Purge Difficulty Setting Makes Certain Purges Never Spawn

Game mode: Online official
Type of issue: Misc
Server type: PvE
Region: North America


I believe the mechanics behind the Purge Difficulty setting used on servers needs to be re-examined, as I have reason to believe it is preventing a great many purge types from spawning…

Basis for this theory follows…

I have 3 paid accounts that I use all on the same Official Server, each one setup as a different clan.

  1. My main contains everything I actually care about, infrastructure… outposts… basically stuff spread out across the Exiled Lands.
  2. My first alt consists of a single base in NE A9.
  3. My second alt consists of a single base in central N4.

The reason for the alt accounts is simple: by having only a single, compact base (as opposed to multiple bases), a player can guarantee what area they will get purged in. Likewise, since all of the purge types have specific geographical areas they cover, this means we can select what purge types we’re apt to see.

The problem is that when servers are set to Difficulty 6, and multiple purge types of varying difficulty overlap an area, only the one with the higher threshold will ever be selected. I say this based off of extensive personal experience.

At my first alt’s base in NE A9, and at my neighbor’s base in B9, both Cimmerian Beast-Tamers (diff 1-6) and Relic Hunter Scouts (diff 1-4) should be able to spawn. For the past 4-6 months, we have each gotten 1-2 purges a week at these bases, and every single time it’s been the CBTs who have come calling.

While this is great for farming some of the beefiest fighters and most desirable crafters in the game, it becomes problematic when you begin looking at other areas of the map…

In the volcano, there are several purge types that should be able to spawn: Silent Legion, Cimmerian Beast Tamers, Yetis (all diff 1-6), and Votaries of Skelos (diff 1-4). However, in the year plus I’ve been on this server, even those who have followed my lead and created “purge alts” have never gotten purged by what should be one of the most desirable purges in the game: Votaries of Skelos.

It’s the same in the jungle, no one has gotten purged by Lemurians since the change was made to Purge Difficulty settings many patches ago. The last and only one anyone on the server witnessed was several months before thrall NPCs finally got to wear clothing.

I can’t say if this is working “as designed”, but it’s problematic because it leads to player frustration, has locked away a lot of the game’s content, and essentially shoehorns players into only a small area of the map if they want to unlock the power of purge crafters.

For the sake of granting players the agency to spread out and build where they want, I implore you to reexamine how this mechanic is implemented.


Please provide a step-by-step process of how the bug can be reproduced. The more details you provide us with the easier it will be for us to find and fix the bug:

  1. Join a server where Purge Difficulty is set to 6.
  2. Start a clan and build only a single base in an area where multiple purges of varying difficulty can spawn.
  3. Get purged several dozen times.
  4. Observe that the only purges that spawn are those with a difficulty of 1-6.
4 Likes

Hey @Larathiel

Thanks for the really detailed feedback.
We’re relaying it to our team so they can re-examine those settings.

1 Like

PurgeDifficulty setting refers to a MINIMAL Purge level spawn. Officials are all level 6 - this way there are some purge types effectively excluded from spawning because their MAXIMAL level is set to 4 (Votaries and Relic Hunter Scouts both have max lvl 4) and server will only spawn lvl 6 purges.

The easiest way to fix it without overhauling the hole system is to change Official server setting to PurgeDifficulty = 4 as there are no (to my knowledge) purge types with initial difficulty level set to 5 or above.

This is a very common theory/belief, but it isn’t true. You can test it for yourself in single player using available admin commands. Not to mention that the vast majority of the Purges in the desert are a level 4 max.

Now I’m not saying that the RNG values of determining which Purge get’s triggered shouldn’t be looked at or something. I am correcting the false theory that only level 6 purges spawn when the setting is 6 though.

Saying it is not true without any evidence backing it up is no different from saying this is true. I would love for this to be “not true”, but the ONLY real evidence can be FUNCOM explaining this system in detail.

Which admin commands should I test? And by the way, I am pretty sure using admin commands effectively overrides any settings i.e. admins can spawn level 4 purge even if the server itself is set to PurgeDifficulty 6.

How can you tell what level they are?

He knows quite a bit actually. He creates mods, but also has used this ground to learn more about the game world.

The purges and their level are most likely listed, and even though my setting is at 6…I get scorpions every darn time at a base north of sepermeru. Which is highly frustrating, I’d like to get variety!

Pretty sure the purge level only affects what can spawn within the purge, and not which ones can/cannot spawn. Which would explain why I still got exile purges by the southern river.

Little dated, but still applies.

No. If you force a specific Purge and wave to spawn, that is the only time it “overrides” the settings. Using available admin commands to simply speed up the testing is not going to “override” anything. It’s still random.

Dev Kit. Wiki has the same data.

2 Likes

So I should be looking into StartPlayerPurge, StartNextPurgePhase and EndPurge. OK I will run some checks.

I will rephrase my question
you are in game when you get your warning “A plague of locusts is going to attack you”
How can you, as a player, tell what level purge is this? My guess is you can count how many enemies spawned per wave (and hope none of them will stuck inside rocks :laughing: so you could actually count all of them)
If there some kind of server log, keeping track of server events (including purge events)?

Compare it to the Wiki. If you get a Desperate Exile purge (for example), it’s level 4, because that’s the max it supports. You won’t get a level 3 Exile Purge when its max is level 4 and the server setting is set to 4-6. The Purge System always will spawn the highest difficulty Purge and Wave depending on the Server Setting. It will still spawn something that is below level 6 if the server setting is set to 6 and the specific Purge Event (such as Desperate Exiles) has a maximum difficulty of 4.

There is a server log, though I don’t know what kind of things show up for the purge (never needed to check the server logs for Purge Events). It’s not exactly easy to read for the average person though. For the purpose of your testing, I don’t see the relevance of needing it either.

So if server’s PurgeDifficulty is set to 4 and Desperate Exile purge (available in ranges from 1-4) pops up , when it will always be level 4 purge? And if PurgeDifficulty is set to 6, Desperate Exile purge should still occur being the same level 4 difficulty (because this is maximum level for this type of purge). Well this kinda makes sence, but this contradicts with my in game observations.
I haven’t played in the newest patch (Blood and Sand) - I will do some testing on the latest build :+1:

@Ignasi Thank you! :slightly_smiling_face:

I waited until I had a sample size of well over 50 purges before making a report. So if it “isn’t true” then empirical testing points to the selection process needing a rework. Because at least on unmodded Officials anyway, it’s effectively functioning exactly as tin egg and I described, and it is extremely discouraging to otherwise motivated PvE players.

One solution would be to increase the difficulty threshold of some of the threshold 1-4 human purges to 1-6 and have difficulties 5 & 6 comprised of either more powerful NPCs (i.e. ones sent to the same training camp as the Sepermeru NPCs), or to throw in some powerful boss-level enemies in the last 2 waves: e.g. a scorpion king with the Relic Hunters, monstrous panthers with the pirates, reptilian monstrosity with the Lemurians, etc.

2 Likes

This is already in place - you get more and more difficult enemies in each consecutive wave, with some obviously bugged purge types like rocknose or crocodile purges, having a 3 skull boss in 3rd wave. But those are pretty common Funcom bugs - could be fixed in 1 minute, but still there months after they been reported.

I can only see one reason for purely humanoid purges being currently capped at level 4 - to deliberately reduce the overall number of waves thus reducing possible thrall number.
Level 6 purge can spawn 9 waves with up to 15 human NPC in the latest waves - considering how detrimental AI is in it’s current state, farming very powerful T4 thralls from those purges would be a walk in the park.

Ya I know, and both of you certainly aren’t the only ones who have seen similar observations. Just to clarify, I’m not discounting the validity of what you are seeing. I can’t say for certain if certain Purges are “weighted” higher then others as that code isn’t visible (that I can find anyhow, it’s mostly all C++ source code which isn’t viewable by modders). That’s my “guess” at this point, but there isn’t any logic or evidence to support said guess.

This is something I’ve investigated before because of almost identical reports. Through discussions with members of the dev team and my own test observations, that’s where my conclusions come from with regards to Server Settings affecting which Purge Event is selected. The Purge mechanics itself I’ve spent a large amount of time with over the course of over a year because it’s a particular feature I find important in Conan.

That said, here is one test cases to articulate my point:

I’m working on a mod that has a level 6 (even a level 7, which yes, a private server admin could set the Purge difficulty to) difficulty. Said Purge event I’ve set the bounds to the entire desert and most of the grass area. That means it can target about half the map. If your theory was correct, setting the Purge Difficulty to 6 (or even 7) would dictate that only that Purge would spawn. It doesn’t. I could que up a test right now and I would probably get an Exile Purge in my testing area because that’s what I’m usually hit with.

In conclusion, I do think there is validation in the RNG rotations that people observe since it’s widely reported. Just not sure of the actual source of the issue and can only speculate at best.

Out of curiosity, what are your bases like in that test area? T1, 2, 3? Expansive, compact? Sprawling or connected?

I ask because I’m wondering if it’s attempting to evaluate the “strength” of a clan’s holdings before selecting a purge and just really bad at apprising how difficult it should be…

As far as I know, there isn’t a base appraisal. Just checks to see if it’s valid for a Purge or not.

Gotcha, was just wondering since I know they described there being point values assigned to bases to determine which of a clan’s bases wins the purge lottery, so I wasn’t sure if that same assessment was used in determining difficulty or not. Thanks.

That part is true and still is. Its a weighted system also. So if you have a build that has more points granted because it has more tier 3 buildings in it, it has a higher chance of being purged then your small starter shack you left on the beach somewhere. Doesn’t guarantee it, gives it the highest chance to be purged though.

Which reflects what Zeb observed. In case you are curious, point values for every building are listed in the Itemtable in the dev kit :stuck_out_tongue:

1 Like

Don’t have the dev kit, but I’d love to see it. Do you know if there’s an exported copy of that list somewhere? Perhaps in Excel or Google Sheets format?

This topic was automatically closed 7 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.