Mercenaries are powerful ships that can be collected by defeating mercenary bosses. Every non-legendary ship card in the game has a mercenary variant that's slightly stronger than the original ship. Mercenaries also always come with an additional, random upgrade.

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The mercenary variant of a specific ship card can be obtained by defeating the mercenary boss based on the same ship. At higher difficulty levels, the odds of winning a copy of a mercenary will increase.
Through the mercenaries screen, which shows your collection of mercenary cards, players can also hire additional mercenaries by spending mercenary tokens. These tokens are primarily gained from defeating mercenary bosses, but can also be gained from regular duels by defeating any mercenary card that the opponent controls.
For more information about droprates and the amounts of tokens gained, check the droprates article.

Mercenaries can also be found occasionally in the 'offers' section of the trader screen.

A mercenary card is always based on an existing core ship card, but will be more powerful. A mercenary could gain more attack or defense, or could have stronger abilities, or could have a lowered card or activation cost.
On top of these boosted stats or abilities, mercenaries always come with a random upgrade, which can boost stats or abilities further, or even add abilities. These upgrades can be changed in the mercenaries screen.

The card pages of ships will list their mercenary variant without any upgrade.

Below is a list of upgrades that mercenaries can have. The presence of stats or abilities on the original mercenary card can prevent certain upgrades from appearing. The presence of an upgrade on a mercenary is shown by a prefix that gets added to the name of the mercenary (shown in bold in the list below).

• the swift : fast. Can't appear on cards with immobile or fast.
• the thrifty : lowered card cost
• the shielded : additional shields
• the armoured : additional resistance
• the deadly : increased attack
• the strong : increased defense
• the besieger : immobile, siege and a bonus to defense (based on original attack value). Can't appear on cards with immobile or attack passives, or no attack value.
• the ethereal : ethereal and a bonus to defense. Can't appear on cards with ethereal.
• the striker : additional retaliate
• the phoenix : restore. Can't appear on cards that already have restore.
• the unblockable : unblockable. Can't appear on cards with immobile or other attack passives.
• the cerberus : cerberus and lowered attack value. Can't appear on cards with immobile or other attack passives.
• the hydra : hydra and lowered attack value. Can't appear on cards with immobile or other attack passives.
• the unpredictable : randomstrike and lowered attack value. Can't appear on cards with immobile or other attack passives.
• the repeater : multistrike and lowered attack value. Can't appear on cards with immobile.
• the powerful : overpower and increased attack. Can't appear on cards with immobile, overpower or unblockable.
• the unwavering : unwavering and increased defense. Can't appear on cards with unwavering.
• the mitigator : mitigation. Can't appear on cards with mitigation.
• the efficient : lowered activation cost. Can only appear on cards with an acti cost of more than zero.
• the artificer : 50% of total card cost (rounded down) becomes random. Can only appear non-artifact single-color cards with minimum 2 cost.
• the burning : the major race of the card becomes human. Also grants strong VS against human.
• the dark one : the major race of the card becomes ca'anian. Also grants strong VS against ca'anian.
• the crystalline : the major race of the card becomes xyloxi. Also grants strong VS against xyloxi.
• the fused one : the major race of the card becomes caes'cix. Also grants strong VS against caes'cix.
• the heavy : the major race of the card becomes rivi'i. Also grants strong VS against rivi'i.
• the chaotic : the major race of the card becomes mith'ri'aeil. Also grants strong VS against mith'ri'aeil.
• the technical : the major race of the card becomes technomancer. Also grants strong VS against technomancer.
• the rifted : the major race of the card becomes rift demon. Also grants strong VS against rift demon.
• the neutral : card becomes artifact. Can't appear on artifact or dual color cards.
• the human : the minor race of the card becomes human and half the card cost is turned into this type as well. Also grants racial resist against this race.
• the ca'anian : the minor race of the card becomes ca'anian and half the card cost is turned into this type as well. Also grants racial resist against this race.
• the xyloxi : the minor race of the card becomes xyloxi and half the card cost is turned into this type as well. Also grants racial resist against this race.
• the caes'cix : the minor race of the card becomes caes'cix and half the card cost is turned into this type as well. Also grants racial resist against this race.
• the rivi'i : the minor race of the card becomes rivi'i and half the card cost is turned into this type as well. Also grants racial resist against this race.
• the mith'ri'aeil : the minor race of the card becomes mith'ri'aeil and half the card cost is turned into this type as well. Also grants racial resist against this race.
• the technomancer : the minor race of the card becomes technomancer and half the card cost is turned into this type as well. Also grants racial resist against this race.
• the rift demon : the minor race of the card becomes rift demon and half the card cost is turned into this type as well. Also grants racial resist against this race.
• the guardian : grants an aura that increases base resistance. Can't appear on cards that already have an aura ability.
• the provoker : grants an aura that increases base retaliation. Can't appear on cards that already have an aura ability.
• the reinforcer : grants an aura that grants base mitigation. Can't appear on cards that already have an aura ability.