very interesting and constructive post alex.
I had never figured out the fact that armor pen was considered / handled as a bonus and i was simply assuming that if the dmg of the arrow was not taken into consideration, so was the armor pen as well.
last time i had noticed these little differences in terms of shots needed to get a specific ennemy down with dragon bone arrows compared to default / blank arrows, i was just thinking that all the shots that i was counting were simply not ALL counted as effective landed shots since sometimes itâs hard to be sure if the engine DID register the shot or not.
So if i understand correctly what you are saying here : half of the item (a non blank arrow like the dragon bone arrow for ex) is bugged (not effective), that is to say the base damage of this item is not working, whereas all other bonuses like armor pen or even the poison effect from the snake arrows do work.
Well that would make sense with the result weâve got then.
i bet youâre already wondering how you could make this part of the item work so i wish you good luck with the devkit system then. it canât be that easy, right? otherwise, the dev team would have fixed this issue long ago.
In case you manage to fix this problem, please donât forget us and let us know the main lines of the fixing process. And i bet youâll make a lot of players happy with implementing it in one of your great modsâŠlike âexile lands improvedâ by any chance ?
KO damage from blunt arrows also applies; a thrall with an advanced-blunt-fitting hunting bow and blunt arrows flattens other thralls with quite minimal lethal damage.
Forgive me if I have missed it, but I tested how reactive the thralls were to an opponent with different weapons.
To smaller or shorter enemies, such as crocodiles, the thralls reacted way slower and spent a lot of time positioning around with one hand weapons or daggers.
With long reach weapons or slow weapons that can be delayed, like Spear, Two handed sword or warhammer the thrall dispatched opponents very quick as it did not waste time positioning itself around.
To humanoids its less noticeable but still noticeable. They seem to spazz out less with Spear, warhammer and two handed weapons against real players as well and more effective too as they dont have to be glued to the human player to start swinging.
just throwing it out if anyone wants to know, I love this thread btw @roro4066 thank you very much for this thread.
Thank you LoneWolf i do remember your thread about âthralls are a lot of fun when they workâ so i do know how you love the thralls game mechanic exactly the same way as i am loving them myself too. And we both know how buggy thralls can be and how well they were working at some point. But it doesnât change the fact that when they DO WORK itâs just pure FUN and thatâs why we are trying to understand every single little aspect of them we can.
Itâs very difficult to generalize i think, like for 5 hours my thralls fight every mob like a charm and 10 min later they got stuck in every single battle they are involved.
the size of the mob DOES matter in their buggyness, iâm convinced by that but only once this size has reached a certain proportion. for exemple 1 category of animals has hitboxes which are beyond the reach of fighters thralls. it will be extremely rare that you see them landing a hit to these ennemies
the undead dragon and other dragons in general as well
mammoths. here you may see 1-2 hits landed sometimes, definitely not as bad as dragons but still very bad
elephants. With elephants i have seen a lot of different things, but thralls do struggle to find the hitbox of these ennemies.
To be honnest i donât think the type of melee weapon you give them will have an impact on their buggyness. I have put thralls in fighting situtions with maces, 1 H sword, 2 H hammers 2 H swords and spears of course. And i can say they are not doing too bad with any of these. They have favourite weapons though, or what i like to call their âfavourite weaponsâ (mostly 2 handers weapons) they seem to be doing better with these but the difference is def not huge and and lies mostly in the reach and the âArea Of Effectâ potential of these weapons.
i may not have understood all of what you wrote correctly though, so donât hesitate too correct me or to enlighten me if you feel iâm totally off topic and not answering your question.
As i saw your question in the âplayers helping other playersâ section and as i remembered never having truly answered to Nuria 's request :
i decided to give it a proper testing session.
if youâre not interested in the process and results analyse, you can directly skip my whole paragraph to the conclusion that i will write at the end of this post.
Do bonus statistics coming from special weapons and armors sets have an impact on your thralls damage output?
First if we want to answer this question, we have to make sure that these bonus stats are trully taken into consideration when equiped and overall when fighting ennemies.
So i decided to test it first on my character (she has 40 points into strenght)
naked with an obsidian 1 H sword (50 base dmg + 6% armor pen)⊠i need 15 light attacksFULL COMBO hits to kill the elk king and only 10 heavy attacksFULL COMBO hits. note that if you donât use a full combo chain, you will do less dmg.
geared with a full dafari set and the legendary 1 H sword Khostal Khel scourge (sorry for the wonky translation into english) (50 base dmg + 9% armor pen and total strenght bonus 14, meaning theorically 28% damage bonus)⊠i need 13 light attacks full combo hits and only 9 heavy attacks full combo hits .
the difference is more noticeable if you only use random regular attacks (without combo chain)
So conclusion: although the impact is not as strong as i was expecting it really seems to be working. Bonus stats do affect your characterâs damage output.
Now letâs apply this to a thrall:
A naked berserker with an obsidian 1H sword will need either 12 or 13 hits to kill the elk king
a fully equiped berserker with dafari armors pieces and the legendary 1 H sword Khostal Khel scourge will need either 12 or 13 swings to kill the dame ennemy.
For me these results were enough to not test the accuracy bonus since i assume it works exactly the same way. If someone has the opportunity to test it please come and share your results but i am 99% sure the conclusion will be the same : Stats bonus from special equipement have NO EFFECT on the thralls damage output
note by the way that a berserker cimmerian is about as strong as my character with 40 in strenght especially considering that thralls are regulary switching from heavy to light combos moves and they often times do not even finish their combo moves
Other Side note: This test also helped me realize that thralls can make more or less dmg depending on the moves they make with their weapons (light attacks / heavy attacks / combo chain). I didnât test it in depth yet but i really think itâs the case right now.
Thank you for the feedback roro4066 and thank you again for the kind words, I will let you know if i find more things out and will definitely make good use of the information you share here.
As for the thralls, yes they are very fun. You should have seen what my axe hurling thrall did to some baddies yesterday on the PvP server, the thrall felt like a real threat and I loved every moment of it.
Next thing we will try is, if a BiS and buffed opponent can survive 3 axe hurling thralls. This will be interesting to watch.
BiS is best in slot, as in, the best possible gear a player would equip himself/herself with in order to have a significant advantage in a PvP combat scenario.
Axe hurling would be less accurate now, as I was boss hunting with my friend and I saw the thrall hurl like 5 axes in one go, we are now calling our axe hurling thralls Flash it works better haha.
Some NPCâs have a certain voice and dialogues that makes them sound funny too, and for some reason, when they hurl axes they repeat dialogues very frequently.
"I donât want to hurt you but I will " --> proceeds to wipe(massacre) out an entire NPC camp in seconds
I greatly appreciate the information in this thread.
Sorry if I missed it, but have there been any combat tests with dancers? Do they fight like fighters, or archers, or something unique? Any bonuses to daggers?
yeah, or âhurling riflesâ. Itâs true they are VERY good DPS wise as ranged thralls but they can sometimes struggle against small sized ennemies or moving targets like snakes for example. Moreover itâs a bit sad they often go in âFist Fightingâ mode when theyâre hit in melee.
Yep this my favourite and most fun part of the thing. Archers are ranged soldiers and they NEVER speak while figting whereas axes throwers speak as much as they are throwing axes quickly�?? This is kinda unique and so much fun !
Thanks RiverTwain , it is something i have wondered as well and that probably other players have wondered too, so itâs good youâre asking this question.
I will try to check it at the end of the day if i have time.
And i will try to make a quick summary of this thread , so players wonât have to read through the whole things to get the main ideas discussed here.
Even i as a player have a problem of HITTING said hitbox, if i use the aim-assist (Q). I use axe-shield or daggers usually. And if iâm fighting against a croc - oh boy - thatâs another problem. I canât hit them, because the hitbox is way too low. On a dagger combo, i can only hit them twice, when heâs spinning around.
yeah this is true, especially with daggers on small ennemies. I know it can happen a little on elephant too but not as much as against small ennemies if i remember correctly. personnally i donât use the auto aim system so i cannot speak of it.
Yeah i know exactly what you mean and you can be sure youâre not alone experiencing this frustrating issue, only 1 hit out of my full heavy combo chain is touching the crocs when iâm fighting them with daggers and when my char is at the same ground height as the croc. Always try to get below the ground level compared to your ennemy in case you havenât tried yet, that way almost all your hits will connect.
This is a problem of the character âaiming heightâ, either stuck in âhigh aiming modeâ or not rightly adapting to the hit boxes of special sized ennemies. This is annoying me too when it happens and i think the devs team already knows about the issue, so they must be looking into it, hopefullyâŠ
First itâs good to know that the best armor plating upgrade will only give you 3 extra points of armor rating whereever you attach it, that is to say it doesnât matter if you apply it to a very heavy or light armor set it will only give you 3 pts to each armor piece, no matter what.
In total this makes a maximum bonus of 15 armor rating points assuming youâre using 5 armor pieces (i mean helmet included).
So for this test i took âcruaidh the crusherâ a t4 fighter from the black hand faction equiped with a full epic flawless dafari set (160 total armor rating without any armor plating upgrade) and i spawned a dragon hatchling to deal the damage.
when he is hit by the âclaws attackâ of the dragon he loses EXACTLY 100 health points
and with the thick armor plating upgrade applied on his armor, he loses exactly 97 health points.
A difference of ONLY 3 hit points, yes thatâs almost NOTHING.
Note: these numbers were very accurate and i ddinât have any single difference while repeating the test several times.
So, as conclusion itâs good to note that 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, youâd better give them better armors / weapons tiers or even prioritize weapons damage kits over plating armor kits IMO
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 thrallsthe higher lvl the more damage they will dish out
Throwing weapons are indeed considered as ranged weapons, that is to say youâd 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 meThe 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 âNON SKILLEDâ 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 wonât matter but keep in mind they wonât be as effective as true combat thralls like fighters and archers.
From the strongest to the weakest, here is a list of all factions of the game:
So itâs 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.
If a moderator can manage to place this post at the very begining of this thread, it would be great ! THANKS in advance and donât hesitate to delete this sentence if you have managed to move it to the start of the thread.
yes exactly, thatâs why⊠Good idea, thanks for the advice mate, i will definitely try it tomorrow in case a moderator couldnât do what i was asking.
I didnât never push my tests at this point, but itâs clear to me that plating and other armor-upgrades are a luxe.
At end-game why not, when you have enought of all, and donât care to waste material, but like said, better make some very good armor, a flawless version to stuff them, than cover them with upgrades.
ps: letâs be clear, this is about thralls, we donât speak here about players-characters. Thatâs an other story.
so i wish you good luck with the devkit system then. it canât be that easy, right? otherwise, the dev team would have fixed this issue long ago.
I can say by experience that view people read the last post but many the first 