Conan Exiles rather depends on thralls for decent game play.
Since wild Surge crafter thralls are, inevitably, Level 1, just barely above useless, I’d like to suggest a leveling system for thralls. Level 1 thralls would, slowly, level to 2 and then 3, depending on crafting, which is dependant on resource gathering, which keeps folks engaged.
T4 and 5 thralls would still be a product of triggered surges, but, with T3 thralls, players could feel some progress rather than being stuck at level 1 until the chance to get a T4 of 5.
Tie the thrall to the station, so if they are removed, they revert to level 1.
As it stands, the lack of decent level crafting thralls turns the game into a unhappy grind.
Sounds good except for resetting the level if removed, quite often we get a bug where they stand in T pose (which drives me crazy) so I pull them off the bench and put them back to reset that
Yeah, the T-pose bug is annoying (and annoyingly common). Also, since different thralls have different recipes (Exceptional/flawless are based on their faction/nationality) there is sometimes need to swap one thrall for another in a workbench.
But like with fighting thralls, picking up a thrall and retaining their level-up information may be technically impossible (ie. difficult or time-consuming enough so as not to be cost-effective to make happen). Not sure if it’s easier with thralls that are permanently “objects” rather than NPCs.
Actually, I think it may not be actually impossible (to be clear, I have no knowledge, just basing this thought on something else I have come across) - specifically - when using Fashionist mod, it is possible to alter the clothing etc of crafting thralls. This information is retained even if they are moved in and out of benches etc. So logically, if they can retain that data, it should be possible to retain a levelling system as well. Of course, this is comparing two different things and maybe an xp system wouldn’t cooperate in the same way, but evidently the system is capable of retaining at least some changes to crafters, which gives me hope.
And that of course may be the reason why it still doesn’t happen, even if it is ‘possible’ - not knowing what Testerle had to do to get that feature to work, or how much extra data that creates, I got no idea. (And what happens if 40 players on a server all have a bunch of crafters levelling up - how much extra strain does that create?)