Dev Stream - 06-20-2019 - Written Summary
Hello to all the peeps. I’ve got a fresh recap here for ya. This recap was all about what’s coming down the immediate pipeline, as seen on Testlive. You can read the patch notes via the following link, though do keep in mind a lot of the new content has been purposely left out of the patch notes and left for players to find and discover themselves.
Per usual, since this stream is discussing new content that is coming out, there are spoilers abound. Where I felt appropriate, I’ve added spoiler tags but suffice to say, if you are reading this summary, spoilers beware. Also as usual for these written summary’s, I try and be extensive in the subject’s that are discussed. If you feel these summary’s are too long, that’s okay, because you can just skip to the sections you care about.
Tascha wasn’t in the stream today because she wasn’t feeling well, but made a chat appearance later in the broadcast. Hope you are feeling better Taschas! Guest appearances are the Jens (Community Manager) and the Robert’s (Senior Designer). Also, as has become standard, many questions asked during Stream in Twitch chat but weren’t answered during the stream has been sent to me by Robert (Robtheswede, Rob, etc) post stream to be included in this recap. Now then onto the written summary.
Links to Bulletin Summary:
Note: The Bulletin Summary is just my old method of doing these, they aren’t nearly as extensive as the full written summary. I just do them for the few remaining people who prefer to see them this way.
PDF Link - Adobe Accessibility Check Ran
When does the Testlive patch come out for all live versions? (13:40):
If everything goes well, the current ETA is next week (that’s the goal anyway). Obviously subject to change, but that’s what we’ve got to go on so far. When the patch drops, it will include additional fixes and changes that are not currently seen on the Testlive version.
Chosen of Asura Stuff (15:39):
The Chosen of Asura are outstanding Conan Exiles community members who have been rewarded and recognized for their efforts in improving the game and/or community in their own special unique ways. For further information, please see the Wiki link here.
The Chosen of Asura now have their own unique armor sets that you will see them sporting (and players can gain themselves). These NPC’s that worship Asura can now fully be found on the map. You may find all of them have a possibility to spawn in the Sinner’s Refuge on Testlive, just like any other named Tier 4 Thrall. It’s possible they can spawn elsewhere, but I would need the dev kit to be updated to the version that is on Testlive to confirm that.
Finally, at 16:39 during the Stream, Jens spoiled who the next Chosen of Asura will be. A formal announcement will be coming next week, but the next person to be recognized and upgraded to Chosen of Asura is @Vattende!!!
I know I can personally thank and recognize Vattende because, going up to over a year now, Vattende has been helping me test my mod updates for some time. So if you are a user of Multigun mods, Vattende deserves a lot of credit for that on my part. On top of being bugged by Multigun all the time, Vattende has been a server admin for some time, and has done a whole heap of troubleshooting and testing the game, and helping the community out in a variety of ways.
Vattende’s Thrall is viewable on testlive now. Vattende’s NPC is a Exile Mitra Priest and is known as Vattende, Confessor of Asura. Be sure to give Vattende a warm welcome by slapping their NPC’s head repeatedly with a Truncheon and throwing them on the friendship wheel.
As for the armor, some of it’s stat details were revealed later in the Stream (at 36:19), which shows that it will grant players +15 survival for the full set. If you want to see The Chosen of Asura armor, click the timestamp for the Chosen of Asura and Jen’s demo character is wearing it.
Population Revamps - Part 2 (19:03):
Like the Anniversary Patch, various areas of the game have seen revamps and changes. For example new bosses, new recipes, and new loot. Basically, the idea is to give players reasons to revisit these areas and provide new content. Changes this go around include areas such as the Mounds of the Dead, Black Galleon, Buccaneers Bay, The Den, various caves have new additions, and etc. Area updates, revamps, and other changes (big or small) will continue to trickle out in future patches (and as previously documented, existing dungeons themselves will be given a look at as well).
Robert added much later during the stream that not all bosses are guaranteed to spawn. It was something we have seen in the last Population Revamp (Volcano comes to mind), but additional added bosses also feature a randomness to whether they will spawn or something else will.
Special Mounds of the Dead Highlight (22:15:)
I’m giving this particular section the full spoiler warning, as it might be fun for players to discover this for themselves.
For all of you peeps who want NPC’s to talk to, and quests to do, this will be particular interest to you. First off, Conan Exiles was never designed to have a full fledged, story arch quest system like so many great single (and multiplayer) RPGs. But using the existing dialogue system, they’ve added a new quest for players to do. A recipe for an armor set is the reward for completing it. They hope to do more in the future, and are eager to hear your feedback on this which can and will greatly shape future attempts at this.
To clarify any confusion with this Jumping Puzzle, it is not in a dungeon. So you won’t need to traverse a Jumping Puzzle in order to complete a dungeon. It is on Testlive now for people to find though. Further on it was asked in chat if the climbing armors would help solve the jumping puzzle, and Robert clarified post stream that climbing boots and gloves wouldn’t help at all with completing this puzzle.
Additional Content/Future Plans/Roadmap/News on Mounts (25:45):
As is standard practice at this point, Funcom has no news to share about major content updates such as Mounts. When or if they do, they will be sure to let us know all of those details, with flashy banners and the whole works.
Xalthar’s Refuge Update Highlight (26:17):
Jens wanted to show off the Refuge a bit and the changes it underwent. You can see those details for yourself by clicking the timestamp. But here’s the spoiler filled brief summary:
A cult that worships Sobek now inhabits the cave. As with other updates to areas, new loots and bosses await you in the cave. The loot includes the Sobek armor (medium armor, heat protection, legendary armor stats).
New Trailer Will be out for the Patch (29:01):
You read it here first, a new trailer will be dropping that will showcase some of the new content once the patch has been deployed.
The temperature system has undergone some changes. The primary drive behind the change was they felt it was iffy, and that it was a system which only punished the player without an incentive to have an ideal temperature range. The new system rewards players for keeping their characters at an ideal body temperature. This can be seen in the new “Soothing” buff which rewards health regeneration so long as your body remains in this neutral state.
There is also a new consumable to help players reach this buff range. Post stream, Robert clarified that this is called the Vehemence Elixir. It will raise or lower your temperature by a specific amount, but be warned, if you are too cold or too hot, not even the Vehemence Elixir will be able to handle it.
As far as why certain armors grant certain protections that they do, it comes down to a simple fact. There isn’t a lore driven reason behind any armor set and the temperature protections that they provide (such as the infamous Pictish Armor sets). Funcom merely looks at balance when introducing new armor sets in terms of what’s already available, and what variety holes need to be filled. If players feel that this should be changed, Robert said that they will not be making any temperature switches to any existing armor pieces.
On that note, a player asked during the stream on Twitch about future armor flexibility to allow players to control the armor temps themselves and Robert answered it post stream. Here is what Robert had to say:
Twitch Question: How about making the padding for armours be thin/thick padding so you can make a hot/cold resist version of each armour?
Robert: We would love to and we’ve thought about that one, but at the moment, the nature of how the armors are set up in data prevents that. It’s something we’re going to discuss internally though because it’s a good solution and ideally it should be handled exactly this way.
There are a number of new changes to various attributes. In particular, Survival and Agility are more important and offer players better benefits then ever before when speccing into those attribute branches.
For every point that is put into Survival now, status effects such as Bleed, Sunder, Cripple, and etc will have the number of ticks applied to your character are reduced. Meaning, they don’t last as long the higher your points spent into Survival. This does not benefit status effects that are “permanent.” Which means that things like Fire or Gas Orbs still have their full power because their are effective so long as a player stands in them.
For every point that is put into Agility, you now gain 4 points armor instead of 2. The 10th point perk reward has also been adjusted, and has been changed to Iron Endurance. This new perk gives the player the benefit of having stamina drain from sprinting be greatly reduced.
They also adjusted the Accuracy 40th point perk so that it now has much greater overall armor penetration then before (30% armor penetration).
Grit also has a change to it. The Fluid Swings perk now benefits both light and heavy attacks.
A player asked if there will be any attribute bonuses for choosing specific races. Robert said that it isn’t in any current plans, but that he has it written in his “want to implement this” notebook. So, maybe someday, but not in any immediate or current plans.
Despite these enticing changes, there won’t be additional levels or ways to gain attributes in order to have more attribute points to spend. Instead, armor and weapons will continue to have different stat bonuses for using and wearing them. As usual, you can use the various potions available to reset your attributes so you can respec as you wish.
As pretty much every PvPer knows, the Spear has been “THE meta” for a long time. Funcom has taken the “the patient Turtle wins the race” mindset in terms of weapon balancing. Like the last major patch, this upcoming patch also has a round of balance updates in mind to help shift the meta away from primarily Spear.
Particular animation move sets for Hammers, daggers, Katanas and 1 handed sword are now easier to make contact with. Heavy attacks across the board now also cost more stamina then light attacks.
There’s a bunch of other balance changes and has been documented in the testlive patch notes. Feel free to give that a click to view all available changes up to this point.
Save Your Build Feature? (43:38):
Robert likes the idea of having a feature to let players save their build (so you don’t need to respec constantly if you want a certain build for a dungeon versus PvP or whatever). However he is unsure if or when such a thing would be implemented, but feels its a good idea to look into.
Shoutout to Vlad the Impa…Content Design Developer (45:10):
A couple of times during the Stream, both Jens and Robert credited Vlad with his hard and creative work with adding new content to the game. Vlad was hired and introduced back in March, so it sounds like Vlad has been doing lots of cool stuff behind the scenes.
Legendary Tools have been introduced. The reason they haven’t been in the game before, is because Robert simply hadn’t thought about them. Robert credited the idea to a suggestion from a fellow Conan Exiles player, Kypran.
The Legendary Tools have a high durability, higher gathering rate, and they look nifty. They also grant 5 survival points when equipping them. There is a Legendary tool for every class of Tool except the Butcher Knife. Why? Because Robert forgot ha ha. Post stream Robert clarified he will eventually add a Legendary Butcher Knife. Finally, as with any Legendary item, it takes a Legendary Repair kit to repair them.
Corsair Light Armor Set (49:57):
A new legendary armor set, the Black Corsair Amor Set, is coming out with the next update. Jens felt the need to show it off at this point, so feel free to give the provided timestamped link a click to check it out. The armor set is a mismatch of existing pieces in the game, and will award 10 agility points when having it fully equipped.
The Goat Horn Bow is also coming out in the next update, which you can check out by clicking this provided timestamped link. The fun story behind this is that it is in reference from a story told from one of the players who came in as a runner up for the previous building contest. The story was that they kept running into a goat that interrupted their building process. So Funcom decided to add a Demonic goat somewhere on the map that drops this new legendary bow.
I’m not going to get into too many details with the new Dungeon, as giving a full summary of what to expect would be way too spoilery and be a recap in of itself. If you want a preview of how the mechanics are going to work out, you know what to do, click the link and see it in action.
Lore wise, the Dungeon is the stronghold for the existing NPC on the map, Warmaker Klael. Another interesting lore feature in the dungeon is a map, that shows what the Exile lands looked like before the Sandstorms.
The dungeon is a high level dungeon designed for 2-4 players, but it can be done solo (it will just take a while at vanilla settings and levels). As has been discussed in the past, the Dungeon designs going forward Funcom is designing with the objective to be more then just corridors and boss fights. This dungeon is another step in that direction towards new and exciting content. In addition to different dungeon mechanics, the boss fight themselves also has some new mechanics that will change as the battle progresses along (which is a first for the game). Each boss also features a loot pool that can drop different items on each encounter.
Where Can You Try the Testlive Version? (1:00:25)
Testlive is only available for PC players. In your Steam Library, it is a separate free install that shows up right underneath the live version of Conan Exiles. The purpose of testlive is to gather community feedback from the players before the patch moves over to the live version of the game. Feedback can help find unknown bugs, test the servers, or make adjustments to improve on things. Testlive is a industry standard mechanic available in many MMORPGS and many other widly popular online games. Feedback from this iteration of Testlive has been gathered and has been very helpful to the developer team. As previously stated at the top of this summary, when the live patch drops, it will include what’s on testlive now, along with other bug fixes and changes that came about because of player tested feedback.
Jens just wanted to show off the new weapon real quick. So you can give the link a click to check it out.
Funcom has had a history of adding various Easter Eggs to the game inspired by the Conan Exiles community in various shapes or form (such as naming Thralls after veteran mod authors). This time they added new arrows named after Firespark81, whose Youtube channel has followed Conan Exiles for some time. Firespark has provided a wide range of feedback that has been helpful to the developer team, so they wanted to give Firespark a shoutout for that. The arrows themselves are the only arrows that can cause bleed, and will only stack to 81.
Just Horse also received an Easter Egg in their honor, though the stream didn’t reveal what.
Further, the hilarious Neebs Gaming Youtube Channel also now has an Easter Egg nod of some sort added in their honor. The stream didn’t reveal what that was though.
Snowhunter the Great (1:09:00):
For the last item of the stream, it was revealed that a mod author worked directly with the developer team in the creation of the new Warmaker’s dungeon. If you have been on the official forums lately, I’ve been trying to spread the word of who Snowhunter is for some time , because what Snowhunter has done is just a phenomenal job and I’ve been very excited to see his hard work come to life.
Snowhunter, if you don’t know, is the very same whose Thrall is known as Dalinsia Snowhunter (and has most likely been in just about every Conan Exiles players base at one point or another).
Robert gave Snowhunter a proper shoutout towards the end of this stream, and I wanted to do the same. If you would like to see some of Snowhunter’s other dungeon work, visit his workshop here. If you would like some behind the scenes look of Snowhunter’s mods, along with the Warmaker Dungeon itself, visit his Arstation here. Please take the time to give Snowhunter some love because he has done so much for the Conan Exiles community for a long time, and now his work is officially part of the game too!
Post Stream Q/A:
- Twitch Comment: Rob Shaved!
- Robert: Yes - it was rainy and muggy and I knew I was going to have to sweat it out on a train for an hour heading in for the stream, so I decided to shave so I wasn’t covered in sweat =) That’s also why I seem a bit fidgety and flustered during the stream, because you can see the ocean of sweat under the Funcom shirt! G’dang! phew…
- Twitch Comment: Where’s Joel Bylos at?
- Robert: He’s busy doing other stuff ™ that we can’t talk about
- Twitch Comment: NPC’s are too passive
- Robert: We know - we will be addressing it but coders are busy with more important things at the moment, but it’s on the list
- Twitch Comment: Can we get armors that look like the Witcher’s Ursine armor or the Lich King?
- Robert: Well, no - sorta, but it’s not legal to take content from other games like that. However, if you like the Ursine armor, you might like the Savage Frontier armors!
- Twitch Comment: New DLC information?
- Robert: We won’t reveal the new DLC yet
- Twitch Comment: Cooling/Heating Stat armors would be nice!
- Robert: Yes, we have a list compiled by a player called KYPRAN that details what stats we are missing for what armor-types (thanks by the way!) we will try to follow that list for new armors
- Twitch Comment: Epic Hyrkanian bow in the future?
- Robert: Good idea, they are amongst the best archers in Conan lore. I’ve made a note from that suggestion.
- Twitch Comment: Asagarth/Asgaard/Asagard inconsistencies
- Robert: We know about this - it’s a whole thing at the office too - sorry for the inconsistency, that one screws everyone over. Time to fix that one methinks.
- Twitch Comment: Will there be a way to hide armors/head equipment?
- Robert: Probably not anytime soon, but we have it noted down since many people are requesting it.
- Twitch Comment: Will you give some functionality to the various Obelisks around the Mounds of the Dead?
- Robert: Quite possibly. Stay tuned.
- Twitch Comment: Acid arrows are causing damage to thralls outside raid times - is this intended?
- Robert: We’ll look at that.
- Twitch Comment: Ignore mounts, focus on bugs, exploits, server performance, etc
- Robert: We have been heavily focused on squashing bugs and fixing exploits. One of the reasons you might read patch notes and “just” see a lot of content changes is because the coders are stoically working on fixing all those behind the scenes. For example, the server-crashing that has escalated lately is now fixed, as is a number of other things.
- Twitch Comment: Why did you wait so long with fixing the xp issue with mobs in the Dagon dungeon?
- Robert: Simply put - there were other priorities. We knew about it but contrary to some bugs it didn’t cause direct damage to the game.
- Twitch Comment: Why call it a new armor when you just reskinned old armors?
- Robert: Because in function, stats and basic looks, it is new. We’re aware that it’s reusing old assets - we can’t pump out lots of new armors because they are costly to make. It’s as simple as that. If we had new looks for every piece we put into the game we would need to have a lot more artists working on that part of the game.
- Twitch Comment: Could we have an option to disable the drum sound on mousing over menus and the like?
- Robert: Unlikely that we will focus on that but maybe we can squeeze it in. I rather have coders work on other things at the moment though.
- Twitch Comment: Could you further explain what the new building wipe on official servers will be?
- Robert: There’s a couple of things to unpack here. The wipe being spoken about here is not a full server wipe. The buildings that are ‘illegal’ (multiple pieces occupying the same slot) gets randomly deleted until there is only one piece left. I hope that explains it and is the answer you’re looking for.
- Twitch Comment: Is Gas orb a poison?
- Robert: No and yes - it’s a poison that never goes away. The amount of ticks for temporary effects go down when speccing into Survival, but the orbs are a permanent effect that runs as long as you are in the orb.
- Twitch Comment: Can I have something to combat Elarkian plague?
- Robert: Someone is playing “Age of Calamitous” - we won’t, no, because that’s a mod =) An excellent one at that.
- Twitch Comment: How about you fix all the flaws in PVP because it’s very frustrating
- Robert: Yes, I know - and now that we have had a few rounds with PvE we will be looking at PvP. So far, we’ve done adjustments to weapon balance because that is a basic level that needs to be done first. It’s also the one that is fairly slow to iterate on because you never know what happens on live until players have had access to the new balance changes for a while. However - we have a long list of things we want to fix for PvP, relating to heavy armors, gods, defenses, offenses and so forth. We’re sorry it’s taking time, but there are many moving parts to that particular machinery.
- Twitch Comment: Will we ever have parry system?
- Robert: No, because the game isn’t built for it and just from a standpoint of lag, it makes it very hard to implement that feature.
- Twitch Comment: Will there ever be a total server wipe?
- Robert: There seems to be a growing support for this. I can’t say anything except for - if you truly want a server wipe, start a forum thread (unless there is one, don’t like… create tons of them) and we’ll see… no promises here. It is something we’ve talked about in the hallways of Funcom from time to time, but for now our stance is “no”.
- Twitch Comment: Are you guys going to ever offer a weapon damage kit that has things like a endurance +3 mod or +5 vitality.
- Robert: Probably not, but there are other interesting weapon/armor kits that we have planned. I think you’ll be happy.
- Twitch Comment: Any updates to character creation maybe?
- Robert: Not anytime soon, sorry.
- Twitch Comment: Could we perhaps get a bonus attribute points for completing each chapter of the journey? (and other related questions to increasing attribute points pools)
- Robert: There is no plans for increasing stat pools at the moment
- Twitch Comment: 7k HP thrall with 800 armor is nigh invulnerable.
- Robert: Acid arrows can eat away the armor. 5 stacks of sunder also removes 100% of armor defense.
- Twitch Comment: Fix spears / spears are OP / etc
- Robert: A lot of changes have been done to spears. Damage, stamina cost, etc. We will keep tweaking weapon balances until we get them right. Sometimes this means small changes, other times it might mean we do more impactful changes, but one thing we can’t do is to nerf something to the ground, so we have to take these things step by step. Do note that there will always be “a meta” - that’s fine. But it’s also fine that the meta changes every now and then. We’ve had Spear-Meta for quite enough time now. Hammers are on par, daggers are quite lethal - and surprisingly - Jhebbal Sag Claws with poison is… very nasty as well. More changes to come.
- Twitch Comment: The problem isn’t really spears, its that movement isn’t fluid enough for other weapons to make them as viable
- Robert: A prime example here is the 1h Mace opener for heavy - we know and we’re poking at these things but we haven’t gotten to maces yet.
- Twitch Comment: The game needs more maps. If there are technical issues, make it as Instance
- Robert: We don’t have instance tech either, so that in itself is a technical issue. The space we have on the map is limited by two major factors; the Unreal Physics limits, which deteriorate over distance, and also the fact that we have more dungeons planned out and these need to be placed somewhere - we earmarked the northeastern part of the game for this purpose. Don’t get me wrong, we’d love to put more land into the game, or make a new map but that is a significant addition and certainly wouldn’t be a free update if we did so.
- Twitch Comment: Will we ever see a Wounds system, where we have a wound debuff until we see an entertainer or stay in shelter a set number of time?
- Robert: Currently, all de/buffs are cleaned up on exiting the game, so at the moment it’s not possible.
- Twitch Comment: Do u guys even care about the PvP player in the community ?
- Robert: Certainly! We have multiple Funcom people that play on PvP servers. We haven’t focused on PvP yet but we will.
- Twitch Comment: Any plans to do something like Exile Lands Improved mod, which adds spells to weapons, like Telith’s Weapons that let you do the Kinscourge’s boss abilities?
- Robert: Not spells, because spells like that are quite high-fantasy. But see my answer from before about new weapon/armor kits
- Twitch Comment: What is up with the dogfish? charisma bonus… male genitals gets modified? Nothing on females?
- Robert: We will likely be looking at that but again, low priority compared to some other stuff =)
- Twitch Comment: They also have health damage haha (relating to tools)
- Robert: Yes - all tools do, we felt it was slightly silly that unarmed did more damage than tools, so now tools have damage as well, although nominal amounts of damage.
- Twitch Comment: I would like to see the name of the bosses when you fight them.
- Robert: I agree, good suggestion, I think someone internally brought it up once and it’s been forgotten about. No promises, but we’ll see what we can do.
- Twitch Comment: Any chance of making the maproom by the guy who teaches you how to make them an interactable/usable maproom?
- Robert: I don’t think so, no
- Twitch Comment: This is a group dungeon? Every dungeon can be soloed in my opinion.
- Robert: Difficulty is tricky to balance, since we have a game that plays in singleplayer as well as multiplayer. Dungeons will be progressively more difficult moving forwards as we add more tricks and features to our grab-bag of features.
- Twitch Comment: It looks like to do this dungeon in single player that it is better to have some mod that raise the level cap. Am i right?
- Robert: You can do that if you would like - there are also mods that specifically adjusts difficulties of bosses specifically- or - you can turn up/down damage numbers in the server settings (server settings still apply while playing in singleplayer)
- Twitch Comment: Is there a possibility in the gamecode/engine to create dungeons that would react to the number of players participating?
- Robert: Not impossible, but difficult - it’s something that has been discussed. The problem there though becomes: Why would you ever go into a fight like that with more than 1 player, even if you have a whole clan? You get the same loot at a lower difficulty. What happens if someone joins later on, etc. What happens if someone logs out, etc. That’s a tough nut to crack with a lot of edge-cases.
- Twitch Comment: Instead of YouTube names for Easter Eggs, do more lore stuff.
- Robert: We will - we did add some minor lore bits in this update as well at … well, I won’t say where. It’s for people to find.
- Twitch Comment: Can you please delete the looped audio chuffing noise for elephants?
- Robert: Not sure what you’re referring to but now that I know, we’ll look at it.
- Twitch Comment: Why isn’t there structure block on spots like the Sink Hole and Shattered Springs? I see people all the time try to spawn block these high valued resources.
- Robert: There is a small one around the sink-hole but I assume you want a bigger one - maybe, we’ll see. When it comes to the Shattered Springs; I’ll be lengthy with this reply because many people do ask, so here we go: Some resources are worth fighting for. When it comes to the springs, it isn’t the only place to get brimstone (it’s not even the best place anymore to be honest) - but it is a very HANDY place. Equally - many people set up huge camps outside New Asagarth and block easy access to the thralls there.
- Twitch Comment: Any question huh? Alright in that case, Rob… what’s your favorite color?
- Robert: My real favorite color is orange.
- Twitch Comment: Could you do something with this running/healing meta?
- Robert: I wouldn’t call that a meta - running away to heal seems sensible to me - however, if you want to prevent that, pack arrows or throwing axes or bombs.