Thralls are an awesome game feature which adds a lot of fun to the game. Especially the new update with thrall leveling and random attribute/perk progession means that you will never have the perfect thrall and therefore always have a reason to try to make an even better thrall. That’s awesome and brings alot of motivation even in the endgame.
But what really bothers me is that thralls are THE superheroes of Conan Exiles while actually the players should be at least on par with them.
I think the idea behind the thralls is that you have a nice supporter on your adventures. While they definitely fulfill that purpose they actually by far over-fulfill that purpose and trivialize even the endgame content and make one wonder if this is still a survival game and if it is how it should be.
While my level 60 character which is completely endgame-equipped feels like the commander of his base and his small fighting group (he and the thrall) it is my thrall who is the real superhero/god-warrior who does 80% of the work.
He can easily solo red dragons and every boss around without a sweat except the arena champion in the warmaker dungeon because of his absolutely insane damage-output and kills Asagarth Humans or Skelletons in the unnamed city with 1-2 hits with his sword of crom at 79 Strength and 7350 life. He could be even better with better RNG and the special Level 20 Perks which he didn’t get.
That is fast 1-2 hits for a melee skelleton where it takes a full heavy combo from me with the Yog’s touch axe (60 damage 40% armor penetration) at 42 Strength to kill them - with 40 strength it takes 1 full heavy combo + 1 hit.
With my Telith’s Sorrow Greatsword at 73 Damage and 26 Armor Penetration it takes more than one combo too at 42 Strength.
So fighter thralls have 10-20 times our hitpoints and 2-3 times our damage output which is ridiculous. Are they meant as a supporter or as the main damagedealer and tank at the same time?
In a pure stats-race in a 1v1 with both you and your thrall fighting each other by hitting one combo after another onto each other without blocking and dodging he could kill you 30-50 or even more times in a row before he would die.
And thats also what I can watch in boss-Fights. You as a player have a lot of downtime in a solo bossfight because you have to avoid hits, block, regenerate stamina and health and so on.
Your thrall on the other hand has almost full uptime in damage dealing and on top of that he does 2-3 times your damage which in the end means he probably takes down a boss 5-10 times faster on his own than you could if you had to fight that boss solo without the thrall. Maybe there are exceptions to that with poison and bleed stacking but on some bosses that won’t work.
So with a good thrall you kill some of the toughest bosses in the game in more or less 1/5th to 1/10th of the time and in the process the thrall only lost like 1k-2k life of his 6000+ HP.
And on top of all that he doesn’t have to repair his armor or weapons and reaches higher armor values than you ever can thanks to awesome agility to armor ratios.
While it is very comfortable to have such an awesome thrall it trivializes the game by making it extremely easy once you equip them with some good gear. It also completely takes away the challenge and survival component from the game.
How would I change thralls to keep them in check?
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Remove the hidden damage multipliers from Fighter Thralls so that they deal exactly the same damage at 50 Strength like a Player does at 50 Strength but don’t give them our +15% damage and +10% Damage perks from strength since they can anyways reach higher strength than players will reach in a realistic build.
Why I mention fighter-damage multipliers: A bearer thrall at same strength does a lot less damage than a fighter thrall. -
After that apply a global -30% Damage mutliplier compared to players because they are always on the boss except if they are stunned. They don’t have to block/dodge away/regenerate stamina or health. I think that way they will deal approximately the same damage in bossfights as a good player character.
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Make sure that there are no hidden damage-multipliers in factions. The faction “trait”/diversity is solved with the different base stats of the different faction thralls.
There are some rumors about hidden multipliers and even youtubers sometimes had weird results when they compared thralls from different factions. They did consider strength and damage with the same weapon. Also someone once mentioned he summoned a 40k health super-thrall via admin panel and that thrall did insane damage which - if that is true - suggests at least that there were some hidden multipliers before the newest patch which might still be there. -
Don’t let thralls use Sword of Crom without a consequence. A player loses all stamina after one hit. At least let them pause for 2-3 additional seconds after each combo if they use this sword. Why should rules that affect the player not at least affect them partially?
What these changes will do is that you feel like your thrall has no superpowers any more compared to you with the exception of a huge healthpool which he needs. In bossfights he will be able to apply about the same effective damage as you dependent on the perks and attributes. Against single weak mobs he will in most cases deal less damage than you because of the -30% damage. But if you are lucky with a 85+ strength thrall he might be able to even keep up with your damage.
Since we reduced their damage considerably fights will take longer which means they will take more damage until the boss is finally dead. But still I would not increase their health pool but rather give them a faster out of combat regeneration once they were not hit for at least 10 seconds.
A player can regen to full health really fast by simply eating some cheap food. A thrall should also be able to at least regenerate to full health in 2 minutes if you give him some food and 10 minutes if you don’t give him any food. I think now a thrall without food regenerates at around 2 HP/Sec which would mean it takes a 6000 HP thrall 50 minutes to refill his HP. That is far too long.
Endgame-equipped Level 20 Thralls will probably still kill many bosses solo but since their damage is alot lower and their health is unchanged they will lose far more life. Against strong bosses you will have to do your best to help them or disengage otherwise they will die and I think this is how it should be. This is Conan’s brutal world and a survival game!
Since fights last longer it now also means that the survival stat from thralls will be important in fights against bleed/poison bosses.
With the new increased out of combat regen your thralls will be back to full health a lot faster than now, especially if you give them food which is a good thing in my opinion.
Do you like the suggested changes? Will it give back some power to player characters and bring back some challenge to the endgame? Or do you prefer the almost allmighty thralls that we have now once they are well equipped in endgame gear?
And sorry for the wall of text
