DLC Epic weapon cost rebalance

Conan Exiles General Discussion Feedback
1

So, Star Metal. It’s the most powerful* tier of weapon you can craft, requiring a limited, hard to find, expensive to mine, highly contested resource.

So why is it required for DLC weapons?

Star Metal is metal of an almost mythical quality, and outfitting my entire army with weapons made out of it feels like I’m cheapening the value of this incredibly rare substance, and- lets take a step back because that’s not my main gripe.

The Main Gripe:
The whole point of the DLC is to turn Conan Exiles into a giant game of dress-up. Dress up your thralls, dress up your buildings, now we can even dress up our horses, and playing either by myself, or with friends, I’m playing dress up with over 250 thralls. (I have a problem, I know) And when you’re outfitting an entire army, quantity is a little more important than quality, especially when we have
Acheronian quality weapons as a viable option.
Remember that time when Saruman traveled all over Middle Earth to find Numenorian Steel to craft the very best weapons for his thousands of Orcs? I don’t.

Acheronian weapons are the same in terms of damage, and skill points to make, but only require Hardened Steel and Alchemical Base (the trade off being lower durability and higher weight, things that don’t matter to a thrall)

If I’m looking for a good bang for my buck, why would I take a trip all the way to the north, spend hours waiting for star metal to spawn (potentially having to fight others for it, if I’m on a server) and get enough to maybe make a few weapons and repair my armor, when I could take that same trip and spend 30 minutes gathering enough black ice to choke the Avatar of Set with all the Hardened Steel I’ll be making.

My suggestion, change Epic DLC weapons to bring them in line with Acheronian weapon crafting costs, and maybe make Acheronian and Epic DLC weapons do a bit less damage… say;
Sword as an example-
S = 39, E = 41, F = 43
vs the current;
S = 43, E = 46, F = 48
That way it makes a nice bidge between Hardened Steel quality, and Star Metal, allowing Star metal to keep it’s niche, and giving people a reason to actually want to make the DLC weapons (and making continuing to buy the DLC’s a more appealing option)

(Edit) I am making this edit to include the question I asked to Muppitish in the comments of this post, because I feel it should have been a part of the original post to give the readers a little more information and clarity as to why I’m making this rebalance suggestion;

Now, a short thought experiment, if you all would;

Which of these would you rather give a Thrall?

Star Metal Sword

Damage: 48
Armor Penetration: 8.55%

Ingredients
1 Icon handle short.png Short Handle
25 Icon starmetal bar.png Star Metal Bar
10 Icon leather thick.png Thick Leather

Poitain Sword (DLC Epic)

Damage: 48
Armor Penetration: 8.55%

Ingredients
1 Icon handle short.png Short Handle
25 Icon starmetal bar.png Star Metal Bar

& $10 USD

Or
Acheronian Longsword
Damage: 48
Armor Penetration: 10.0%

Ingredients
1 Icon handle short.png Short Handle
25 Icon hardened steel bar.png Hardened Steel Bar
13 Icon alchemical base.png Alchemical Base

Which has better stats?
Which is easier to get the ingredients for?
Which would you rather give a Thrall?
Which would you rather give to 50 Thralls?

If the damage of the Poitain Sword and Acheronian Longsword were reduced by only 5 points, what would your answers to the above questions be?

And please do actually take a moment to answer those questions, as I want to know your opinions and the reasons behind them, but for me? I see no reason to ever make Star Metal weapons (or spend my real world money on this game) ever again.

These are the current in-game stats, of the current in-game weapons.
This is the choice every player needs to make, every time they want to make a stack of dragonpowder to go and harvest some Star Metal.

Why do DLC weapons need to cost Star Metal?

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3

All epic tier DLC weapons require star metal because they are on the exact same level as normal star metal weapons, they just have a different appearance.
To get star metal you don’t need any DLC, you can get it in the vanilla version of the game.

Then give your thralls less powerful weapons like the orcs have? As far as I know, in the movies their weapons were mass produced crappy things as well. You don’t even need to give them the highest tier of armor and weapons, even with the base flawless tier top tier thralls still wreck everything.

5

As far as I know, the epic heavy armor of DLCs always used hardened steel while the epic weapons always used star metal. Vanilla heavy armor sets however use star metal in the epic level 60 versions.

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All Epic DLC weapons (except bows) require star metal.

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If that were the only issue, I’d agree with you, but there are other factors. One doesn’t always have the option of filling their base with nothing but t-4 cimmerian berserkers, a large army is gonna have a lot of 1’s and 2’s, and if I lure a world boss back to a bunch of 1’s and 2’s with flawless iron quality weapons, I’m gonna lose a lot of 1’s and 2’s.

Now, Saruman’s orcs weren’t equiped with mass produced crappy things, they were mass produced steel of surprisingly good quality (considering where they came from). They had practical weaponry, made to suit an army.
Acheronian quality is (and I can not stress this enough) Just As Good as Star Metal, practical to get, and can be easily mass produced for an army.

Now, what is the point of all this paid “themed” stuff, if one isn’t going to use it to “theme” what they do? Why would one want to “theme” their stuff when the process of doing that is exceedingly difficult, when there is another equally good but easier option just lying around waiting to be used? The proposed changes solve all these issues. Acheronian would still be super easy to get, while being only slightly less powerful than star metal, allowing players to still go the extra mile to get decked out in star metal if they want, and allows us to actually get some practical use out of our Paid DLC.

As it is currently, the DLC weapons are pretty much useless as soon as you hit 60, when I have other more important things to spend my really hard earned star metal on (Like Shadoza said, it’s really difficult for single players to get) Had I known ahead of time that I wouldn’t be using them, I wouldn’t have spent the $90 I have getting all the DLC, neither would the 3 friends I roped into getting this game. That’s about $400 collectivly, that we are a little annoyed about not getting any real value out of, and I don’t see myself buying any more DLC unless they introduce something I just can’t live without.

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Errr why not just hunt for legendary weapons?

Star metal requires being in the right place at the right time. Not wait and stare at the sky.

You and your friends have enough to buy all the DLCs but cannot afford a server for 3 months?

And dont give me that crap that you shouldnt have to get a server ,since ARK has 70k players who play and most are private servers.

I just checked for you- its 48 bucks canadian for 3 months and 10 slots for a conan exiles server.

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Can. Do. Not the point.

Right. It’s bloody annoying, and a rediculous time investment when one is trying to do something on a large scale.

Can you name a valid reason why I, or anyone should be forced to rent a server? I can’t. I also didn’t mention it, and it still doesn’t fix the issues.

The issues being;

  1. The tone and primary selling point of the DLC’s are hurt by their implementation.
  2. The rarest non-boss drop resource in the game is being used for like, a hundred different things, greatly cheapening it’s presence while artificially inflating it’s demand.
  3. there is another option that is every bit as good, but easier to get, rendering that super special material and all of the DLC melee weapons utterly pointless. Sure, Star Metal weapons last longer (1350 vs 900), but you can afford to make and throw away 30 Acheronian weapons in the time and resources it would take to make 5 Star Metal ones.

Add to the issue that Acheronian weapons have better armor penetration than Star Metal or Epic DLC ones, and suddenly Acheronian weapons are better for thralls in every way, so now the only reason to get the DLC’s are if playing dress up is more important to you than any form of effeciency or resource management. Well, that and the bows. The bows are still pretty good.

Yes and we have an ARK server of our own. We host it ourselves. That’s because ARK is basically unplayable otherwise.

10

I’m also on single player but to note cimmera clan if broken I usually just do tier 1 but they have star metal weapons so get them use recycled bench and while you do that star metal meteors fall plus plus I do it a lot but it works but ever since 1st dlc all end game epic weapons are star metal only except for bows

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That would only give you 1 star metal per thrall you break, so you’d need to break 20 thralls for enough material to make one DLC weapon. Sure, star metal might fall in the time you spend doing that, but it might not. I’ve only seen star metal fall twice, and only once was I in a position to be able to do anything about it. That’s a horrible solution to a poorly designed system.

12

Am i missing something, or isn’t there iron versions of every weapon?
And DLC’s are supposed to be just skins. The epic versions are skins for star metal weapons. That is how it should be to avoid pay to win. IF you removed the star metal and used hardened instead, then the stats would need to be the same as hardened.

If you want to mass equip, then do what every known army has done when mass equip…cheapest. Make the iron versions with the master fitting.

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Truly on my trys I think in an 8 hour period I got a lot like thousands but the star weapons should give you 5 also if you break teir 1 with teir 4 task could be very easygoing but I do that a lot but it’s a chance however the ridge where you get Ymir’s religion above him wait there as many fall right there very often and did that for weeks when I relieved when it becomes so easy to do but you go there and wait and keep doing it tell you get 30 or 40 falls and you will know how to get it easier as for 1 plus year I did not like it but really try to get it now it’s so easy that now I know how it falls and it’s more common places to that’s my advice to any and all that want to get and use star metal

14

To be frank, I’m kinda wondering what part you didn’t miss…

Yeah, it’s all about the aesthetic aspect of the game.

Making them out of star metal means they are suddenly prohibitively expensive to use unless:

  • you are on a server, so star metal falls frequently (but there you have to contend with others for the already limited resource)
  • you are playing with drastically increased resource collection
  • you feel like spending all day waiting for star metal to spawn in single player.

This (and the next part) makes me assume you didn’t actually read the post.

Yes. Obviously, (except I didn’t suggest hardened, I suggested Acheronian and gave several reasons for doing so) I even gave some ideas for rebalancing the Acheronian and Acheronian-based DLC Epic weapons to make them less powerful than Star Metal because,

and I can not stress this enough it seems,

Acheronian weapons are just as strong as Star Metal Weapons, while being much easier to mass produce, for literally no good reason!

Ok, I know I’m nitpicking now, and this part is kind of a tangent, but that’s a logical (and factual) fallacy.
You don’t go “cheapest” you go most cost effecient. Actually, that wasn’t a nitpicky tangent, because it ties masterfully into the next part;

Why would I do that when I can make them Acheronian instead?
Acheronian weapons are basically as easy to make as Hardened Steel, while doing the Same Amount of Damage as Star Metal, having More armor penetration than Star Metal, and the only drawbacks are Weight, and Durability Which Doesnt Matter to a Thrall.

Does anyone see my point yet?

There is absolutly no reason, at all, to go all the extra steps to get Star Metal DLC weapons for your Thrall while Acheronian weapons exist in their current state. You’d be better off throwing a full stack of Dragonpowder off a cliff, then wasting it on getting Star Metal to make DLC weapons (Something you paid actual Money for), when you can spend a little bit of Hardened Steel and Alchemical Base to get something just as good.

15

Dragonbone weapons?
I thought Dragon bone were;

A lot easier to farm materials for? Easy to mass produce for thralls who don’t need to worry about weight & durability? In the vanilla game and can learn to make them before you’re even lvl 30…

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I have to mention that in some countries the whole season pass costs cheaper than renting own server for 1 month, and if you play several hours a week you’ll not be lvl 60 in a month. PC players can install Pippi and force this meteor shower in Admin mode but console players can not, so Star metal can be a real problem for them.

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Maybe I’m just lucky but so far I haven’t had any trouble getting star metal, especially not since mounts were added. If you have a map room then you can easily fast travel up north, ride around gathering black ice, iron and stone and if you come across star metal then get some of that too, if you don’t then just try again next time you need black ice. I like the fact that DLC weapons have star metal versions, it would be a bit lame to pay for content that becomes irrelevant almost immediately.

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Dragonbone is why there is an asterisk in my comment.

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Yeah, You are. Because finding it is entirely a matter of luck.
And I’m ok with Star Metal being a matter of luck. I’m ok with it being used in some of the best stuff.
I’m not ok with it being used to make cosmetic items that you had to spend real world money to get, especially when the whole point of getting these items is theming. There is no good reason for it to cost Star Metal, at all.

How exactly would the proposed changes make these items irrelevant?

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Because iron weapons are only useful early on, without higher tier versions they aren’t much use other than wall decoration. I also find it useful for saving feat points, I’ve been able to craft several star metal weapons without having to spent points on individual feats for the knowledge.
I think maybe DLC weapons and armours should be more like the pet/mount styles. If we could create a “paint” to apply the appearance of weapons and armours without changing the stats that would probably be the fairest way to change them.

21

So you didn’t actually read the post then?

22

I read your original post, I haven’t read every single response. Personally I don’t have a problem with the current system and have happily paid for multiple DLC packs over the years, but you’re perspective has some valid points and maybe I’m part of the minority, maybe it does need to change, I think there are too many players to ever please all of us.