Please fix the Story

I made this account just to post this.
I’ve played the game for a long time now, and recently started a private server for a couple of friends.
I’ve done pretty much all content before, but they never experienced the “story” and that’s what they were more interested in.

They are very happy with, well, pretty much everything else the game has, but a couple steps into the “story” and disappointments started pilling up. And when I thought about that I realized that, since I’ve done it before, I don’t care much about it anyway, nor do people who like to do awesome builds or PVP.
Yet, it was something that could be fixed rather easily and by all rights should have been fixed years ago.
It really hurts to hear my friends go “WOW” when they place the Staff atop the Tower of Bats and then go “aww…” when they realize it bugged and played a line it shouldn’t. And I wince inside because I know there’s even worse coming up.

For starters, how are Exiles supposed to know they should start with the Dregs? Well, there’s a Journey pointing them there. And yet, before doing journeys, people will explore. My first boss in this game was the Witch Queen. I just stumbled on her, with Iron weapons. I only met Razma many hours later, and did not make the connection that she was the women I fought all those hours ago. Her dialog came off as insane random rambling without the context.
Suggestion: place more things leading to the Dregs. Notes you find on exile camps, ghosts or NPC’s that talk to you. And by Crom, lock the door on Xel-Ha temple behind something (suggestion on next point). There’s no PVP or progression reason to visit it (except for Lemurian feat) so there’s no reason to let new players wander in there.

Then comes the Staff of the Triumvirate. Not only a excellent idea to guide players, it also plays a part in the story! How cool! But then… it’s beyond glitched. Right when you awaken it, it spews the 2 lines it’s supposed to and… a third it should only do after you visit the Archivist. Worse: it’s supposed to start giving you lines to guide you to every artefact AFTER exhausting the dialog with the Archivist. This is also bugged. 50% of my friends managed to get these lines to activate, the other half didn’t.
He also has no line for the Shinning Trapezohedron. Or rather, he has one but since the character does not have a prompt with a question, there’s no context and when he replies “This is a dangerous question, best not continue” the player will wonder what the hell is going on.
It DOES make sense why he wouldn’t tell you, but his reply seems utterly inane and disconnected from the rest. Worse still when it comes to the Scourgestone. He tells you it was broken. And then… nothing.
I’m actually struggling to find a way to tell me friends how you’re suposed to figure out where the scourgestone parts are besides “check the wiki, lol”. I don’t think there’s a signle in-game piece of content pointing you in the right away for any of the three parts. Best you could do without checking the wiki, is just keep killing stuff until it drops.
Spoiling the rest for people who haven’t done this content.

It’s absolutely BRILLIANT that you got a line in where the staff taunts you and reveals itself a servant of the Snakes that undermined and destroyed the Giant Kings Empire from within. It’s extra cool when he not only references Kull, but also threatens YOU. “You will be cleansed!” he yells! And… nothing happen. That is, if you even bothered to bring the staff with you to check for another line. When I did the Volcano for the first time, I left the staff home (it was being used as a prop for my Dancer-stage). So, no line at all. Worse still, I got the line AFTER returning home. AFTER killing every Snake there. The line would work so, SO much better if it was uttered in the Volcano :frowning:. Worse still, some of his revelations (making the High Priest curse his own son) come off… out of the blue. The lore surrounding Tyros is so interspaced and spread out that I only pieced it together after consulting the wiki for the 2 lore pieces and couple journals I missed. Same goes for the Stone of circles betrayal. At least the Sandstorm hijinks is better understood by the players.

Fixing the staff is actually far, FAR easier than it would seem. You know how you got to place the staff on the Tower of Bats and activated with Demon Blood? Heck, even the altar has a crafting panel telling you the recipe. Do the same everywhere else, use one ingredient that is thematic.
For instance, Xel-ha could be locked, but have a staff opening next to it. You’d place the staff, throw in some Black Lotus and voila, it opens.
Behind the scenes, the Staff would be consumed as an ingredient for another staff (essentially a new item) that has a different line. So there would be 10 or 12 different Staff items, each with their own lines (no possibility of bugging out with the wrong line) and from the point of view of the player, he would not notice anything. Best of all: you can play a singular voice line from the altar when the recipe is concluded (like how workbench’s play sounds when recipes are finished) and it’s a voice line about the boss/dungeon you’re about to do.
In the arena, placing the staff near the plinth would summon the boss.
You could open the High Priest dungeon with it.
And by the end of the game:

The player places the staff in that circle-arena before the Snake people, to open a door, but then the staff plays that last line, and rather than opening the door, a bunch of snake people ambush the players. The staff disappears, and the door can be opened by a key carried by one of the snakes. Bonus: have the Snake High Priest wield the staff in the final fight.

Next up is the ScourgeStone. Boy, that comes out of nowhere. Think on it: people have to scavenge 3 pieces (with no hint to their location) and then… what? One of my friends did the entire story and tried sticking the pieces on the Chaosmouth. It seems simple when you’ve done it, but for new players: nothing tells them that they HAVE to assemble the Scourgestone. Worse still, they might be brilliant and realize that “follow the sandstorm” means. And stumble upon Petruzo. And Petruzo will tell them where to find the stones and to assemble them. Which is a lie: you have to bring them back, Petruzo is the one who assembles it.
Sugestion: Petruzo should direct players to Floatsam, where the players kill a boss that drops the first piece. Shamalla then should tell the players that the pirates sought to use the stone to summon winds and sail away, but after a mutiny, half the pirates stole two of the pieces and went to the desert.
The Black Hand camp should contain notes and optionally a prisioner in a cage talking about a group that went north: they found a passage and decided to go there. Essentially, a third group that double-backstabbed the Black hand.
In the Passage, alongside the scourgestone, the player should find notes about this group (they’re all dead) telling the player where they came from.
Why do things these away? Because rather than requiring people to meet Petruzo to get the location of the Scourgestone, they now have Petruzo, Flotsam, Blackhand Camp and The Passage as 4 locations that mutually reference each other. Any player who simply decides “Never been to the jungle, let’s explore” will casually stumble upon these notes and be effortlessly pointed in the right direction.
Bonus: have the Staff open the Windswept ruins with blood from Sandbeasts (as pointed above).

Third point: Tyro’s and the Silent Legion.
There’s some things I know are unreasonable to ask. Would I like to have actual Legions of silent Skeletons patrolling around his keep? Yes. Do I think that’s easy to implement? No.
But the Tragedy and betrayal that happened in the north are so hard to piece together that most players will flat out not pick up on it. It will be just a scary dude in heavy black armour.
Same goes for the Circle of Swords. Most likely, when the player reaches it, it’s been hours since he spoke to the Warmaker. And if he hasn’t found the High Priest yet, they won’t understand what the hell is going on there.
Suggestion: the tundra should be the more civilized part of the game. As in, you need more camps and NPC’s with friendlies in there with stories and lines for the player. Camps near the silent Legion keep, camps near the Circle of stones. Throw in a merchant or two, and a scholar or treasure hunter who can dump a pinch of lore on the player. It either clarifies or refreshes the player so they can understand what’s going on.
And please, PLEASE, for all that’s unholy and debauched in Derketo’s name: fix Telith island. That place should shock players and make them do a double take, but without the ghost and the singing, people will simply see the Journey notification pop-up and go “Uhhh…?”, open the Journey screen, read it and be even more confused.

Fourth point: I personally recommend to my friends that, before going into the volcano, they do the optional dungeons now. Warmaker Citadel, Wine Cellar, Dagon and Jhebal.
And when I do, someone will always ask “Wait, how were we supposed to figure these existed?”
Warmaker and Jhebal, okay, you can easily stumble on them through exploration.
But both the Wine Cellar and Dagon are “here’s this conspicuous object that does not seem relevant in any way. Press E to enter a dungeon that puts main-quest dungeons to shame”.
Wine Cellar is even worse: the Khari are just “dropped” on the player, and for people who do not know the lore well, it’s race that pops in, and pops out after doing that content.
Jhebal’s is quite okay as a “secret”, but it’s a shame because it’s visually amazing.
Suggestion: First, lock the Silent Legion Keep with a portcullis. Defeating the boss in the Warmaker citadel gives the player a Horn they can blow. Give it a description telling them it’s used to announce the arrival of a general at the Silent Legion keep. So now, Silent Legion is literally “gated” behind Warmaker, and if you place the “camps” I outlined in the previous point, one NPC can easily direct the player to Warmaker Citadel. “The gates only open for generals and nobles, but the last general died in Warmaker citadel…”
Have a camp of “Hounds of the North” in the Mounds of the dead, a rival group of the “Dogs of the Desert” with notes detailing how they want to steal their potions and invade Jhebbal’s dungeon. Place it close to the High Priest tomb, and place an item on a table there that can open the Barrow King tomb (instead of Demon Blood). So now, while doing the main-quest, the players stumble upon a hint to Jhebal’s dungeon.
Lastly: block off the entries to the volcano. One is blocked by an ancient Kari gatehouse that opens with a key you get from the wine cellar. You can explore a small portion of the gatehouse and find a map, detailing a refuge to their hidden city in the south (don’t mention Sepermeru, I don’t think it was buildt when the Kari were around).
The other entrance is blocked by a Lemurian temple. To enter it, you need to carry an item relating to Dagon. Once more, have another map, detailing where Lemurian cultists would depart from to reach Dagon’s worshipping place.
These items are not consumed on use, they simply open the door, temporarily while carrying them.
And please, make the entrance to the WineCellar and Dagon a little more noticeable. A make-shift docks with several boats and notes (couple of Lemurian guards) and a sort of mine-shaft garded by Setite guards in Sepermeru for instance.

So, after all this, the player has gathered all the parts, done the optional dungeons and arrives at the Chaosmouth. The staff is gone and can’t guide you anymore, you’re about to end your journey.
You know where I’m going next, we all do, even Funcom probably knows. And we all do, because it’s something that has been repeated adnauseum on this forum.
Please Funcom, you can ignore everything above this point, but at least fix this.

The Servant of the Ring.

We all know how broken it is, some of us have even summoned it manually to fight it and get the journey, so let me jump straight to the suggestion.
When the player places all 6 artefacts on the altar, they’re locked and consumed. The keystone is made, but alas: the archivist was wrong. While the artefacts are enough to created the keystone, it has no power, and it cannot activate. But when a player crafts it, a ghost appears next to the Altar.
It’s Thoth-Amon! It cackles and taunts the player: you have strength, but no “real power”. Then proclaim that they wish to bargain. The keystone for our freedom. Come to the Snake temple in the Unnamed city, place the keystone on the alter and we’ll bargain…
This is, of course a trap. The player has to place the keystone on the altar inside the temple (simply make it act like a chest) but when they do, a green barrier appears at the entrance and the Servant of the Ring spawns in. Thoth-Amons voice cackles through the air, laughing at us, and then crying in anger when we kill his servant. The Servant of the Ring doesn’t even need to be a spectacular boss or anything, the ambient corruption on that fight already makes it a tense moment. Heck, you could simply bump his health to 15k right now as he is (with no extra attacks), spawn in 6 more undead around him and it would be an entirely appropriate boss fight to end the game on. Not spectacular, but serviceable.
When the servant dies, Klael dies outside too, so that when the player leaves the Temple, he sees the Warmaker, the last of the Giant Kings, finally dead, joining his kin (Implying that the servant killed him before getting in as the Giant Kings were no longer useful for Thoth Amon).
The player can now use the essence from the Servant and activate the Keystone he recovered from the altar to remove his bracelet.

Or rather, and here’s the final fix: when you use the keystone, the game doesn’t outright end. The bracelet changes colour to blue.
If the player wishes to keep playing, this is a neat detail to distinguish him among other players has someone who has done the story. Kind of like the White Robes in the game “Journey”.
This let’s you keep the bracelet (so you can remove it to kill yourself).
Anytime he wishes though, he can head south, through the desert and continue. As soon as he passes the Ghost Barrier, the normal cutscene plays (bonus detail you could add: when you pass the barrier, the bracelet opens and falls on the sand).
I would also add a credit scroll here, with some music. Come on Funcom, this is the best time for you guys to brag a bit and let your names out there, use it!
Main reason is that this effectively lets the players finish all journey steps and still continue playing. And then end it anytime they want.

Now, I know there’s 3.0 coming around the corner, and I know everyone is busy either getting hyped, or trying to contain their hype to avoid disappointments. I know there’s a lot of work ahead for the team hot fixing all the problems that will surely pop up whenever a big update gets dropped on the player base. And I am also very aware that 90% of the player base plays this game to build cool forts and PVP. But please, remember that once upon a time, you guys actually managed to write a good story, with some twists and shocking revelations, the fall of an empire, betrayal, love and the oldest grudge in history. And some of us really liked it.
If nothing in this list is doable in the near future or at all, then I’ll use the opportunity to ask that you send a message to your writers and artists: “You guys did an amazing job, and I loved every bit of it.”

PS: when sorcery? I’m throwing fire-orbs at my friends and calling myself “Tim the Powerful Sorcerer” but they mock me and claim it’s not really magick :frowning:

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One day, I WILL have my pet rabbit, feed it Shadebloom and they’ll never laugh at me again. :smiling_face_with_tear:

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One heart for the effort. I am reading piece by piece. I like your commitment to the pve aspect of the game.

To the first things I readied I can place my opinion here if you don’t mind…

I remember I started on single player the game years ago. After a bit wandering in the starting river and a couple of deaths from food poisoning and sandstorm, I just couldn’t find out how to start the camp fire :man_shrugging:. The dears were fast, the hyenas were difficult, the crocks were OK but when I finded a kudo I said this is it, so I fix a small camp near to the kudo to have my meals ensured. Traveling around, especially in jungle was not an option. So surely my first boss fight was the abysmal. Did I had charts, no.
Did I had guidance, no.
I started watching YouTube videos from vintage beef to do something more and later on Kiah, shaqueira, firespark…
YouTube videos was my guidance and it still is, now I am mostly @Wak4863. I believe that the “story” of the game is a bit scattered because what devs wanted was not to decide to leave exile lands, but to decide to stay there and dominate.
Nice effort @Koriath, Welcome to the forum, I will keep reading and reply again :+1:t6:

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Thanks.
After all these years, I ended up liking the scattered story. It’s not even a new phenomenon to me.
I mean, who hasn’t played Dark Soul? That’s a neat game by itself, but once you delve into item descriptions and some of the landscape details, it really paints a large story underneath the surface.
And since it’s so scattered, it’s 100% non-intrusive for people who just want to build cool bases and PVP.
But precisely because I’m familiar with Dark Souls, I also know exactly why so many people play that game, beat the final boss and then go: “So uh… what was that all about?”.

In Conan, it’s an extra shame, because the game features a lot of voice lines and plot threads that a lot of people won’t hear without exploring every inch of the map. I think rewarding exploration with recipes and emotes is great, good incentive to go out and find those hidden nooks. But the first time I reached the Volcano, I didn’t understand what the serpents had to do with the rest of the game. Just a new enemy that I could kill. Several hours of wiki-reading and YouTube videos and I… wow. That was amazing. Why isn’t it in the game then?
Except that it is. It’s how it’s presented that isn’t particularly well executed.
The Journey system is something I loved to see from day 1. Finally a game that integrates player on-boarding with the story itself! And the Steps descriptions? Some of them could have been written by Howard himself! Great stuff!
Wow, the first dungeon gives you a staff that points you out to the rest of the story? This is such a non-intrusive way to guide the player, I love it!
And it stopped there. Every place you visit is great in it’s own way. It’s how you get there that bugs me.
What motivation does your character have to go there, why would you open that big gate and challenge monstrosities twice your size?
“Because I can” is a very Conan-like answer, and for more experience players, we don’t need anything else. But for newer players, I wished we had something cooler for them.

I’ve decided to use Pippi thespians to place some NPC’s around so that my friends get some of the suggestions I laid out here. It’s not the same, and I’m not a great writer myself, but I believe they’ll appreciate the experience just that little bit more.

But with 3.0 coming up, and possibly new players picking up the game, it’s also a great time to think about them, and give them a reason to love the game as much as we older players do.
Who knows, they might stick around for the absolute mess that is PVP (but that’s a can of worms I am NOT sticking my hand in).

If nothing else, maybe Funcom will atleast finnaly finish the Servant of the Ring and we atleast can finish that journey without an Admin spawning the ugly thing :smiley:

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Dude, this is awesome! At first I thought it was going to be another one of those “where’s the Mummy of the Ring” posts or “removing the bracelet is such a letdown” posts. I agree with both, by the way, but I’ve seen them so many times and it’s nothing new anymore. But this? This is fuсking brilliant! If this is what you made your account for, I look forward to all your subsequent posts :smiley:

Yeah, that’s really bad behavior. I’m not gonna call it a bug, because I get the feeling that it’s been implemented that way on purpose, but it was a bad call. Not a game-breaking showstopper, but it completely ruins the in-game guidance for almost everyone who plays the game.

I’ve been playing this game for 5 years now, and I only found out last year that you can make the staff go on beyond the “look at this place” line by carrying it with you to the Archivist. It’s especially baffling because no other change in its dialogue requires that.

An excellent suggestion! Journey steps are good, but the one for the Remnant is in “chapter 6”, and most players will explore a lot of the map by the time that chapter starts getting unlocked.

I have mixed feelings about this, but I’ll address that when I get to that part.

I don’t think it’s bugged. I think it was a poor design decision. As I explained, to get past the “look at this place” line, you have to take the staff with you, in your inventory, to the Archivist. I don’t remember if you have to go through the whole dialogue with the staff in your inventory or not, but it has worked for every character I’ve made since I found out about it.

I think the player is supposed to keep track of which items the Archivist mentioned in his dialogue and which items the staff guided them to. The only one left at this point will be the Shining Trapezohedron, given the Archivist’s explanation that Thoth Amon took the Serpent Ring of Set and it’s not obtainable anymore.

Now, I’m not defending Funcom here, I’m explaining what their logic seems to have been. I find it a bad call, just like the aforementioned behavior of the staff.

That’s something you seem to have either missed or not paid full attention to, but happens to be one of my favorite bits of lore/guidance in Exiled Lands. Bear in mind, I found these clues and followed them even before I learned how to get guidance from the staff, so with the staff it would’ve been even easier.

For the Scourgestone, there are two hints. One is the one I followed: the Archivist tells you the Priestking used it to create the Sandstorm and then gave it to the Warmaker, and suggests that the Warmaker might know more. When you speak to the Warmaker, he says he lost the control of the Sandstorm. Without the staff’s guidance, that’s pretty much a dead end. The staff, however, tells you to “follow the sandstorm”.

However, even without that, I stumbled upon the Sandswept Ruins through exploration, which is where following the sandstorm should guide you. There, you talk to Petruso the Sandstorm Maniac, and if you persist through his insane babble, you get to hear the voice of the elemental imprisoned by the Scourgestone, which gives you all the necessary hints to find its fragments.

I found this to be a refreshing break from all the hand-holding you see in other videogames. No quest markers, no arrows pointing anywhere, no blunt “go to this place and do this thing”. Instead, you’re encouraged to investigate carefully and assemble the clues yourself.

Okay, this is what I said I had mixed feelings about. On the one hand, I’m also dissatisfied with the way you can miss out on important and/or interesting dialogue from the staff. On the other hand, I like the sandbox nature of the game and I don’t want even this main story to be linear and railroaded. Plus, I depend on entering the Witch Queen’s Palace (without fighting her) for a journey step that gives me XP as part of my leveling process for new characters. It’s not something I couldn’t live without, but it’s a nice bonus.

So, what I would suggest instead of linearization of the main story, is to rework the interactions with the staff. Make it behave like one of the lore NPCs, in that when you interact with it, you get buttons that prompt dialgoue options.

That would not only allow players to listen to previous hints, but also to decide in which order they want to follow the scavenger hunt for the Keystone artifacts.

On the other hand, doing the staff altar thing might be easier to implement – I don’t have access to the codebase, so I can’t tell. If that’s the case, then I would humbly request to leave the journey step as it is and make the staff open the inner door to the Queen’s chamber.

I mean, I don’t know, it doesn’t take extraordinary perception to realize the storm is always moving in the same direction or even to notice that it seems to stop at a certain point and hang there. But maybe there should be more emphasis on that, some lore books or some dialogue from lore NPCs, pointing out that the storm seems to be sentient and searching for something and always ends up in the same place?

Hmmm. Petruso’s interaction options include, right from the start, the option to “purchase” the Scourgestone in exchange for its fragments, but perhaps Funcom should emphasize this a bit in the dialogue. Maybe if the elemental dialogue swapped the “combine these pieces, Exile” line for something like “bring these pieces to the madman, Exile”?

I do like the rest of your ideas about the mutually referencing clues, that would be awesome.

Yeah, the only way to even start piecing all this lore together is to have defeated the Witch Queen, talked to Razma, and then to listen to one of the Lemurian lore stones and realize it’s the same voice. That’s way too subtle for me, and even after I realized what those stones were, it was still hard to piece together the story. And I’m still not 100% clear on all the details about Tyros and Telith. I guess I could look it up in the wiki, but I agree with you wholeheartedly that if we have to look up any of the lore on the wiki, then it’s not presented well enough in the game.

As I mentioned, I generally dislike gating the progress and making it linear, but in this isn’t too bad. Still, I could live without it. The same goes for your suggestion about the Midnight Grove.

Plus, it’s a bit backwards in terms of difficulty progression. Defeating the Priestking is laughably easy compared to the Midnight Grove. And I find that the Kinscourge is not as hard as the bosses in the Warmaker’s Sanctuary.

I am vehemently against this, and I think I have a very good reason for it. I enjoy the story and the lore and the clues, but not everyone does. There are many extremely important things in the volcano and it shouldn’t be gated like that.

We’re talking about locking the access to Serpentmen weapons, to obsidian, to thralls from the Votaries faction, to the Emissary of Atlach-Nacha, and last, but not least, to the abso-fuсking-lutely best stone quarry in the whole Exiled Lands. Yeah, yeah, I know stone is abundant all over the map, but the volcano is the best place for farming large quantities of it, because it has so many dense node clusters (where you can hit 3+ stone nodes with one swing). And yeah, I know of the landslide bit in the silver mine, but the total amount you get from that is not that high. Volcano combines the density with the abundance.

So, a hard no from me, for what that’s worth :wink:

Okay, everything from this point on is absolute gold, except for this last bit:

If they end up implementing sorcery, I really hope it’s not the flashy “throw fireballs around” kind of combat sorcery. I’m perfectly fine with all the sorcery that’s already in the game – you can even raise your own dead and spectral minions – but I’m not opposed to adding sorcery, as long as it isn’t the same D&D-derivative we see everywhere.

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:rofl:

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No problem, I’m a fan of gating gameplay to better guide players, and give them a feeling of “I unlocked this now!” but it’s also not something everyone would like.

About Petruzo: yes, I also stumbled upon him, and one of my friend also picked up on the “follow the sandstorm” clue. Those are two ways to find him, yeah. But since he’s involved in, essentially, 3 parts of the keystone instead of one, I thought there could be more ways to stumble upon that piece of content.
On a personnel level, I just dislike how he states “Lol, Gallaman was always bragging about a lucky stone, and how he was gonna be buried with it, what a pompous bufoon, amirite?”
“Ah, those cooky pirates have a lucky stone, didyaknow?”
“Btw: you should go to this place called The Passage. Maybe… there’s a lucky stone too, eh?”
It works, and guides the player but… I don’t like how Funcom attached a Blunt Fitting to Petruzo and called it a day.

And I was joking about the sorcery. It is, after all, a sword&sorcery setting, meaning that any magic is to be seen a corruption of the natural laws. I want rituals, things that take a long time to cast, or require sacrifices to produce effects. Not “point, click, boom” flashy magical-flamethrowers.

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Yep! I absolutely love the suggestion to have mutually referencing lore documents pointing to Petruso and Sandswept Ruins. I’m not against adding more breadcrumbs, I was just trying to say how happy I was that they didn’t do it in the typical ham-fisted way other games like to use.

Huh. I’ll have to go visit Petruso again. I honestly don’t recall it being like that. I don’t remember all the details, but I think the elemental explains that these are the places that it can’t reach through the sandstorm it controls. I got the impression that it searched everywhere and these were the clues it found but couldn’t act upon, because the places they mention are not within its grasp.

But again, I might be wrong. I haven’t visited the Sandswept Ruins in a long time.

Thank Mitra! Sorry I took you so seriously, but you wouldn’t believe how many times I’ve seen people on the forums ask for the “magical flamethrower” flavor of sorcery :smiley:

That, and stuff like dwarves, elves, and vampires. :roll_eyes:

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Oh yeah, because there’s such shortage of games with those things. :roll_eyes:.
At least they got V Rising for vampires now, so the workshop won’t be spammed with Vampire mods anymore.

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This one agrees that the story could use a bit of tightening, and likes many of your suggestions.
While less of the lock the zones mentality, but definitely allow the staff to be evolved to give better and more relevant clues.

The wine cellar is a bit hidden, but there is a note on the bar near Conan that complains about the drunkard Szeth (of the normal looking but very useful truncheon) being locked in the cellar out back. Not much of a lead, but it is a thing.
Perhaps more relic hunter dialogue about the dig or more notes around would help.
Even a loading screen pop up
What ancient and haunted ruins is Seperemu built upon?

Not necessarily hand holding, but slightly less obscure clues would be appreciated.

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I think tying it in to the corruption system could be useful there. You have to give up max health and stamina (ie gaining corruption) to cast magic. You could even make the sorcerer, create a zone of corruption around them as they cast, and perhaps wherever they go if they are too corrupt. Reading spells ought to induce corruption, and sufficiently powerful texts should also emit corruption. It would be interesting if corruption was expanded to have more tiers (where max health/stamina is a tier 1 loss). You might have poorer vision, poorer audio, occasionally spawn enemies, wear out your armor, or even where out your buildings. Perhaps if diseases were implemented, it would make you more prone to diseases as well. You could also make the character be more threatening to bosses and mobs (who would primarily target the caster).

I think requiring only ritual casts is a bit much, but it could be cool that you have to cast a ritual to “precast” instant use spells.

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I think the game would benefit from a recording system so you can go back at any time and listen to what people, the lore stones, and journal notes have said. Kind of like how you can pick up Razma’s journal and reread it at any time. I never go to all of the lore stones in the correct order either so in order to get the story I have to read the wiki.

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Thankfully, in single player I can spawn a pet rabbit to myself!
But I wonder! If I give them other animals’ attacks (which are portrayed with a bag in the inventory), will they use it? Would be hillarious. :rofl:

By personal experience only, informing you that I am an original pve player because this is what amuses me the most, pvp is not that bad. Actually my best pve days was on pvp servers. Hopefully after all these years I find @Marcospt and I finally enjoy pve in pve servers. Yet pvp has more to pve, the fact that you hurt your team mate and your thrall makes every fight counts. I wish, if they ever decide to fix official pve barbaric servers, hurting your thralls and your teammate will be in the project. Ofcurce you will tell me, hey that’s pvec! No I don’t want the ability to hurt all the times my team, just when I fight a boss or an npc and only my team, clan, not other players or their thralls.
More to come…

An interesting approach to the lore aspect. I, like many others, were not sure what to first expect when I was your massive opening post. and I find myself kinda agreeing with you.

On one hand, Conan Exiles is a sandbox. We’re dumped into what is meant to be a death-camp with no way out. There isn’t a “main quest” to follow like in most RPGs, leading us through progressive challenges towards the grand finale. From this perspective, the whole “uhh, what’s going on” and finding hints and bits of lore piecemeal serves the overall flavor of the setting.

On the other hand, the sandbox environment also means that (with only a few exceptions) everything is there from the beginning, so there’s nothing to prevent us from finding the clues in a “wrong” order. I mean, I accidentally rescued Razma weeks before Conan first asked if I had seen her and gave me some clues to start looking in the Unnamed City. Yet I had no option to tell him “sure, I found her, she’s right there living two streets that way”.

The way I see it, the Exiled Lands cannot be real. They’re a dream. Whether it’s my character’s dream, Thoth-Amon’s, the gods’ or Conan’s, I cannot say - but that’s the only “reasonable” explanation why the chronology doesn’t make sense. (Also explains why you can die, respawn and run back to your corpse and eat its heart and use your own leg as a club.)

Now, I wouldn’t mind having a more coherent, progressive storyline to follow in the game. Not necessarily a quest or anything like that, but an order in which to find details would help make sense of things that are going on. (And removing obsolete or retconned pieces of lore would also help.)

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Actually I saved her after the chat I had with him, which reminds me the great disappointment I had when I went back to Conan to announce the news that Razma is back and see that nothing changed and the travel to him was pointless.
I have to be honest however that the population of Conan gamers I met in game is huge. Most of 80% keeps repeating routines that don’t even touch the 50% of the content this game has. People playing this game online care more for dominance and builds or destruction than the rest. I rarely find people that speaks or care for the lore of the game and almost nobody even keeps the Razmas journals. You use to loose these journals on death, so I was recreating characters just for that, silly I know, but not to be able to have them the game seemed pointless.

when you did that - was it on a dedicated server or in singleplayer? I’ve found that while npc’s do have different dialogue lines if you leave then come back, (in singleplayer) leaving render distance of them will completely reset them and you’ll be back to, “Another new one, eh? Veterans tend to smell a little more like despair.”

I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s no new dialogue for Conan dependent on Razma, though.

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I’m like 80 hours into the game and I didn’t know there was a story. How do you get into the story? Are there quests? Where does the story start?

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I find it… less. Some parts of the “history” should be more rewarding. For example there is a great talk about the Atlantean sword in this game. Conan could provide it to you after defeating the witch Queen and only if you have found all of Razmas journals. It would be very nice if your entrance in the witch Queens lair wouldn’t be allowed if you haven’t find the journals. I do understand what op needs and I am on 100%. However we have to be honest here, we are a significant minority.

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