Mercs Attack Rate Way too fast?!!

[Riklin]

I've got 3 different versions of the database, an old unpatched one from 2013, a current one that has been patched and a database that is brand new based on the September 2014 database. When merc_stats table exists, it has the fields attack_count and attack_speed.

The column attack_delay is not in the database at this time, so is the situation I am running in to a merc bug or a client bug? I have tried this with an AMD 8 core, a 6 core, a 4 core and a 2 core. It works exactly the same way in all cases. These machines are all running between 3.2 ghz and 5.0 ghz...

If I cannot get these mercs to work, I may have to disable them. I don't believe EQ is supposed to be easy. One of the things we typically like about the game, the lure that keeps us coming back, is the little victories (addiction to stat blue text, etc.) and the major ones, like leveling, as well as the major one of new gear, so that we get new spells to figure out. Hiring a merc that is a "bloody ginsoo", leaving a wake of chopped up pieces of any red mob within 10 levels, you encounter, is totally unfair, imo...

[trevius]

I think at lower levels, mercs are currently overpowered, but it balances out quite a bit at higher levels depending on your server content difficulty. Merc stats can be adjusted in the merc_stats table with some fairly simple queries if you need. I would have to double check, but I think you may even be able to just adjust the scale field to have them scale down to whatever rate you think feels right (50%, 25%, whatever). I am not positive offhand if that is currently functional, but I am sure it wouldn't be too hard to add if not.

Mercs are still in development to work out the remaining bugs, but they are fairly functional at this point (compared to how they were in the past).