Beginners Guide to the Assassin's Creed Odyssey Mercenaries system. Learn what bounties are and how to fight bounty hunters to climb the ranks!
Please note, this article does NOT contain any story spoilers from Assassin’s Creed Odyssey!
Ubisoft added a whole new Assassin’s Creed Odyssey Mercenary system with a lot of depth. In this guide I will help you learn everything you need to know about the Bounty Hunters – how a bounty is placed on you, how to get rid of it, how to defeat the mercenaries chasing you and more.
The Mercenary system is a great addition to the game. It creates an additional level of tension and forces you to be even more careful what you do or tell and how you play. On the other side, being able to defeat the bounty hunters chasing you, can make you very rich very quick, as these NPCs drop amazing rewards.
Time to get to work with the details!
What is the Mercenary System in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey allows you to behave in a way you see fit for your character. However, just like in the real life, stealing, killing civilians and innocent citizens, can and is punishable. When someone spots you performing something illegal, they may report you or directly place a bounty for your head. This will trigger the mercenary system and send one or more (based on the type and duration of your actions) bounty hunters after you.
If you keep doing illegal things, more mercenaries will start tracking and chasing you. This is indicated by the graphic in the lower right corner of your HUD.
The bounty hunters are not spawning out of thin air, though. These are real alive characters roaming around in the world. Once a bounty is placed for your head, they will start looking for you. At some point they will also start tracking you.
The mercenaries all have their own lives and schedule. They are not always specifically looking for you. Once you discover a mercenary, you will be able to track their movement and inspect their background, including strong and weak sides. I will explain this more in-depth later in the guide.
Most mercenaries are created with a random set of perks and background story, some are part of missions. Beware, fighting a mercenary 2 or more levels higher than you, can be very deadly. Not only will some of your abilities be less effective, but you can be one-shotted too.
How to Remove your Bounty in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey
Once a bounty is placed for your head, there are several ways to remove it – wait and stay out of trouble, pay it off one sponsor at a time or all at once, kill the sponsor or kill the mercenary hunting you.
The first and most annoying as well as slowest one is to simply wait – stay out of trouble and the bounty will simply expire on its own. This doesn’t happen quick enough, though. It’s even less recommended if you are being hunted by more than one mercenary.
If you open the world map, you will see red icons marking locations of the sponsor or sponsors who offered the drachmae for your head. These NPCs are usually located in guarded areas, in most cases nearby the same place where you did something illegal to provoke them to place the bounty on you. You can click on each one of them and pay the required sum to remove the bounty.
If paying the price to remove the bounty is not to your liking, you can kill the sponsor. If your bounty meter is too high, the price might be too steep for you to be able to pay it. This is especially true for the first few hours of your adventure if you keep upgrading your gear often. Later on the drachmae will start piling uo, but it is ultimately up to you if you want to spend money on avoiding a fight or going for it and reaping benefits in the form of loot and rewards.
The last option to remove a bounty is to kill the mercenary or mercenaries that are looking for you. In most cases this is what I would recommend you to do. Killing a mercenary can be hard and in some cases even near-impossible, based on your current level and theirs or the number of mercenaries you have on your tail. Defeating them is the topic of the next paragraph with some tips and tricks you can use to make it quick and easy. Let me just mention quickly that killing mercenaries does not solve your problem completely. The rewards they drop are very good indeed, but these characters will simply be replaced by new ones later.
Mercenary System Tiers and Rewards
The mercenaries are divided into nine tiers. You start your way off from Tier 9 and by killing each one you encounter you climb the ranks. Each rank presents a higher difficulty as the NPCs will become stronger, higher levels and better trained. Your ultimate goal is to climb all the way up to Tier 1.
Here is a quick overview of what benefits each Mercenary Tier brings you (updated for 1.0.6):
- Tier 9 – This is where start.
- Tier 8 – Blacksmiths reduce their prices by 50% (up from 20%).
- Tier 7 – War Contracts and Bounties provide 20% more rewards.
- Tier 6 – Blacksmiths also reduce the price on their engraving services by 50% (up from 20%).
- Tier 5 – Fearful sponsors remove their bounties for 20% less.
- Tier 4 – Reduces ship upgrades by 50% (up from 20%).
- Tier 3 – Blacksmiths also reduce the price on their upgrading services by 50% (up from 30%).
- Tier 2 – Increased luck by 10% to find greater items as you explore the world.
- Tier 1 – The highest mercenary tier in the game.
- Tier S1 – (added with Update 1.1.2) War Contracts and Bounties provide 35% more XP, Drachmae and Crafting Materials.
- Tier S2 – (added with Update 1.1.2) Hephaistos reduces the price of his teaching by 20%.
Using Ikaros(your bird) is a great way to spot Mercenaries in the world. Once you discover one, he or she gets listed with all of their perks and biography in the Mercenary System menu screen. Here (image above) you can explore their strong sides and weaknesses. Based on these you can adapt your build and plan accordingly on how to take them down.
Tips on How to Defeat Mercenaries in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey
When you inspect a Mercenary, you can see their weak and strong sides on the left side of the screen. If you want to deal with the NPC right away, you can track their movements by pressing the “Track” button, which is located right below the Biography and Loot section.
A few quick tips on how to successfully fight and defeat Mercenaries in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey:
- Research the mercenary you are about to fight with. Check what they are strong against and what weak spots you can exploit to your advantage.
- Avoid fighting mercenaries inside soldier camps or forts. The soldiers will most likely light up a brazier and call for reinforcements, making the fight not only much longer, but in many cases incredibly hard for you.
- Don’t fight mercenaries that are 2 levels above your current level.
- Spartan Kick is your best ally when facing tough enemies. Be careful, however, the knock-back is not applied if the enemy is 2 or more levels higher than you.
- Always have your gear and weapons upgraded and, if possible – engraved, when you are fighting mercenaries. This is especially important on the higher difficulty tiers of the game.
- If the mercenary comes with a pet, take it out first, then focus on the master.
- If you have developed yourself in the Hunter skill tree, hitting them from great distance will allow you to slowly take their HP away without them actually spotting you. It’s a tricky and dangerous tactic, though. Slow too.
- Parry is your best friend. Especially on lower levels!
- Dodging in the right moment slows time and allows you to perform something neat on the mercenary, like a skill combo or just series of fast and well placed hits.
Mercenaries are arguably one of the best sources for high quality loot. If you are careful enough when near the end of the fight with them, you can deal a non-lethal attacks (Kick or Stun) and attempt to recruit them instead of killing them. This will allow you to have an additional Lieutenant for your Ship crew.
This is all I have for you for now on the topic of the Assassin’s Creed Odyssey Mercenary system. I will be updating this guide when Ubisoft tweaks the system or adds new features to it with future game updates.
For all things Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, visit the NEWS and GUIDES sections here on VULKK.com!
If you feel eager to learn some more about Assassin’s Creed Odyssey’s features, why not check out these other Beginner friendly guides I have for you:
- Assassin’s Creed Odyssey Tips for Beginners
- Assassin’s Creed Odyssey Abilities and Combat Guide
- Guided vs Exploration Mode in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey
- Assassin’s Creed Odyssey Ship and Crew Guide
