Here is some feedback about thralls mechanics

yeah makes sense, but i think “bryson mc rock” is playing in pve with teamates only so no worry for him in that matter.
i lost sthing like 4 risa and a few t4 tanner (don’t remember his/ her name since he has changed is gender recently) while dragging them near the lava.
Anyway your post could come in handy for PVP players i guess.
You know how fond of PVP i am :wink: !!!

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Our previous conversation on the subject of PVP was foreshortened, but if I may just add one observation: most people agree the Exiled Lands are too big for one person to rule. This is why we are culturally tolerant of Clans. In a server of several solo players, where each player is immortal – because in CE we truly are immortal – I am left with only one choice after a loss: do I return in shame/revenge/anger/lol? Or do I leave?

I suspect this is a bit like our mythology of Titans: bored of playing with each other, they invented themselves. Thus if the server is just filled with trolls, why not just leave, instead of returning to shame or defeat? PVP affords the ultimate choice to players who wish to be as Hyperion himself. :smiley:

because of honnor, pride, self esteem and spirit of competition (never surender). Moreover let’s not forget there must be some kind of fun and joy at outplaying others, even after a defeat (even more satisfying i guess)
But i got your point.
In my opinion pvp servers should be RULED by a wise or serveral wise admin in order to make it enjoyable for everyone, but of course i cannot have a proper opinion on that matter since i know nothing of PVP ygrid :wink:
But let’s not deviate too much from the topic.

thank you all for the advise :slight_smile:

we are specifically playing on a dedicated server so we have the power but because power is corruptive we are so kind to the world to let nobody suffer under our corruptive minds :wink:

The point with the “build something else you might loose your thrall in the lava” is a good idea and the tanner somehow became aggro to me. Her name translated into English would be something like “fast tongue” so I don´t know if this is her english name too :slight_smile:

no idea why I can remember that name so clearly…

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Just put your taskmasters in a vault after use next to the volcano base, everyone does that in the PvP servers no need to place the wheel so far away

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Nice tests and anylisis !

I didn’t never test it so far, but it was a fact for me since EA that the higher the thrall the better, still in same faction.
Then fighter i gived them mostly the best weapon i could, corresponding to what they used by default.
Archers, best bow to, and of course i love snake-arrows ! For my thralls and for myself. :wink:
Like you said, other arrows don’t work better than default ones, so i stuck with snake-arrows, simply the best !

Now what would be nice, similar tests for armors, and the upgrades for them.
Not realy sure how much upgrades are working for thralls, at least the last time they seem no more lose the upgrades i put on theyr armors like it happened a time. But there isn’t realy any reason they shouldn’t work on them after all.

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good!!! now I can murder better

Am I reading this correctly… essentially type or tier of weapon does not matter?

What did bring you to this conclusion? Please let me know and if i can explain or simply reformulate it, i will.

similar tests for armors have been done too. You may just have missed it, maybe? The thread can be messy to go through indeed.
i didn’t check with “upgrades / kits” that you can attach to it though. But unless i’m mistaken, considering how little of a difference it makes in terms of armor rating, it would be really hard and not so interesting to check how effective their benefits could be.
But in case things would have changed recently, i will have a look at these armor kits as soon as i get back to my game :smiley: .

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i did say, it would be interesting, didn’t say, you have to do it !

Then of course i know that armors are important for thralls, mine have mostly beside weapons, mostly the best stuff i can give them in the current moment in my plays.

Upgrades are an other story. While on my player-character i apply still upgrades, also if you may say it makes little differences (i do not agree with you here in that point maybe), for my player-char the difference is here, and upgrades are still a thing.

For thralls this is an other story. Hard to figure out, if upgrades make any difference, but i doubt about.
Long time, thralls lost the upgrades on armors after a short time, so it was useless to spend material and time for them. Now the upgrades mostly stay on the armors they wear, so mostly i apply some, at least on my highest fighter thralls.
I mean, on my server, i’m realy in end-game, and have my chest full of nice stuff. But i can imagine, that players with lower levels see it as luxury, especially if they are not sure if there is any difference and benefit for the loved and cherished thralls. :wink:

if i have offended you with my last post, please accept my apologies, this was not my intention BY ANY MEANS. For me it’s pretty clear that not everyone will read through the wolde thread (since it’s pretty long and kinda messy) and that we all can sometimes miss 1 or 2 paragrphs when we read a thread. It happens to me as well of course, that’s why i wrote “the thread can be messy to go through indeed” . I had hoped that this little comment would have made things clear that there was no bad intention AT ALL in my reply to your post.

Commuication is a hard thing, especially when handlled through keyboards only and even more inbetween foreigners, so if i have expressed myself badly, then again i’m sorry. Now i hope you have understood my intentions so let’s move on :sunglasses:

I agree it makes a little difference on your own character if you choose to go with light armors, maybe even with medium (i go with flexibility kits for my light armors but that’s a personal choice of course) but assuming we are speaking of thralls mechanics here and that heavy armor is the way to go if you plan on having very resistant thralls, i’m trying to see things from this perspective mostly and i think armor kits may not be so impactfull on thralls resistance + it would be pretty hard to test on a PVE server considering it only let your thrall gain something like 20-25 extra armor rating points compared to a possible total armor rating of 720 (maybe even more) in full heavy set… that’s not even 5 % of this amount.

Now it’s true not every player is interested in effeciency (and i am one of those in some cases), and that for other reasons (like the look of your thralls) we may choose to go for light / medium armors for our thralls.

So.I guess i could try to test it with light armors too, why not… i think it would make something like 20% improvement on the armor rating of the thrall (still have to check it though), but i still think it will not be easy to notice such a difference IN PVE while testing, i will nontheless try it out and maybe change my opinion depending on the results we’ve got, that’s why we are here after all…

cheers !

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“default weapons appear to NOT matter at all.
just checked the difference between dalinsa snow hunter (default weapon 1 h sword) and a berserker ( default weapon 2 h sword)
Both did the exact same amount of damage with either a 2h sword or a 1H sword.”

I was drawing an inference… your statement is clear that weapon style, i.e. 2 handed vs sword and board doesn’t matter. So from this I was also drawing a possible conclusion that tier of weapon didn’t matter. I mean, a 2h sword does more damage than 1h, so… ?

Thanks for doing this. The info is really handy.

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i can definitely see why these statements can be confusing. How to reformulate :thinking: ?

BrysonMcRock and myself were wondering if a thrall that is coming out of the wheel of pain with a 1 H sword and shield as “default equipement” would be more efficient, more skilled by using his own type of weapon / equipement COMPARED to how an equivalent thrall (same faction, same class and same lvl) coming out of the wheel of pain with a 2 H sword as default weapon would do in terms of damage in case they were both using a 1 handed sword for example.

differently said, we were wondering if funcom had implemented a mechanic that would make a “sword and shield” thrall more specialized, doing more damage by using his respective / default weapon (1 handed sword + shield in that case) compared to any other random weapon such as a spear, or a 2 H sword for example.
For example if you give a 2 H sword to both dalinsa and a berserker they will both do the same damage while wielding this weapon and if you give them both a 1 H sword, they will be doing the same damage but with more hits since they are both using a weaker weapon.

If there had been a “deafult weapons efficency” mechanic in the game, dalinsa (equiped with a 1 H sword) would have killed the same ennemy as the berserker in less hits, and this was just not the case, both killed their ennemy with the same amount of hits while wielding the same weapon.

So it appeared that the type of weapon thrall are using by default (ranged thralls excluded) plays no role in the damage calculation or even in terms of combo moves.

Sorry for the headache :sweat:i’m starting to get one myself :smile: . Hope this was clear enough, it’s really difficult for me to explain such thing in english, so if anyone feels fit to reformulate, you’re more than welcome :smiley: !

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Thank you for the excellent info and well written explenations.

I have gone over the thread again, and maybe i missed it, but do melee weapons make any difference at all on your thrall?

I mean, i see the tier and faction matter, thats great, but do it help at all to upgrade the weapons of your melee thralls?
I get the feeling that the thrall do the same damage no matter if you give him a dragonbone weapon or let him keep the standard one.

Have you seen any difference on this matter?

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Thank you, that was not expected, considering how i am struggling to put english words on all that stuff.

No , you didn’t miss it. I hadn’t testesd the arguably most basic and most obvious thing about combat thralls mechanics : does the tier of weapons actually matter for the thralls damage output ?

So it’s good you’re asking that and i thank you for it. This should have been checked right at the begining of these first testing sessions, but as most of us i guess, i was assuming it was certainly the case.
As there is nothing better to make things 100% sure and clear, i checked it in the game a few min ago.
ok so now i shall stop “blabla ing” and let me post the results of my last session :

Same ennemy for the main part of the testing (elk king) with all different tier of 2H swords wielded by one of my favourite thralls: the cimmerian bereserker.

  • stone 2 H sword (base dmg 18)… 39 hits the first time / and 37 hits the second time

  • iron 2 H sword (base dmg 26)… 26 hits the first time / 27 hits the third time

  • steel 2 h sword (base dmg33)… 24 hits the first time / 21 hits the second time

  • ancient 2 H sword (base dmg 39)… 19 hits the first time / 18 hits the second time

  • hardened steel 2 H sword (base dmg 43)… 16 hits the first time / 14 hits the second / and 15 hits the third time

  • dragon bone 2 h sword (base dmg 55)… 13 hits the first time / 12 hits the second time

  • obsidian 2 H sword (base dmg 60)… 12 hits the first time / 11 hit the second / 11 hits the third time / and 12 hits the fourth time

  • starmetal 2 H sword (base dmg 63)… 10 hits the first time / and 11 hits the second time

And for fun and curiosity i decided to change the ennemy for 1 time : the berserker girl has needed 3 swings of a starmetal 2 H sword to kill a regular wolf, as opposed to 9 swings with a 2 H stone sword.

Note that the numbers of my ingame weapons base damage may differ from your game.
i have recently subscribed to alex’s great mod “exiled land improved” mainly for the starmetal weapons base dmg changes. there are a lot of other good changes in his mod as well BTW, so i invite you to have a quick look at his last mod in case you do like mods, here is a link: [Mod] Exiled land improved

And to be honest i’m not sure if it’s a recent change from the developpers or if it’s a change done by alex in his mods but when i was doing 95 % of my previous testing sessions, i clearly remember that the dragon bone 2 H sword had a base dmg of 60 (as opposed to 55 here). So If alex or a developper can confirm that, it would be nice, but anyways i’m fine with these current numbers for my ingame weapons base dmg.

Of course there is no need to write down the conclusion of this testing session, but as i like clear things and for the sake of it :

DIFFERENT TIERS OF WEAPONS DO MATTER FOR YOUR THRALLS DAMAGE OUTPUT

And after all these posts and testing sessions / results i thought it would be nice to give you 2-3 screen of my last sessions so you could (of course in a very limited way) put some kind of pict on all these words

Sorry for the BIG BIG post :sweat:

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Thank you for that, as i guess we all thought it would be like that, but its better to know and not waste precious materials if it didnt matter:)

Thank you for spending the time to do this, it have helped me a lot.

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Sure !

Weapons | Mod off / Mod on
stone 2h | 18 / 18
iron 2h | 26 / 26
steel 2h | 33 / 33
ancient 2h | 39 / 39
hardened steel 2h | 42 / 43
dragonbone 2h | 62 / 55
obsidian 2h | 58 / 60
star metal 2h | 57 / 63

Grats for the thread and thanks for the link. :blush:

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Thanks alex, so i was not trippin :sweat_smile: .
So it was not 60 then but 62, good that you cleared it out in my head, tks.
Your mod has very meaningfull changes and i have been having ZERO issue at all with it, so it’s always worth for others to get a quick look at it.

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Your thread make me curious about thrall damage, it seems that they only use the damage of the bow, but not the damage of the arrows. On the other hand they benefit from armor penetration bonuses and statut effect (poison) of arrow. That why you needed 52 shots without any arrows and 50 shots with dragonbone arrows on Elk king, thrall has +9% armor pen according to the arrows.

I tested something with Devkit help. I checked the NpcStatTable and picked up a monster with low HP :

  • hyena spotted : 96 hp, armor 22

If I use bossonian bow with blunted arrow, damage 17+1 (I used blunted arrow to have something like no arrow damage bonus), I should theoretically shoot 96/18 = 5.3 arrows, but I have 7+8 = 15% armor pen, so I should need less than 5 arrows.

In game I need 4 shots to kill hyena.

From there I tried with thralls equipped with a 18 damage bow, without arrows and then with dragonbone arrows on the same hyena.

  • Black hands archer lvl 1:
    -No arrows : 10 arrows : 96/10 = 9.6 damage
    -dragonbone arrows : 9 arrows

-1 arrow due to + 9% armor pen bonus, but archer lvl 1 still does less than half of the damage than a player with same bow damage stat.

  • Black hand archer lvl 2
    -No arrows : 9 arrows : 96/9 = 10.7 damage
    -dragonbone arrows : 9 arrows

archer lvl 2 still does half of the damage than a player with same bow damage stat.

  • Black hand archer lvl 3
    -No arrows : 7 arrows : 96/9 = 13.7 damage
    -dragonbone arrows : 7 arrows

archer lvl 3 still does less damage than a player with same bow damage stat.

  • Black hand archer lvl 4
    -No arrows : 6 arrows : 96/6 = 16 damage
    -dragonbone arrows : 6 arrows

archer lvl 4 still does little bit less damage than a player with same bow damage stat.

Now lets try with Forgotten Tribe archers :

  • Forgotten Tribe archer lvl 1:
    -No arrows : 8 arrows : 96/8 = 12 damage
    -dragonbone arrows : 8 arrows

This guy is stronger than an Black hand archer lvl 2

  • Forgotten Tribe archer lvl 2:
    -No arrows : 7 arrows : 96/7 = 13.7 damage
    -dragonbone arrows : 7 arrows

This guy is equivalent to Black hand archer lvl 3.

  • Forgotten Tribe archer lvl 3:
    -No arrows : 6 arrows : 96/6 = 16 damage
    -dragonbone arrows : 5 arrows

-1 arrow due to + 9% armor pen bonus

This guy is equivalent to Black hand archer lvl 4.

  • Forgotten Tribe archer lvl 4:
    -No arrows : 5 arrows : 96/5 = 19.2 damage
    -dragonbone arrows : 5 arrows

Finaly, this guy is stronger than Black hand archer lvl 4, but still do less damage as player with same bow with “no arrow”.

Let’s try best archers of the game, Votaries :

  • Votarie archer lvl 1:
    -No arrows : 7 arrows : 96/7 = 13.7 damage
    -dragonbone arrows : 7 arrows

This guy is equivalent to Forgotten archer lvl 2 and Black hand archer lvl 3.

  • Votarie archer lvl 2:
    -No arrows : 6 arrows : 96/6 = 16 damage
    -dragonbone arrows : 6 arrows

This guy is equivalent to Forgotten archer lvl 3 and Black hand archer lvl 4.

  • Votarie archer lvl 3:
    -No arrows : 5 arrows : 96/5 = 19.2 damage
    -dragonbone arrows : 5 arrows

This guy is equivalent to Forgotten archer lvl 4.

  • Votarie archer lvl 4:
    -No arrows : 4 arrows : 96/5 = 24 damage
    -dragonbone arrows : 4 arrows

Finaly this guy do same damage as player with same bow without any arrow damage bonus.

Conclusion :
Player will always deal more damage than thralls even with 0 accuracy. Arrows are pretty useless on thrall, cause they ignore additional arrow damage and only bonuses are effective, so snake arrow is the ONLY interesting thrall ammunition choice because of the poison stack effect AND the +8% armor pen.

I also tried full stygian raider armor and Eye of the khan bow (+14 accuracy) on Votarie archer lvl 4, he still need 4 arrows to kill the hyena. Accuracy is useless on thrall, the only interesting armor bonus for thrall is vitality, others do nothing.

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