Question on Blood/Tears Speccing | Forums

[Solvaring]

Hey everyone,

Thank you all so much for the help I have received with my questions thus far. I'm getting a much better understanding of the game thanks to all your assistance + other posts I have found while surfing this forum. I'll be sure to pay it back with my own input once I have input to give.

While playing the necro campaign I built a hall of heroes and recruited sir jaywoods into my retinue. When I opened his character screen where you can view army, items that are in inventory/equipped, etc. I noticed that there was not a little ****on to switch between Blood/Tears reputation info and Army info, it only gives me army info. Can Mercenary heroes not be specced into blood or tears? What's the deal with this? I really wish Ubi would have included a better manual with the game @_@

On a side note, I realized necro and inferno can not build advanced marketplaces, i found a post about it in the forums but figured I would mention it here. What's up with that?

Thanks again for the help!

[Unicorn1844]

Mercenary heroes dont get a blood or tears path. Only your dynasty heroes get that choice. You can give any mercenary heroes one of your dynasty weapons though to help level it up. I use mercenary heroes mainly as couriers of troops, give them realm skills to help my towns, and get the ones that provide more troops. Other wise I find them basically non useful for fighting due to the lack of tears or blood skills.

AS afar as the lack of special market for Necro and Inferno... there are always black markets available on the maps somewhere.

[prince_c4spi4n]

Nobody but the devs are really sure why the "bad" guys can't have a built-in artifact shop. It hurts inferno way more than it does necropolis - necropolis even has that building that revives dead heroes free while the "crucible of chaos" is, I don't know, pretty laughable. You are lucky if that week the exchange rate tilts in your favor but when it doesn't *facepalm*. But at least most of Kiril's maps have one artifact merchant to compensate.

[Solvaring]

So does using Blood or Tears abilities affect mercenary heroes in any way? I haven't ever got into combat to use the abilities and find out for myself? If for instance I use a blood related might/magic ability with a mercenary hero during combat will I gain rep points at all?

[prince_c4spi4n]

Mercenaries don't accumulate reputation even when using blood/tears abilities so it doesn't affect them or the main heroes. My memory is not very good on this - if I'm correct, the strength of your mercenary's blood/tears abilities actually depend on your main hero's reputation; if he's promoted on the blood path then all mercenaries' blood skills will be more powerful compared to when he's neutral. Well of course you'll know soon enough when you observe things in a game.

[Solvaring]

So it seems that using blood/tears abilities with mercenary heroes have no effect on the alignment of the main hero, and mercenary heroes themselves can not specialize into blood or tears. This is only what I've observed in the campaign though and have yet to play a custom game although I assume the mechanic is the same. Also when choosing to pursue or leave a retreating group of enemies, no blood or tears points are awared (Lamesauce), the same goes for arcane libraries and other choices resulting in blood or tears reputation. If you visit an arcane library with a mercenary hero, or are presented a choice to pursue or leave a retreating army while controlling a mercenary hero, no blood or tears points are awarded. At least my many questions are finally getting answered. I'm totally loving this game but christ it's so complicated and deep when it comes to mechanics and gameplay and options.

I also thought that when my main hero reached blood/tears spec, my mercenary heroes would follow suit, for example since i went blood on necro my ebon knights would become deathknights and my necromancers would become reapers. But they all just stayed the same ole ebon knights and necromancers. Even though mercenary heroes can't gain blood/tears rep and cant contribute rep to the main hero, looking at their abilities window on the third tab, 'hero abilities', after might tab and magic tab, on the right hand side where abilities from blood/tears spec would be there are three slots there. So I thought after i reached reaper/embalmer status with the main hero, the merc heroes should follow suit and gain abilities to fill those slots.

UGHHHH @_@ well i guess i know now, correct me please though if I'm wrong. I really want to understand all of this.

[Unicorn1844]

Correct, mercenary heroes stay the same, they don't get promoted as your main hero does. I am now playing the end campaign #2 (the Dark one) with a blood path Stronghold magic hero. He is a storm caller and at level 30 with tier two stormcaller, full air spell catalog, mass regen and mass life leach, summon earth elemental and summon water elemental and the Thunderstaff now at level three almost level four, he is so far doing great damage and getting zero losses. It took a lot of work and frustration though to get him there. Plus I had to get him the full prophet set to support his mana since the warlord set was the default gifts.

The mercenary heroes in this version of HoMM are not nearly as useful as they are in the other versions of HoMM. I much prefer to use them more as couriers and realm supporters as those skills are wasted on your primary hero but are quite useful for building up your troop numbers and supporting your towns.

[byron8g]

Totally agree with Solvaring who posted this point.
Ideally you would want one blood hero and one tear.