This is just wrong. It’s a QoL thing. It’s ok to have some of the final perks have a small negative side effect if the positive effect is extremely good, but the way the level 20 perks are balanced they usually ruin what you have spent 19 levels trying to improve. Either dump all the negative effects from level 20 perks or lower them while increasing the positive effect.
Right now I see no reason to level a thrall past 19 if getting to level 20 might mean sending an important stat back to where it was at level 10. Terrible balancing.
Also, the new thralls still bork out if you get killed sometimes. You return and tell the thrall to start following again, but now it can’t attack anymore even if you are getting clobbered by 7 npcs. It just draws it’s weapon and stands there trying to figure out what to do with the weapon and the only thing that un-borks the thrall is a server reset. Uhhh, no. You make these thralls require 5 days of leveling and they must work always.
And they better always defend your base when you are offline and do it very well. Nothing else is acceptable when you set players a goal that will take most of a year to complete (50 thralls times 6 days = 300 days.) If they are just the same buggy thralls from before the Mounts update you Devs better be fixing that. You owe players that now.
Thanks for the heads-up. I’ll be a bit more judicious with my leveling if it seems we’re still in need of balance.
If you have time, please head to Shaleback Hollow with an archer thrall and achieve aggro on those undead turtles while still standing outside. Let your thrall fire on them and she’ll stand outside the cave, walking back and forth to shoot at one of the three targets. Let it continue for as long as you can stand, then pull her away by running away. Hit the Darfari village across the river, and I think you’ll see she’s in the state you describe. However, she’ll fire a furtive shot into the air across the river toward the cave, from time to time.
What I think happens is a follower becomes focused on one set of NPCs and cannot reset. I think death may cause the same situation. Your only solution other than a reset is to bring her back to your base and park her on your landclaim. Strip her naked of armor and weapons. Run out of the area, for about 30 seconds at sprint, and interact with something there. Kill an NPC, open a box, etc. Run back to her and, keeping her on your landclaim, lure aggro back to her. When she goes to punchies, she’s good again.
I urge you very strongly to get a pal to try and infiltrate you. Pay him like 500 steel reinforcements and let him try and get in. It is essential you check and recheck your defenses. They may be super-lethal, but not if they can’t fire over a foundation block, or if they’re pinned to a parapet.
I have some issues with the perk system as well, and I think Funcom said that Fighters getting Archer perks and vice versa was a mistake (can anyone confirm that?), so I’ve kinda stopped leveling them for now, since about 3/4 of them get ruined.
But really, it’s taking you 5-6 days to level a thrall?? It should only take a couple of hours max, even the volcano ones. Try either the skeletons in the Unnamed City (skip the bosses for speed leveling) or the frost giants up north (Temple then 3 camps and repeat).
Oh, I guess I can level any thrall in 8 hours if I just grind for that sole purpose, but not doing that. That would be mind-numbing.
It just really annoys me to get a -5 perk at level 20 and have it wipe out what took 10-15 level-ups to achieve. You can’t fix that, your thrall is done, but it’s like it just went back to level 10 in that stat when moments before it was awesome. Stupid planning IMHO. Level 20 perks should only be the positive ones. Maybe you get just a minor one, maybe you get a great one, but at least your thrall is still a level 20 thrall and not level 10.
In the long run, it does not matter either way, so why not be a good thing instead of jerking players around?
I will try that next time one borks-out, Barnes. Thanks.
For base defense I am not relying on thralls anymore. They are just part of it. However, prior to the Mounts Update I was raided and my thralls apparently just stood there and died even though:
There were under 35 in the main area.
It was impossible for attackers to use ranged attacks beyond aggro range.
To fight the battle they were in range of 15 archers at all times armed with poison and star metal arrows and there were also 15-18 Berserker class melee thralls with dragon-bone weapons.
But my archers only fired 2-3 arrows and my melee guards just stood there. A few were killed, but then ignored as the attackers placed explosives within 10 yards of them to blow up stuff. I deleted this 7 month old character after this because Conan Exiles is obviously too buggy to be relying on.
Hence, my concern that I am going to spend 3 to 6 months leveling thralls only to have them bug-out when they are needed to do what they should easily do. I mean when I go to the Volcano or the Cimmerian camps just a few thralls kill me or force me to retreat. Why don’t my thralls do the same?
Yeah, when you look at player perks, none are a give and take perk. Nothing like immunity to poison, but you carry less. +5 vitality, but now you can’t climb… etc. So why do thralls get them? I get that the devs wanted to make perks interesting and more random, but if they could make the perks all beneficial and targeted to the correct class, it would be so much better. If not, just make leveling take an hour or two.
Because you’re comparing apples and oranges. Player “perks” are are obtained by getting certain attributes high enough and they never affect the attributes themselves. Thrall “perks” are obtained by reaching a certain level and they only affect attributes, never anything else.
But yeah, perks that decrease attributes shouldn’t be awarded at level 20.
I agree there’s an issue, and have experienced the same. On several occasions, I have had thralls that were literally worse at level 15 than they were at level 11 or 12, too. Maybe around level 17 or so they get back to the same power-level they had at 11. But that’s a wasted thrall right there, and usually not worth spending more effort on.
So it’s not just level 20 perks (though obviously, given the time investment, they’re the biggest kick in the teeth).
Of course this may be intentional, and as I have argued previously (and still believe), it does mean that getting that “perfect” thrall - if it ever happens - is going to be truly special, as opposed to something everybody has a hundred of. But I am starting to feel that it would be better if there were no negative perks, just varying degrees of positive. I realize the end-result is the same, but it removes the feeling of punishment from using the level-system.
In fact it reminds me of nothing so much as the “Ageing” system in Blood Bowl back in the day, a rule that had your characters have increasingly high chances to get career-ending negatives as they increased in power. Thankfully that system was retired long ago.
Wait, what? Thralls can get crappier due to a negative perk? What the Mississippi f***? I feel like that’s one of those things that any game developer should have enough sense to know is a huge no no. L
As someone else mentioned just reduce how much positive progress they made, don’t crap on someone at level 20. It’s not exclusive to Funcom by any stretch but I feel like this kind of dunce move has become more abundant in gaming in the last decade along with the patches/updates that either suck or break more than they fix. I seriously hope there comes a change in the gaming industry that sees some of these changes for the worse reverted to more common sense protocol.
Yeah and for a personal thrall that would be a re-do, but for a guard I’m not throwing away a level 20 just because it got at +10 Survival. The problem comes in when your Fighters get negative Strength/Vitality and positive Accuracy or vice versa for the Archers. That’s a total kick in the teeth and makes me want to stop leveling my guards all together.
Yeah this is really stupid imho. Like others have said let the negative effect be a reduction in stat increase, not a decrease in actual stats, that hardly even makes sense, their stats can actually go down as they “LEVEL UP”??? wth Funcom, lol I feel like this decision was made one late sunday night after someone hadnt slept in over 42 hours and was running on nothing but redbull and coffee. I think in that state of mind it maybe seemed like a way to add some extra complexity, but in the mind of a sober awake and clear thinking individual it should not be hard to see the foolishness in this feature.
Like OP stated all that will happen is people will be reluctant to max level thralls as the chance that one could get severely worse, not just not as good as they could have been but actually worse than they are currently, that is such a stupidly risky venture to add to players. This actually makes me not want to level my thralls now o.O. Why make this whole fuss about how strong new thralls will be but then pull this BS and add the potential for them to revert. It is essentially means there is a chance the player gets punished for leveling the thrall??? like what??? This has to be a mistake or some kind of oversight, I would be extremely surprised to find out that the devs actually thought that this was a good idea. It creates incentive to not level your thralls now, as the player can get punished for doing so…
Imagine if when you exercise to get fit and develop your own body there was a chance that you would actually get weaker and your muscles would shrink, and I don’t mean from risk of injury or something, I mean through standard safe and properly executed exercise sometimes your muscles would just revert back to a weaker state. The world would be a much fatter and out of shape place I can tell you that ;). So come on Funcom this has to change.
EDIT: I am actually really curious what the thinking was behind this, did anyone put their hand up and say wait this sounds like a bad idea, essentially what was the excuse that was given that something like this should be a feature.
The thrall bug can often be fixed with the simple removal of gear.
go find a trash mob like a mountain goat or Kudo and punch it. When your thrall goes aggro but stands there stupid, enter their inventory and pull their helmet to your inventory. Exit their inventory. Usually they will start to fight right away. Once they are done with the mob or any killing spree it ensues, add the helmet back.
I do agree. Too often the final level becomes the nail in the coffin for a thrall. What should be people looking forward to the big level is more, what will they poop sock with this time?
I agree it’s annoying, but I don’t get why so many people act like a thrall is done if it gets a bad perk. Even if it’s an important stat. Thralls (when they work) are super OP and a lvl 10 thrall can do anything just fine, so getting one stat reset to lvl 10 doesn’t really mean anything. Especially because those 50 thralls you want aren’t all gonna be in equally important spots.
The thrall has to be at least 9 points in whatever is possible to be reduced, otherwise this perk will not hit.
for all who want to know more about the perk system I recommend the video of firespark https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44R1wC5HuNk
There needs to be some risk and variability to it, don’t you agree? I think a few whammies keeps it real, and as I said before, the system may need some balancing before too long. However, you may be a bit short-sighted in this endeavor by keeping her out of school. I know you want the very best for your thrall, but, as Dalinsia comes out at LVL 0 with 8746 HP and has a potential HP bonus of up to 4746 HP, it would benefit you to level her fully.
From my preliminary testing, feeding is quite important, and you might be surprised by which foods provide the best attributes in the long run. Furthermore, until you hit that LVL 20 you won’t realize the full STR bonus they can achieve.
For Sciencetm, you might end up delighted with Dalinsia. As your post may imply, are you going for straight VIT? Even if you have been, I suggest finishing her off with a steady diet of gruel.
