Here is some feedback about thralls mechanics

Conan Exiles General Discussion
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EDIT : SUMMERIZE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT POINTS SEEN IN THIS THREAD:

  • the class / job (archer or fighter) of your thrall has definitely an impact (twice as strong) on the weapon you give him / her

  • Only sepcial effects like poison are working on your thralls arrows, in short, pretty much every other arrow than the snake arrows are useless on thralls

  • different tiers of archers / fighters DO matter in the damage output potential of your thralls the higher lvl the more damage they will dish out

  • Throwing weapons are indeed considered as ranged weapons, that is to say you’d better give a throwing axe to an archer than to a fighter for ex if you want to optimize your defenses.

  • Armors do work on the thralls, and pretty effectively BTW

  • Factions have an effect on your thralls damage output as well

  • This point is vey tricky to explain for me The type of the weapon your thrall will acquire by default when he comes out of the wheel of pain will not make him specialized in this very type of weapon. You can give him whatever you like as long as it is a melee weapon for a fighter or a ranged weapon for an archer

  • Different tiers of weapons do matter in the damage output of your thralls

  • Stats bonus from special equipement (like + 9 in strenght with a dafari set) have NO EFFECT on the thralls damage output

  • ARMOR PLATING UPGRADES ARE WORKING ON THRALLS but the difference is so tiny that it SHOULD NOT be one of your highest priorities when equiping thralls

  • Dancers are considered as “NON SKILLED” combat thralls, meaning they do only half the damage a fighter does with a melee weapon and only half the damage an archer can do with a ranged weapon. In short you can give them any type of weapon you like, it won’t matter but keep in mind they won’t be as effective as true combat thralls like fighters and archers.

Here is the order (from the strongest to the weakest) of the different factions of the game:

So it’s important to say that most of the thralls combat mechanics are working as intended by the developpers, but as i took the time to make it clear for me and for others as well, i hope it can help some of us when we will be wondering how we should prepare our thralls defenses next time a purge or anything else is susceptible to happen.

have a great game everyone, and i wish you a lot of FUN.

End of the EDIT

This thread is about the current state of some of the thralls mechanics, like :

-difference between fighters and archers in terms of efficiency with ranged or melee weapons
-efficiency regarding different types of arrows you can give to your thralls
-if the throwing are indeed handled as range weapons for your thralls.

all testing were done on Sp mode on pc in the desert near sepermeru and admin pannel was used to get things faster.
The elk king was choosen as ennemy during all this testing for good reasons (appropriate HP pool and fairly low DPS)

First test:

One T3 hyborian archer from the vocano with a dragon bone bow and default arrows (so no arrows placed in the thrall inventory
result : elk king dead after 52 shots

second test:

One T3 hyborian fighter from the volcano with the same weapon
result: elk king dead after 106 shots

the class / job of your thrall has definitely an impact (twice as strong) on the weapon you give him / her

third test:

same archer, same weapon but with dragon bone arrows equiped this time
result: 50 arrows for the kill, so no difference at all

fourth test:

same archer, same weapon but with snake arrows equiped this time
result: elk king dead after 23 shots

this was expected and means the system hasn’t changed at all since the early access, meaning that only snake arrows have an impact of your archer damage output.
So don’t waste your archer DPS with high tier arrows, it’s useless.

Fifth test:

same archer with a black ice throwing axe equiped
22 shots needed

sixth test:

same fighter as the one used previously with a black ice throwing ice
result: 42 shots needed

so here again, classes do have an impact on throwing axes and i expect it to be the same with throwing javelin as well, but still need to be tested.
So throwing axes are indeed considered as ranged weapons

NB: throwing axe thralls / users seem to get stuck if the ennemy manages to get in close combat ( which should happen very very rarely BTW )

finally i got all these mechanics clear in my mind and eventhough this must have been already clear for some of you guys, it may not be the case for everyone, and that was the main purpose of this thread.

I’m gonna soon test the same things with melee weapons, but normally the result should be similar.

Feel free to add your own experience about thralls mechanics and add suggestions if something could be tested more efficiently.

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This was a very informative article. Thank you for sharing it with us.

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Very thorough! Thanks for that!

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Update: as previously mentionned and expected here are the results with the last testing.

With a 2 H dragon bone sword.
-A t 3 archer needs 29 swings to kill the ennemy
-A T3 fighter needs 13 swings for the same task

don’t forget there is always the human factor, “my factor” that can lead to little differences wtih the final amount of shots/ swings needed to kill the ennemy, because i know i’m not 100% accurate while counting (although i really feel i am accurate), especially with effectively landed arrows from archer thralls. but all results about melee weapons are about 99% accurate in my opinion ( way easier to not miscount )

i have been also testing the differences in effectiveness between thralls tiers, like between a T3 and a T1 archer from the same faction and same thing with melee thralls, but i don’t want to share the final result yet, since i still need to do further testing in that regard in my opinion. i just don’t want to jump on any conclusion too fast.

Again don’t hesitate to post your own results / experiences on the topic. The more feedback, the more accurate conclusions we can make…

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Thanks for sharing. Now I know not to use high tier arrows for my archer thralls. Looking forward to the results of your other tests!

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:astonished:
Thank you! I only assumed better arrows would actually cause more damage…

The only questions left… What is faster? 23 shots with a bow or 22 throws with the axe? I guess the axe might have dealt with the elk king a lot faster?

When you check melee…
Could you please look at wether sandreaper poison gets consumed on thrall weapons or not? :smiling_imp:

Also. Is it correct, that armor makes a difference on damage if it comes with stats?

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Last update from me. i don’t think i need to do further testing about that topic, i’ve got my answers and hope you’ve got some as well :

  • 1 T3 fighter from the volcano (of course) with a dragon bone 2 H sword needs 14 swings to kill the elk king

whereas

  • 1 T1 fighter from the same faction needs 19, or sometimes 20 hits to kill the same ennemy with the same equipement

i didn’t do the maths but it should mean a t3 fighter is aproximately 45 % stronger tan a t1 fighter
This was not expected from me and i think it’s a pretty interesting result.
So the better tier the better efficiency, which makes 100% sense BTW (somehow many players, me included were thinking only the weapon would matter in the damage output of your thralls, but the results don’t lie and the result are pretty reassuring imo.

of course i also wanted to get an idea about archers tiers :

1 T3 archer needs about 48 “blank” arrows to kill an elk king
whereas
1 T1 archer needs about 69 blank arrows to kill the same guy

So the result is pretty similar (i let you do the maths :wink: ), i had to repeat this test a lot of times to be sure, but now i can say that different tiers of archers DO matter as well

So as summarize to this topic, from my experience, evreything matters about thralls, from their respective jobs to the different kind of tiers and only snake arrows make a difference, so this should be the only thing fucom might consider to improve in order to give high tier arrows some kind of sense / usefullness in the thrall mechanics perspective.
if someone can summarize this better than me, you’re more than welcome !!! i don’t master the language of shakespeare that well :sweat_smile:

i might do a final testing about factions only, but i’m not sure, since i now really expect the result to be like “exiles” are the weakest and “voltaries” are the strongest, but untill it is actually tested we can never be 100% sure :wink:

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Equip a thrall with a throwing axe, let an ennemy hit you while you’re standing in range of your guard and it will speek better than any answer i can give you :smiley: But don’t be too close to your guard when the aggro triggers, otherwise he / she could get stuck doing nothing.

YES the elk king got down A LOT FASTER with throwing axes.
Throwing axes are REALLY fast + they have the advantage of “stun locking” the opponent which makes them kinda OP i have to admit ( but so much FUN at the same time :rofl: ) , whereas the bow stuns nothing…
don’t get me wrong when your thrall lands 3 consecutive quick hits with a bow, it’s pretty fast as well, but with throwing axes there is just not that moment when your thrall stops firing + there is no heavy / light attack with this kind of weapon , so that means your thrall only knows the quick attack button apparently. Give it a shot you won’t be regreting it !!!

It’s good you’re talking about armors effectiveness on thralls since it’s a pretty important point too.
i already got my answer when i posted the “150 berserkers NPCS to kill a scorpion king” thread and this answer has been even more confirmed with these last testing sessions, since my testing thralls were ALL using a silent legion set ( except the helmet of course :wink: ) and geez i was thinking they would get to mid life pretty often, but NO they never lost more than 250 HP in the worst case, and believe me they took a LOT of hits ( but the elk king isn’t especially strong either he’s just tanky which was perfect for this testing, always good to keep that in mind )

Anyway, i would say YES the armor rating of your thralls seems to play a role in the damage mitigation.
Ok so now you have made me wanting to make it 100% sure :grin: … ok i’ll try hit later then, it’s always good to be 100% sure.

i have NEVER used any sandreaper toxins on thralls weapons since the end of the EA, so why not…nice suggestion.

cheers

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Nice work! I had already realized that archer levels make a big difference. I was using a T1 archer as a bearer. After each fight I would have half a dozen arrows sticking out of my â– â– â– . When I switched to a T4 (Freya) I found her to be much more accurate.

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Wow so arrows are bugged too for thralls? :frowning:

Good info, good work!

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No not bugged, it’s just hard to fire into a melee and hit what you want. The better the archer the more likely they are to hit. IMHO this is working very well, no bug.

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Its not working correctly when a snake arrow is adding damage but a dragonbone arrow isn’t.

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i think you’re not talking about the same thing.
what shintaiDK wrote is correct imo, you should do AT LEAST the same amount of damage with dragon bone arrows compared to snake arrows, if not more…

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Thank you so much for the testing! I will carry this enlightenment forward when equipping my defensive armies from now on!

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Thanks for the kind words guys. It always motivates even more to keep on adding feedback and testing results.

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i hope i understood this correctly about stats…

i did some testing in that regard just to prove or not, that armor rating on thralls HAS an impact on the damage they take from ennmies.

And yes as expected, with 720 armor rating they can take approxilately twice as much hits than if they are naked.

In numbers:

-1 tier 1 fighter from the volcano NAKED can take 8 hits from a scorpion king before going down.

-1 tier 1 fighter from the volcano with a full silent legion set equiped can take 15 hits before going down.

So armors DO MATTER for thralls

i wanted to get it tested as well but i couldn’t find the sandreaper poison crafting recipe. i believe it was crafted in the cauldron during EA but now i have NO IDEA.
So please let me know if it comes to your mind.

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I should have been more precise: do the accuracy stats grant more damage to archer thralls? Because people keep telling how they give their archers those implying they would deal more damage because of that.
I wonder if that actually works for thralls as well.

Yep. You need the glands from these weird thingis I forgot their names. north of galleon, seperemu (few) and in the norther swungle. (Those poisoning monsters.) Then one gland goes into 1 poison at the cauldron.

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All of this could be changing with the newest TestLive, but here you go with what I know about Live, to roll up some of your earlier questions as well. Fire rate for standard archer is one every ~500ms or greater. Fire rate for throwing axe from standard archer is 3+ per second. If you get a tree between you and the axe guy, you’ll retrieve about 30 throwing axes in about 20 seconds (max gather rate for me). Poison DoT is consumed at first strike, it came at the same time as torch durability was added for thralls, but has occasionally toggled to where the thrall may administer unlimited DoT – possibly due to server issues. As you may know, no poison can be applied to throwing axes. At this point, no perks are applied to thralls via armor, only Armor Value.

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Ah ok thanks. Yes, poison was more about melee. Thanks for the information Barnes.
I wasnt after perks, but rather after those +2% damage per statpoint. But good to know. I am probably going for some heavy DLC armor.

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NP, I’ll update if TL is different, or better in any way. IMO Epic Flawless Hyrkanian is still a choice way to go for your duders.