Question about our thralls that just leveled to 10

Conan Exiles General Discussion
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My wife’s Accursed Berserker on Siptah just hit level 10 and he picked Dead-Eye as his perk. So he gets a - to STR and a + to AGI. She isn’t sure how to evaluate that, but she was disappointed Mine, on the other hand picked Thick Skull, which adds + to VIT and + to GRIT, which I think is nice, but I also don’t know how it compares to other choices.

My wife wants to know if she should cut the bond with this guy, has he been bricked? Should she pick up another? Should she park him at our Purge base? I have the same questions about my guy. Do players typically make the best with what they get or keep re-rolling until they get something actually useful.

Another question. I keep hearing that 1h Mace is a good weapon choice for our followers. Why exactly is this? Is it an issue with thrall AI or weapons themselves? My thrall seems to do quite a windup before striking and often just misses with his big combos. He’s better when he just pounds away but I don’t know how to force that.

Final question. Should thralls using 1h maces equip a shield? Is that going to help their survivability or just get in the way of their offense?

Thanks for any insights or suggestions.

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Full list of follower perks on the wiki.

You can reroll thrall perks with an Elixir of Rebirth, so bad perks are not permanent. Keep leveling him to 20, then make him chug Rebirths until you get a decent set of perks (this may take several attempts, so don’t be afraid to mass produce Rebirths).

DPS. Other weapons that ostensibly hit harder, hit slower. The Sunder effect is also a nice debuff against tougher enemies. While players can fight tactically and succeed with alternate weapons, thralls are really dumb, so DPS is the only thing that matters.

No. Thralls choose their moves at random, so they will never use a shield logically. If a thrall ever uses their shield in a useful way, it is by accident.

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Yup! Sometimes they just block with a shield. For no reason.

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The above post is exactly correct.

But to add a few little details.

First of all, thralls are dumb
Like, lose contests of wits with boxes of rocks dumb.
They will not make good decisions.
The more options they have, the more bad decisions they will make.
As was noted above, never give a Thrall a shield.

With the current combat system in place, single handed maces are generally the best weapon for thralls. They have some hyper armour, so the thrall may actually be able to get an attack in, the move set has a decent blend of forward and AoE attacks, have high armour penetration so they remain relevant against higher armour enemies, and apply sunder, which is a useful debuffs.

Another gearing note, don’t worry about their armour weight, they don’t care, strap them in the heaviest of harnesses, if it offers the best defense and support.

Final gearing note, some weapon are useless for them.
Mostly legendaries. Sword of Crom, just doesn’t do damage when welded by a thrall. Any weapon with the “Predatory” tag is also a bad choice. Predatory weapons only deal damage on light attacks, but the thrall will still randomly throw out heavies.

That said, still expect the thrall to stand there picking their nose while you or even it is being killed.
Also, expect it to attack thin air frequently, or prioritize some random animal over the enemy actually attacking.
They were, after all, beaten into unconscious and tortured into subservience, picked up drunk at a bar, or rescu d from whatever tortures the Stygians had inflicted on them. These are not mentally healthy people.

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This is why the forums are my go-to source of reliable, current information. Thank you Tephra, Kikigirl and LostBytrunian, this was exactly the information I needed. No more, no less.

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Oh, and I’m still lol @ LostBythrunian’s answer.

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And bulk plating. As dumb as they are, they need all the protection they can get.
@Wanderlust , you craft the bulk plating in the tinkering bench, in case you haven’t discovered that yet. It’s heavy, but that doesn’t matter for thralls and it’s a little extra protection. :blush:

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This one is always glad if their antics can promote mirth.

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The mace is the optimal weapon if the thrall is fighting one-on-one with someone, for example, with a world boss.
If you are planning battles with several enemies, for example, in camps or in purge, then a two-handed sword may be the best choice, especially if it has significantly higher statistics than a mace. The two-handed sword, when swung, captures large sectors and deals damage simultaneously to several enemies that surround the thrall.

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As long as they actually swing. I lost a lvl 20 berserker fully geared with 4000 health yesterday in the Well of Skelos because he just stood there while an add killed him (I was fighting off two others). stupid thralls

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This one would have agreed a couple patches ago.
But now this one watches their two handed sword thralls stand stun locked when surrounded. The hyper armour doesn’t seem to work as well

Edit: which is a shame, because the two handed sword was one of the tiny number of weapons the thrall seemed even vaguely competent with.

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No. 1H mace is the best weapon for thrall because they actually use it to fight rather than staying idle and getting killed.

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@Wolfrider4594 , @Teng was right until recently. You wanted 2h swords against mobs, maces against everything else.
Now, that thralls can be stunned until they die, maces work better and even so there’s no guarantees they won’t space out and die anyway.
Thralls have never been this bad since I started playing Conan Exiles a few years back.

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No. I never wanted 2H sword on my thralls since I started playing in 2019 on PS4. It was true when i switched for an XBox in 2021 and still true when I switched again for a PC in 2022. Because I noticed with my 1st thralls their bad habit to engage some mob and the stay idle letting that mob seriously damage them while fighting with a 2H weapon. But continue fighting while wielding a 1H mace.
Then I’ve never been obsessed by the badass look and attitude many see when their thralls are wielding a 2H sword. Wich is the main reason why so many people thought, and still think, the 2H sword as the best weapon for a thrall. I wasn’t and never been. I’ve more than 3000 hours of play to be sure about it.

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All of this one’s minions on Siptah still have Outer Dark Greatswords as their primary weapons. Remnants of better times.
Mostly because this one has no zeal for combat right now, less desire to bring thralls on suicide missions (which are most missions), and much less interest in spending time on the drudgery of crafting and swapping them all out to gray one maces and feroxic pikes.

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Well, I didn’t write categorically ‘is’, I wrote ‘may be’.
I take a closer look at the action of my thralls and do not see that they have become worse at working with two-handed swords. All my power-leveling thralls have either Momentum or mod two-handed swords, and I don’t see any difference in the speed of reaction to an attack.
For some thralls I even replaced the momentum with a two-handed sword.
But I have very strong two-handed swords from the AoC mod with damage 97. This is almost Crom’s sword.
I have this in my single player game.
I admit that there may be other circumstances related to the operation of the servers.

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I have a solution to this.
2 thralls, one with a mace and one with a two-handed sword - this combination has worked for me for quite a long time

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It is also important what kind of mace and sword.
Besides Momentum, there are 4 maces that are beyond competition: Nortis, Quake, Unintelligible and Brittle Bastard.
If the mace is less powerful, then the same Papyrus sword may be preferable.

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Your problem then.
Now, a 2h sword is not a good option.
It used to be the best against mobs because with the mace they missed the first heavy attack many times. The AoE is wider and the damage higher.
I hope Funcom fixes this so we can equip them properly again.

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Right now, be careful when equiping them 2h swords. They are easily stunned with them, @Teng .

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