First Purge.
First wave. Lemurians. Took out all my pets and fighters. A few dozen for my 2 fighters. a komodo, and 4 panthers.
Second wave: Cultist of Dagon, about 2 dozen fishmen with lemurian axes. They one hit me as fast as I could respawn. Till I respawned in the desert, which means they leveled my keep. Think I’m done with test for a bit.
This Is why I hate purges and want no part of them. I was so happy when I thought I could finally opt out.
Game went from powder puff to Abomb.
Once a nordheimer army leveled 3/4 of my base and spawnkilled me too. And that was before 3.0, so defender thralls were stronger.
Since then I build in open areas, and put a dozen of archers on top of half-raised foundations equipped with bleeding, gas arrows/bombs and Set arrows. Place palisades around them and around my main building. In some cases, where undead enemies attack, I give my archers just the strongest arrows and explosive orbs/arrows.
Give them the highest amount of armor with HP boost, no need for damage boost, since they use mainly DoT weapons. Plus thrall pots filled with exotic feasts everywhere 
Hope this helps a bit!
I will never use fighters and animals against any purge anymore.
Yep, for an (almost) first time bases will need to plan designs around strategic dealing with Purges (and Sieges?) and players. Fun. Does sound though that there might need to be some scale-tweaking of the Purges pre-release?
We also don’t know what all chapters of the Age of War will release into the game. Perhaps huge, sprawl bases that are harder to protect are being discouraged?
Well its seem we are going back to past, with purge that are not manageable.
for me balance of a game is when the game allow you to do something about it otherwise players say you good bye sadly (well those that are not masochists) , will try to launch a strong purge with berserker and norheimer to see on beta
on beta i have been lucky was a scorpion nest purge so easy to manage.
as advice for everybody, when strong purge the thing to use is poison arrow to poison large numbers of npc
but well clearly for me the move to nerf against thralls was a bad move (because even if stronger, to reduce their health pool is for me as a result is a nerf), there is even some dungeon in which the best thrall best gear will not survive in beta.
Not gonna lie, that sounds like so much fun. I bet you had a thrilling experience.
There’s no interest in killing the purge. If you have enough leveled and geared thralls, eventually you manage.
The interest is capturing thralls. It seems this is a thing again, fortunately. I wish someone could tell me how low hp thralls armed with truncheons will do it, though…
@DeaconElie you can’t face a purge with two fighters and pets. What were you expecting? 20 fighters would be more like it. Pets need to go inside. They are decoration. You always need to build t3 external pieces with a clear open route for the purge. Build t1 stairs connecting to t3 foundations in a kill box. Put some fighters there. The combat will break the stairs but the purge will keep exploring that entry point with little success. When you have a t1 base, you need to build over a cliff with a large entry way. The external pieces facing and surrounding that way must be t3, except the stairs. You want those to break.
You can do something about it. Build a T3 base, maybe get stronger thralls with more hp, have 65 of them, and build in a practical way. There are so many easy ways to deflect even the strongest of purges.
I’ve done more than 200 purges in all these years and I can tell you, I’ve never lost a base entirely. At most I did lost some chests and a wall, and that was in my early days.
I honestly, can’t wait for the trebuchets in a purge. That’s going to be such a game changer.
Tell that to a new player, @GodlyVoice .
He won’t do such thing. It will take him a few deaths before he learns.
Some will simply quit because they lost all their thralls and their entire base.
New players start slow. They’ll only face danger when they get their first purge.
If they build on noob river area, the purge won’t be hard. But if they move a little north, they can get the cultists of Sobek purge. They will level their base to the ground.
Get some votaire thralls from the volcano. Those used to have the highest hp. Level up only those with 86% health chance and use savory meat so you’ll get 100% health on each level. Equip them with health gear and buf them before purge. Fill invetory with feasts so they get 10 hp every second, and maybe throw some shields on them too. Use truncheons on all of them.
YOu’ll have to do all the killing, but 100% you’ll get purge crafters.
I did this so many times with a 5x5 base.
The hardest part was having to kill 2-3 Daughter’s of Ymir or 1-2 Blue Dragons at the end.
Dude, you’re preaching to the choir.
I know how to manage purges and capture purge thralls.
But nerfing thralls hp makes this task very, very difficult.
Music to my ears.
i did a lot too 
marcosc explain very well the problem
You’re a m4sochist 
That’s for players. It almost makes no difference in top tier thralls. Better investing in strenght as much as you can.
You have the additional option of purple orbs now thou…
I havent actually tried this yet in a purge, but seems like it should be a thing.
Hum, I hadn’t remembered those, @Smoketreader .
That just might be it. 
I’ve never even tried them. Are they effective?
Yes. Imagine tossing poison orbs to purge mobs, except that mobs dont die, they get knocked over.
I can see that working pretty well. 
You just made my day @Smoketreader .
The purge was based on my level not my keeps or thralls. I’m right close to 60th; leveling on test seems stupid fast, but test just seem very amped for ease.
My base had maybe 4 T3 pieces, the rest was flotsam. By benchers were all T1 and I was just now getting butts on benches, even if they were just T2. I had 2 T3 nobody fighters out side, 4 nobody T3 archers out side. 1 T 3 fighter unarmored and new, inside, as well as a T4 bearer. I had one named bearer up to 18L and another at 14L.
No way was I not going to lose everything to my FIRST PURGE.
Not sure I want to log in to mop up. If I do 1st I need to move. I love the jungle region because I run well over 100fps most of the time. But not suited to an easy to defend base. I’ll have to set up a funnel, a kill box of some sort.
I play PVE so I don’t have to build PVP.
Me shouting in tongues at the top of my lungs, I’m sure is thrilling for the neighbors.
I got real side tracked doing journey steps 
Yup, have said they were ornamental, but was fun to watch a pride of panthers take out a salamander.
This is why I’d love to see thralls/pets get EP when set as well as following. If that was in game those panthers would have been pushing 20th just on shoebill kills.
I will say I’m going to but as long as I am threatening to I wont. If I quit
I did used to set up for purges, when they felt right and and didn’t get buggy. Hell I used to set up boss kill boxes to farm world bosses. Till some one gave me 
in chat because they got caught in my kill box with a boss.
Just for fun on a private server I knocked out sepermeru. Ya those orbs are even more potent on test. One orb and one thump from an iron truncheon will drop a T4. So ya, it’s a party, roofies and party favors all around.
Kinda late on test to do a move. Shutting down in 2 weeks? We’ll see. But I need a cool down.