Vespera Mercenary Expeditions
One hire in the fight. Everyone else should be walking a route before you close the laptop.
Expeditions are how Vespera’s bench earns hides, ores, crystals, and time while you climb. The mercenaries hub covers who fights beside you. This page is the road. If the combat slot is full and the rest of the roster is standing in town, you are wasting the same 24-hour cap that offline combat tries to give you. Patch 0.11.3 added a Mercenaries Codex and an option to continue Standing Orders after a failed expedition. Use both. A failed walk should not park a hire until you log back in.
This is still a single-player idle RPG. Expeditions are NPC jobs. Other humans show up on faction world bosses, not on the War Table.
The War Table is the map
The Mercenary War Table is where routes live. A 1.0 screenshot of the roster includes Bran Shieldbearer on tank hold, Mira Field Healer, Kael Axehand as a striker, Syl Green Warden on support, Nox Shade Scout, and Orin Gemwright as a caster. Your table may differ as you hire. The rule does not: the combat slot gets the talent buttons; the bench gets a destination.
Example Eastern Marches routing from that same client view sends people to Roadside posts, Tower Recon, or Starless Spire contracts for Vesper Crystals and Aether. Pick the shortest route you can finish inside the window you actually have. An overnight 24-hour cap can take a longer contract. A lunch break cannot.
Start the expedition before you start a Tower reclaim. Offline settlement in later 0.15.x patches is better about not dropping the ball, but the habit still saves you when a calculation is slow. See Patch 0.15.
Standing Orders after a wipe
Expeditions fail. That is why Standing Orders exist. Turn on the option to continue after a failed run so the hire does not sit in town waiting for a click. Then read the Codex so you know which follower actually died on the road versus which one is waiting on a story beat.
Story quests on mercenaries are not cosmetics. They exist so the hire is more than a stat stick. Finish a story when it pops, then send them out again. Do not recruit the whole tavern on day one — getting started still needs gold for food.
Caravans are presentation, not a second economy
Patch 0.15.1 made newly dispatched Caravans use your selected character presentation, subclass portrait, and any purchased Avatar Pack across road, raid, and defender views. Existing journeys keep a safe portrait fallback. That is a cosmetics and identity pass. It is not a reason to stop gathering or to skip the forge.
Caravans ride alongside expeditions. They do not replace the War Table. If a portrait looks wrong on an old journey, dispatch a new one after 0.15.1 rather than assuming the save is broken. Patch 1.0 sat on those loading and presentation fixes.
What the bench should bring back
Match the route to the hole in your bags:
- Empty leather chain → hunt-adjacent or hide routes, then craft on gathering.
- Empty Aether or Vesper Crystals → Starless Spire contracts if the table offers them.
- Empty food → you have the wrong problem. Cook. Do not send a mercenary to solve a kitchen.
- Tower deaths → you need the combat slot, not a longer walk. Swap the fighter using the mercenaries hub advice for your class.
Gear sockets stay on you. Mercenaries do not eat Attunement gems. Keep gear and gems focused on the player character. Spend the ten small mercenary talent buttons on the hire who actually enters dungeons and Tower floors.
Overnight checklist
- Combat slot filled with a kit that auto-casts without you.
- Every other hire on a route that finishes inside 24 hours.
- Standing Orders on so a failure does not freeze the bench.
- Academy study running — see Magic Academy.
- One of Tower, Spire, or Frontier owns the player’s offline job. Not all three.
- War Chest leftovers only after food exists. Titans are on a timer; expeditions are not a raid.
If you return to a full combat log and an empty bench, the night was half wasted. The review talks about how many systems Vespera stacks. Expeditions are the one that keeps paying when you refuse to stare at the screen.
Official notes: Steam news, Discord on links. Client tooltips win when they disagree with this unofficial page.
Frequently Asked Questions
Quick answers players search after the Vespera 1.0 launch.
Should every mercenary go on an expedition?
Everyone except the combat slot. Parked hires waste the idle cap. Start routes before a long offline window.
What are Standing Orders?
A 0.11.3 option to keep expeditions going after a failure so the bench does not wait for a click. Turn it on.
Do Caravans replace expeditions?
No. 0.15.1 made new Caravans use your subclass portrait and Avatar Pack. They ride beside the War Table, they do not replace it.
Which hire gets talent points?
The combat slot. The bench walks. Class pairing lives on the mercenaries hub.