So I have a combat thrall with a 1handed weapon. I take the weapon and give it a great 2 handed sword
Well, by Crom of course when I go into combat against a boss, my thrall draws the weapon and doesn’t do a dang thing. I run, go back - nope - stands there. Log out and back in - nope. This is stupid
Come on FunCom… is it really to much to ask that the game works? This is a stupid issue. I mean really?
You have a valid complaint but the snarky digs dont help.
This has been an issue for awhile. Try swapping weapons on the thrall mid combat or using a different thrall for awhile.
Do you have any mods installed?
It also happened to me sometimes, but I solved it by uninstalling Armor Mashup and Conan Sexiles mods.
It was one of the two … I can’t tell you which one.
It’s not caused by mods. Happens on vanilla, official servers all the time (unfortunately).
It’s possible certain mods exacerbate the issue, but they’re not the root cause.
Ah, ok. I play SP on PC. In my case it worked.
I have never played online on official servers, but one day I will try.
When this happens to me I take their weapon away until they start punching, then give it back. Doesn’t work 100% of the time, but it works enough.
I still believe this is a myth, caused by this bug, rather than a feature.
I am frustrated by this too. And it may not be related to weapons. As sometime my horse will just sit there and do nothing while an enemy beats me up. Other times he charges into combat immediately.
I think you should be able to set an aggro level on Thralls. Like passive vs. aggressive. Or maybe have thralls that are inherently one or the other.
Aggro thralls will run and attack any enemy that comes near you. Passive will wait for you to be attacked. Atleast it would make more sense of the AI behavior we are seeing.
Thralls are just broken and until Funcom spends some time on them we will just be using one fix after another over and over. I think I play what in heck is that thrall doing now more then Conan lol.
As for the weapon problem I just do not get why after so long with these thralls doing this it has not been fixed its is for sure an issue and its a big issue in the middle of a purge when yu do not have time to run around changing weapons , removing putting back on trying to get them to work but no they just stand there and watch you get your butt kicked.
Yo dog I heard you liked your myths about bugs inside of bugs.
Bugception: I’m sure both of you know this, I’m just jumping off the convo. 
Certain armor types, when combined with certain thrall body types, cause what I call a superimposition glitch. In this state, the thrall’s mesh and its armor mesh have become either entangled or overlapped, rendering the thrall’s intended movements useless. In this state, a thrall will approach an enemy, target the enemy, but never take an offensive posture.
A telltale symptom of this is when they’re on follow, running over flat natural terrain, and they frequently – at regular intervals – stop and pause, then teleport. During this stop and pause, it’s almost as if they’re engaging in conversation. In this state, you must immediately stay out of aggro and strip everything from them, including weapons … replace armor, shift weapon to inventory and run off. If they run behind you properly, this part of the glitch has been worked around.
I don’t have the inside straight dope on this, but over time it has definitely improved. For me, it’s impossible to say if these meshes have been tightened or refined, because I have only recently begun working with the devkit.
Within this very issue comes another clash between a certain body style/frame, and weapon, or even weapon archetype. In other words, there are particular weapons, of particular size and class, that throw this error more frequently than others. Especially when combined with the armor types and body sizes from above.
To wrap it all up, because people commonly select this type and stature of thrall, they see it happen more frequently.
Lol wut?
My Freya is…stupid. She has a sword and a bow. Her stats suggest that she would rather use the sword. Crom of course. But instead she Plinks things with the bow. In melee range.
I know she’s an archer. But even Freya in the wild switches.
Mine however hates melee.
A fix for this would be nice.I just use one handers now so I can swap between them and truncheons.Kinda blows at times (Such is Life)
For fighters that I want to swap weapons on frequently, I’ve had good luck sticking to 1-handed maces. I suspect the fact that the mace and truncheon’s combos are similar helps to keep the AI from bugging out (vs. going 2-hander to trunch), but who knows.
Another work-around that sometimes helps if you don’t have time to do a full reset like @Barnes outlines is to simply remove their helmet. It’s like removing it let’s a fresh breeze whistle thru the empty space between their ears, clearing away the gossamer within.
It sure would!
Hey all 
,
to speak a little of what I understand of the non attacking thrall bug 
,
your thrall can be in 2 different “mode” , let’s call them normal and combat mode ,
normal mode : your thrall has his weapon and shield in inventory and follows you whitout aggroing anything .
then to swap him into the other mode , combat mode , you need to attack an npc or wild creature ( the thrall will go better into combat mode if there are two or more ennemies closeby while attacking or if you get hit by said npc/wild creature and last but not least try to “kick” the npc you want your thrall to attack it works pretty well also )
so when your thrall is in combat mode he draws his weapon out and starts going towards npcs to attack them . here we can have a two case scenario ,
first one : you attacked a single npc your thrall is going to help you but before he can help you, you kill the npc , in this case he will keep his weapon out while follwing you but won’t have the "going towards any npc combat type " anymore , this is when you should never swap a weapon for another one , cause his attacked will be linked to that specific weapon , meaning we won’t fight untill you put back the weapon you took from him , this scenario can also happen with multiple ennemies if you kill the last one as your thrall is comming weapon in hand to help you kill it and you kill it before he can start attacking it
the second scenario is that the trall killed the ennemies and put his weapon back into inventory , that means he went back to normal mode and you can swap weapons without bug .
I would strongly suggest to not swap weapons while the thrall is attacking ( unless you have already broke the AI and want to give him back the weapon you took off of him ) .
I hope this message will help you understand better what happens 
.
Are you playing on official , or do you play on a modded server ? cause personnaly within my 2900 hours of conan exiles on an official pve-C server I only experienced bad behaviours like this when I swaped weapons before understanding why , I don’t swap weapons neither and have a truncheon dedicated thrall ect , and as they may hit sometimes with their fist just after a boss knock them over , I haven’t experienced a non attacking thrall since I stoped swaping weapons a while ago now .
As previously discussed, this is not a mod issue. Many many reported bugs are, this is not one of them.
It does appear that swapping weapons on a thrall has a high chance of causing this bug to appear, so a workaround is to not do that, but it’s certainly a bug all the same.
When it happens to me, I find that climbing the sandward tower and doing a war dance to the east, then shake my fist at the volcano, drop 3 rotten flesh, drink a grey lotus potion and do a swan dive on to a nordheimer… Still doesn’t fix it.
The only thing I find that works for me is a server restart, so I just park my thrall and grab another.
The ai rework can’t come quick enough.
I am sad to say that I have this bug too in my Offline Singleplayer game. In my own play experience, it begins as soon as the Thrall tries to change weapons, with Archers seemingly the worst affected. However other factors also seem to bring it on, with Pets and Horses affected too. On Thralls at least they typically draw their weapon and run up to the enemy NPC, however instead of attacking they just walk or ‘skulk’ around them continuously instead of actually attacking. The bug remains in effect until a server restart.
A variation of this also affects enemy human NPCs, which generally run up to my character as if they are holding their weapon, or an invisible version of it. After standing there in a threatening demeanor for around 10-15 seconds they may begin to attack.