Savage's sugestions of Conan

Hi. My name is Savage, and my talents for erecting walls of text are unmatched.

First of all I’d like to thank Funcom for their job with Conan exiles. Coming back after a year I’m pleasantly surprised, and I can say this is the best early access game I ever got, by far. Congratulations, guys. I wish you a great success.
Now, the game is still (somewhat) in development and there’s room for suggestions, so I made this thread to write about some of them. I am perfectly aware some of them may not be realistic, but since this is a “what if” situation, please bear with me. Here’s the first of them:

1- Clashing swords

A while ago, the devs said there was no chance of sword blocking being implemented into the game. What if there was a fun alternative to that? When 2 attacks with weapons clash, both characters are pushed back, with no damage. Add a clashing sound in the middle of that and you’ve got some neat new mechanic to spice up the combat even more.

2-Climbing block drains.
Isn’t it surprising that we can climb over a flat rock as easily as a sandstone wall filled with cracks?
No more! The solution is simple: make it so some blocks are harder to climb so they penalise the player for climbing them. tier 2 walls and above would take 2x stamina so that only a skilled player can climb them, making grit and the right gear more valuable.
This suggestion comes with an extra feature: an attached ladder. Attached ladders would attach themselves to one side of blocks and make stamina drain minimal for that side only. It adds more customisation to bases and lets the players with tiny watchtowers no longer feel like they’re playing Spiderman the barbarian.

This suggestion is tied to the next one:

3- Spikes of difficulty
Spike blocks should act differently. Why? They make climbing somewhat useless no matter what level you are, and they make archers, oil and thrall placement less useful. Why do you need archers to defend your walls against climbers if they can defend themselves?

Here’s how to fix that: Make spike blocks damage the players who climb on them without making them fall. How to do that? 2 ways:

A) Make it so spike blocks drain 3x more stamina
B) Simply make the players need to take more damage to fall down.

The former would force the players to stop at spike blocks to avoid the DPS making them fall. But at the same time this would make it more easy for archers to finish the job. Praised be Bel! Placement matters again!

4- Climbing Sieges
We’ve got very nice wall defenses, even boiling oil to get rid of those pesky climbing players… but it’s something which we don’t really use, because spikes make players fall and enemies don’t climb at all. It’s remains a bit unused.
That’s why SOME enemies should be able to climb.
What enemies? Concretely: humanoids in light armor, bugs and spiders. That’s it.
Not even scorpions, because they’re dangerous enough with their current speed. This would make the game so much more diverse in terms of sieges. Simple (I hope) and effective.

5- Fake Sorcery and Fake Player Enslavement
It’s simple: you grab a thrall, you bring it to a death altar (which is pretty much a glorified wheel of pain), you gather the right ingredients, you murder that thrall with a ritual knife (or simply use a recipe with the thrall) and you get a wonderful skeleton thrall. Bam! Lazy necromancy with no effects needed.

The Fake player enslavement would be simple: Got knocked down by a truncheon? You respawn, but the one who got you just got an npc copy of yourself as a thrall.

6- Grab me that barbarian!

One of the things we get to see in the intro cinematic is Conan holding a beast’s jaw with his bare hands. On a scale from 1 to 10… what are the chances of this being implemented? If it can be done, it would be amazing for creatures such as hyena packs or for bat demons to grab you and drop you from a high place.

An over the top thing would be to add actual grip moves which you can perform onto staggered enemies by pressing [key], but that would likely require a lot of work.

7- Getting that chest

I got into a very annoying situation where I pursued my enemy into their lair and they closed the door, leaving me there with my stone weapons with no other option save suicide or starvation. In the end I dropped rotten meat all around his house and reluctantly removed my bracelet.
That’s why I found the following solution for this problem: lockpicks.
Lockpicks would need to be from different materials for different doors. tier 1 doors and chests would need iron lockpicks, tier 2 would need steel lockpicks… and so on. The final tier would be impossible to unlock without explosives. Lockpicks would be easy to craft, but have one use only.

Alternatively and going over the top, stats could influence your skill to pick locks, perhaps even perks which make it possible for players to do so. After all, a warrior can’t pick a lock like a thief.

Now players can finally play like a real Zamorian. (No offense intended to the noble peoples of Zamora)

8- Kicking ■■■ and more
Kick is not bad, but it could be great. Make it so it knocks enemies back a bit more or if they’re running towards it they fall. Little things in this life are more satisfying than kicking your enemies towards a trap/spike/off a cliff in a display of cruelty, cunning and skill. And it gives players with 1h swords a good reason to NOT use a shield.

That would be it. I hope it was not that much of a long rant and I hope the ideas exposed here were useful. I’m really happy with the game as it is.

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