestral. But the thing that is best is the material caches you get, because that is the main thing holding back my progression, so at least there is a little bit that i can add to what I get from other content.
I get ancestrals often enough. I like it as a passive thing. I let the coins build up and then go spend them.
However if they removed it from the game I wouldn’t miss it. Infact if they removed mercenaries from the game would I even notice? Probably not except for not hearing varyana introducing herself to mobs over and over and thinking she sounds like ventress from the clone wars series.
I think that is a bigger problem the den and mercenaries are just meh.
Ok, i knew i heard that voice from somewhere. Thats what it was.
That and i think the va also did a character in Border Lands 3, another cranky old lady.
Just out of curiosity it looks like you got 2 items out of 13k pale marks? You didn’t say what you spent.
But to the OP - I did spent 3200 pale marks the other day.
I came away with 7 1 GA items, none of them useful and none with a higher aspect.
Feels pointless to me as well.
i spend nearly 13k pale marks. I kept 5x 2GA items, got lots of 1 GA items (i dont collect 1 GA items anymore).
ancestral items DO get offered. Like the rest of the game now they are rare… too rare and needs adjustment but they are in the merc vendor
Some are great. Boss mats. Offensive to hit aspects.
Most suck like obdulcite one is like 30. 30???