I force STR in animals it has waaay more impact on them. Every point adds 10%, while on human, every 3 points add an extra 1% give or take. Yes, you can’t give high damaging weapons for animals, but usually if you place them after taming them, hey have their attacks in their inventory in bags that show the actual base damage they deal. The other important is vitality to my animals for me.
On humanoids, I usually go for agility and survival, the base melee modifier of them is high enough to overshadow the points in STR. (Of course, if they are fighters and got ACC perks, I sacrifice them for being that stupid.)
A lot of players do not remember or never experienced when thralls stood in attack mode in whatever armor/weapons they came off of the wheel with.
The thrall system has come a long way and is very much improved from those days, but I agree with people that spending so many hours in game leveling thralls only to have RNG ruin them is a poor system and needs revamping.
My big fear is that FCs “revamps” always seem to make it worse or break it completely.
So I say please leave it alone.
I did not have anything against the wildcard perks before. Then i leveld up all 7 playfull pups and found their set perks quite refreshing. So when i went back to level more thralls, the negative perks felt like a punch in the face.
So many of the perks just aren’t perks.
They are quirks. Often quirks that make no sense.
As anyone who has practiced archery with a pre-modern bow can attest, it is a matter of strength. The herp derp archer weak trope is the work of morons.
But if we are going to play with foolish misconceptions…
Might as well double down… They might be better baked into the character’s cultural origin. Darfari? Yep, they’re probably a cannibal. You know, cause all those letters in front of archer or fighter to mean something. Give some stat variance in thralls based on culture as well as faction, or at least impact the growth parameters.
Instead, we work with a lol randumb advancement system that not only fails to make sense, but is also mislabeled, especially when gaining a level can wipe away three levels worth of HP.
He actually doesn’t look that bad to me. Now if he were Hekr Waverunner, who hits like a limp daffodil, I’d turn him into a Yog meat. Have you looked at his guy’s mutiplier? I haven’t, but if it’s close to say Erii, he hits like a Sherman Tank.
It does occur to me from time to time that the “system” attempts to fill in the holes of a particular thrall. Without the bonuses, Lesteret there only got 1 point in Accuracy. What might’ve happened had he been in say, Archery Armour instead of mixed vit/str? Only musing.
This is not accurate. The longbow was designed with “slight” people in mind, and from the time of Henry VII we have recordings of regiments of these small people being mowed down by handfuls of light cavalry. Boys and small men were trained from youth to pull this 90 lbs by steadying the holding hand and “laying down” into the curve of the bow. In other words, using the body weight to draw.
Ya he still hits like a truck for sure and is still a great involuntary friend so he’s not going to be dumped out at sea. It just irks me that he had an 85 percent chance to gain strength, was fed gruel for that extra 14 percent chance yet still managed to pick up 2 “perks” that detracted from this thralls particular area of focus. I wouldn’t have cared if he had have picked up the survival perks, but -8 from strength leaves a sour taste that won’t rinse out lol
Is it possible that he was gaining too much strength and this is funcom’s way of balancing out his stats? Just a wild guess, I really have no idea but if he is potentially gaining 1-2 strength per level after 20 levels that’s a whole lot of potential strength so the -8 isn’t actually going to hurt him all that much where as boosting up some other stats that might not have been increasing will bring them more in line. Again, just a while guess.
It didn’t seem to slow him down in the least tbh. It’s just potential v reality. To find a fighter with 85 percent chance to gain str is rare. To have 2 perks that -8 off that str is a kick in the balls It’s not the end of the world I’ll admit. He is still a kick ass thrall. It’s just hard not to rue what could have been. As has been pointed out that -8 meant very little in the scheme of things. Maybe -15-20 per hit at most. But when your going for a Monet and end up with a piccaso it’s hard to not be just a little jaded.
Personal opinion, I think it does matter. Not because of the thrall eventually being good or not (as others have pointed out, it doesn’t make a huge difference really), but because of the disappointment. Many of us have got pretty used to it and don’t really care that much - we know how little real difference it makes, and we know how often it happens - but I’ve seen quite a lot of new players face that same disappointment. I’ve seen youtubers excited to finally see the first perk their first thrall gets, only to discover that the ‘mighty warrior’ they’ve been trying to train is an ‘archer’ - and then they’re left asking ‘does that mean I have to just use him as an archer now?’ and bemoaning that they had really hoped he was going to ‘turn out good’.
Of course, we can explain to them that it’s not a problem, that it doesn’t really matter and that a good thrall is still going to be a good thrall (and they probably weren’t training a particularly good thrall in the first place ) - but that disappointment is still their first experience of the thrall perk system.
I don’t think I would want a thrall perk system that was totally tailored - guaranteeing specific perks through specific foods would seem too easy, and would just lead to another narrower meta (‘train your thrall this way’). But I would like to see either some re-balancing of these probabilities (so fighters less often get archer perks, and archers less often get fighter perks) or a split into two separate lists.
Simply put, even though most pets are not as good as thralls for endgame content, it always feels better to level pets than thralls because there’s a guarantee that the worst you’ll get is a perk that you consider irrelevant, you’ll never get one that feels negative. And in a game played for enjoyment, the ‘feel’ of something seems like it should matter.
You’d think that the folks who programmed the games would be aware that thralls - the only folks who get perks - don’t need encumbrance.
It is also irritating that worthless-to-thralls perks like ‘encumbrance’ and ‘survival’ are included at all, let alone set up as ‘buff-nerf perks’ which buff those and nerf useful traits like strength or accuracy.
It is also irritating that warriors disproportionately get ‘accuracy’ buffs and archers get ‘strength’ buffs. Done too many for the tendency to be random - it’s definitely intentional in the algorithm.
The ‘good news’ is that there is a mod where you can get the thralls zeroed out and start over, by putting them back in inventory. The ‘bad news’ is then it’s back to RNG to hope the ‘perks’ don’t screw them over again.
Survival is NOT worthless to thralls by any means. Higher survival on thralls = less poison effect. I think possibly bleed as well. But it certainly is not worthless especially when fighting specific boss enemies.
Yeah I have never been a fan of the +one trait while -another trait but I honestly don’t really worry about my thralls perks that much anyway. The main ones I want are vitality anyway.
This is what would be wrong with the choose-your-own-companion method. People would just choose heath and str and then we’d have another nerf to str and vit soon to follow (like the previous thrall nerf). There are ofc uses for all the perks (cimms have a decent hidden ranged modifier) but people dont value archer thralls. This would be an argument for making archer thralls more valuable imo. Rather than saying “I got a useless stat, change perks” I think it would be much better to say “Thralls have these stats that arent as useful; here’s what I would do to make them more relevant.” It turns a whinge into potentially useful feedback.
Are we looking at the same game? Here, maybe I’m blind and you can point out where you see encumbrance in this screen shot:
My Beastmaster Teimos would like to talk to you about the importance of the survival attribute. Meet him in front of the giant snake in the Citadel of the Triumvirate.
Really, this whole perk problem could be solved easily by making strength also useful for archers and accuracy also useful for fighters. Right now, strength gives damage bonus to melee attacks and accuracy gives damage bonus to ranged attacks. If they made strength also give armor penetration bonus to ranged attacks and accuracy also give armor penetration bonus to melee attacks, we would have no reason to complain about mismatched perks.
It’s not complicated either. It’s just horribly boring. Games aren’t meant to be boring.
And from Crecy through Agincourt we have recordings of archers mowing down armoured knights. Which leads me to question the quality of these stick figure regiments you mention. You are aware that citing events where a group is decisively crushed might be dubious when discussing the optimal form of such a combat style?
Which battle are you drawing this from? The chaotic and poorly documented Bosworth that closed the war the roses or one of the hastily thrown together rebellions?
For that matter, I am curious as to why you are claiming the Longbow was designed for “slight” people. Considering the remains of archers we have discovered (even including those of Magyars whose horsebows were of significantly lesser draw weight) include significant activity induced stress markers indicating noticeable and protracted muscular development along the clavicle, scapula, humerus, ulna, and radius.
Male youths who have been drilled for years in the use of a weapon requiring significant strength (far more than most swords) will be significantly stronger. Especially if they come from a background where manual labour starts early in life. Also, the proper lean draw form (frequently documented in history, almost never replicated in games) does help put one’s weight into play (ignoring that you are claiming the weapon is for those of “slight” build, thus lacking useful weight regardless) but simply put, unless the arms, shoulders, back, and fingers can repetitively hold the weight long enough to raise the bow to the angle for volley (since you are talking about conscripts), it doesn’t matter. Longbows don’t get easier to hold once drawn to full, quite the contrary. Snapshots, which do not draw to full and then loose are not possible with the lean pull as the position of the bow does not start in line with the target. This is exasperated by the minimum rate of loose being 12 (I’ve read some that indicate 20, but I think they may be exaggerating, especially given the typical arrow bundle counts) per minute in drill. Repetition builds fatigue in unconditioned bodies with extreme alacrity. While good technique well absolutely help one’s physical exertions, this is something anyone who has lifted knows, it also supplements and compliments, rather than replaces the power required.
Your draw weight is also curious. The very basement of historical examples surviving is 80lb, with question as to whether those were even bows for war. Warbows tend to basement at 90 while the median of those found on the Mary Rose run 135-160. Why low-ball?
It’s not the end of the world I’ll admit. He is still a kick ass thrall. It’s just hard not to rue what could have been. As has been pointed out that -8 meant very little in the scheme of things. Maybe -15-20 per hit at most. But when your going for a Monet and end up with a piccaso it’s hard to not be just a little jaded.