since I take a companion with me, the game feels like switched to easy mode.
When I was running solo and wanted to do a dungeon or kill a special world boss, I had to prepare myself. Some NPCs required to stay at range for some others I had to learn their attack patterns. Most were unique and a challenge.
Now I just watch my companion kill everything that dares to cross me. That way the game became somehow boring. I even did run naked and without a weapon. With a bit dodging, it was still easy.
Sure, the companion AI is dumb but making them almost gods to compensate this is the wrong approach.
There must be a better way to make companions useful.
Does the update address the damage and health of companions? All I know is that we will get additional option to change their behavior so they will become even more efficient and the game more easier.
Since the topic is marked as PvE, here you go. Yes, for low damage and health, get a thrall from noob river and give it an iron weapon. Or simply get a pet with you instead. It is a sandbox, you can have it easy or hard, it is all in your hands.
Pick a not so strong thrall (medium live, medium damage)
Because it is your choice you can not blame the game and call for a change, because you don’t like the game the way you self play it.
You are able to play the game in a other way, but for the player which are like the thralls like the are now a nerf would change their game in a way they are not able to compensate.
Take a dancer with you instead of a fighter. Their low damage multiplier means that even with high strength they do not do much damage. Thus in a boss fight the dancer may be able to tank the boss, if equipped with good armor, but you(!) will have to provide the damage to take the boss down.
Thralls are just another weapon. “You” includes your character and the thrall. If you want a more difficult experience, you could use inferior choices of: your weapon, your armor, your thrall tier/faction, your thralls weapon/armor. The issue isn’t really if it’s your character or the thrall doing the killing but whether the two together make the game trivial which comes down to how long does it take to complete. Your typical AAA title can be completed in anywhere between 8-20 hours depending on the difficulty you set it at, so with thralls set where they are and the relative player character power set at the various difficulty settings, I would imagine it still takes longer than 20 hours to remove the bracelet, so from that perspective for PVE, the game is fine.
Thralls were recently nerfed however, and my suspicion is it was done for PVP purposes. That has a different set of constraints since thralls can guard your base in your absence when not playing. If there were any nerf/buff changes to thrall power again, I’d much rather the thrall damage server button be fixed so that servers can set thrall power to their desired environment, leaving the conflict between PVP and PVE out of the decision.
In a way you are right, sometimes thralls make it very easy, but not boring, not at all. I really like the idea that in 30 min i will farm 4 to 5 skeleton keys and in 1 hour i will make a double round inside the unnamed city. That means that i have at least 1 and a half hour for all the other things. So from a point of view you are right, but i am right too . So if you really need some more excitement you can always try barbarick mode (you’ll love it), or join a pvp server and play solo (good luck on that). I play solo barbarick mode from times to times and I really love it. Still playing solo is not so nice. I wish there was an official server in barbarick mode for the hardcore players. If you haven’t try yet, try it. But please, never take a thrall lower than lvl 17 in Arena Champion, if you think it is a challenging fight in normal mode, in barbarick mode is madness .
So players should purposely miss out on hunting Volcano Thralls (at least somewhat challenging until you get pretty much any fighter follower). And, consequently, wiht healing arrows, i can run Warmakers with a Set City Fighter II leveled at 12, and get thru it. So that doesn’t work. Maybe if i grab a Dafari Dancer I.
suggesting players not get the full experience of all thralls means those same players should get a rebate of the % they have to purposely role play and avoid.
Sure, will I get a rebate for all the nerfs that I had to deal with because of one or another reason? That player has a bunch of options to tailor their experience the way they deem fit, what he suggests is reducing all those options to one (nerfed thralls) and mind you this is a PvE topic, not a PvP one. If he came and asked for buffed player stats to be on par with thralls, I would say, sure we can talk about it but all some people want are nerfs which they are later on complaining about. Sorry but I am a bit fed up.
“Just take a weak thrall and give him weak weapons and there you go, enjoy your hard mode game”
It’s disapointing that this game has come to this. Why would anyone bother playing and progressing a character if at the end it all depends on the thrall? to build massive bases? sure that’s fun but i believe this game has so much more to offer than that.
Thralls need a nerf and a good one, all those changes being made in the TL are very welcome but thralls are still too strong, excessively strong. I hope, after this next update, thralls get a well deserved nerf and turn them into meat shields with low hp and low damage. If you want them to survive, depends on you…
But wait there is more, they are about to get buffed with commands and better AI.
I just leveled to 58 with a Shemite Exile I, she died due to the old bug of teleporting while running after me with horse at full speed.
Come play on Darksun. Companions are needed 60%. Monsters take 50% less damage and do 50% more damage. Plus the age of calamitous mod makes it hard. Even with 3 companions I still almost die. I lost a named fighter today to a snake boss.
Why? You have a choice.
If the thrall will be nerfed, we, who enjoy the game as it is, we will have no choice.
So only because you don’t like to decide which thrall with which kind of armor and weapons should be your companion, all other players should lose their possibility to play the game like they do right now?
Sorry, but this is a absolute selfish and overbearing behaviour.
Why dissapointing, you ask?
Well, a game adversited as a survival sandbox in a setting of Conan the Barbarian that turns out to be gotta catch 'em all pokemon and build your pretty castle, leaving the exploration, the achivement and the rewarding aspect of the game (speaking of PvE) to those who just use the weakest possible thrall or no thrall at all in a game designed for a thrall that do it all and making everything so tedious if you do the opposite.
Also, the thralls in PvP are ridiculous strong, leaving you, the player, to avoid fighting them and abusing the lack of AI from their part.
So what’s the poing of playing as a character if all you gonna do is carry things and deploy thralls? this game could have been a RTS game, or something like that, wouls serve the same purpose, without all this problems about balance this and balance that. (or there would be but those would be others).
I like the building part of the game, is actually my favorite part, but the game has so much more that i also like and its kinda pointless, because your thralls already destroy everything without problem, you just have to make them follow you and heal their â– â– â– with arrows.
Perhaps this is selfish but just the same as those wanting it to be a just building no challenge game.
I have to agree with the easy mod arguement, but I haven’t tried changing the settings on the server, just played whatever setting was out of box. My problem would be content I think. I stopped playing ARK at around 1,500 hours played, and I’m pretty much end game here with 500 hours played. I think it’s a lack of complexity when compared to Ark, but I’m not really sure. Could be the animal husbandry aspect that Ark provides.
I play most action games on easy difficulty because I’m not a very skilled player. That’s why I like having an “easy mode” for Conan Exiles too.
But there’s the thing. In solo/co-op games you can choose the difficulty. If you’re a pro player you can pick the Nightmare mode or whatever suits your taste and let casuals enjoy their easy mode. But with multiplayer games you all play with the same server settings, even though the same server probably has players with a variety of skill levels.
That’s where thralls can be used to “adjust the difficulty setting” within a single server. Those who need the help can use the best possible thralls, and those who want a challenge can go solo or with an Exile Dancer I. You can rename her to Dalinsia Snowhunter or Vathis the Hierophant.
Just because a game has an Easy difficulty setting doesn’t mean you need to pick it. It’s there for people who need it because they’re not as good at the game as you.
I did not ask for a thrall nerf only. I hope for a better balance between playes, thralls and NPCs in the future… well this could/would include a thrall nerf.
Without thralls some bosses are nearly impossible without abusing the bad AI, f.e. rockslide. The spinning attack has a huge radius and knocks you down. I already had fights where he did that attack 4 to 6 times in row. All I can do to survive is to climb on a rock and nail him with arrows. He is to dumb to reach me on the rock or go to cover to force me to climb down.
Without that AI abuse I would be ripped apart by him.
On the other hand, my thrall doesn’t care about it, she can tank the damage and solo rockslide without problems.
Such situations show an imbalance in the game. I hope that in the future thralls will become a support in combat, not a replacement for the player or the only way to win a fight.
. So if you really need some more excitement you can always try barbarick mode (you’ll love it), or join a pvp server and play solo (good luck on that). I play solo barbarick mode from times to times and I really love it. Still playing solo is not so nice. I wish there was an official server in barbarick mode for the hardcore players. If you haven’t try yet, try it. But please, never take a thrall lower than lvl 17 in Arena Champion, if you think it is a challenging fight in normal mode, in barbarick mode is madness 