When should I get a second minion? (in General)

Robynne -- Score / PR / MPR: 1,572,016 / 739,447 / 532,847

I want to know when the best time to get her a little brother would be. An enchanter to give her a little more boost or a meat shield, at least. Not sure what I'll train him to do just yet, so suggest away...

I'll be back in 8 or so hours to check on this. It's bedtime. ^_^

Thanks in advance for the advice!

I prefer to wait as long as possible in order to get a large minion. The less diluted your main minion is, the better. 1 huge tank always wipes the floor with 2 smaller ones, likewise to mages! I could be wrong though, I think I waited to about 1.2m mpr, then got a second and third minion.

How much did it cost for each of your minions at that level?

Wait at least until you've breached 1mil mpr. Have 20 mil ready. Usually, people add minion at the end of their ncb for an extra boost.

I agree with these sentiments. Wait as long as you economically can.
At some point it's going to get so expensive you'll just look at the price and cry. Try to do it before then.

I think it's painful to wait that long ;x. But it's good advice. I would really consider hiring around 1mil - 1.5mil MPR.

The question is, are you struggling where you are currently at?
If so, then another minion might put you over the hump.

You are playing a Tank, so exactly how much do you wish to invest into your character/weapons?

I added my second minion about 1-2 weeks before my NCB expired so I could get some xp on him to make him decent. And it cost me about 25 mil or so. Now if I add another minion it will cost me about 43 mil.

The major difference between us is that you are using a Mage Seeker (which didn't come out until I had already heavily invested into an elb), and I just used Seekers to get past mages. So you might fare much better chance as a solo minion than I did. I needed the Mage meat shield with the Elb and no seekers.

In the end, it's all really personal preference. I don't want to add a minion, unless my fight list takes a major hit and gear management can't overcome it.

I'm not really having a great deal of trouble, but I'm being farmed ridiculously often.. I thought if I had a meat shield out in front, giving me a little extra boost that these farmers will lose a bit more often.

You could always try a familiar tattoo. I changed from a non-familiar tattoo to a base familiar tat just to see what happened, and I added a number of people to my list, just because of the extra minion it gave. It didn't actually do any damage to anyone for a long time, but it didn't need to. I did this as a mage, however, so your ToA is probably still better, I don't know.

I recommend against adding minions too early on. As a growth character, you need to use a setup that uses minimal set of equipment and can function with an RoE. That is the best way to get to a respectable level of MPR where you can leapfrog into the top tier. More minion = more equipment to add, which leads to more PR and less reward. The benefit of a concentrated single tank also cannot be ignored.

Assuming you have enough resources, minion hiring is one of the best way to get to 6/20 right as your ncb/nub run out. If you are stuck at 1.8mil mpr, that extra 400k will take you months and the top players will grow at close to the same rate as you do. There really should be no other reason to hire minion. Look at it this way, if you can buy a 1.5mil char for a 5-10 million while hiring a minion takes 15-25mil, why would you bother?

When should I get a second minion?

Never.

Heheeh. Some valid points here. Thanks for the info.