I have to tell you, though, that my experience wasn't a resounding success...
In fact, if I were to base my assessment on first impressions, Turbine would've received an F- for a grade. Fortunately for them, I was willing to give my hireling a second chance.
You see, shortly after hiring himself a Cleric, I took Trinarias into the Sunken Sewer to finally complete the quest on Elite. Mind you, this is a Level 2 quest on Normal, and both Trin and his hireling Cleric were Level 6.
Now, before I get ahead of myself, I did take the time to visit the DDO Compendium to review the personality descriptions for the available hired help. And, I thought I'd made myself a suitable choice in the selection of miss Kendra Estleton. After all, she isn't what I would consider to be a battle-Cleric, but rather one who's more interested in keeping her benefactor alive. So, after speaking with the hireling vendor (aka "pimp"), Trin made his selection and headed off to see how his new employee would work out.
Not thirty seconds after she'd been summoned, Trin found himself picking up her soul stone and heading for the nearest resurrection shrine.
As it turned out, as soon as she'd been summoned, she locked onto a group of three Kobolds and headed after them. In fact, it was all I could do to have Trin join the fracas in hopes of salvaging the situation. Not only had Kendra gotten herself killed, but Trin barely survived the encounter himself.
It seems to me that, when a hireling is first summoned, their stance *ought* to be set to "Be Passive", rather than defaulting to a "Be Active" state that instigates an unexpected encounter.
By the way, Trin never did make it to the resurrection shrine. He was himself killed by a pair of angry glass spiders.
So, the first impression was that it had been a complete waste of the 2,060 gold pieces Trin had paid for Kendra's services.
But, there was still time left on Kendra's contract, and Trin was determined to get his money's worth out of her. So, Trin headed off to House Deneith, and entered the Depths series of quests. As is customary, Trin started with the Depths of Despair, entering through the sewer grate just north of the Hammersmith's Inn.
To avoid any unnecessary death and/or destruction, Trin entered the quest on Normal (a Level 4 quest). And, shortly after entering, Kendra was once again summoned. Of course, it didn't take long for the duo to encounter an Earth Elemental, which caused Kendra to immediately jump into action.
Mind you, she's supposed to be primarily a healer, based on the information in her dossier that the Compendium had presented. But, she was certainly swinging for the fences with her mace when that elemental came bounding down the tunnel at them. Fortunately, her initial encounter in this quest didn't end the same way it had in the Sunken Sewer.
But, I did notice that she didn't spend the time healing herself or Trin that I thought she should. She did, in fact, nearly meet with another horrible end, save for the fact that Trin was also beating on the same elemental with his Thundering Maul of Righteousness. I also noticed that miss Kendra also allowed Trin's health to fall dangerously low before she began to heal him.
What was the point of hiring a Cleric if it wasn't going to heal its employer?
Well, she did a little better as the pair worked their way through the tunnels, searching for the Troglodyte supposedly responsible for the condition of the sewers.
Actually, miss Kendra did surprisingly well when she and Trin encountered the caged Minotaur. Instead of barreling directly toward a bad ending, she held back a bit and let Trin do most of the work, and she kept him on his feet.
That isn't to say that she healed Trin back to full health, but that she didn't let him die. He still had to repair the remaining damage himself.
And, perhaps that was part of the problem... Trinarias is a Warforged; Clerics generally prefer to heal fleshies, as their healing isn't as effective on the forgies. Maybe Trin should've hired a Wizard instead.
But Kendra did finally do her part to keep Trin going, and they finished the quest with time to spare. So, Trin escorted her back to the rest shrine and directed her to use it, to replenish her mana, before they entered the second quest in the chain, the Depths of Darkness.
Now, because the Depths series allows adventurers to enter the next quest in the chain without returning to a public space in between, Kendra followed Trin right on in to the next quest without having to be re-summoned. A nice touch, I think, as it allows the hireling to maintain the same "posture" in the transition from one quest to the next. And, by "posture", I mean whether the player has chosen to set the hireling to being active or passive.
Both Trin and Kendra did very well in the Depths of Darkness, too. Though, I'm glad Trin didn't have to pay Kendra's repair bills. It seems that miss Kendra didn't care that she was bludgeoning the slimes and oozes with her primary mace. In fact, she didn't seem to have a Muckbane club, as she never switched to another weapon the entire time.
The final encounter was interesting, though, as Kendra demonstrated an amazing amount of initiative, as witnessed by this screenshot...
While Trin was fighting several Hobgoblins on the floor, he was being ranged by a Hobgoblin Cleric from the mezzanine above. Kendra decided it would be in the best interests of Trin's health if she took care of the problem herself. And, took care of the problem she did. As you can see, she even decided to climb the ladder to reach the problem Cleric on her own. There was no direction to do so on my part; it was clearly a matter of her own initiative.
I was curious, though... the time on Kendra's contract had long since expired, but she remained with Trin throughout the quest. I decided that I had to see whether she would remain with Trin into the next quest in the chain despite the fact that her obligation had ended. So, I had Trin step through the next manhole, into the Depths of Discord. And, sure enough, Kendra came right along with him.
I thought that was very interesting. Technically, this was a new quest, and her contract had expired some twenty minutes prior. So, I had no expectation that she would continue through, but instead that I'd have to take Trin back to the pimp for another hour's time. But, she surprised me, and continued beyond her obligation.
Unfortunately, I had to log to make dinner for the wife, so I had to let Kendra return to her pimp, but it had been an interesting experience to that point.
After dinner, I joined Sephrena (Bashal), Plagiarist (Tanision) and Bastim (Robinous) for a little turn through Splinterskull Fortress. Of course, I had to bring a hireling, as the preview event was still going on. I decided, this time, to bring a tank along instead. After a brief chat with the hireling pimp, I decided to add Kastinalia Windblossom to our group.
All-in-all, I think Kastinalia was a better value than Kendra was. But, I think that was the result of a completely different set of expectations. After all, you expect a Fighter to jump into the fight and swing away. You don't expect them to stand back and heal everyone. And, in accordance with such expectations, it wasn't entirely surprising that Kastinalia bought the farm when she took off and engaged three Hobgoblins at the same time, while the rest of us were all engaged on a single Hobgoblin Cleric. Especially with the quest set on Elite.
I did find, through trial-and-error, and with quite a bit of help from the others, that the first shrine in the Splinterskull Fortress is unusable by the hirelings. It must be some kind of pathing issue, as the room in which the shrine is situated is rather cramped. Although you could issue the instruction to the hireling to use the rest shrine, and they would acknowledge your orders, they simply could not comply. We did discover that they could use the more spacious second shrine without problems, so it seems there's something that requires a bug report for the developers to work on.
Eventually, the fatigue of a long work day was too much for Sephrena to continue with us, so she (he) logged out for the evening, leaving just Plagiarist, Bastim and myself. This was the perfect opportunity for us to fill the three remaining slots in the party with hirelings.
Since Kastinalia's contract had expired, I decided to try one of the battle-Clerics, Plagiarist hired himself a Fighter, and Bastim hired himself a Sorcerer. Here's the group we ended up with...
As you may or may not be able to see, Trin had hired Arias Oreth, Plagiarist had hired Ormol Soggybottom, and Bastim had hired Azala Fireshaper.
I think that, considering that half our party wasn't able to use any form of human intelligence to guide their actions, we did pretty well. We made it through the first five chapters of the Splinterskull chain, and had quested well beyond the duration of all three hireling's contracts, and could have continued had the human players not needed some rest.
In fact, at one point, Plagiarist had used his Bardic abilities to charm a number of the Hobgoblins, too. It seemed to be a contest as to how many NPCs our party could control. But it was all very amusing, too.
I think the folks at Turbine have found a way to really improve the way players interact with the game. Surely it's still a social platform. But, for those who can't find a full group for what they want to run, or for those who simply want a little insurance while they attempt to solo their favorite quests, hirelings seem to be a nice complement to the game's other features.
And, if this works out as well as it promises to, Turbine may be well on their way to adding persistent familiars to the game, too.
For those who missed last night's preview event, rest assured that Turbine has already offered a second event for tomorrow (Friday) night.
This should be fun!
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