Make pets / thralls start the attack when we start the attack

Conan Exiles General Discussion
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1

The system as it is now has the pets or thralls attacking an enemy only when the enemy hurts us.
Is not a big deal when you face normal enemies (not cool either tho) its a bit more annoying when you face bosses that hit like trucks, so you basically must get trashed first to see your companion take any action.

I am very aware that the currect state of the game is not exactly luxurious about thralls and pets options, like a mini-wheel menu to select the companion stance (defensive, aggressive, etc… I know, science-fiction for CE), but at least have the companions start the attack when we start the attack on a specific target.
It shouldn’t be hard to achieve coding-wise, and would improve also thralls behaviour during purges when we are present.

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hmm for me it attacks when i attack and it attacks nearby if its on guarding, not follow, so for me its already working as you want it too.

3

It attacks when you do also in follow mode ?

4

for me yes

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5

Damn, then is not default , it’s a bug I have…or you have (a good one in your case…)
Anyone else ? pet start attack when you do , or when you get hit ?

6

This was broken for a long time, but with the latest patch they’re back to being proactive again and attacking when you do. Sometimes too proactive, as they’ll run out and start killing random things.

7

Reapher is correct, it seems to be a new mechanic they implemented with the last update. Now as soon as you hit an ennemy, your follower will engage combat (which is great btw) and will keep on attacking everything in sight range and even the “non targeted ennemies”, it’s like once they have engaged the combat they go frenzy, they don’t stop untill everything around is dead or too far. just run forwards if you want them to stop fighting, so they just TP.

8

I’ve noticed it is absolutely useless to have a pet or thrall follow you.

You’re going to kill whatever it is you’re attacking before they will even start attacking.

If you go into a group of NPCs your follower will just stand there doing nothing while you kill each NPC individually.

If I kill anything near one of my bases, the only way the guarding thrall or pets will attack, is if the enemy hits me. Of course, again, I’ll have said enemy dead before the thrall/animal get there.

9

Uhm, thats great, but, apparently the newly implemented stance for thralls doesn’t work for everybody then.
For me is still “get trashed, then I attack” in follow mode at least, and for SirMang as well if understand correctly.
Latency ? server performance related ? different patch version based on platforms ?

11

You understand correctly.

Follow or guard mode doesn’t matter, they won’t attack/attempt to attack until I get hit.

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12

Ok, then we could safely say that someone has the new aggressive stance, while others (me included) are stuck to the “get hit first” stance, which could be considered defensive I guess, but we could also call it “it sucks big time” stance.

Just hope that Funcom notice this post and do something about.
(yes I was laughing while typing this last sentence)

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13

Or just call it the “thralls are useless” stance. lol

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Not completely useless come on, my berserker just cleared the new religion dungeon on ps4 , I didnt, he did, he basically soloed it, I was just with my shield up waiting for the invisible enemies to load , one boss didn’t load animations at all during the whole fight, it was sitting there (from my point of view), while actually the berserker was figthing him (fighting the air from my point of view).
All I had to do: having the invisible boss mopping the floor with me at the begin.
They are not useless! they can see things we human cant ! …sigh

15

That’s good to know that followers will go with you into the Grove, maybe I’ll take one of my 5 “useless” greater bears with me into the Grove. At least on the two bears vs me attack, it might do something.

Or the 3 sabretooth vs me attack, it might do something.

Or maybe when I’m blocking the Gorillas ridiculous attacks, it will attack the Gorilla!

And if it dies in there, well it doesn’t help me much in the rest of the world map anyway.

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16

yeah you’re right, they’re not useless , they are really strong when not buggy.

There is also a severe bug with followers. The other day i took my berserker (same as you :wink: ) to go clear some stuff on the map, and she rocked as they can do. But at the end of my session she got bugged somehow and could NOT swing anymore. She was trying to target ennemies with her spear sheathed but no hit could be landed apparently, she was jsut runing close to them.
Changing her gear didn’t help, switching follower neither, Only this one berserker was bugged, no other one… the server restart fixed it.

offcial server PVE (so NO mods)

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17

I have discovered a few things about thralls that I think applies.

First thing I noticed is thralls seem to have a weapon preference. I took a thrall that originally had a sword and gave him a Kingslayer pole arm. The thrall acted like he had no idea what to do, with mobs attacking me sometimes he would not help at all, sometime he would use his fists and other times break out the pole arm for one shot then use his fists then stop attacking. He was so useless that I killed him myself and took the Kingslayer.

I went up north for what I was thinking would be a better thrall, first thrall I seen was a Nordheimer with a pole arm. Clubbed him, broke him then gave him the Kingslayer and slapped some heavy armor on him. Took him up north to farm starmetal. This guy was was like Spartacus. He was attacking everything that even looked at me wrong. Mind you, he was not the greatest at entering all the fights really fast but I was generally impressed with him. He was killing Mammoths sometimes aggroing to them before they even got near me.

When I ran past the mounds a archer thrall shot an arrow at me but I just kept running. I noticed my thrall was gone part way up the hill so I back tracked. Turns out the guy was inside one of the huts and slaughtered 7 thralls.

The only thing I didnt like about him was when I was cracking open starmetal he would run up to the flame and stand there taking damage, it appears he thinks the meteor is aggro’d to me and he wants to attack it but cant.

Try keeping the weapon choice of the thrall, if he is a npc with a 2h sword when you club him, give him a 2h sword when you deploy him. I am going to investigate thralls and weapons further. Thralls also have their own stats so be aware not all thralls are created equal.

Edit: Give them the good food when you take them out. Who wants to fight for a master who feeds them gruel, I wouldnt.

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18

Since we are sharing Thralls tales…here is an interesting one, about thralls behaviour.
(half wall of words ahead)

After my thrall cleared the Grove (read above), I decided to step up the game a little bit with him, needed some dragon heads to adorn a new building, and I wanted to see how he fared taking down a dragon.
So I geared him a bit better, with a full Silent Legion set, freshly crafted just for him.
We went into the Unnamed city and started the “farm”.
We brought down 4 green dragons, they are not particularly hard you know, but still do some considerable damage if dont avoid their attack, like a thrall …
The hunt went pretty well, he was taking all the aggro, which means all full damage was on him…and I have to say, except from one dragon that we had problem with, because the thrall kept getting stuck half buried in the terrain + night + sandstorm, all together, the berserker HP never fell below the 1k mark.
The most annoying part is waiting for the thrall healing process, which can take several minutes.

He was equipped with Legendary pike Vaulting Pole+adv dmg kit, which in my opinion gives the right balance between hit range, damage and hit speed rating for a thrall, and I was with a Telith Sorrow (with strength set at 40), so we were dealing a good amount of damage to bring the dragon down quickly, otrherwise the thrall would have taken too much damage.

The funny part begins when I got back home, proudly hanged my new heads and “parked” the thrall with a simple “stop following”.
This particular thrall was stationed on a very nordic base, and when I gave the “stop following” command I was in a southern jungle base. I saw him go automatically in guard mode there, so I left all the gear on him and went for a gathering errand.
When I was getting away from the base, I looked back and I saw him running away from the base…I was like…what the F…
When I got back the thrall wasn’t there…vanished, closed the game, reloaded, nothing , he was gone with all the precious gear on him… (usual Funcom I thought, some more gear wasted…)…
He literally Ran away…I thought that we had fun together, I thought there was a future for us together, yes ok, I mistreated him a little bit, he took a metric-ton of damage in the Grove and with the Dragons, but is not every relationship forged with struggle ? :joy:
Oh well…farewell my brief and intense partner, You will be remembered …because you stole some good legendary gear damn you !

I finish to place the heads, store the materials gathered, and teleport back to the Nordic base.
While approaching the base, slowly (veeery slowly) loading textures, structures and thralls I notice a familiar figure standing in front of the entrance…
Was him…he returned to the original post, “traveling” from south to north, even if theoretically he was in “guard” mode when I left him in the south…

Long story short:

  • Good equipped thralls can considerably speed up boss farming runs for solo players.
  • Thralls have souls… watch out what you do with them.
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19

Was bored today and took one of my 5 Greater Bears on a stroll through the lands. We visited the Den, the Savanna, Locust nests, Asagarth. Mr. Bear took damage a few times but never attacked anything.

I picked up some tiger and rhino babies for him to carry for me, so he at least packmuled like a champ.

I have 5 8k HP beasts who are, nothing but glorified packmules.

Except what’s the point in taming them into pets if they also won’t do anything?

20

@SirMang
Funcom actually plans to change this behavior of your Thralls/Pets. Instead of attacking at least when you get attacked they will attack when you are attacking. So it will be possible to sign a hostile NPC with an arrow and your pet will attack this guy.

21

I also have the problem with all my thralls and pets just sitting there while an npc or creature chases me while i try and get them to freakin notice it…They are 100% useless for guarding when they let anything just run past them. This REALLY needs to be adressed FAST because i remember thralls used to attack anything that was in their sights, which made them excellent guards.