We have a lot of undead creatures in the game, hienas, turtles, dragon, lizardmen, 2 kinds of human skeletons, demonic wolfs. Is there a possibility or plan to add new, corupted station with ability to tame such creatures? This could be matketed as a part of magic system.
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I do think undead servants were always supposed to be a cornerstone of the Sorcery system, as an alternative to/complement of the current thrall/pet options.
Of course the Sorcery system is currently in limbo, with no ETA as to when - or even if - itâll ever materialize.
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Taming station seam to be an easy way for devs to deliver this kind of magic.
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Agreed. Itâs a pretty good idea actually.
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Maybe itâs just me, but Iâve never considered the undead to be a major part of the Conan lore. There have been a handful of singular, major antagonists such as Xaltotun and Thugra Khotan (and Akivasha, kind of) who have been extremely powerful undead, but hordes of skeletons or zombies, or other critters raised from the dead, havenât played a major role in R. E. Howardâs Conan stories. Pelias animated the dead eunuch Shukeli in the Scarlet Citadel, and there have probably been a few other cases of undeath in the books, but for the most part, the dead have stayed dead, and any exception to this have been major events.
So this is just my personal preference, but Iâd rather not see undeath trivialized even further in Conan Exiles. Sure, the existence of skeleton armies, wights and zombie hyenas can all be explained with the Giant-Kingsâ magic cursing the whole place, but I dislike the idea that everyone could have their pet zombie, or an army of them.
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What You described is actually a pretty prominent presence of the undead. If You add to this ghosts swarming Conan in his dreams, ghouls from the tombs in the pass, skeleton warlord guarding his sword etc. It piles up to serious influence of this thrope in books.
I understand fear off trivialization. But than again, it cant be worse than armies of floating animals that already swarm the servers.
I Donât see this working without a fully fleshed out magic system
Well, Howardâs original stories donât feature many undead but many of the later authors do.
Necromancy is definitely a part of the lore though, even if we go by Howardâs stories as can be seen in the Scarlet Citadel. Itâs not a major part, admittedly, but itâs part nonetheless just like demon summoning rituals and curses are.
However, I donât think it should be as easy as taming and it definitely should have a high cost/sacrifice tied to it.
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Cost wise they could mix that with the idea of sacrificing thralls that someone else brought in an other topic. So you would still need to capture living thralls then sacrificing them to turn them into an undead (so extra work/cost to get those undead compared to regular living ones)
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I do quite like this idea, however it also presents some challenges. For example, the undead creatures (eg-hyenas, shalebacks, skeletons, etc), do not have eggs or babies like regular animals. So unless they were added, which to me sounds a little silly having the undead produce babies, it would have to just be a station which corrupts existing animals/people. Which I wouldnt mind honestly. 
Just putting it out there since the topic of necromancy is at hand, here is how I always envisioned it. We build the âcrafting stationâ, put several parts in (eg-bones, rotten flesh, undead shaleback/hyena head, etc), and it then reanimates or âcraftsâ the relevant undead being.
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Yeah, my mind kinda skipped straight to this, ignoring the whole âtamingâ part of the suggestion. Thereâs any number of already-existing items that could be fed into a âcrafting stationâ to produce undead servants: Fragments of Power, living creatures (thralls/animals), Lingering Essence, hearts, bones, skulls etc etc⊠You could even have it require a minimum level of corruption and/or cause a significant dosage of corruption to use it.
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Yeah I know what you mean, Hearts, Claws, Horns, Corrupted Stones, there are so many interesting possibilities. Done carefully, it would certainly make for some diverse and clever use of resources. And if an âimprovedâ version of the âcrafting/taming stationâ was needed for the bigger and more dangerous undead, there is yet another layer. Moreover, they (correct me if Im wrong, please) wouldnt even need to implement an entirely new system to make it work.
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It can even be another endgame loop, tied to unnamed city bosses (new crafting loot or guarded chests with mentioned unique version of components like flesh, bo es etc), or even part of new dungeon like the midnight groove, where you go to to farm special components later used in ânecromancyâ station. This will minimalize trivialization problem kapoteeni mentioned, only most dedicated players will have access to it.
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I believe you are right, no new system should be required. Itâd essentially just be crafting items the way we do today, and if itâs solely (or mostly) using existing items then itâd âjustâ be a matter of a new crafting station with matching recipes, and of course new âpetsâ (or thralls) using existing models. No small task, certainly, but neither would it be a gargantuan one I believe.
Just make sure to have all recipes require something that is as difficult to acquire as any other combat servant (a tamed thrall or pet) and there really shouldnât be too many balance issues either (assuming the undead servants to be no more powerful than their living counterparts).
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I like the idea of it being animal carcasses needed to make the corresponding undead animal thrall. With humans it could be as simple as a needing some limbs and a skull from recently deceased tamed thralls. Alternatively a sacrificial slab to murder thralls on and collect necromancy ritual items would work. Take these things to a ritual shrine of sorts and build your undead using those materials and maybe Hearts of Heroes or power frags. Sacrfice slab could even be connected to ritual shrine and have some cool effects like a bowl of blood filling upon sacrfice that drains into the shrine. To make things more interesting they could include a harvesting tool with the shrine that can only be used on world bosses to collect life essence . When said essence is used in the ritual it would produce a stronger undead thrall.
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Maybe a God that instead of a token, you get the ability to create soul orbs of the un-dead. Lore peeps would know if there is a God (or demi-god) that would tie to it.
The sacrifice would be harvesting the undeads corpses for the altar, and crafted into the orbs that you would throw. Balancing the expensive vs the reward is crucial though. After orb is thrown, they appear and corruption would start to cleans on the player who threw it, so basically the more corruption one had, the longer the undead stay summoned. If no corruption, then cannot throw orb. 30s max if you have max corruption, and can only have one active per player at a time.
Lots of gods in the Hyborian mythologies have Death as (one of) their domain(s). Derketo, Kali, Bel and Set off the top of my head. Not surprising since death is an inevitable part of life, so pretty much any culture (fictional or not) needs to deal with it one way or the other.
Most real-world religions deal with death, too, but few of them advertise necromancy as part of the package deal. Unless you count that one guy who allegedly got up from the dead.
Howardâs horror themes were more closely related to H. P. Lovecraftâs ancient otherworldly gods, demons from outer space, huge amorphous tentacle monsters, etc. Necromancy is most reliably connected to the ancient kingdom of Acheron (Xaltotunâs kingdom, ~3000 years before Conanâs time) which in turn was connected to Setâs cult. Set is generally the âbad guysâ religionâ in the setting.
The iron-bound Book of Skelos also contains rituals to bring the dead back to (un)life. I donât know if itâs connected to any religion, but it could be the key to unlocking Necromancy (or Sorcery, or whatever) in a similar fashion to unlocking Jhebbal Sagâs religion - toss the player in a difficult dungeon, defeat an ancient mummy-lich-wizard-person, loot Book of Skelos, ???, profit.
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I think most real-life religions have at least one guy (or gal) who somehow returned from the dead, cheated death, achieved mastery over death or otherwise messed around with it 