Mercenaries: Farming Tyrael coins

Singleplayer Discussion
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Before I start, let’s mention another topic on the matter, albeit in a wrong forum, since it’s more of a design problem and not a bug.

So, let’s get to the point: I understand that the whole level is a reference to… you know what, hence the bounty awarding coins for Paladins in addition to Tyrael himself… However, as it stands, getting Tyrael’s coins is not guaranteed even on the heroic version due to Uther’s being there as a legendary merc also, moreover, getting those coins instead can be quite frustrating — and there is currently no other bounty with Tyrael’s coins in the award pool.

My suggestion would be to change Uther in the reward pool to someone else — if it’s all about paladins, let it be Cariel, Cornelius… or maybe even Yrel… or Finley, by the way — so that the bounty would make any sense besides unlocking the equipment and achievement. Oh, and please don’t tell me about the quill-boaring way to farm those coins, in you know what I mean…

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Was there a change at some point to make the legendary merc coins guaranteed from a heroic bounty? I know that was not the case early this year when I spent far too much time grinding 2-3 for Malfurion coins.

On topic, Yrel seems a good choice to swap for Uther. She’s only in one bounty, and the other two who get coins from the N’Zoth bounty are pretty quick and easy to max out (or at least they were for me).

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There are a few bounties where all three rewards are still useful for me. I focus mostly on those bounties, with a fast fire team, and a couple of far-from-maxed legendaries on the bench, to hopefully get the “member of your party” reward.

Currently, Tyrael is my farthest-from-maxed, so he is one of those on the bench.

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Yes, in patch 22.0.2 (you may thank me for looking that up for you :smiley: ).

  • All Heroic Level 30 Bounties will now include at least one pile of Legendary Coins (chosen from the selection of Coins designated for each Bounty) as part of their Bounty completion rewards.

Actually, it wasn’t that bad before that patch — some people have claimed that you used to get even more legendary coins on average before that (nowadays I get the feeling that the amount of legendary coins has been increased a bit, but I might be wrong)… So, in my opinion, that kind of farming wasn’t that bad at all back in the day, especially for F2P players — I’ve crafted many, if not most, of my early legendaries from coins (was hoping to get those Cairne, Diablo and possibly Sylvanas for PvP from packs instead… Never happened, so I ended up crafting and maxing them in the end), which has also allowed me to build up the collection and begin fishing for newer legendary mercs, starting with Valeera, from the packs you get from completing tasks. As for the time spent… well, that’s another matter. :smiley:

By the way, wish I had known Malfurion was a priority for crafting back then… Been farming Banehollow and swimming in Anduin coins instead, which wasn’t bad either, but…

Yes, that’s what I had in mind from a purely practical point of view. If one considers instead the ‘lore’ perspective of human (not draenei or murloc) paladins in D2… Well, then the Roames actually fit perfectly, maybe even better, considering that they are both more dark-skinned, just like the respective D2 characters… And there was that paladin girl, Fara, too, so Cariel would also qualify as someone resembling a paladin from D2.

You are not alone in that regard… The problem is, with a full party the chance for getting the coins for the ‘right’ member is not that great (1/6, I assume).

PS As for my F2P collection, in case it is representative, — I’ve got all mercs available at the moment, with tasks done, most of them maxed, almost maxed (a few coins for the last upgrade remaining) — Yrel, Yogg-Saron (just done it also for Lorewalker Cho recently), getting there — Sire Finley, far from maxed — Tyrael, for the aforementioned reasons. The main method of farming for me, apart from completing tasks, has been doing heroic bounties (no abandoning bounties when farming the mysterious stranger was a thing — I had actually been completing them for all those coins to craft various mercs, while picking up the ‘mysterious’ coins along the way; no running the heroic 1-1, which is outright quill-boaring, in my opinion), in order to make it all somewhat meaningful and challenging.

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Weird. The date on 22.0.2 is December, and I started playing in early January (broken fingers, needed to find a game I could play with just my left hand…). Yet I had many, many runs of heroic 2-3 where all I got were Tamsin and Voone coins (those two were maxed out the instant they finished their task 7s). Maybe another example of Blizzard’s characteristic high standards, where the new feature was bugged and didn’t work until a few patches later? :stuck_out_tongue:

Edit: ah, it only applies to Winterspring and later; heroic Felwood is level 26-29. That explains it.

Re: lore, shrug, I’ll leave that to people who know and care. :slight_smile: This is the first Blizzard game I’ve played since Diablo and Starcraft (no numbers, since they weren’t needed back then…) back in the late 90s. I’ll take your word for it that Cariel makes more sense, but on the other hand she’s already rewarded for four bounties.

Since we’re comparing notes on collections/farming now: as of this writing I have 83 task-complete, 54 maxed out (counting Cookie, who I do not intend to spend the coins on to actually max out), only 3 left who have never been on the task board. For farming, literally all I do are tasks, a handful of bounties a day, slow and steady. Bounties that are useful for coins for two or three mercs when I can, heroic 1-1 when the task board has four useless wankers from which I can’t make a team that can complete a useful heroic bounty.

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Precisely, level 30 is the key. The Secret Cow is in the Barrens, but level 30 on heroic also.

Well, the ‘secret cow level’ was a joke back in the days of Diablo, a rumour that was made true in D2. This whole affair is a reference to that franchise, as is the design of the level (all the regular enemies there are ‘hell bovines’… wielding halberds) and the boss (the Cow King in particular is a ‘lightning enchanted’ super-unique monster there, i.e. emitting lightning bolts each time he’s struck; some parts re Tyrael and the portal to Whimsyshire or whatever refer to D3, which I haven’t played either). While, as I understand, Tyrael and the whole affair in Mercenaries are a promotion of some other new game that I don’t care about either, it is a funny tribute to those old days (I would argue that D2 belonged to that era of ‘good old’ Blizzard in terms of game quality) as well.

It is my assumption that the reward pool, apart from Tyrael, refers also to the Paladin class in D2.

As a sidenote:

But why? I understand that it might be easier to do some tasks with him when that swordfish is not maxed, but there was a time when Cookie was arguably the most powerful mercenary in PvP, included in nearly every competitive team (‘La-la, barloopah-eh!’ :fish: ), so having him maxed was beneficial, including the fishes, which were so powerful with the Cairne-Diablo combo, and, in my opinion, it far outweighed the minor inconveniences that it caused sometimes when doing tasks. Nowadays his relative power level doesn’t quite keep up with what it used to be, but he can still be playable.

Digressing even further, there are some pretentious… characters out there calling themselves ‘content-makers’, who sometimes make… ambitious :smirk: claims about ‘the easiest way’ to do something (like they tried them all), for example, or how you should ‘never’ max certain mercs (Cookie or the old Garrosh, for example, which both used to be arguably much better off maxed for PvP)… My suggestion would be to take it all with a pinch of salt (especially given that these characters often give misleading advice, having no clue about certain aspects of the game, while presenting it all as nearly the ultimate truth) and use one’s own common sense and judgement instead.

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Re: Cookie - I could not care less about PvP, and regret taking the fishes to level 4. If I could downgrade abilities I would drop the fishes to 2. There have been many occasions grinding one of the irritating poorly-designed tasks where swordfish cascades made an already long task considerably longer.

Garrosh, no opinion on his change just yet, I’ve barely touched orcs since then. Keeping him at speed 6 before that was a no-brainer in PvE though.

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We’re going completely off-topic here, but since we’re at it anyway…

A lot of these tasks have been actually present even before Cookie’s release. While those fishes are often a no-brainer, as they say, there are often more elegant solutions. Felwood (heroic Banehollow again) in particular has been quite useful to me, especially those blood imps.

In my experience, it made a little difference in PvE even back in the day, probably less so nowadays, when a few of modern orcs, such as Drek’That or Galvangar, attack at speed 5. Therefore, in my opinion, the change is more of a buff, also removing the dilemma ‘Should I upgrade him?’ for the player.

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I have all the current mercs, and all their tasks done. About 28 of them aren’t maxed yet. I don’t do PvP, and mostly do PvE only when I have a task, meaning just two bounties each day.

These days, that is usually Darkshore or Sunken City, Normal, where all three of the bounty rewards are mercs I don’t have maxed. If I have a “Mercs” daily, like dealing 100 Fel Damage, one of my two runs will be H1-1, with an appropriate team for completing the daily.

No packs purchased. The only gold spent was in the workshop.

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To sum up, yep, having Tyrael further from being maxed than other mercenaries seems to be a recurring theme for at least some kinds of players (forgot to mention that I’ve also been doing PvP to get those packs from the rating chests and other rewards… I think you might even find me on the EU leaderboards; as for packs, maybe a couple or so purchased with gold, the rest of them I got from story missions, tasks and monthly rating rewards; 57 of them stashed right now, awaiting the release of new mercenaries), as initially suggested. Maybe feedback from more players would be appreciated, so that we could get a bigger sample and further illustrate the point with a more representative player base.

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For me, Tyrael is in the normal state for a merc that has all tasks completed and that I don’t use often or make particular efforts to push toward max. Skills are all 5s, a few hundred more coins needed to finish all the equipment. When/if I do make a push for maxed out I would expect him to be more trouble than most, of course.

No packs purchased or gold spent outside the workshop (and I didn’t bother with the PvP building or the second training ground slot). Right now 149 packs stored for the next merc release.

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That was the entire point. Getting from ‘all tasks done, mercenary in a somewhat playable shape’ to ‘maxed’ tends to be the tricky part.

In that regard, Tyrael might be rivalled only by those epics whose coins are assigned to a single bounty only — for the Sunken City, Brann, Yrel and Cho are fitting examples, but in this case doing their respective bounties can be at least partially useful for upgrading some other newer mercs, which cannot be said about Tyrael.