Greetings Exiles,
Conan Exiles veteran here and I want to try help you by giving solid advice on how to combat (or at least live with) the issue of griefing plaguing most of the PVE and PVE-c servers.
As I scroll through most of these forums related to the subject I see a lot of people with legitimate complaints about the issues but no plausible solutions being promoted to address them. From what I understand, Funcom’s hands are tied with the issue at the moment so it will be up to us players to come up with innovative and creative means for official servers to combat the problem until moderation and built in solutions become available.
I will attempt to make this guide as comprehensive as possible and will mostly be covering PVE-c but in the likely instance I miss anything then please do not hesitate to add it to this forum. Together I am sure we can try and make the game as enjoyable as possible.
Part 1: Know what you are getting Into
Before you even join an official PVE or PVE-c server you need to understand that the possibility of getting grieved exists. Knowing this first we can begin to plan accordingly. Your ultimate goal should be working toward being in a position to prevent yourself from getting grieved, (or at least be able to live with it and still be able to function).
Be courteous and respectful, don’t go in killing all other players in sight and spitting on their corpses until you know for a fact you can’t be personally retaliated against. Stay out of the chat as much as possible, keep communication to a minimum but always observe what is being said so that you can identify potentially troublesome individuals and clans and act accordingly. Upsetting the wrong person has the potential to ruin your experience on a server fairly early in the game.
Keep your true intentions to yourself and try to be friendly everyone when you first start. ( At least on the surface)
Part 2: Building
Your ultimate goal should be to build a big base that fits all of your needs and for lack of a better word is (Grief-Proof) This is going to be the most important part of this guide because most of the grieving related issues always revolves around building.
Don’t make any plans on settling permanently in one area right at the beginning. Be ready to move. Keep your base small yet dependable from the purge utilizing only the bare minimum of structures and stations. Once you level up and start to unlock some of your more complex structures you can begin to start to scout a more permanent foundation to build upon.
Always be mindful of where you build in the beginning. Do not block important creature spawns, resources, caves, or natural paths. This can easily upset people.
Try to keep things nice and tidy. Nobody likes strolling through a server that looks like a hillbilly trailer park. If you decide to move then demolish your old structures and take your thralls with you.
One of the best places you can possibly build is very close to the obelisks if not right next to them. Spread out your territory enough to allow for placement of all your bigger items and leave room for the future: Animal Pens, Shrines, Map Room (A MUST) etc. but DO NOT block off the obelisk. (Leave it open for travel and many would appreciate if you left your map room open to the public as well) If you build your base right on the edge of the no build zone and you have a map room in your base and a map room in other parts of the map then people can grief you all day by building walls around you and it will not matter in the slightest bit. (in fact they run the risk of upsetting the entire server because walling your base in will also mean walling the obelisk in as well) You do not necessarily have to build next the obelisk. You can build further away from it and make a path leading directly to it. (this may be a better option for more populated servers) If you become walled off the only real thing that will be affected is your ability to bring unconscious thralls in your base and I do not recommend putting your thrall wheels in your main base for this reason alone which I will touch on later.
In most servers other players place public map rooms next to the obelisks anyway so you can definitely use this to your advantage. NEVER put yourself into a position to be walled off by another player. Survey the map, and build accordingly. Its a big world out there and sometimes you may find yourself not necessarily getting to build where you want to but it is a small price to pay to keep yourself from getting grieved from the random player you just killed during PVP hours on PVE-c.
Maintain multiple thrall wheels right on the edge of the no build zones outside the cities. Same principal as your base placement. This will also cut down on travel distance and will guarantee you have a way to obtain thralls. When thralls are finished being broken in, you can simply put them in your inventory and bring them back to your base.
Part 3: A Place to rest your Bones
Be Mindful that even if you are sleeping inside your supposedly secure base other players can still kill you during PVP hours. I have seen players throw Gas Orbs at bases, use poison arrows, explosives, ect. to kill logged of players through the walls of their base in an attempt to grief them and steal the contents of their body. The simplest and easiest solution to this is to keep a box next to where you sleep and dump everything you have in. (Sleep Naked!)
Another solution is to construct a log off room. Instead of using tradition walls use foundations as your walls. and make it tall enough and thick enough to thwart other players attempts at killing you while you sleep.
Part 4: Dealing with the Rif-Raf
Every server is going to have trolls, grievers, etc. and not much can really be done about it right now. We just have to accept it as part of the game at this point and learn to play around it. If the “Grieving Noob” is going around blocking off key structures, resources, etc. the best thing you can possibly do on PVE-c is always kill on sight and IGNORE them. Do not engage chat with them. The only interaction you should have with them is your spear piercing their head. It’s as simple as that. Most of the time they will get bored and quit.
I am sure there is a lot of things i have not covered but will continue to add things as come along. As said before please feel free to contribute. This can be an evolving guide.
Keep on surviving exiles.