The Mercenary career involves working as a soldier of fortune. The Pilots Federation bestows ranks to commanders based on their success and profits in On Foot activities. Mercenary work aboard ships requires fighting in Conflict Zones and amassing Combat Bonds. It is tracked as part of a commander's Combat rank.
Ranks[]
Mercenary Elite icon
Note that Mercenary ranks only apply to On Foot activities.
| Rank | Total Profit Required | Cosmetic Unlocks |
|---|---|---|
| Defenceless | 0 | Dominator Suit Body Suit Livery (Bronze) |
| Mostly Defenceless | 10,000,000 | Dominator Suit Torso, Arms, and Legs Livery (Bronze) |
| Rookie | 30,000,000 | Dominator Suit Helmet Livery (Bronze) |
| Soldier | 60,000,000 | Dominator Suit Body Suit Livery (Silver) |
| Gunslinger | 125,000,000 | Dominator Suit Torso, Arms, and Legs Livery (Silver) |
| Warrior | 350,000,000 | Dominator Suit Helmet Livery (Silver) |
| Gladiator | 465,000,000 | Dominator Suit Body Suit Livery (Gold) |
| Deadeye | 888,000,000 | Dominator Suit Torso, Arms, and Legs Livery (Gold) |
| Elite | 1,550,000,000 | Dominator Suit Helmet Livery (Gold) |
| Elite I | 2,605,000,000 | |
| Elite II | 3,537,000,000 | |
| Elite III | 5,364,000,000 | |
| Elite IV | 6,734,000,000 | |
| Elite V | 8,118,000,000 |
On Foot[]
Mercenary
Rewards[]
- Frontline Solutions
- Combat Bond Vouchers: Similar to ship rewards, Conflict Zone missions accepted from Frontline Solutions at Concourses will award combat bonds per kill, and can be redeemed after completing the mission and returning to the Concourse.
- Reputation: Fighting for a specific faction will improve your relation to it. Reputation increase appears to be equal to that of a normal ship mission.
- Missions: Standard three-option reward of either credits, or a combination of credits and items and/or bonus reputation/influence.
Risks[]
- There appears to be no risk associated with Conflict Zone missions. If a mercenary is killed or critically injured, they will be redeployed to the dropship and returned to the Conflict Zone with the same suit and weapons. No items, credits, or uncashed combat bonds are lost.
Missions[]
All On Foot mission types count towards the Mercenary rank ladder. Mission types are highly varied, ranging from simple, potentially non-combat tasks, to illegal raids on settlements. Missions can be accepted from a Concourse's Terminals and local mission providers. When interacting with local mission providers Commanders can negotiate for increased rewards, with the highest level of success potentially doubling the maximum possible rewards.
Mercenaries can also participate in large-scale battles for control of settlements by accepting missions with Frontline Solutions. Combat bonds from these encounters will also grant Mercenary rank progress.
Powerplay on foot[]
There are lower risk on-foot Powerplay activities. Here's a guide by Stelar Seven:
- Join a Power.
- Go to a rival power's exploited system. The exploited ones (triangle no outline) are the weakest.
- Go to any ground settlement.
- Land 1 km away, drive in with an SRV.
- Park the SRV at the edge of a settlement behind a building for some cover so the guards don't notice.
- Find the alarms and disable them.
- Go to terminal a d to sneakily download the power data files. If you are spotted by NPCs then you can kill them or put your shield up and use cover to finish your download.
- Turn in the files at a power contact in a friendly system for 100-300 merits. This increases as you rank up with the power. At rank 65 you can get 560 merits.
Engineering a Mavrick suit and a Tormentor pistol help a lot. You will get wanted and notoriety if you kill too many guards, so kill sparingly. Raiding a pirate faction settlement has no penalty at all.
This can be done via stealth and sneaking in or shoot and loot with combat. You get paid either way. Reccomend is to not pul the power regulator, because that leads to a settlement collapse, it would be powered down and empty. If the game crashes you can reset the settlement by hitting supercruise then return which respawns the loot.
Ship[]
Rewards[]
- Combat Bond Vouchers: Choosing a side after entering the Conflict Zone will increase the value of earned Vouchers substantially. The reward for each kill will increase from 3000 Cr per Voucher, to anywhere from 4,000 Cr to 80,000 Cr depending on the ship killed, see Combat Bond Voucher.
- Reputation: Fighting for a specific faction will improve your relation to it. It is fairly ineffective for grinding Reputation, compared to other activities.
Risks[]
The amount of enemy ships in a Conflict Zones can be overwhelming, especially if they focus their attacks on a single ship. Therefore it is recommended to have some combat experience and a sufficient fighter ship, or a team before entering.
Missions[]
Missions can target different factions and NPC careers and are most commonly spawned by factions in conflicts or unrest. Over 100 kills may be demanded by a single mission. The total reward and reward per kill both increase with the number of kills demanded.
If the player has multiple missions to kill certain targets, then kills will count towards the first Mission accepted until it is accomplished. This makes mission stacking less profitable than accepting large missions.
Doing this as team with 3 other players makes it safer and more efficient.
Bugs[]
Please be aware that after accepting a mercenary ship combat mission and traveling to the mission sector it is ill-advised to respond to Unidentified Signal Sources. If you find a USS event that updates the mission with the abandon reward or an alternate target, it resets your kill counter. Solutions:
- Ignore USS and focus on eliminating the mission target.
- Search USS first, but keep reputation in mind. It is generally a bad idea to suddenly go kill traders or security forces affiliated with a friendly faction.
Sometimes, there will be no Conflict Zone at the designated mission location. Currently, there are no workarounds for this bug, as leaving and returning to the system does not resolve it. Find a USS with the NPC that offers the alternative abandon mission and accept that.
Covert Heist / Theft missions[]
This guide is courtesy of CMDR Ulassis. It is required to have completed 6 covert heist/theft missions to unlock engineer Terra Velasquez, whose modifications includes:
- Combat movement speed (suit)
- Higher accuracy (primary weapon)
- Increased air reserves (suit)
- Increased sprint duration (suit)
- Noise suppressor (primary weapon)
The top 2 are exclusively provided by her only. Moreover she also introduces you to Oden Geiger, the only engineer providing suit night vision.
Process details[]
For heist/theft mission you are required to steal something from a settlement - a covert one means you cannot trigger any alarms. However, opening the containment units in which the target objects are placed always trigger an alarm immediately regardless of whether you have been seen by an NPC. So before stealing, we need to find the alarm control panel and disable the alarm systems first.
The alarm system control is usually, if not always, in the power building. I am not sure if I have encountered 1 or 2 settlements where the panel is in the command center. The exact position varies according to the type of the settlement, so it may be a good idea to locate the panel through a terminal -- details of high security level building interiors are often locked if you do not have high enough access level, so an E-breach will come in handy. There are usually a terminal fairly close to the landing pad while away from any patrolling NPCs, so this step should be safe and easy.
Regardless of the actual position, the alarm system control panel is always in restricted area with high access level requirements. So you need to steal someone's identity -- you will almost always need a level 3 access at some point of the mission progress, and here is a incredibly easy way to get it safe and quick -- no need to scan level 1 in the surroundings, go to level 1 area and scan a level 2, then go to level 2 area and scan a level 3 anymore!
If you are familiar with power building structures, you might recall that the 2nd floor of all PWR buildings (those that HAVE a 2nd floor, of course) are identical. A platform is connected by 2 stairs from opposite sides, and a short corridor (a long room?) is connected to the platform by a automatic door.
What I accidentally find is that, an Level 3 NPC will routinely come into this long room, pretend to work in front of a fake control table for a while, and leave and come back in a few minutes later. The interesting thing is that, while he is working he will remain stationary giving his back to the window, and, spoiler alert, you can steal his identity FROM OUTSIDE THE WINDOW!
Once you get the access everything became easy. Just run into the PWR building, take care not to be scanned by the guards (commandos, scouts, and sharpshooters), and make sure you know where the control panel exactly is before entering "restricted areas" . The NPCs inside the building, either "scientist" or "worker", will not scan you. So as long as you do not "misbehave" in front of them they don't care how or why did you get in here -- as long as you do not go into the restricted area. Once you do enter the restricted area will warn you immediately, and if you did not quit the area immediately, they will start shooting at you with their pathetic little pistols not long after the warning. So you don't have much time to shut down the alarms. Just rush in, stand in front of the panel, press [E], and run out.
Finally you can start stealing. If you don't know where the stuff is, go back to the terminal you hacked into at the beginning and locate it. In heist missions, the sample containment units takes forever to open (about 3 minutes), and even if not alarms is triggered, the NPCs will shut it back off immediately after they saw it open. So make sure you can always see the opening progress of the containment unit, and took the sample immediately after its open. From my personal experience, the sample itself isn't labeled "stolen" or "illegal" and even if you take it right in front of an NPC scientist they still think this is fine... so just be quick. That's all; you may realize the only most important thing is to steal the identity from outside the window.
Notes[]
- The Mercenary rank ladder was introduced in Elite Dangerous: Odyssey.
Videos[]
Gallery[]
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