I’ve been playing Conan Exiles for multiples years, and have been renting a private server off and on for the past few years. I was having fun and was content on adventuring my own with one or two thralls to help me stay alive. recently I went for a trip up north and the first NPC I came against destroyed my two thralls who were level 10 plus, and well geared, within a few seconds. I was like, " What THE @#@$ just happened? Turns out the thralls have been nerfed, and are now no better than a wet paper bag. This game was so much fun, but now I foresee my time with Conan Exiles soon coming to an end. I would like thank FUNCOM for making this game no longer fun to play. I will give you folks one month to pull your heads out of your keester, then I’m cancelling everything to do with Conan Exiles. Uninstalling and cancelling my subscription for the rented private server. It seems I’m not the onlyh player who is rather pissed at this uncalled for nerf.
WOW!
That sounds very weird!
What type of thralls were they?
What type of armor were they wearing(ordinary/epic)?
What npc were they fighting?
I’m sorry but you are leaving out a bunch of important information that could shed some light on what happened.
Yes they changed thralls and npc’s in the Age of War chapter 1 update back in June, but 1 single npc should not be able to kill 2 +10 level thralls.
Even though they changed the meta of thralls(T4 Dafari are now the hardest hitting), lots of people would argue your statement that thralls are no better than a wet paper bag, in fact a good well trained thrall may now have less health (npc’s and bosses too have less health), but the best can actually kill just about any boss in a matter of seconds - All in all, thralls are now stronger than ever 
A couple of t3 bearers in medium epic gear and legendary weapons walking through boss crocodile and spiders. Why I say medium is because we have not gathered black ice yet. 
@Lord_Amrick
Nothing wrong with them as they are.
You arent doing it right.
Up at the mounds the Cimmerians do not f*** around.
T2’s use maces and shields, everyone else is equally there to hand you your own spine. As a general rule of thumb I don’t go up there with any thralls under level 15.
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Thralls health has been nerfed. This does NOT mean they are useless however, as damages have been increased across the board as well as bosses health has been nerfed. You just have to be more cognizant of where you deploy them and what enemies you fight. Certain thralls are practically overpowered when geared and leveled. Cannibal brutes in particular received a huge buff to their damage. My friend said his two leveled cannibal brutes eviscerated the red mother in about 45 seconds.
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To get the most out of thralls, you need to invest in the authority tree. It hasn’t been enough for a while to simply break and equip them. Basically the gap between “weak” and “strong” thrall grew in both directions.
Overall Ive loved the changes, as I play a fully corrupted authority sorcerer character on an official pvp server. Previously thralls were just tanking punching bags with little to no difference between them, now I find myself caring more about their nurturing and the tactics in combat.
Nerfed no.
Rebalanced yes.
Combat good.
Change deserved.
People like to talk about it as a matter of “it is bad” or “it is good”. That is not the issue.
Nerfed, balanced, whatever, are terms like saying “you are on the right/wrong side of history” or “this is morally wrong”. All that hinges on your personal take on what is what.
One can only talk as if “they had reason” if they use reason, and the only way to do that is when you can see why something can be good, and why something can be bad, and then you can reason on it.
Changes were made. If you for some reason has data on thrall behavior, you can see the changes were made and they change specific things about them.
“Nerfed”, or “balanced”, yes. If you get a thrall of a specific spawn line in the database and pitch it against the specific non thrallfied version of it, with the same armor and specs, the thrallfied version always gets “destroyed” in couple attacks by the non thrallfied version of the same spawn line. Open field, no intervention. Server settings at the 1 equally. That is a kind of “scientific” approach to the matter.
No matter what you think, if this is good or bad, they still go downhill from their power. One can argue: Yes, they are supposed to. You can even argue all the smashed head and thrall crafting might get them weaker. Fair enough, I think that is “immersive” RP, ok. Problem is: This still happening when the thrall is level 15, with a “master” full Authority. The question is not “ah, but you need to get them the best armor”, “ah, you need to get them the best weapons”, the question is only they are very much weaker than their NPC counterparts.
As if this is “good” or “bad” it is no matter. Since the “dawn of competitive gaming” that games which feature PvE and PvP have been doing crap in trying to please both groups in one same plane field of specs because that is not really possible. And at the same time, discussions about what measures are taken for it also always end in “My play is the most important”. While we can have an objective measure of that, as it possible to know by the devs and those who can find that out, how many people play PvP or PvE in a given game, it is at the end of the day Devs priorities that define which crowd to please.
As I use mods, I simply study in the method above (pitching thrall and non thrall version of the same spawn, one on one, no intervention, all set to 1, same armor, same weapons) and take notes on several fights, also using the “simulator” from Unreal Engine to “theorycraft” hundreds of fights per second. I devise a mod that simply make a thrall level 1 to be 20% inferior to its own “wild version”, and a level 20 to be 20% more powerful than the wild version. It is my game, so I mod it and I dont need to bother with the PvE/PvP discussions from those who play official servers, pvp, console, whatever.
But I can see why that is a problem to BOTH. To my perception, highly individual and from my perspective as what would be a PvE-C fan, inclined to think base should be possible to secure and a base made secure SHOULD be harder to invade than to protect, as any conservative minded person is led to think, I dont see why they should go down this route. The fact that they do make efforts to certain aspects almost all competitive able game devs do, is plain, as always game devs do:
- Make it easier to raid bases by artifices out of players’ control to foster competition. They go out of the way to make efforts to secure a base less effective than methods to raid a base, in order to avoid the need of lengthy and costly sieges, fostering “quick reward” gameplay over strategic gameplay.
- Make it so “sponge HP” is what matters about NPCs. Thralls are not that weak, but their method of fighting preconizes that they “face hits” instead of acting smart. That is not so “lack of complexity” as simple rules like “ant AI” can make them act smart. The thing is done this way to enhance the devs control over power by simply tweaking the ability to take damage to translate into NPC power. If AI was smarter, it would be infinitely more complex to control and tune the power of NPCs
- Define rules for engagement that foster the “first item here”, which is quick reward, so the game, as most games strive to, seem “passional”, “sanguine”, and do not entrench itself in the intricacies of allowing strategic play to get disproportionally (some may say unfairly, but fairness is a subjective assessment) bent towards smart play.
So while I myself think the game loses with the strive for a model of quick reward and fast paced gameplay, I also think that this kind of gameplay would make a game less popular, and at instances in which you cant make “two games out of one” to satisfy “everyone”, the choice of design must be made, and they must know why they are choosing to “side” with whomever they are siding with.
So I mod my game to change the way I want it to change, because I think that wont change anytime soon. The devs in this MUST and MADE their choice to what kind of gameplay to foster, and hardly there is much you can argue to change it.
Neither are better designs, just destined to different people.
You can’t expect an active game to be the same as years ago. It has to evolve. Whether or not you remain is in question but the game is more focused now on you going out and getting dirty with game play. Also I highly recommend you review the attribute changes. If you want to be the director of combat and just point and watch, I highly recommend authority.
If you own your own server, just tweak them. Tweak the dmg they do and the dmg they suffer until you are comfortable.
Or spawn a Ladagara and an Arena Champion and you won’t ever need to worry about thralls dying.
Maybe it’s you who fights like a wet paper bag and not the thralls?
Sounds like you need some combat training.
On a private server, the server settings are yours to handle as you see fit.
I believe the default setting for officials is that thralls do only 50 % damage to stuff because people were complaining that thralls did all the work for the player. I actually use that 50 % damage on my Single-Player, and my thralls are far from useless. Let them wear good armor, give them good weapons, and most importantly - participate in combat yourself, because if you leave the thrall to do all the fighting, you’re either in for a very long, very boring spectator match, or you lose the thrall, depending on what you threw them at.
“Called for nerf” would be more accurate. Players asked to stop thralls from being superheroes. Most people who have been playing since the “nerf” and who have had time to adapt have evolved past your knee-jerk reaction and figured out ways to use their thralls effectively. I don’t think there’s a single boss in the game I haven’t fought and defeated with a thrall since the update. I’ve lost two thralls since - once against a Blood-Moon beast who killed me so I couldn’t help the poor level 13 Relic Hunter archer while I was getting back to the scene, and another level 12 who got mobbed in Sepermeru by some dagger-wielding locals and bled to death. Both times I was playing a fully corrupted sorcerer so I kinda sucked at helping the thrall in those fights before I got the hang of playing with half hitpoints and stamina.
Just out of curiosity: Who was
and who were
?
There’s a difference between taking two Cimmerian berserker thralls against a wight, and taking two T1 Exile thralls against Rotbranch.
I personally feel the nerfing was nonsense. No matter if you have authority maxed, the thralls are like straws in the wind when they aren’t following and therefore very poor base defenders nowadays. A naked player runs through them with very little problems and that’s just not right. I’ve played the game over 5000 hours and i hate what it has become.
Thralls were idiots even before the nerf. Any player with decent combat skills could wipe out unattended thralls without breaking a sweat even when they had twice the hitpoints.
It’s worth noting that thrall damage to players was nerfed because PvPers didn’t like getting one-shotted by the other guy’s thrall.
I agree that base defense needs better options, but having a squadron of M1 Abrams tanks as thralls is not what I’d like to see.
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