Some feedback from a new player

Hi,

Just to give some background, played the free weekend and I bought the game and all DLC the next day in the steam sale.

First of all, I’m really enjoying the game, a little too much tbh, lots of ‘oh i’ll just craft this thing’ turns into 3hrs later…

Anyway I thought I’d share some feedback on my experiences so far (PC - solo - lvl 33)

  • The beginner experience is quite harsh and the learning curve is fairly steep. The lack of any obvious way to heal was a big problem and there is very little in the way of in game help. I ended up watching a few starter vids.

  • An explanation of some of the core basics would be really helpful to ease new players into the CE experience, healing is such a basic mechanic, it should be explained up front to avoid frustration.

  • The building experience is on the whole very good and intuitive but there are some annoying parts and bugs. I’ve had issues with not being able to place a building parts for no reason, just a ‘failed to place building part’ message or the ghost piece does not show up where you want to place it.

  • I built a large outer wall to my base and placed fence foundations along the wall and fencing on the top, for some reason there are a few spots where I can’t place fence foundations and or fences for no apparent reason.

  • The pets and thralls mechanic is a bit hit and miss. I love the thought of having your own private army but the training process was frustrating and again there were some bugs. On the lesser wheel of pain with no taskmaster thrall a tier 2 blacksmith has taken about 20+ hours to break.

  • I built a normal wheel of pain and have broken 8+ thralls in the time it’s taken to break one blacksmith, she is still on the wheel, seriously, she is the toughest blacksmith in the exiled lands lol…probably won’t be done for another few days judging by the progress bar (maybe a timer would help here). This is clearly a bug but very frustrating as I thought it was just how it works.

  • There is not enough control over your pets and thralls, stop and follow and place is all we have, it works but it’s very basic. I would like to see that area developed and give us more control over our minions.

  • Crafting is deep and rewarding but there needs to be more information about some aspects that are not immediately obvious i.e. a tool tip on where you can find or make certain resources…like blood, or shadebloom or gossamer or oil etc…

  • Also if I’m crafting a new sword for example I should be able to see the dmg stats for the sword in the crafting screen rather than going into feats to find out…just a bit of streamlining and QoL is needed here.

  • A stonemason bench would be nice to craft building parts so you don’t have to do it yourself…I get why they’ve done it this way however.

  • I’ve spent a lot of time reading reddit, the forums and watching vids to understand a lot of what I now know in CE. There is v little in the game itself to help you, it’s a complicated beast but there needs to be more info and not relying on 3rd party sites and youtube for everything.

In terms of more cosmetic stuff…

  • It would be nice to have some more idle animations for all characters, at the moment they tend to stand stock still and barely move at all, it would make the game feel a little more alive with just a few more animations, animals preening themselves, people and animals yawning and stretching, scratching, playing/inspecting their weapons, playing dice, drinking/eating etc…

  • No birds? Other than Vultures and Ostriches there don’t seem to be any birds, would be good to see carrion birds, and just birds in general to add to the environment.

  • Food/drink items to place on tables etc…

  • More options for clothing, armour and weapons, the DLC is great but after the starter weapons there is nothing until late game…maybe I just haven’t unlocked them yet, maybe if that blacksmith thrall ever breaks :slight_smile:

Well done for letting the modding community create their own stuff…clever move, I’m sure many of these and much more has been modded already and it adds so much variety to the game.

Overall, loving CE and look forward to seeing what else is in the works.

TL;DR In short CE is great but the beginner experience and lack of info is an issue.

Cheers

Urbanski

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Glad you’re enjoying the game. Going in blind is pretty much par for the survival genre, and for a lot of people it is half the fun.

I do second a bench to make building pieces though. It’s quite a wait to make a few hundred building pieces.

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Fair feedback, and definitely agree about healing in the early-game. I kept expecting to be able to lay down in a bed to be able to heal, or for there to be slow regeneration, but then this is the first survival game I’d ever played.

And yes, a mason bench would be awesome!

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First off, welcome to the community! :slight_smile:

This happens due to some of the placement “checks” when placing a block. You will find that the failed to place message most often happens when you are trying to place a block in the place where you were previously standing for some of the last block placements. While annoying, I believe that Funcom is committed to correcting this. I think whatever flag that gets set marking your location simply does not refresh in an dynamic fashion that you would expect.

A pretty easy workaround is to simply select another building piece from your hotbar, and then swap back to the block you wanted to place. Also, if you are mindful that placing from a position where you intend to lay additional blocks, you can try to position yourself differently as so not to set the flag that prevents the block placement.

That does not seem right. I always try to break (or steal) a taskmaster first. But 20+ hours for a T2 artisan does not seem to be like the proper timing. Have you had trouble with the wheel running out of food? Or stopping, and you have to start it again? Was this 20+ hour duration between server restarts? If you have the race of the thrall, that might be helpful for some of our community to look at. It might be that that particular blacksmith’s breaking time got goobered.

While I am sure that your blacksmith is quite formidable, it is Beri who is the toughest blacksmith in the Exiled Lands. :smiley: :smiley: :smiley: She does not often break. But when she does, she forges some of the most powerful weapons in the land.

There is slow, trickle regeneration. You just need to invest the 30 points into Vitality (which is not all that unreasonable, once you reach level 45+).

Yes, that regeneration was nerfed to 0.5 per second, which is too low considering it’s a VIT 30 perk. 0.75 per second would probably be a better value and still lower than it used to be.

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Thanks for the building tips. Still not sure why I can’t place some fences along the top of my wall though…weird.

As for the blacksmith thrall…I think she is a zamorian t2 blacksmith…would have to check. I was careful to check the food situ - there is about 9hrs of food on the wheel and I kept it topped up…tried everything. I’m SP so no server restarts…I read its a bug with the lesser wheel?

The wheel thing is odd… something similiar happened to me a few days ago, but with a greater wheel on singleplayer as I was testing stuff. In my case it was a stygian fighter I, he got stuck at about 20% and the bar never moved again, despite 8+ hours of food and the wheel was definitely running (checked a couple of times).

More tips for building.

Make a Repair Hammer. This can be used to check the stability of building blocks. Anything that is 20 or less you can not build on to. Not sure if you knew that already. If its 40 or more then you should be able to build.

A tip I haven’t seen mentioned yet which I find myself needing to do of late. If you can’t place that one block and stability is good, nothing is in the way or to close (like a thrall or yourself).

Build all the way around (or under, or above). Then try and place that 1 block that won’t go. Real waste of materials but it seems to be the only way when everything else fails. I always try the other methods first. Swap to a different block then back again (you can even split your stack and use 2 hot bar slots). Then you can swap between the 2 slots. I do that when I am building a ton of the same block, like foundations or walls.

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Thx for the tip…I did know about the repair hammer but this piece is on top of a foundation wall so stability is 100.

I will try the swapping stacks and if that fails I’ll build around it, another stack of foundations next to it, see if that helps.

Cheers

I’ve found that eating bugs is a cheap and easy way to make minor heals. Of course, you need decent food for major healing, but IMO bugs work better than the 3rd Vitality perk. And you get lots of them with all the plant fiber you’ll need. Plus, they’re light and you can carry lots of them.

Yes, I worked that out early on but only after having watched a new player guide video where they explained the healing mechanic. I didn’t realise the heal didn’t stack and I was spamming those insects. I then found out to take them one at a time and wait for the regen icon to stop before taking another.

So early on I died alot because I hadn’t worked out how to heal…no problem, I solved it and now I know but for new players, dying a lot in the early game can be very frustrating and I’d imagine quite a few were put off by how often they died during the first few levels. A little info in game would help with that.

OK so the problem t2 blacksmith thrall that’s taking a week to break is Shemite…checked last night…she is still on that wheel…what a trooper :slight_smile:

Only problem is that in the meantime I’ve found another tier 3 blacksmith that i’ve already broken and put to work so I don’t need her anymore…lol

well, it’ a survival game, and all your points are positives if you RP in a server. Try it !

Yes, I’m aware it’s a survival game…I think I know what you are trying to say…but I don’t see that broken / bugged building mechanics and broken / bugged pet/thrall taming would help with RP.

Also RP is one way to play the game…not the only way to play so perhaps if there are additional tool tips for new starters perhaps they can be disabled on server settings?

Take it from someone who was in beta: The tile placement denial bug has always been there. Its possible that it was fixed while I was away and has returned, but Conan has always suffered from it. It was way worse in the beginning though.

Just recently I built myself a T3 frontier base on a pvp server (fully enclosed base is important), all went well except for one roof slot in middle of the bloody roof refused to have a tile placed on it for no apparent reason. Many expletives were used, then I was forced to build a column of foundation tiles from below to fill the hole. -_-

One advice that I can give at least in regards to foundation tiles, place a foundation in 90 degree angle to the connecting tile, then try again. Sometimes the bug goes away when you build a tile next to the problematic spot. This sometimes helps with the “tile was not placed” bug. You should also try rotating pieces with mouse wheel while placing them, so that when you build a line of tiles, they all face the same way. This is important with roof tiles at least.

ps. Eating heals.

Heal from food and heal from bandages stacks

pps. Conan wiki is important resource while learning the game

dumb question coming…
Did you switch food types? If you did, you have to start it again when the first type of food runs out. It won;t auto change to the new fuel source (in this case food types). IE, if you are burning with oil in a station, and throw in some dry wood. when the oil runs out, the station stops. you have to restart to have it burn the dry wood.

Not such a dumb question but no, i didn’t swap out food…just used gruel and made sure I had plenty, several hours worth to make sure I didn’t even come close to running out…I believe in overkill and working in a high margin of redundancy :slight_smile:

I’ve read it’s a bug that occasionally happens with the lesser wheel, the timings goes wrong but I’m now just curious to see if it ever completes, it’s been nearly 25hrs game time in SP so far…lol.

I’ve broken 10+ thralls on the standard wheel in that time

What about berries?
The first thing we do when we hit the river is gather water, berries, eggs.
At 60 we still carry them.

Sorry you’re having some frustration with this. Way back when the Level cap was 50, not 60, we had a similar bug that popped up from time to time. I’m not certain what causes it; you may notice Lesser Wheels are a little finicky about placement, that’s as close as I’ve come to understanding it. Essentially, you place a Lesser Wheel in a location the terrain/structure supports temporarily, but on game restart, it is considered “invalid.” I was able to re-create this Lesser Wheel wait state just now by crashing my game. Please try dropping a Taskmaster onto this wheel, it restarted mine.