Gather 'round everyone, for on this day, October 4th, we’re releasing the next update for Conan Exiles! Well, sort of.
We’re releasing half of the Pets Update, meaning you’re getting the Midnight Grove, the Jhebbal Sag religion and thrall hunger system. The pets system will be released at a later date and we’re currently aiming for next week.
The Midnight Grove & Jhebbal Sag Religion
The Midnight Grove is where you learn the Jhebbal sag religion path, the sixth and final religion in Conan Exiles. You have to traverse a labyrinthian maze, facing down many dangers along your path before you make it to the end and discover the final challenge: Jhebbal Sag’s champion.
Defeating the werewolf and consuming its flesh will give you the knowledge of Jhebbal Sag’s altars and religious items. Followers of Jhebbel Sag are all about controlling and hunting beasts. Special bloodletter knives allows them to extract blood from their victims and sacrifice it to their bloodthirsty master.
They are also able to craft special lures that attract animals and other beasts to wherever they’re thrown, making them deadly and implacable foes out in the wild. The magical Mark of Jhebbal Sag will offer any creature caught within it up as tribute to the Lord of Beasts. In return he may send one of his champions to see if you are still worthy.
Reaching the highest level of worship with Jhebbal Sag will grant you access to the deadly Claws of Jhebbal Sag. This devastating weapon allows you to truly tap into your inner beast and unleash furious swipes with razor sharp claws, much like like Jhebbal Sag’s champion.
Thrall Hunger
As part of this update we’re rolling out thrall hunger, which requires you to feed your thralls in order to keep them alive. The objective of this is to add nuance and flavor, not grinding, and we’ve gotten a lot of valuable feedback from our Testlive audience when tweaking the numbers. We feel we’ve arrived at a reasonable balance for this mechanic, but we always welcome more feedback.
- You only need to feed thralls that have been placed out in the world (fighters and archers). Thralls at your workstations and altars have no inventory and won’t require feeding
- The amount of time a companion can go on without eating, from fully fed to hungry, will be 7 days
- Companions will be able to eat pretty much anything that’s even remotely edible
- If you match thrall’s preferred diet, they will gain a bonus buff. This way, if you do care about the specifics of each companion type, you can get a temporary short-term advantage. You can still feed them whatever you want to prevent them from decaying. This also means you can buff your companions right before battle. A server setting (disabled by default) will allow you to make diet matching mandatory if that’s what you prefer
- Food dispensers (Thrall Pot for thralls and Feedbox for pets) will push smaller amounts of food to each companion before moving onto the next companion. The net result of this is that all your companions will be more equally fed and you’ll need smaller amounts of food to reach them all
- The Thrall Pot is unlocked when you make a Wheel of Pain. You craft it at the Carpenter’s Bench.
- Food will decay very slowly when placed in food dispensers
- There will be server options to enable/disable the feeding system separately for thralls and pets. There will also be server config parameters to adjust other aspects of the system, including if your companions should die when they are hungry or only be reduced in health. This means your server can adjust the system to a level of commitment/consequence that you want, including disabling it entirely
Known issues
- We have been getting reports that some players with mods installed are experiencing crashes when placing thralls. Disabling nameplates will fix this.
- Even if you disable thrall hunger, the hunger timer will still tick down. Your thralls won’t die once the timer runs out, but we know it can cause confusion
- Character hitbox can sometimes bug out when you log out on top of a foundation. A server restart will take care of this
Server settings
Private server admins should be aware of the following:
- StarvationDamagePenaltyCap=n where n is the percentage of maximum damage that a thrall can take if going hungry for 7 ingame days
- StarvationDamagePenaltyCap=0.0000 would mean taking max 0% damage over time
- StarvationDamagePenaltyCap=1.0000 would mean taking max 100% damage over time and potentially killing the thralls
Changelog:
HIGHLIGHTS
- New Dungeon: The Midnight Grove
- New offhand combat mechanics
- New Specialist Arrows: Light Arrows, Tar Arrows, Poison Arrows, Ivory Arrows, Explosive Arrows, Healing Arrows
- New thrall hunger mechanics
THRALLS/AI
- Fixed a bug that would cause thrall health to reset to 100 HP
- Thralls have now 50% increased health. That is to bring them in line with some of the greater pets and also make it more interesting to take a thrall out for exploration/hunting
- Entertainer Thralls now provide buffs after having been on follow mode
- The Crocodile boss near the N’batu’s Pack is no longer stuck and attacks the player
- Fixed an issue where NPCs would stop aggroing after a player teleported several times.
- Pets and Thralls that get stuck will now teleport back to the location they were deployed.
PURGE UPDATES
- Optimized database cleaning to remove inactive clans
- Better randomization for Purge spawn options
- Distracted Purgers will no longer get sidetracked by random Points of Interest.
- Set initial purge countdown to 15 minutes
NEW CONTENT
- New Dungeon: The Midnight Grove
- Added Werewolves
- Added Nightvision Potion, allowing players to see more clearly when it’s dark
- Added new offhand combat mechanics
- Added new Specialist Arrows: Light Arrows, Tar Arrows, Poison Arrows, Ivory Arrows, Explosive Arrows, Healing Arrows
- Thralls will now need to be fed in order to survive. Place food items into their inventory to feed them, or use the Thrall Pot to distribute food automatically. It will take a companion about 7 days to go from filled to starving
- Added the option to visually remove text on signs made by people outside your guild. You will only see it if you click on it.
- Added the option to visually remove text from all signs. You will only see it if you click on it.
- Beehives now require Queen Bees to produce honey
ANIMATION UPDATES
- Added new combat animations
– The Sword/Axe/Mace and Shield heavy chain will now incorporate shield bashes
– Throwing axes are now a part of your heavy chain combos when wielded with Swords, Axes and Maces - Added new attack to the Spider Tarantula Boss
- Added new attack to the Crocodile Boss
- New knockback setup and animations for monsters
- New Rocknose animations
- Added new idle and threat animations
- Updated surface swimming to work with a glowstick
GAMEPLAY CHANGES
- We have added the ability to use bait to force a specific result in fish traps. For example, if you want Unappetizing Fish, you can force that outcome with insects. Grubs will catch Exotic Fish. No bait means you get a random fish, which is the way they work in the Live servers.
- Preservation box’s inventory space is increased. Food will not decay in them if there’s ice in the box
- Beehives behave differently: They still collect honey over time, but Worker Bees and Queen Bees will produce a lot more honey than an empty beehive
UI CHANGES
- Moved Sunder debuff to the right side of the nameplate, where it belongs
- Darkened the opacity on the background panel for container inventories
- Added button to the server list where players can report downed servers
- Added coordinate grid to the in game Map
- In-game Map can now be zoomed out further
- The menu can now be accessed during Character Creation
- Implemented a confirmation prompt upon exiting game from Dedicated server
- The map navigation is no longer inverted when inverting the Y axis on a controller
- The “Cycle Filter” button no longer becomes unresponsive when cycling through all filters
- Solved an issue with password protected servers not being displayed properly
- Fixed an issue where resetting Video settings to default wouldn’t apply changes to Windowed mode and resolution
- Fixed an issue where the in game map would be cut off in 4:3 and 16:10 aspect ratio
BALANCING
- Vaults have now much lower hitpoints and will decay faster
- Vaults max inventory size increased from 200 to 300
- Glowing Standing Torch should now have the correct HP when placed down
- Added more building and climbing blockers to areas where players aren’t supposed to build/climb:
– The City of Votaries of Skelos
– The Exiles’ camp between the Sandswept Ruins and Drifter’s Rest
– NPC village in Deckswab’s Retreat - The Epic version of Conan’s Atlantean Sword is now more durable than its Mid Grade equivalent, as it should be
- Fixed swapped ingredients for Ugly and Unapetizing Fish Tropies
- Re-balanced armor bonuses to stats
- Acheronian Longsword, Spear and War-Axe should no longer be more powerful than Star Metal equivalents
- Fixed Corrupted Spiders so they’re not killed in one hit with Star Metal Greatsword
- Avatar special attacks now damage buildings with the correct amount of damage. This is not a total fix for avatars as they are undergoing additional changes and updates as part of the siege system re-balancing. Set is still being difficult!
GENERAL BUG FIXES
- Fixed some bugs related to NPC patrols around camps
- Bossonian Bow can be repaired again
- Status effects, journey steps and crosshairs should now be temporarily removed when cinematics trigger
- Fixed an animation bug where animals would turn away from you after attacking
- Fixed a bug where the player character would clip through solid structures when re-logging after sitting in a chair
- It should now be possible attach fence foundations corner-to-corner at a right angle
- Fixed a bug where Reinforced Wooden Awnings couldn’t be placed
- All sloped wall pieces now detract the same amount of stability
- Aquilonian Braziers, Hanging Braziers and Khitan Lamps should no longer be placeable underground
- Fixed a bug where the sound of footsteps in water would play when walking on the edge of the Large Water Well
- Fixed Iron Brazier in Deathwhisper Camp so it doesn’t float anymore
- Fixed a bug where low tier items would lose all durability after having damage kits applied to them
- Fixed a bug where the Noxious Gas debuff would wear off, even when standing in gas
- Hatch Frames now snap to walls, door frames and frame pieces
- Statues of Refreshment can now be placed near any of Mitra’s religious buildings
- Giant Snakes and Alpha Snakes should now drop Reptile Hides when harvested
- You should now be able to harvest Crimson Lotus Flower with Sickles
- Jungle Birds now drop heads
- Glowing Sticks should now be usable underwater
- Fixed a bug where the expiration timer on Purified Flesh would display a negative value
- Players should now be able to place walls next to stairs
- Fixed an issue where the Witch Queen could be engaged behind the magical barrier
- Fixed a bug where gamepad and mouse would lose functionality after controlling an avatar
- Ostrich egg clutches under ground in the middle of the desert are are now above-ground
- Fixed an issue where placeables would disappear if the base of the item was slightly below-ground
- Fixed a bug where you could override the corruption limit by drinking Corruption Brew
- Fixed a bug where bedroll map marker would disappear after respawn
- Helped a Shaleback out from inside a tree by moving his spawn point
- Fixed a bug where you wouldn’t do damage when jumping on another person’s head
- Fixed a bug where the Palisades’ placement brush would give the “Spikes” debuff and cause lag issues
- Fixed a bug where The Kinscourge would lose aggro if the player stands on a balustrade
- Fixed an issue with re-binding the CTRL key
- Fixed a bug where dismantling a Wheel of Pain would cause it to drop an unlootable loot bag
- Fixed a bug where Star Metal Pickaxe cost 0 points to unlock
- You should now be able to change fuel type with a controller
- Avatar Lifetime option is no longer missing in a single-player game
- Fixed an issue where the clan member sub-menu wouldn’t appear on a 4K monitor
- Carpets should now disappear when foundations are destroyed
- Fixed an exploit where players could push themselves under the map using ceilings and climbing
- Fixed a bug where the UI would disappear for the host of a co-op session when a client summons an avatar
- Corrected HealthPool l for Hyenas and Shoebills
- Fixed an issue with wolves not using all their available attacks
- Fixed an issue where it wasn’t possible to refresh the server list
- Fixed an issue where it wasn’t possible to queue crafting processes
- Fixed a tooltip issue when a player character is unarmed
- Fixed an issue with Sandstorms damaging players in the Swamp Area
- "Show your religious Zeal’ Journey Step now unlocks at Jhebbal Sag altars
- The player can no longer climb into the model of the Palace of the Witch Queen
- Fixed an issue where after unlocking a new arrow type, the arrows wouldn’t be used up when used from the radial/quickbar
- Brought item requirements for building the Altar of Ymir in line with the other Altars
- Fixed additional issues where the player could get stuck in terrain
- Njoror Battleborn should now spawn as intended
EXPLOIT FIXES
- Fixed an issue where thrall inventories could be exploited to carry more items than intended
- Fixed a bug where Archer Thralls would produce infinite amount of special arrows.
QoL UPDATES
- Merchants now have names and are marked as “Merchant”, rather than “Fighter”
- White placeholder icon for teleportation buff is now no longer visible
- Various audio fixes
- It should now be easier to place items on the Wall Hanging Shelf
- Planters are no longer semi-indistructable when attacked with a trebuchet
- Archpriests of Yog should now use the correct weapon rather than a Yog Cleaver
- Removed the ability to apply Weapon Damage Kits to torches as it was causing bugs
- Fixed missing collision on chests placed on the roof of The Well of Skelos
- Items that are currently being used as ingredients in a crafting process will no longer be displayed as an available resource
- Honey now stacks up to 100
- Attempting to clan invite a player that is already in a clan will not trigger a popup with a warning
- Fixed a bug where NPC’s hairline was not textured correctly (hairlines are important!)
- Warpaints now also cover forearms
- It is now possible to clear your Admin Password
- Implemented SFX for highlighting Finalize Character in Character Creation
SOUND IMPROVEMENTS
- Added SFX for looting via the inventory preview
- Fixed an SFX issue on the difficulty screen
- Added SFX to Reset Attribute button
DEDICATED SERVER LAUNCHER:
- Reduced the size of the button to open the log folder, allows the log window to be larger
- Added a button to open the folder containing the ini files
- Added a button to copy the mac/hardware address to the clipboard (useful when trying to do port forwarding on a web interface)
- Added a combo selector for the server region
- Added an edit field for the maximum number of players allowed on the server
- Added a check: If settings have changed, the launcher will ask to confirm about losing changes when starting the server
- Added a startup check: If we find a running server process that happens to not be the one in our sub-folder, display a message and quit
- Changed the deployment/update/starting/stopping sequence to make it easier to know what is happening (icon changes and messages in the status bar)
- Added support for switching between the Live and TestLive branch
- The revision and snapshot information is now extracted from the Dreamworld DLL and displayed in the UI
- Removed the tray icon
- Added an option to force validate the server installation
Swimming drains stamina because it used to be that a player could run into the water and, while swimming, replenish their stamina. But it’s obviously having some effects on PvP that we didn’t foresee.
