Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,
One thing I came to appreciate the most about Conan Exiles are the little things that show a bit of clemency when it comes to balance to make a massive difference in terms of quality of life, especially if it doesn’t give anyone an exclusive advantage over others. An example of this would be ice not melting inside of preservation boxes. Thank you for this. Truly.
There use to be one of these clemencies that were unintentional, but felt entirely reasonable to players. Nobody even thought it was out of order: Functional War Paint, being permanent until death.
This felt so right, because it was expensive, and made the life of your character mean something more than just an inconvenience upon death. This sort of dynamic is even a defining feature of EVE Online, where expensive clones would have bonuses, but lose it all upon death.
In Conan Exiles, functional war paint is made even more significant to the “feel” of the game, because it is a ritual. I feel as though it is a cultural thing for my character to do, to apply warpaint. A ritual worthy of doing. It should be something that defines a character not just visually, but affects it’s very playstyle, which it did.
I use to apply an encumberance paint all the time, because it allowed me to use the conan’s crown, instead of a light armor turbin for the encumberance build bonus, while affording an extra perk on a different tree.
Anyone who sees my character can see what I am about, depending on the war-paint I am wearing, just as much as the armor which I am wearing.
One might ask: “Then why not use warpaints? It’s not like we removed it from the game, by adding a duration to it.”
Because the difference between persistence and transients is identity.
Warpaints are incredibly unique to Conan Exiles, and is a feature which actually let’s your playstyle affect your appearance, not just on a physical level, but on a personal one as well. I feel using it as a duration super-buff is a waste of such a profound feature with such intrinsic value.
Temporary super buffs feels like it belongs to top tier potions. This is what religions should be for.
But applying a paint on yourself, is like making a personal promise to yourself.