How Do You Set Up Your Thralls in PvE?

Conan Exiles General Discussion Players Helping Players
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This is a broad topic for thrall preparations. Alot has changed since the game was launched. Its easy to find “out of date” websites full of misinformation. So I was wondering what folks are doing these days with the current state of the game (2022).

  • What armor do you equip melee thralls? Archer thralls? (Snow biomes/Desert areas?)
  • What weapons do you like for melee thralls? Archer thralls?
  • What food buffs do you like for melee thralls? Archer thralls?
  • Do you ever bother upgrading thrall armor and weapons (Plating? Damage kits?)

Any special tips for thralls (especially base defenders against Purges)?

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For pve the use of a thrall is basically a boss farming tool. You want to maximise damage and ap for direct combat while still keeping them alive.

  • Heavy armor, hands down. Thralls don’t dodge so this should be a given. Maximize dr while having a set that boosts str and/or vit
  • Some people like to give their thrall a mace, but I prefer 2h weapons. Greatswords, warhammers, or a greataxe with some ap kit on it. Never a shield. Never use archers in pve.
  • Gruel or haunch for training so they level str/vit, pork for damage bonus. Feed appropriate to which stat needs the most work or you feel you want more of. Str is your ttk but no vit means you could risk them dying sooner.
  • The extra ~1% dr from kits isn’t worth the effort in my opinion, but preference. For weapons absolutely, master kit or spiked every time
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I’m certain people will disagree but I have found through many purges that it just doesn’t matter enough to spend any time thinking about it. Dress them how you like. It might make a VERY slight difference if you equip archers with armor that increases Accuracy and fighters with strength perked armor. Another thing I have found in practice which no one agrees with it that the perks the thrall gets is more important then the “Archer” or “Fighter” designation. Supposedly the “multipliers” are different but in practice it’s not even detectable - or the system is broken - either way… :stuck_out_tongue:

All my thralls get both: Bow 30 Dmg 20 Pen, 200 Star metal arrows, and an 81 Dmg Long Sword or 2H Hammer. This now actually matters.

All thralls get nothing but Gruel for their entire lives.

DMG kits on the weapons of course but for armor I have in the past but I have found it to be a complete waste of time and materials in practice.

A lot depends on the arrangement and settings more than anything else. 90% of my thralls are set to:

  • Prioritize Ranged
  • Attack All Enemies
  • Attack Distance 50m
  • Chase Distance 15m
    And the ones on walkways are set to Stand And Defend instead of Prioritize Ranged.

These settings have the thralls detecting enemies at 50m, running out away from the base 15m, taking formation there, raining arrows on the attackers, and then finishing them off with long swords and 2H hammers. Setups would be different if you were trying to acquire Purge Thralls of course. But that to me is a collector thing… like someone trying to collect all of the special weapons in the game, or all the DLC saddles, etc. It might be fun to have popular or famous names but T3 is just as good in practice - for both base defense and boss farming.

For the weapons you want a mix where some are doing Sunder, some Bleed, and some Poison - but all with 80* Dmg and 30 to 50 Pen.

You want you thralls to be placed 6M from each other all long every side of your base - I find right next to the exterior wall is best.

It also matters very little if your thralls are tier 3 or named tier 4 thralls as long as you have enough of them. Ofc, this seems to also be true when battling with a single follower - in almost every situation. A tier 3 level 10 follower will kill the Red Mother Dragon and her two babies in about 6 to 7 minutes losing only half it’s health. A tier 4 named thrall at level 20 will kill the Red Mother and her two babies in about 5 or 6 minutes losing 35 to 40% of it’s health. So like no difference - at least not enough to worry about IMO.

And I should probably mention that I mostly only have experience with Stygian thralls that come out of the wheel with about 3.5k HP and hit about 4.5K by level 10. I realize that some more primitive races may have weaker thralls but I dunno too much about them. There are three “classes” of thralls and Stygian warriors are in the middle class - offering what I consider to the the optimal balance between durability and leveling speeds.

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My thralls always get max strength gear and if they don’t have over 90% chance in vit, they get steaked to 20 (then grueled into incontinence). I want the most health I can get naturally and want them to do the most damage possible, even if its in the margins, cuz… why not? If it means they hit a boss one less time because its dead, that’s a win for me.

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Depends what im using them for. Personal thralls , ones that travel with me, thats a secret. Guards and general combat thralls get heavy epic gear and epic weapons.

Undead dont bleed so bleed type weapons are useless for them. Sunder for those.

Most others get bleed or poison for general combat

I form squads too. Experimenting with those.

Saw a recent mod for thrall patrols and sleeping im interested in too.

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What armor do you equip melee thralls? Archer thralls? (Snow biomes/Desert areas?)

  • Weight: heavy armor
  • Stats: vitality, strength as a distant second
  • Some wiggle room for customization. Thralls shouldn’t look boring, and at least in PvE, some points more or less don’t matter that much.

What weapons do you like for melee thralls? Archer thralls?

  • Best of what I have of: maces, two handed swords, two handed axes.
  • Daggers, spears and bows tend not to work well for thralls imho.

What food buffs do you like for melee thralls? Archer thralls?

  • Steaks to increase vitality gain until they reach level 20
  • gruel after that. Pork might be better, but I’m a cheapskate

Do you ever bother upgrading thrall armor and weapons (Plating? Damage kits?)

  • weapons yes, best damage kit I can craft
  • armor no
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Depends… if your looking for OP to be OP… been covered.

I tend to dress them up, slap bulk plates on them for extra def. And be happy. XD
Thou, I lean towards Med Armors.

Alot of people hate Archers for PVE… they do crap damage, and getting setting right so they actually fire arrows and not back up over and over is pain.
If you can get distant setting right (give or take your play style) they can be fun. Thou getting them good arrows can suck.
I tend to have my Archer, Target there Archer. So I can deal with melee units and not be turned to pin cushion and get hit with cripple all alot swear words time.

Melee, So many weapons got faults when used by thralls… Maces/Trebs whiff, Several of 2hands they sit there… open to attack.
Spears and Pikes, they’ll poke… point blank and aim right over stuff. -_-’
Daggers aren’t to bad… anything low to ground, it’ll miss right over them like spears.

I personally like Spears/Pikes, Keeps thrall out of reach, and enemy ai will often try close in. I find 2hand swords nice for aoe hits. I tend pick my fights better.

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I like to give my thralls greataxes and greatswords for PVE stuff when I’m grabbing a bodyguard.

Base Melee guards: Full strength or vitaility gear, depending on the thrall (Teimos gets vitality, berserkers get strength etc etc). All heavy armor because I can. No armor plating, though. Too many resources for so little gain. I’ve found that once they hit the 1k armor mark, the plating really doesn’t matter. The only armor upgrades I give them are weight reduction kits or durability kits, depending on whether or not I plan on wearing their armor at some point. Weapon Kits, however, are priceless. There’s literally no downside to them if given to a thrall. Master Weapon Kit or Advanced Weapon Spikes depending on the base armor pen.

As for base archer guards, Heavy armor in the form of the Poitain cavalier/Hykerian Raider set (minus helmet) and the assassin’s hood for a +10 bonus to accuracy. Grab a bunch of Freya’s and Hundred-Arrows, give them cooked fish to boost that accuracy stat, and give them the best bows I can (aside from the ones I plan on using). Master weapon kits on all bows.

Thrall pots for base defense are your friends. Especially during a purge/raid. Gruel vs No Gruel can make or break a base assault.

Base archers: Chase distance 15, Attack distance 50, Attack everything, and put them in positions where they have 360° firing arcs, My current favorite method is a fence on a foundation/ceiling and using the Derketo DLC’s stage floors. It works out extremely well.

Base Melee: Chase Distance 50, Attack Distance 30, Attack everything. Half are given spears, a quarter are given maces, and the remaining quarter are given greatswords/greataxes (depending on my mood)

This next part may not apply to you, since it’s a PVP server that I play on, but I keep a box of Obsidian arrows, Poison arrows, and Snake arrows on standby. My heavy hitters get obsidian arrows to punch through Armor, my cannon fodder get Snake arrows since they’re cheap and easy to replace (both the thrall and the arrows), and my “could have been good but weren’t” thralls get poison gas arrows. When I have a feeling that I’m going to be raided, I give all my thralls gas masks of some kind and proceed to dole out the arrows. Will the archer thralls kill a player? Probably not. Will they prevent them from healing by peppering them with single digit damage? Absolutely. Also, obsidian arrows are easy to craft by the thousand, and when given to a strong archer will pack a heck of a punch

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Depends on the location you build. Speaking for exile lands the purges have crafters so I fix a Really fast perimeter just for the purge and I take my best thrall with God breaker exotic feast and truncheon. The other thralls are waiting on the first foundations of the perimeter wall with great swords or pikes. I want to be able to lure the named crafters on me, but sometimes it takes time to knock them down, so my base is exposed, that’s why my rest fighters are on, if a foundation will break they will go down and slay.
I don’t fix them armors anymore, I put them armor pieces that I farm, but only the epic, mostly Cimmerian steel.
In places like jungle or Darfari I dress them with skelos armor pieces, they don’t need more, I farm the volcano a lot so it’s easy to gain skelos pieces of armor.
In all the other places they wear Cimmerian steel. Free armor pieces from the mount of the dead camp.
In Siptah I use almost the same tactic. Yet all this time I had only accursed purges, no named crafters at all so I do not fix a perimeter Wall, they are all out with Grey great swords slaying everything in seconds, I don’t even bother to capture named fighters or archers, I can find them all in citadel anyway, so why bother to capture them in the purge and risk? No they all die fast and clean.
A tip for weapons is the dragon bone in exile lands, they are really cheap and strong, and Grey weapons in Siptah, free boosted weapons :man_shrugging:.

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For follower thralls, always heavy armor with STR/VIT depending on which stat needed the most help after they’ve leveled. for base thralls, the fighters get heavy in either STR/VIT and the archers get whatever weight that has accuracy and both get armor that looks the best to fit the theme of my base.

Melee thralls I usually give a mace but I’ve also used greatsword. I still find mace to be one of the better options but I’ll admit I have not bothered to try other weapons like katanas/axes etc. Mace just works and I haven’t seen any reason to really change it.

Archer thralls get bows of course and depends on theme of my base, since I only use archer thralls as base defense, never as followers.

Depending on which stat needs help during leveling, I choose the appropriate food for thralls I level up. Everyone else gets gruel and once thrall hits 20 they get gruel too. Gruel is easy to make and gives the best bang for your buck on health regen/effort. Since base thralls will not level up no point in giving them food other than gruel.

Weapons definitely, always go for a master weapon kit because durability won’t matter since thrall weapons don’t take durability damage when they use them. Armor not really, I don’t think its necessary at all as thralls don’t need to deal with weight and the good followers are already really tanky and have large health pools so that tiny bit of extra armor rating isn’t going to really make an impact.

For archers the positioning is important. Make sure there’s no building pieces getting in the way of their shots as much as possible else they are just fancy decoration. Other thralls it really doesn’t matter a whole lot as the purge is pretty random about where the enemies actually spawn. I’ve found even trying to purposefully design my base in ways for enemies to funnel in oftentimes the enemies will just go randomly attack another part of the outer wall. So basically surround your base with fighters every so often for coverage in case that happens and then put them a bit more densely around the points of entry.

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This one likes the gold lingerie one can craft at the casting bench for dancer thralls.
Followed closely by Derketo (the religious set, not the dancer set which is barely modified from Zamoran dancer) and Zath temple clothes.

Now, for combat.
This one has three classes of combat prisoners with jobs.

  1. Personal attendants/bodyguards.
    These tend to be tier 4 and are lavished with the very best Heavey Armour, forged by a named armourer, further reinforced with bulk plating. Almost always vitality forward armour, but if this one is on Siptah, it’s Wolf Hat all the way. Weapons are also top tier and modded heavily. Either two-handed sword or single handed mace/axe. Thralls seem to get confused when offered many weapons, but these seem reliable. This one tends to play anvil to the thrall’s hammer in many boss fights. They are given a regulated diet of feasts their entire lives and usually have warpaint as well.
  2. Household guards.
    These may be of lower tier. They get hand me downs from the personal guard until this one has spare resources to make better (still Heavey, still vit focused, altho archers may get heavy Poitain because it dyes well and is accuracy heavy armour) gear for them. When that time comes, this one tries to match their gear style to the style of the household they are guarding. Weapons are going to include bows and spears more, as they are often not going to be traveling far. With Truncheons nearby in case of a humanoid purge.
    When placing guard thralls, remember that they are as dense of skull as they are of muscle and are likely to loose arrows at walls of at all possible…
    In the thrall pot is a steady supply of cooked whatever meat this one got most recent and honey because there is plenty to go around.
  3. Harvesting Caddy.
    This one’s named bearers are treated as well as the personal guard. This one does not want the grind mule to die en route. The difference being they usually are almost exclusively given shields and single hand weapons. They must survive. Even if this one does not, especially if this one does not, they must last until they can be retrieved.

It has already been mentioned above that some things that seems like they should matter, do not and other hidden factors are weighty.
No need to beat that expired equine.
This one would only note that sunder is a valuable status to inflict in mass combat.

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1604×1273 2.61 MB

This is the last thrall I used in PVE. Its a Tier 3 Bearer (could not find a T4 to save my life). He’s equipped with Epic Turanian Heavy with Bulk Plating for maximum tankiness (he has a eHP value of around 87,000). This is on Savage Wilds which has a few things that make the Arena Champion look like she’s slapping you with a wet noodle. So need a slightly tougher nut to crack so the loot doesn’t spill out everywhere.

In the case that I’m dealing with a ton of minions either because I waded through an area like a madman, or one of the bosses goes through an add phase (yep some bosses in Savage Wilds have phases, good times), he’s got a Sword of Crom with a master fitting. The bow I have no clue about. I think it might actually be a legendary equivalent bow that looks like a Hunting Bow. Think I was testing something when I took that screenshot. But normally can just omit that.

But usually he would just stand off to the side with his nose in a corner so I could do my work. He’s pretty much there to carry the loot.

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I outlined my setup and said what I know above - but here’s a pretty typical purge. This one is about medium grade as enemy strength and fierceness goes:

The more difficult ones with Berserkers and whatnot, are no different really - the enemies last about twice as long and are able in a few rare cases, to whittle my guys down to about 85 or 90% of their health. So like from 4,000 HP to 3,500 HP.

All but three of these thralls are T3. I don’t actively try to acquire T4 Named combat thralls.

BTW, if you’re wondering about the Thrall Names, I named them after US Presidents and when I got more than 46 thralls I began naming them after early American heroes.

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