Changing Mercenary Hero Armour?

Dafad Dhu

Ascalonian Squire

Join Date: Nov 2010

Rt/

I have several mercenary heroes for whom I would like to change their armour.

Can I do this without wrecking the suits of the existing mercenaries?


An example, to clarify my question:

My mesmer mercenary was created with a particular armour set. The mesmer character now has nicer armour, and I'd like that to appear on the mercenaries.
Can I re-register my mesmer character with the guy in Balth Temple, wearing her new armour, and this will update all my existing mesmer mercenaries? If so, how do I go about this? Will all the insignias and runes on the existing mercenaries be replicated on the new style of armour?

If I can do this; is the process guaranteed to work, or should I buy loads of perfect salvage kits and strip all the mercenary heroes before I attempt this?


Thanks.

Star_Jewel

Star_Jewel

Jungle Guide

Join Date: Mar 2010

Denizen of Tyria since Feb. 2009

According to wiki:

Quote:
Originally Posted by http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Mercenary_Hero#Modifying_a_mercenary

Modifying a mercenary

Mercenaries cannot be edited, the only way to change the appearance of a mercenary is to delete them and create another with the same name in the same slot. However, to avoid losing any equipment, do one of the following:
  • Remove any armor weapons, runes, or insignias or
  • Immediately create the new mercenary (with the same profession) before logging out or zoning.
You will lose the profession-specific armor upgrades if the new mercenary has a different primary profession; you will lose the weapons and common armor upgrades if you change districts, characters, or outposts.

However, if you decide to go the super-safe route and strip runes and insignias, I can't imagine you needing a perfect kit. They're heroes, right? Their armor can't break.

SpyderArachnid

SpyderArachnid

Wilds Pathfinder

Join Date: Jul 2008

United States

Lords Of Noh [LoN]

Me/

I actually did this myself.

Went through all my character's merc heroes and used a sup/expert kit to remove all the runes and then tossed the weapons in their inventories. Did all this cause I got new armors for my actual characters and wanted to change my mercs.

I had one character I forgot to de-rune/de-weapon their merc heroes, but after I changed them to their new armor, nothing happened. Since it was the same merc heroes, with just different looks, I didn't lose anything.

Not sure if that was a one time glitch, or if that is how it works. So you can always just replace the merc hero without salvaging all their runes, just make sure they keep the same slot on the merc screen. Or salvage the stuff if you'd rather play it safe.

That is just my experience.

vader

vader

Wilds Pathfinder

Join Date: Jul 2005

P/W

As long as you delete and recreate your merc hero right away without logging off, you don't have to worry about losing runes, weapons etc. I can confirm this works as I have done it myself:

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/c...tml?t=10490983

Quaker

Quaker

Hell's Protector

Join Date: Aug 2005

Canada

Brothers Disgruntled

Many people have asked this and there have been a number of conflicting answers, so I decided to try an experiment.
I wanted to change the armor of my 2nd Monk mercenary, but I was concerned about the risk. So I removed all the runes, insignias, and weapons from the 2nd monk merc on 4 of my main characters, but left them on the other 7. (Incidentally, you don't need a Perfect kit for this - just an Expert or Superior will do.)
The change process is very simple - you simply go back to the mercenary hero register guy in GToB with the character the Merc is based on, and delete the previous version of the merc and then register the new one.
After re-doing the Monk, no mods or weapons were lost on any of the mercs.

Since then I've done the same thing with my Ele merc, without removing any runes, insignias, or weapons first, with no problems.

Note though - this is only known to work if you directly swap the same merc type and slot (without logging off in between). That is, if you want to change the appearance of you Mesmer Merc, make sure you use the same mesmer you used before, and only swap into the same Merc slot.