Your doubt is misgiven.
Nope, I didn’t mean removing the grind. I meant laziness - just like I said!
Otherwise what, everyone could max out their thrall limit and level them all without even playing the game, adventuring or what have you. Nope! Terrible idea! If you choose to acquire 65 thralls then you’re responsible for leveling them - else yeah, a few are gonna die with every difficult purge. The strategy is of course to defend your borders and level up the captains or point-guards using the least number possible. Allowing us 65 combat thralls offers the alternative of defense by sheer number.
Is leveling a bunch of thralls “a grind”? I guess it can be if you do it or see it that way. I would like it to go a bit faster but it’s not usually “a grind” for me. I just pick one and bring him along with me for whatever it is I’m doing. When he reaches Level 10 I pick another. Like chess, when a get a fairly strong front in place then I choose my attack pieces and strengthen them further, and place them strategically - hopefully a nice T4 with good stats.
As for PvP I wouldn’t know I don’t use thralls in PvP. No one I know uses thralls in PvP - besides maybe bearers, indoor guards & dancers, and the usual PvE play on PvP servers. Outdoors they’re just fodder and of no use at all. In a fight or raid they just get in the way and are more detriment than help.
I’m not seeing the hypocrisy but feel free to clue me in - I won’t be offended.
Current leveling system is hot garbage, designed to waste your time while “rewarding” your efforts with “- 8 str” perk. Imagine FUNCOM game designers where designing slot machines - you would spend 20$ playing one and occasionally “win” slot machine electricity bill 
Thralls should earn a share of any exp earned by player regardless of whether they are following him or not. This can be tied to new authority stat f.e. all thralls get 10% of all player earned exp (from all sources) and every point in AUTH boosts this exp gain up to a 100% at max AUTH level (and if player is in a clan - this percentages can be diminished proportionally to clan size. Or this can be done via sorcery - casting some kind of “war cry” spell, granting all thralls in the area “exp buff” transferring a portion of player earned exp to every affected thrall. Or similar buff can be done by building some kind
of banner structure (like PvP banner). Or maybe we could burn some offerings in T3 altar with T4 priest having a recipe to craft some “fragments of exp” we can then feed to a thrall. There should be a ton of different ways to level you thralls besides taking them to grind fests.
3 Likes
Myeth
23
Well I like to use thralls in pvp. I’d use them even more if we had a better way to level them. I think they bring alot of flare into base defense and attacking. We’d probably see them on the attack more, if they were not such a large investment, that tends to warp on top of a base and get merked by the defenders kill box.
When the overall nerf across the board for thralls not following the player, I think some changes would greatly improve the thrall gameplay.
I think leveling 60 thralls to max level can feel like a complain waste of time, since, they are fated to die to a God attack-off line raid or random players with bows or even a single throwing axe etc.
Being able to build leveling bases for them and producing thralls that feel more expendable would lessen the burden of leveling thralls and expand the fun of sending them into battle or having them on the front line of base defense. Thralls are an interesting and very fun part of pvp in conan. I think they could be even better if they were less of a burden.
1 Like
Oh my, okay. I think what you just described is still “using thralls”. Did I mention Guarding thralls? Yep, titled it.
Right, but then we’re right back to the same argument. And again even thralls actively following you don’t receive XP for in-border kills. It’s that way for a reason. They didn’t just accidentally set that up you know.
And if you’re arguing that thralls at home in your base should receive XP from your fights out in the field then I dunno what to say - that’s just craziness!
While I like the thought that went into this post and it is more than likely possible for some of the thralls there is on glaring issue. The wheels of pain were primarily based on the first movie. And also in that movie this did mental shut off to learning without a master did not happen. If it had happened then Conan would not have been able to cope with the world and rise to power after being set free.
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I didn’t see an emoted icon that adjectively describes your free speech (maybe). What I saw was another snark, “you know”.
Yes on dolls earning experience points while defending base. Maybe we need another settings-slider for that damage multiplier.
1 Like
erjoh
28
Thralls are still powerhouses even in the 3.0 revision. They need to have some measure of grind to get their peak performance.
If they get XP from just guard battles, the Southern Jungle will be full of thralls on guard duty. All waiting for the apes to spawn in so they kill them and gain XP. You would have these thralls all leveled by the EoD.
While I agree with your logic in that battle experience is battle experience. The game function makes this a horribly unbalanced idea that will just mean everyone’s thralls are level 60 and the map will be littered with thralls guarding around spawn points.
2 Likes
Myeth
29
What about scouting mode, what if scouting allows battle experience, but also allows players to harm them. This would allow them to earn experience and also allow pvp to finish off thralls after a player has died in none raid windows. Muahahaha
2 Likes
Yes, it is a primitive change. I think you simply pointed out prime real state.
3LiON
31
- Allow thralls to receive XP while not following the player (guarding, scouting, purge defense, etc.).
- Limit the amount of XP thralls receive per day while not following the player.
- Set a requirement of having access to food for thralls to receive XP while not following the player (no food - no XP)
- Set an XP multiplier for thralls when the player is in certain range (e.g. thralls are gaining more XP while not following, but the player is at the same base as the thrall)
Done.
This will solve most issues that you’ve been discussed here. Although I would prefer thralls to gain XP on their own (any battle experience is experience), I understand why the game designers don’t want to make the game that plays itself. At the same time I agree that thralls leveling is a resource management, especially when it comes to larger bases. And there are tools that will prevent players from abusing this system, like, force thralls to leave the leashing radius of a boss when not following the player. Or many more others. The thing is it must be a game design decision. And something tells me (especially all the changes that come with 3.0) that the designers want a player to play more rather than less. So I don’t expect for guarding thralls to earn XP feature to be implement at all even with all the limitations enabled.
2 Likes
Nope! I don’t know. No snarks from me. If you’re reading snarks then you’re making these posts too personal. From me they aren’t - at all. For example “that’s just craziness” is all 100% about what it would be like if FC made such changes - nothing to do with you on any sort of personal level.
And it totally would be craziness… insanity even! Worst idea ever!
The main problems that I see with this idea are:
- It would allow players to sit AFK while leveling multiple thralls. The changes we see in 3.0 are a strong indicator that Funcom does not want players to AFK their way through the game.
- Your guards won’t get any experience unless the game is simulating the AI in the area. If there are no players around, this simulation won’t run. This is an important optimization and Funcom sure as hell isn’t likely to undo it. So instead of running around leveling one follower, now you have to hang around a bunch of guards to level them.
- There’s no good way to do the UI for this. Right now, the game lets you know that your follower leveled when it happens. If it starts doing that for your guards too, then you’re going to get a lot of unwanted pop-ups. If it doesn’t, then you’ll have to keep checking your guards by hand to see if they leveled and if you have to feed them.
I think this suggestion is the wrong solution to an important problem: many players feel like leveling their followers is not enjoyable. Funcom should probably look for ways to make leveling more fun and rewarding.
4 Likes
Good point. On the food point though you would have to leave enough food on them anyway to guard. The popup could be an option to turn off in the settings though.
The simulation long distance could be an issue agreed in that it might tax the server and require even more limits on follower numbers a player(s) could have.
erjoh
35
Stagnant would be the word. IMHO, XP gain should be reduced if you kill 5 of that monster type. You get all of the XP for the first 5 and then diminished gains afterwards. This makes it less grindy and more exploratory.
1 Like
I’ve found feeding thralls to be very, very fiddly. If my follower is at 100% health after leveling, I have to get them damaged to get them to eat the food and gain the growth chance bonus from it. This is trivial with a follower, but a nightmare waiting to happen when it comes to the guards.
Sure, but that’s yet another option for Funcom to add somewhere in the GUI – maybe the settings, maybe the followers tab – and for players to fiddle with.
I don’t often assert my opinions with absolute confidence, but this is one of the rare exceptions: I’m sure this change simply won’t happen. There’s a reason servers have a maximum number of concurrent players. This change would effectively treat each guard as a concurrent player when it comes to server-side AI simulation.
This is the matter of personal taste and opinion, but I couldn’t disagree with you more. Having to do a few consecutive loops of Unnamed City can get boring and grindy, but at least it gets the job done in X hours. Having to keep alternating between the Unnamed City and southern jungle would get just as boring and grindy, but this time with added frustration, and it would require way more than X hours to get the job done.
In my opinion, the reason why the follower leveling is not fun is because the loop itself is repetitive. Killing the same bunch of mobs over and over is no less repetitive than killing a variety of mobs over and over. It’s still just killing over and over.
What I would like to see is more player agency involved in follower leveling. In other words, meaningful choices leading to different outcomes.
2 Likes
That seems fine as AoS demonstrated the guards/zombies.
And, horses don’t fight (default), but they still earn XP. 
That made me think of classic wow. Quest: “Go kill 40 wolves” is not the only one (that was).
It’s two at a time now in 3.0…
All mounts fight. Horses have trample and rhinos have a horn-thrust. They are also a follower and only gain XP when they are following - as it should be.
1 Like
erjoh
39
I can see your point. It would be frustrating over what we got now but it forces people to go out and find new things but I’m not committed to the idea.
What I think would be great is a % modifier for the weapon they are using up to 20%. For each use, you get 1% higher to increase this trait up to 20% increase of advancing that trait they are using (strength or agility). The food choices would affect vitality vs grit designations.
2 Likes
Not sure what this means. Does AoS somehow allow zombies (or some other critter) to gain experience without following you?
They don’t earn XP if you’re AFK-ing. They earn XP, slowly, if you ride them. And they earn a lot more if you’re killing things while they follow you.
Yep, stuff like that would be interesting to explore. The choice of weapons could influence the stat growth. Or maybe we could have weapon proficiency perks. Or maybe different enemies could influence stats and perks in different ways.
Plenty of ways they could innovate, but as always, it’s a matter of having time and resources to do so 
3 Likes
