I can’t believe I wasted hours testing this 
Anyways, here is some independent, objective testing if anyone cares:
While I respect stelagel’s contributions to this community and the time and effort it took to make this post, I think that the conclusions drawn from it were heavily biased by his testing methodology and confirmation bias.
First off, thralls - despite the dozens of nerfs over the years - are still quite OP. Two geared thralls with War Party already trivialize most of the content in the game - especially when they are armed with BIS items like Momentum. It doesn’t matter what thralls.
Add a human player with BIS items with maxxed agility damage using a BIS katana (already ridiculously OP in PVE) and the game is at joke difficulty. Plus I have no idea what the server settings are, or if they are even at default.
On official, unmodded servers noone in their right mind runs around grinding PVE with stacks of Exotic Feasts on their thralls. They slap a stack of gruel on the thrall and that’s it. People only grind with Exotic Feast in single-player where they can spawn stacks in instead of having to run around hand-picking eggs 1by1 and drying berries in a dryer.
Exotic Feast is giving you almost double the health regen of gruel, which is already more than sufficient to keep a proper thrall alive during anything short of being beaten on by several angry volcano thralls at once. Of course your Lone Fishermen seem to regain their health fast: because they have very little health and you are feeding them with the most powerful regen food in the game which is then compounded by your Authority build buffs and perks like Attentive Care.
There is absolutely nothing special about the Lone Fisherman. What you are seeing here is simply an Authority build with two geared thralls being supported by a competent player steamrolling PVE content. The pitiful 1.2 melee multiplier damage is being nearly doubled by the Authority build and healing is being boosted by both Authority and an unrealistic thrall food to nearly 3x that of the typical thrall with gruel. There is no magic here, just confirmation bias.
A proper, unbiased way to test this would be a 1vs1 with a lvl0 Lone Fisherman thrall vs an enemy with no player intervention, and then a 1vs1 with another lvl0 thrall (for example the common Cimmerian Berserker) vs the exact same enemy, again with no player intervention. Repeat at least 10x, toss the results in an Excel and then you have something remotely approaching a fair test.
As for your mentor having 10k hours: No disrespect intended, and I have no idea who they are, but - just like age IRL - time played does not necessarily correlate with wisdom. An experience alone does not automatically bestow wisdom: one must actually choose to learn from the experience.
There are many dumb people with thousands of hours played on my server. In fact, I just gassed someone with 6000+ hours the other night as a little lesson, because he was arguing that 2 blocks is the safe limit to protect from poison gas (hint: it is not). Ironically that is something that I learned in my first 10 hours or so.
I should also add that there are very valid reasons for leveling crafters, especially with the new purge system.
I have clanmates, and everyone wants to have their own separate base with their own crafters, herd of mounts, field of f***king Golems harvesting that 100 wood per night (sigh)… so ever since crafters take up a thrall slot thrall cap has always been tight.
So if I get a decent T4 like Jaes’Pliis, then I will take the time to level her to 20 so that she can be a proper contributor during a purge. Why have a crafter thrall just standing there sawing at the same log for 3 years when you can give her some gear and an epic bow and she can hold her own in a fight when necessary?
And lately my server has been plagued by toxic clans who will use every exploit in the book. I had my base offline purged the other night and my bladesmith, shieldwright, and bowyer managed to survive because they were fully leveled and geared. (my base has since been moved to a safe place). A lot can go wrong in the game, either due to legit happenings, bugs, or toxic players – and even your poor 312 health Moku the Smelly would appreciate you taking 15 minutes to get him some levels (with Grilled Steak) and toss some looted Cimmerian Steel armor on him to cover his ass.
Tangent.
Would there be a reason to level up Lone Fisherman or Tavern Keepers or other 0 stat 0 stat growth thralls?
It’s almost like Age of Zeroes simply forgot certain followers when it rolled in with it’s overhaul.
Also, @stelagel, let’s find an official and follow up on this information when we have time.
There may be discrepancy between PStato and other versions, or we may have missed something.
We can run a fisher and compare them to an equally equipped zerker eating the gruel. Especially watching what takes damage from what.
From my experience, not anymore.
I still have some that were placed years ago that have ‘normal’ % growth stats.
Strangely even the barkeeps got the 0 treatment. Beforehand they did have positive % growth stats because I used to level them awhile back. Why would I do such a thing? Because way back when the new purge was first introduced and we learned that the # of defending thralls increased the amount of purge enemies, I did some experiments with manning my cauldrons with leveled barkeepers in an attempt to make them not count towards the defending thrall #s. I do not think it makes a difference btw: a thrall is a thrall.
And yes I just realized that stelagel is on console. I should add that my testing was done on an Official PC PVE-C server, with a standard (non-authority) build. Yes, this naturally means that my Lone Fisherman was weaker than stelagel’s - but I’ve been leveling thralls for 7 years and I noticed absolutely nothing out of the ordinary with the Lone Fisherman aside from the frustration of it gaining no stats even with that 14% chance. It’s an ordinary 1.2 melee multi, 1487 health thrall.
Speaking of which: 14% vitality chance shoulds till pop a health now and then. You actually get two rolls on each level up: one at 14%, and a second roll at 7% (half).
I have always suspected that there is something fishy going on with the stat growth % calculation (and/or stat growth buff food) because with the food buff (for example 90% natural chance +14% from food) I have often had thralls at a theoretical 100% chance to gain at least 1 stat point and they did not gain one on level up. That should not be possible. But then again this is CE so nothing surprises me anymore.
BTW the following thralls have the same paper stats as Lone Fisherman, and should be obtainable in-game for a comparison. Comparisons should be done at level 0, with identical gear, no player intervention, 1v1-ing a mob at least ten times or so to average out lucky hits.
Leo the Monster (Relic_Hunter_Taskmaster_4_Zingaran)
Luba the Luscious (Relic_Hunter_Entertainer_4_Zamorian)
Kot-Arok Steelbender (Relic_Hunter_Blacksmith_4_Stygian)
Inigo the Vengeful (Relic_Hunter_Tanner_4_Zingarian)
Iblis of Zingara (Relic_Hunter_Alchemist_4_Zingarian)
(there are more but I am getting tired of typing them out)
All of these have the exact same paper stats. I’ve leveled them all, if there was something “special” about crafters I’m sure I’d have picked up on it.
I think stelagel just discovered that even crappy thralls with BIS gear and uber health regen food buffed by a full authority build and supported by a competent player steamrolls content.
Thank you 
. It’s really appreciated you tested you know, it’s very important to have more opinions on this matter.
My difficulty test was the same as official (decadent) , but what makes official gaming very difficult is the performance. Single player doesn’t lag, desync and all the rest nusty experience that makes easy to very hard 
. And Yes, it was not the fishermans that was finishing the fights but me, this Musashi is a freaking beast on pve, very true!
Not quite true brother. The difficulty of eggs exists because people refuse to change attributes (hardworking perk) and harvest shoebills in jungle. Run an hour in the jungle with a pet you wish to level up safely and gather so many eggs that you can fill a preservation box and get your pet on lvl 15 easily.
Unless i have a problem on my mind 
, when i play regularly on official servers alone my kitchen is the most important room of my home.
THANK YOU!!!
Everything is so fluid with this system that in the end all you understand is that you are chasing golden cheerios, finally it leaves you with the feeling that it doesn’t worth the effort.
I cannot quote again , my phone doesn’t allow me now, so allow me some friendly clarifications.
The special thing with Lone fisherman duo and the exile crafters duo was the fact that i didn’t have to stop my run, no matter where i was, and look behind if they need healing or any other kind of help. It felt like the old times that i was completely confident that my Berserker is alive and kicking behind me. I kinda missed that brother, since Age of sorcery even with Authority points you feel fear that your thrall may be staggered and die.
So for this feeling only, yes, the egg grinding worth it, what the heck, and yes… This is very special if you ask me.
You are all my mentors, make no mistake please, all of you have given something to me. I often call Masters in here people that i find in here when i first visited, i got plenty of help and advices from all of you even if you were not referring to me personally. I simply read many posts, many ideas and many replies, it’s my coffee company every morning and every afternoon. Yes i am a routine person .
But yes, the hours of gaming does not reflect necessarily competence or skills, you are 1000% correct on this one too.
I have made no discovery my friend @AngryPotato WE have, all of us because we still play and share opinions and experiences.
Once again thanks a million for your contribution, it’s extremely appreciated, truly
It’s a shame more people don’t have this same attitude and inquisitiveness, and want to get to the bottom of the weirdness that is Conan Exiles.
For example I have some thralls that have permanent warpaint. There seems to be some kindof glitch that causes it. I am 99% sure that it involves putting the bodypaint on when the thrall is at level 0, the thrall leveling up, and the thrall teleporting back to its originally placed position from the Scouting state.
But I have tried so many times and it almost seems like a random occurrence. If people would help figure out a repeatable process it would be a really cool way to customize thralls. But currently out of about 75 thralls I typically have about 2-3 with “perma bodypaint”.
There are other systems that need more research.
For example, is there any difference between an archer thrall, and a fighter thrall at all (may as well add entertainer to the equation) or does nothing matter at all aside from melee multiplier, ranged multiplier and stats? You kindof touched on this with this Lone Fisherman thing but I don’t think anything has ever been proven definitively.
I know that Tier I, Tier II, Tier III and Tier IV does matter in terms of what attacks the thrall executes and its ability to complete full combos, but does the Archer, Fighter, Entertainer, Cook, Smelter, etc designation have any influence on the thrall’s combat ability?
Some claim that an Archer thrall is more accurate (misses less) with a bow. I have never really noticed this, but then again I have never tested it in-depth. Nothing in the game seems to indicate that thralls have an inherent “accuracy” attribute that varies from thrall to thrall… but I am not certain.
Sadly Funcom is about the least communicative developer ever. I think at this point the playerbase and people like @Xevyr probably know more about the game code than whatever unfortunate skeleton crew of interns they currently have - if they have any at all - maintaining the game.
I have several characters on official servers with permanent warpaint. Not even death removes it. Never been able to figure out how to reliably make it happen and not from lack of trying. Best I got is that it happens when a character with warpaint on is camped out when a patch happens. But it’s never been 100% and lately it hasn’t happened at all so whatever was causing it may have been fixed or changed.
I was talking about thralls. It is definitely still happening since I have a dancer I placed a couple weeks ago with permanent Relic Hunter warpaint on. She was placed, warpainted, geared, buffed and leveled to level 5 and then left scouting to teleport back to her initial guard position.
I didn’t even know it could happen with players!
I can only say from experience here and hopefully @LostBrythunian got me out of my frustration almost immediately with his knowledge and wisdom.
Some months ago i will decide to do a purge test of open war. So i will fix a square fortress with one great open gate and in the yard i will place the fighters in front and the archers behind, 6 fighters and 6 archers. I gave them the orders of attack distance and chase distance, not more than 10 meters on fighters and not more than 20 on archers since they were behind but on the ground not protected on walls.
I also decided to rank Nimble toe to Captain. She was in the middle of the lines but had exactly the same distance orders like fighters.
She got me really frustrated because she was not “following orders” she was running away from lines and often get her self and me on real trouble. My temper went high and i got really frustrated with this action so my dearest friend opened my eyes with his words…
My friend, she is a who.re and you made her captain, what did you expect from an entertainer, she ain’t a warrior dude, send her back to the bar to entertain soldiers with her dancing skills…
Dude! He was absolutely correct. As soon she was removed from the battle field the wars kept going with absolute planning and success.
So from experience only, don’t use entertainers as warriors in purge bases and battle field, they ain’t warriors neither they follow orders .
And for the sake of the test, i tried it on single player too, because where we were playing was a humiliating official pve-c server that performance was an unknown word in it.
Entertainers are good followers but really bad warriors!
Ps. Apologies if i sound a bit sexist here, we speak about thralls after all, not actual persons.
This is very strange. I have worked with thralls many times that have a 100% or higher chance of increasing the stat, and they always increased it with each level. The only difference was that if the chance was 100%, then the increase in points could be 1 and 2, approximately equally, but if the chance was more than 100% due to food, then 2 points were almost always added.
To be entirely fair, Sun Tzu also tried this exact thing in the Art of War.
Master Sun, However, has the ability to execute those who performed poorly to encourage others to get their head in the game.
Thralls in this game… They are of significantly more diminished mental capacity.
On to other topics
What this one has noticed with regards to permanent warpaint is mostly limited to Carries Others through Storms and certain demonic Amazons. They come with the warpaint by default, and unless it is overwritten or deliberately scrubbed, remains on them. Some other Thralls may be coded with a default body paint. It may not even show up, but if the one they are perma codes to is applied, it may linger, but that is pure speculation. This one has never seen a BP, Bazaar, or DLC warpaint become persistent.
Regarding archers and archery…
An excellent question, but how would it even be tested? The number of (literally) moving parts is too many for this one to isolate why a thing turns out as it does in regards to shots hitting.
This one has seen archers run up, take aim, and then shoot thin air just as often as fighters, but that is just anecdotal.
It happens, albeit rarely.
It is always warpaint that I apply. This is not the “Carries Others Through Storms” perma warpaint.
It happens randomly with old decorative warpaints, aspect warpaints and even Battlepass warpaints. For example I have thralls with black hand, accuracy aspect, strength aspect, and even battlepass Vanir bodypaint that is stuck on them for years.
When you place a new thrall, immediately before doing anything place a warpaint on them, buff, then get a few levels. Once in about 50 times it seems to stick. I’ve been trying to replicate the exact conditions but haven’t been able to figure out a totally repeatable process, so maybe there is a random glitch element to it.