Mercenary Quickstart Raid Guide

For the purpose of this guide, we heavily recommend you go the standard mercenary role, in the Alpha section.

Lobby:
To start off, click on the leftmost icon shown here:



Then, click on Job Setup, and select Mercenary under Alpha on the bottom row:





Then click on the exit button in the top right of the UI to close character setup, and click on the middle icon to ready up:



To clarify, when the middle icon says 'NOT READY', you have not readied up. When the icon does say 'READY', you're readied up and will spawn at roundstart.

Roundstart:
Once the round starts, locate an unused Voucher Redemption Terminal and get geared. First you'll need to select a kit, you can cycle through companies and shift+click the kits to see their stats. Once you've found a kit you like, click the vend button. Next, you'll need to get a weapon, you have pistols, SMGs, longarms, and exotics. Pistols are 1 W$, and have free special ammo. SMGs cost two W$, and can fit on the belt slot. Longarms typically cost 3 W$ and mostly consist of rifles and shotguns. Exotics are uncommon weapons like swords, flamethrowers, and heavy weapons such as the LMG and rocket launcher.

To get ammo for the weapon you selected, click on the gun and in the bottom right, you'll have the option to vend ammo, as well as buy specialized ammo.

Next, you'll want storage items to hold your gear. Click on this icon, and vend a belt, satchel/backpack, and/or webbing. Experiment to see what works best for you.

Lastly, you'll want medical pouches, click this and vend a few. First-aid pouches contain medipacks and autoinjectors, Chemical aid pouches contain just autoinjectors, and Trauma pouches contain medipacks.

Mission start:
Once geared, you'll need to locate your squad's pod in the hangar deck, Alpha's can be found in the center, and rest can be found within the starboard(north) hangar hall. Once the ship has reached the mission area, the Squad Leaders will set a landing site and deploy the pod at their leisure. A squad pod without a destination set will automatically launch after five minutes.

Once you're in the AO proper, you'll typically want to stay with your squad, as the Queen can see mercs through their own special overwatch map and single them out for attack. Most of the fighting will take place in the south side of the colony, due to the vaults that can spawn there, which are also valuable to Hives.

Rescue Ronald
Agent Ronald is a special Screech somewhere in the AO, hidden inside a vault in one of the colony's buildings. You'll need to power the area to see the vault. This can be done either by using a generator, or fixing the broken generators in the engineering complex. Once you have Ronald, you'll need to bring him back to the Saltshaker's bridge for the objective to complete. If done successfully, you'll receive two goal points. The objective will fail if Ronald dies.

Collect Loot
There are two types of loot implemented, money found in vaults, or resin cores.

Stacks of money can be found inside opened vaults. The room containing the vault will need to be uninfested, un-obstructed, and powered, through a portable generator, or the power generators outputting energy.

Resin cores are items dropped by dead Zurganids. The value of these cores ranges from 1 to 5 points. You'll need to deposit 20 points worth of cores to complete the objective. This objective can and will need to be done multiple times.

Resin cores can be deposited

Open Artifact Vaults
Artifacts can be found inside vaults, Every opened artifact vault will award two goal points. The room containing the vault will need to be uninfested, un-obstructed, and powered, through a portable generator, or the power generators outputting energy.

Evacuation Phase:
Once the Mercenaries have reached enough goal points to complete their mission, or have taken too many losses, the evacuation phase of the mission will start, any secured system vaults will have a transport pod deploy on top of them. After a five minute period, the pod will launch back up to the deployment ship and end the mission, to successfully escape via the pod, mercenaries must be inside the green zone around it.

Transport:
You have three means of getting to the AO, these being:

The Squad FOBs

the shuttles

the teleporter

Squad FOBs:
The Squad FOBs can be found in the hangar bays, with Alpha's being in the center of the hangar, and the rest within the starboard(north) halls. You must be buckled into the seats around the FOB deployment console to be sent down when the launch order is given.

Shuttles:
Shuttles are another method of transportation to and from the Saltshaker. These belong to the Transport Pilots, but Squad Leaders and the Field Commander are able to access them as well.

Note: When you're returning to the ship on a shuttle and see these tiles, do NOT exit the shuttle. You'll gib.

Teleporter:
The teleporter can be used to quickly enter the battlefield after the FOB pods have been launched downwards.

I lost my gun:
In the event you've somehow lost your weapon, you can use the tracker in the top right of your HUD to locate it. This will not work if the gun has been destroyed.

It's also possible that your gun ended up in cryo recovery storage if you accidentally hit the clean room button while gearing up. If this happens, go to the entrance of cryo and look for a wall mounted computer with the name of 'cryo recovery storage.'

Recommend pages:
Handbook to Merc

Mercenary Roles

Mercenary Gear and Equipment