No events in-game for low-level?

The game doesn’t really interest you anymore when you’re not level 60. It’s a shame because in PVE, what’s fun is progression and leveling. With the new update, it’s even more obvious, the game is only interesting at level 60. Why not add more content for low levels ?

Because you will outgrown the low-tier events fast enough and lose interests forever (think about Dredge)

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Why not add more content for low levels? Because too much of the game is for low levels already. Looking at both Exiled Lands and Siptah’s maps, you can see literally 99% of the map is for low level content. Only the dungeons (and some of them are for low levels) and some world bosses are for high levels.

This is actually a bit of a problem. At 1x exp, you reach level 60 in a matter of hours. Veteran players can do it in a single sitting. My last playthrough took me 3 sittings at 0.5x rate.

Despite nearly 6k hours played over 5 years, I can honestly say I’ve spent less than 1% of that time under level 60. Yet low level content makes up a majority of the game. While it should comprise of far less to represent the percentage most players spend in it.

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Yeah, I think it’s the fact that we reach the level cap too quickly that obsoletes such a big portion of the game. This is especially true for veteran players who know how to power through levels and where to find the best resources and base locations.

I remember how excited I was to upgrade to a steel weapon on my first playthrough. It felt like such a huge upgrade. Now I basically skip Steel and hardened steel altogether (except for tools, and even then I mostly use looted tools rather than make my own).

I do agree with the OP, once we hit the level cap there’s a reduced feeling of progression because the only upgrades we can get is equipment and materials - the character stops improving. That’s why I use Multigun’s Level 140 - Unlock everything mod. (Yes, it also makes the character a lot more powerful towards the end, but as I’m Single-Player I can always adjust the difficulty to suit my preferences.)

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Progression is something I’ve been tinkering with for nearly a year now. Its not been an easy issue to deal with.

One of the ways I’ve tried is slowing it down. One of the theories I had is the main problem about progression is we level too fast. This is true, but this has its own issues. But anyway the idea was that we have these tiers based on materials. The first tier is the stones and branches we pick up off the ground, the stone tier. This lasts till level 10.

Ideally I think this should last quite a bit longer than it does now. This is also the tier where your character is naked, trying to survive off of stuff they find. And it functions as the introduction to what the game’s theme is going to be. But at 1.0x rate, even for a noob, this is a twenty minute affair.

Some people may spend around an hour or two here and if they do that, its because they are exploring. I feel like it should be a bit harder to explore at this stage. If anything to give the idea that you are weak, off the cross, naked, afraid, and trying to survive. But for a newbie it may be hard enough. I mean with barely any experience in the game, trying to fight a hyena or croc is a little scary. Anything that is scary to a veteran will be impossible for anyone else at this point. So we do have to be careful with the bias of experience here.

But I do think it would benefit from the tier being extended.

After this is the Iron Tier. You can make a blacksmith bench and furnace at 10 which allows the smelting of Iron. For new players this is where they spend a sitting or two or more. Getting to 30 where the next tier is doesn’t exactly come as quickly as 1-10 did. Its still quick though. Iron is interesting because you’re making your first real tools, real weapons, and real armor. You’re also likely building a base to store everything you’re finding. This is really an important tier because you’re just starting to make a mark in the world. This is also the part of the game that ‘hooks’ a new player. This decides whether they will want to keep playing or not. This is the true beginning of the game where the prior tier is a bit of an introduction. Not tutorial, there is none, you live or die.

But there is something wrong with this tier. At 1.0x exp rates, you will hit level 30 easily before you get a stack of iron. Even if you do have a stack of iron bars, you only can convert that to 200 steel bars. Which isn’t enough to do everything you probably want with Steel. Not even close. Slowing down the iron tier would allow for stock piling more iron.

And when you do hit 30 relatively quickly, you reach the steel tier. Most average players can do this in a few sittings, vets usually hit this in a single sitting within an hour or so. I’m not going to talk about vets right now. Just the average player who may be on their first time or their second time. But just playing the game normally in either case.

I know people say you can get steel by farming it. But your average player can’t really deal with the Nordheimers and Cimmerians that typically drop it. Nor can they deal with the wolf, bear, and wight infested areas they dwell in at level 30. So they need to hit up brimstone and farm tar to convert iron bars.

They need ALOT of iron to do this. Especially if now they are looking at making DLC buildings and the like. They probably should wait to build that stuff, but its some pretty stuff they paid for. I understand why they may not want to wait. Also they need steel for new weapons and tools. Here’s where a problem comes in. They can easily hit Hardened Steel tier at level 50 by the time they finish farming the mats they need.

Let’s be honest you need a lot of iron if you can’t quite or don’t know to kill stuff that drops steel. You also need a lot of hides, skins, and pelts to tan for tar. This is going to level you up quick whether you are trying or not. I know this from experience having leveled up 6 characters without trying to powerlevel them. By the time I get to level 30, just farming stuff for my base gets me from 30-50 very quickly.

When this tier and the previous tier is slowed down. You end up with all the farmed materials you need for the next tier by the time you hit it. I found the sweet spot to be just under 0.5x. But there’s more issues than simply leveling too fast. I’ll get into that later.

At level 50 you have the hardened steel tier. This one is interesting because you need black ice. For most new players this is out of reach unless they are on Siptah. They’re going to be 60 before making this stuff. And let’s be honest, 50-60 goes by quick. These last 10 levels definitely need a slowing down, probably directly in the exp tables rather than simply dropping the exp rate to something like 0.25x. But again, I’ll address that soon.

You can learn to make star metal tools at 55, but in reality, star metal tier is 60. Not much to be said there, you’re done leveling when you hit this tier and so any character that reaches this tier will be at this tier forever. What I will say is that it replaces hardened steel so fast that most of us never even make the bars. New players might simply because they have to, since star metal is a bit tricky for them to get (simply because of their ignorance which will be cured soon through experience or looking up a guide). But this isn’t a tier anyone really sits at for long.

I think this is a bit of a shame. Funcom has artistically referred to this tier as the Riddle of Steel. Its a nod to the 1982 Conan the Barbarian film. Which is probably one of the biggest impacts of the Hyborian franchise and the main inspiration I’m sure the devs derive from. How could they not?

But we zip right on past the Riddle of Steel, some of us simply get enough bars for upgrading our tools in the tinkerer’s bench and that’s about it. We go right to Star Metal and found items after that. There’s no reason to make a ton of hardened steel so we don’t. We take what we need from enemies who drop it. Either the bars themselves or weapons we can dismantle.

So one of the things I’ve tried to address all the concerns brought up is simply lowering the exp rates. 0.5x seems to be a good happy median to attain mostly what I’ve brought up so far. But I would recommend 0.25x rate for mostly veteran players. What this does is solves the issue of getting to a tier before you have the farmed materials for it. That’s all it solves however. And really only for levels 1-50.

There’s another problem. Wasted feat points. Or knowledge points after 3.0. Mainly in the section of weapons:


This is definitely annoying. What you see in the picture is just the one handed weapons side of things. There is individual feats for each weapon from 1-50. This is a holdover from prior to release when there was a feat revamp to streamline things. For some reason they never got around to fixing weapons.

But here’s the issue, and we’re going to stick with regular one handed weapons here. Is you are level 10 and you can unlock Iron Broadsword (3). 11 you get flanged iron mace(3). Let’s just say you know Iron Shortsword is agility and so you stick with strength weapons. You decide you like swords more than maces. So next you unlock a Stygian Khopesh(4) at level 16. Cutlass(6) at 25. Then when you get some steel you want to get a Longsword(7). Falcata(8) comes at level 38 and you will likely want to try out an Ancient Khopesh(10) at level 45. Finally you’ll get Hardened Steel Sword(11) at level 50.

Once you get level 60 you can get your Star Metal Sword(13) and maybe try the Acheronian Sword(13).

Thus far you’ve spent 49 knowledge points on feats that you will never use again. You only need Warrior(0), and Star Metal Sword(13), to be able to craft everything you need. Even acheronian is a bit of a waste. But someone who doesn’t know this will spend a total of 62 points on stuff they don’t need.

Yellow Lotus helps of course. But do we really need to be using Lotus like this? This breaks immersion. I would think you would want to use a lotus when you want to switch from specializing in one-handed weapons to specialized weapons or something like that. Not because you’ve focused on One-Handed weapons and outgrew other tiers.

With illusions, this has gotten less annoying, but its still a problem. That’s a lot of feat points wasted still. So here was my solution:


This is a mod that condenses all those weapons into their material tiers. It also rebalanced them to be of the tier you obtain them at. So Ancient weapons have less damage since you can obtain them at level 30 instead of mid 40s. I balanced this by giving higher mid tier weapons armor pen (but less damage). This way they are still unique.

You also are required to take each tier. So to make steel weapons like the Longsword, Falcata, and Ancient Khopesh, you need the Iron tier which makes all the iron weapons.

I adjusted the feat costs to match the total spent to equal that of picking up the basic tier and the star metal tier, but spread across all. This resulted in a reduction of several hundred feat points if you were to get everything.

There’s still enough feat point costs that for a regular leveling experience you cannot get everything. You still need to pick and choose which specialization of weapon you want (if you want to be able to get your masonry feats, survival feats, and armor feats). You might be able to squeeze two in there. But going two lines means you sacrifice something somewhere else.

It was a bit of work, there’s about 100 weapons that needed to be looked at, and I used multiple spreadsheets to keep track of everything I was doing. But the overall effect was well received. It did help with the feeling of wasting feats and gave a clear line of progression that was cleaned up compared to the original version.

But it still doesn’t solve some other underlying issues with progression. This isn’t a problem FC caused. Well they did, but not initially. They are following a flawed philosophy of vertical progression. That’s the mistake they made, they chose a vertical progression. I don’t blame them because 90% of progression oriented games do this.

Players like it and don’t even know that it will cause issues. I used to be in that camp. When I was much younger back in the late 1980s I remember reading about how Dragon Warrior played in a magazine. How you would level and get new abilities, how you would fight monsters and get gold to buy new equipment that would let you fight more monsters and get more gold.

I thought that was cool. Most players would. Many would argue that is how games work. You play to progress like this. It has a flaw however. And for the last 40 years, this hasn’t really been seen as a flaw by most.

What do you do when you reach the top?

When I played Everquest about 20 years ago, their solution was simple. Keep raising the top. It started with Ruins of Kunark and has served to keep the game relevant 23 years later with two dozen expansions.

This has its own problems. You end up with a gap between players. With MMORPGs they have to come up with various ways of controlling, mitigating, or bridging those gaps. But inevitably you end up with a top heavy game.

Conan Exiles already has this issue. Look at what a level 10 can do compared to a level 60 who has legendary gear.

One of the best ways I’ve seen that deals with this is horizontal progression. A game that handled this very well was Planetside 2. A level 1 character still poses a decent threat to a level 100+ character. The biggest advantage a high level has is personal player experience. The progression advantage he has is very minor in terms of actual power, but more so in actual utility and options.

Unfortunately I don’t believe that would work in Conan Exiles. Well… it can and it actually has in 3.0. Sorcery is a good example of Horizontal progression. You don’t get stronger with sorcery. You just get different stuff. I don’t know how much that can be expanded, but it is an interesting take.

I know many of you are thinking, those differences don’t make you stronger yes… they make you weaker. Don’t get me wrong, PS2 had many such growing pains in 2012 when it first released and it has had numerous balance passes over the decade to get some stuff that isn’t default to be useful in many cases. Its not always easy. I think sorcery and corruption will get there.

But I’m not going to dwell on that. We still have levels 1-60. And attribute points that grant power at each level. That isn’t going anywhere. And to be honest, some amount of vertical progression isn’t bad. You just need more to do once you get to the top. This is why this thread kind of irked me a bit. We need more stuff for low levels… like really? You’re low level for all of the duration of a fart.

Going back to MMORPGs for a moment. They all make the same mistake (well all except for one, we’ll get to that). That is they spend too much development time on leveling content. Think about it. Many of you played World of Warcraft back in 2005-2007. You saw the Burning Crusade expansion. They raised the level cap from 60 to 70.

That was the first mistake. Now we have 10 levels we need to go through. Look at all the overland content they made. The questing in the different areas in Hellfire Peninsula, the swamp, the plains, and the other areas (forgive me its been like 15 years so I don’t remember all the names). That took a ton of developer effort.

Now compare that to the dungeons you had. They reused the dungeons wisely in the heroic mode. That cut out some dev time. But if you remember. You only had like two raids initially. Kharazan and the one big dude. You didn’t have the ones against Kael’thas, Illidan, and the Sunwell, it took months and even I believe a year to see the whole thing. Why? Because they weren’t finished with the expansion.

There was so much time and effort spent on 60-70 they didn’t even have all the endgame stuff ready. This isn’t always the case. When you play an Everquest expansion, usually (not always) the entire expansion is available right off the bat. But if its an expansion with a level cap increase. There is a marked decrease in endgame content.

I’ve mentioned this in this thread before. But look at the Exiled Lands. How much of that map is 1-59 content compared to 60 content? Its ridiculous. Now imagine if you went 1-59 in the newbie river and desert, and anything outside of that… such as the savannah, jungle, unnamed city, temperate, tundra, and dungeons were all level 60. That’d be a lot of content. I’m not suggesting they rebalance the game to do this. But I’m just pointing out a hypothetical to illustrate a point.

When you play the game for a few hundred hours. You start skipping a lot of stuff because its irrelevant. It might not have been irrelevant to you when you did your first play through, but the idea of ‘what was the point’ starts crossing one’s mind when you’ve played the game long enough.

You also may start asking yourself the question of, “what the heck is the point of levels?”

That’s where I’ve been after tinkering and thinking about progression. In all honesty, why do we have levels? If I kill crocodiles until I’m level 60, which at 1.0x doesn’t actually take as long as some may think. My character can wield star metal tier weapons just like any other character.

Do we not see a problem with this?

And I get it, some people might make the statement that people play the game they want to. Why not let someone level by killing the same thing over and over if that’s how they like to play.

But that sentiment is also being said out of ignorance. Sorry but it is. If I get a player who gets into the game and sees they can level quickly by killing an enemy over and over. They’re likely going to keep doing that activity. Is it because they ‘want’ to or is it because the game erroneously rewards them for it?

What’s the harm? Well they get levels and think they are better than they actually are. How good is level 60 croc killer with an iron spear when a pack of 3-4 wolves led by a corrupted wolf runs after them?

When you play a game like Dragon Warrior or Final Fantasy where levels matter and you’re just selecting options in a menu. Then stats and levels is all you need. You may need some experience in the idea that you use fire attacks on cold creatures and such. But over all you’re not learning through muscle memory and reactions.

In Conan Exiles there is a big difference between a croc on the noob river and a corrupted wolf, or some other creatures. Level is a poor indicator of personal performance. Because a veteran with a stone weapon straight off the cross can deal with wolves. Levels don’t matter to them.

Levels don’t actually matter. Its a measure of time spent with a reward of an attribute point and some knowledge points. That’s it.

I had an idea for this. One FC could do, maybe even for 4.0 or even a 3.X patch. Who knows.

Get rid of levels. Revamp the journey system. And then have attribute points and knowledge points be rewards for completing journey steps. You can even split it up. Combat oriented journey steps award attribute points (make you stronger), and crafting and exploration steps give knowledge steps (make you smarter). Could even tie material tiers to journey chapters. Like in order to craft Iron, you need to complete the first chapter to unlock those recipes.

This is still a vertical progression system, so it has every flaw those things have. But it does solve the issue of people not getting a well rounded view of the game. It also makes getting your initial character progression a set of goals. Rather than simply mindnumbingly grinding exp in some form or another.

And like I said, I get it, it flies in the face of those who just want to level the way they want to level. But those are veteran players. No one comes into Conan Exiles with the idea of being the Conquering Marauding King by killing a few hundred crocodiles. That’s a veteran player who just can’t be bothered. This system helps the new players get into the game and experience everything it has to offer. They have to learn each skill needed to deal with every aspect they will see in the game.

But I would argue that even the aforementioned jaded veteran who wants to get through the game as quickly as possible so they can go do whatever it is they want to do would actually have fun with such a journey system if they actually tried it. And most of them wouldn’t be affected. They got 60 already, if such a system was implemented you keep what you’ve earned (level 60’s would simply start with all the chapters needed for 60 attribute points and suitable amount of knowledge points plus the recipes). Though it would be interesting if everyone started at the beginning… think about that. You have all these grognaird vets on all these servers basically starting at chapter one and now have to all go out at the same time and step over each other to get their stuff done. Some helping each other, and other’s PVPing the crap out of each other. Might be worth it for that alone :laughing:

Probably wouldn’t see that, but it would be funny, and fun for some of us. Maybe even most. But either way, facetiousness aside, I think a replacement of the leveling system with an achievement based journey step system would actually benefit the game over the current leveling system. Like said, it would need a journey step/chapter revamp. Something many of us have been requesting for a while.

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It is one of the weaknesses of this game that anything < level 60 is not important. People speed rush to 60 in a few days max and you have no room for lower tier weapons, armor, items, or events for the most part.

The dregs are a great example. Would love an epic set of weapons you can craft. As it is… you do the dregs and have a sword useful for 15 minutes before you’ve outleveled it.

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The game really seems to be balanced around barbaric mode. The default normal setting is simply way too fast and easy especially for someone familiar with the game.

The Grave Matters event at The Summoning Place can be done at lower levels especially with two or more people. I steamrolled it solo at 40, new character on a new server, with level appropriate gear and thrall.

The map may be for low levels but the really interesting content is from level 60. Frankly, the caverns and low level dungeons are just uninteresting (who redo the Dregs or the Black Keep several times??). Even the craft encourages rushing at level 60 (who builds in brick or stone? Armor is either level 1 or level 60, between there is nothing or pores). And then, we could have hoped for a revamp of the lands of the Exiles because the majority of the zones are identical (except for a wizard and sometimes an extra scroll…-_-).
Finally, the new events are made for the HL, it’s very good (even if I think it would have been nice to have a little more). But we could also have had some events for low levels (small events for small levels!)

I do. Both are quick and easy to stroll through once you know where to go (although the Dregs is a pain at some points because of the new “feature” where climbing over an edge fails repeatedly), and both have unique loot. Why, don’t you mass-produce Telith’s Sorrows for your thralls?

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