TRADESMAN Deal to Dealer Mercenaries and Hires
Four fighters, one hauler, two scrolls each. Leadership opens the stall. Reputation opens the legendaries.
Mercenaries are the HP bar of TRADESMAN: Deal to Dealer. The merchant shouts; the hires bleed. This hub is the roster manual. Rankings live on the mercenary tier list. Example lanes live on squad builds. Beasts and haulers live on animals. Read all three before you spend a legendary scroll on a name you liked in a tavern.
Party rules that 1.0 actually enforces
- Cap is four mercenaries + one transport.
- Levels come from rarity-matched scrolls, not from road mileage alone. After the 2024 combat pass, mercs also gain a personal XP bar with ten random pips.
- Each hire can hold two scrolls if they are not the same effect. Locks mean no.
- Identical epic copies are limited so the studio can buff without deleting your fantasy. Old saves keep extras until you touch the party.
- Health: units flee at 0, return after battle around 25 percent HP (about 40 percent with a recovery talent).
- If everyone flees, cargo chunks vanish from each stack — combat and trading.
Leadership is the talent that lets rare and legendary people take your money. Without it you are shopping in peasant world. Details: talents.
Where humans come from
Grampstead — pitchfork peasants (~18 coins in old writeups), chicken peasants, later a legendary on the pillar (Duncan Sanders). Tutorial stall. Sack early.
Watchposts / guard camps — guards, then soldiers. Military demand towns. Often a combat book at reputation cap.
Mill and tavern towns — woodcutters, drunks, throwers. Woodcutters forget planks and become taxi quests. Quests.
Holy / cemetery belt — paladins, peacemakers, inquisitors, acolytes. Bring a cleanse shout for moles.
Wild, rebel, miner, snow towns — barbarians, wanderers, named diggers, White Horror after the lantern mole. These are 10,000-standing or boss-gated shopping trips — reputation.
English names bounce between official Steam strings and community nicknames. Match on role (tank, thrower, holy, beast) and rarity colour, not on a translated joke.
How to hire without going broke
Talk to the NPC, pay the coin price, check the talent gate. If the prompt is grey, you need Leadership or a beast node. If the prompt is a reputation whisper, look at the pillar. Do not sack your only sponge to satisfy a hand-in quest unless the quest giver is handing you a better sponge.
Feed them. Cooking is a talent tree and a bag of meals. Hungry legendaries still flee. Extra food slots from standing rewards exist for a reason.
Scrolls and pips
Buy scrolls that match the border colour of the hire. Giving a common scroll to a legendary is how you role-play poverty. Two-scroll rules ban twins and near-twins. Hunter (beasts) scrolls were nerfed — do not build a wolf-only identity around old video math.
Reroll a merc’s random talent with upgrade points or coins (toggle in the panel). That is cheaper than sacking a nearly-good epic after the duplicate cap.
Related loops
Carts and overnight watches: carts. First-day peasants: Getting Started. Patch changes to party rules: Version 1.0 and updates. Official Discord if a name does not match your language pack: links.
Hire like you trade. One good unit, then a second, then a hauler that is not named Horse. A full tavern of C-tier comedy sprites is how the 1.0 cargo rule finds you.
Frequently Asked Questions
Quick answers to the most common merchant questions.
How many mercenaries can I take?
Four plus one transport. There is no extra slot DLC besides cosmetics such as the Hats pack.
Why is a hire locked?
Leadership, animal talents, or town reputation. Check talents and the local pillar.
Do mercenaries persist if I flee?
They come back with partial HP. You lose cargo chunks, not the roster — unless you sack them yourself.
Is there multiplayer hiring?
No. Single-player only.