Hello, I made an account to share my thoughts on this new update. I’ve spent 22 hours in Testlive at the time of posting. First, the bugs:
- The base armor sets and ethnic DLC armor sets have always focused on a single attribute (now stat). However, the Turanian Scout set now has split stats: 3 pieces focusing on follower damage, and 2 pieces on concussive damage. I believe this was an accident.
- Related to the above, the Turanian Scout gloves and boots each give +5% concussive damage. However, the Nemedian Scout set, which is focused on concussive damage, each piece gives +10% concussive damage. Generally, ethnic DLCs have never had power discrepancies, so they should have the same stat bonus.
- I’ve noticed repeatedly that my stamina suddenly loses ~20 points, most obviously as ~140 dropping down to ~120 with some points into grit, and I must respec to recover it. Another thread reported the bug as related to losing the +20 bonus perk from death, but I’ve noticed it happen even without me dying. I haven’t identified a specific cause, but it is (only?) fixed by respeccing.
- Upon joining a game, all the models appear in bright purple for a moment before becoming normal. This doesn’t ever happen in live.
- Maybe a typo. The Authority 10 perk Healthy Diet says your followers “gain passive health regen”. However, this implies they have no health regen without the perk, yet they do. I think it should say “gains ADDITIONAL passive health regen” (and preferably, how much extra).
- After casting “Slow Fall,” navigating back to it in the casting menu gives you the option “Remove Ongoing Effect” for free. However, after casting “Conceal Corruption Effects,” navigating back to it in the casting menu only lets you recast “Conceal Corruption Effects” for the normal cost, even though the effect is “unconcealing” corruption effects (ie, removing the ongoing illusion). It’s fine if you want to keep the casting cost, but the text should at least update to say “Unconceal the physical effects of corruption” to clarify it undoes the illusion – or else match the Slow Fall toggle for consistency.
- Cloth physics for female armors once again breaks when you have taller or shorter characters. This was an old bug that was previously fixed in a patch, and likewise the old trick of editing your characters height (via Orb of Nergal) to 50% fixes it, but I would prefer the patch fix instead.
- The new “smart display” of health bars is very inconsistent, like how right now in-game I cannot see the hp of any of my pets no matter how close I get or if they follow me. The line of sight blocking is also very unfortunate in cases of big pets like Sand Reaper Queen blocking LoS during fights. Sometimes it works fine, sometimes it just stops rendering completely for certain pets no matter the circumstance. I think it needs some polish.
- The new resurrected zombie pets show no edible food in their Diet, but they still eat and heal with certain items like Putrid Meat.
- The model of my character in the Inventory screen does not show my corruption effects.
- Dancers simultaneously give and remove corruption at the same time, although still removing more than they give.
Those are all the things I believe are unarguably bugs or typos. I do have some other things that are more debatable on if they were intended or not, which I’ll discuss in my feedback.
Feedback
Let me preface this by saying that 95% of the changes and additions are incredible, absolutely for the positive. The aesthetic, the feel, the new attributes, the spells, you guys hit this patch out of the park. I am primarily going to focus on constructive feedback, but I don’t want that mistaken for an excessively critical take. I am very pleased with this patch.
- The Thrall Nerf. So far, I am completely fine with this. I came from the days when the best thrall you could get was Vathis from the volcano for her (back when Vathis could spawn female) mighty 4k hp. Seeing that number grow to 20k from the pets patch always felt excessive, and seeing numbers in the 8k-10k now is far more reasonable. Especially with those new Authority points and perks, thralls are in a great place.
However. This is something I think could go under bugs, but pets received the same nerfs that thralls did. In the 2022-08-04 QA livestream, the dev said (at 02:17:08) “No we didn’t nerf animal companions [like we did thralls]. They were already at a disadvantage to thralls so they’re just untouched. I believe they’re fully untouched. I don’t think their damage changed or anything.” I can’t speak about damage, but it is obvious that pet hp was cut in half along with the thralls, and I don’t think this was intended. It was already too hard to keep my beloved Sand Reaper Queens alive through fights with poison, like the Scorpion Boss, or bleed(?), whatever the Siptah undead dog boss does. With half the hp, I’m even more shy at the thought of taking one around. And that’s a greater pet. For the regular pets, I couldn’t even convince myself to try them. To be clear, at full Authority, the +20 to all stats perk AND the “take 2 followers” perk respectively both offset this loss just like it does for thralls. However, like the devs said, animals were already disadvantaged to thralls, and the simultaneous pet nerf just perpetuates the discrepancy between them. I really hope the pet nerf is undone or at least diminished by released. Running around with 2 wolves or 2 bears or a super tiger has been a real treat in Testlive. Even if pets stay nerfed I’ll keep doing it, but as-is I know I’ll have to swap to thralls for some places.
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Armor revamp. Along with the attributes, which is up next, this has been an overall great change. There is something I think may have been an oversight in the new stats, however. The new basic stat categories are Carrying, SWeapon, AWeapon, Health, Stamina, Follower Damage, and Concussive Damage. However, right now many categories are missing an armor class. There are NO Light or Medium armor sets for +Follower Damage (except the aforementioned split Turnian Scout, which means no +follower light gloves or boots). Only the Heavy hyrkanian raider and heavy poitan sets have +follower damage. There are NO Medium or Heavy +concussive damage sets, only the light nemedian set. To reiterate, Medium class has no +follower or +concussive sets at all. Previously, every armor class had access to every attribute, but now, for example, nemedian medium (which used to be +survival), has been changed to +Health, as if it was +vitality before, instead of either of the new support stats. Stygian Raider, formerly accuracy, became +strength, instead of following hyrkanian raider into being +follower. The new stats seem to lack coherency and as a result, lack proper distribution.
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Attribute rework and Corrupted Attributes. This has been FANTASTIC. Getting health regen at lvl 5 (or Vit 5) is perfect for smoothing out the early game and leveling process. I always went encumbrance right away, and now getting the survival resource doubling perk AND 15 points of enc at the same time (by lvl 15 instead of lvl 30!!) is a wholly welcome change. I love my followers, and Authority’s irrate and double followers are unexpected yet amazing changes. Being able to max 2 attributes and spread love around the others keeps my power up without losing too much other goodies. Overall, this is the most welcome change from the patch.
After some extended playing around, even the Corrupted stats ended up being pleasantly surprising. Like everyone, I was worried about halving my hp when players are already so fragile and halving my stamina, which is a player’s lifeblood. After a few unsuccessful combinations, I decided to embed myself into the roleplay of a “sorcerer who commands from the back,” and I went 20 vit, 20 auth, 20 exp, and I corrupted 19 vit and 19 auth (keeping normal the 20 vit, 20 auth perks). To my surprise, despite my scant hp, I became a monstrous tank. My damage taken was split to 2 followers, I could ignore some hits, I healed my last hit, and my 2 pet’s damage healed me. Done just right, I was not fragile at all. My damage was obviously lacking, but with the corrupted auth perk, my followers more than made up for it, and it felt GOOD. Amazing even.
Now the “however.” We lost the temperature protection of survival, with no way to make it up. I hope that gets some attention. Secondly, although the hp gain from vitality is VERY WELCOME, being almost 800 at lvl 20, the combat potential it offers overshadows strength and grit completely. 200 to 800 offer x4 to my combat potential for 20 points. 20 points to strength only offers x2, by doubling damage. 20 Grit offers even less than x2, not even allowing twice as many swings or rolls at max. Although each attribute has niches they shine at, if you could only take one, vitality is a no-brainer as the undisputed best choice. Rather than nerf vit hp, however, I hope you look at ways of improving strength/agility/git to rival current vitality. After playing around the end-game stuff, I would say players are still lacking relative power rather than exceeding in it. Thirdly, the perks to +armor seem almost a joke. For example the Strength 20 perk, when below 25% hp. At 0 armor, +50 armor gives 9% DR, and anything you fight will still kill you in one hit if you’re under 25% hp. At medium armor, 34% DR becomes 36%, and you still die in the same amount of hits. In heavy, 66% becomes 66%, and it also doesn’t change. The scant +armor does nothing, here or elsewhere. I suggest it be reworked to “take half damage when under 25% hp,” which actually has a real effect on your survival that close to death. Elsewhere, armor points have the same struggle, where epic light and regular light armors are identical in all but durability. Climbing Gear showcases this completely. Even the buffed +armor plates only show DR changes at low armor, where a few increments don’t matter, and no DR change at high armor, where each point really does matter.
- Sorcery. Thematically and visually, this has been perfectly on point. I love almost everything about it, even the stuff I may not use. The rituals especially really please me. I can already think of some great uses for summoning my body. Volcano dive, anyone? It’s like a free teleport back to home with my sack full of gold and obsidian. For the negative, the lightning spell is in a weird place. It’s useless in a fight and seems only good for breaking bases. Likewise, it’s reagent requires x2 demon blood like dragonpowder, plus gold for the inconvience, so it feels like a reskinned explosive at the cost of crippled stats. PvP players I’m sure will have strong opinions on it, but for PvE, it’s a flop. I spent 30 seconds kiting a crocodile around before it could finally get hit by a bolt. As feedback, I wish you’d have the bolts have a tendency to hit “taller” targets in its area, like real lightning. Clear out the trees first, maybe a hut or placeable, then start hitting people. Or if the opponent is giant, make him my lightning rod for a hit or two.
Piggybacking on this is
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Removing Witch Doctor. I beg you, please keep both Witch Doctor and the new zombies in the game together. Skeletons and skelly dogs are my second favorite pets in the game, just behind Sand Reaper Queen. I mentioned I keep losing sand reaper queens to poison and bleed, and guess what is totally immune to both of those? My skellybois. I love them so much. I heard the dev’s reasons, I know it can still come back “under the new undead system” later on. But in truth, I greatly dislike the new undead system. To clarify, I dislike all temporary systems. I hated the thrall/pets-food patch (where you feed them or else lose them) and actually quit playing back then, only recently coming back to this game. The new zombies are a great addition offering quick power, especially as emergency defence in face of a purge or elsewhere. I think the new system is great how it is and has a rock solid place in the game. But I hate temporary pets, whether they last 10 minutes or 3 days. That’s also why I don’t like the new demons. Even if you do add skeletons back in a future patch, if they’re only temporary pets like zombies, I’ll hate it. AND a temporary system doesn’t even make sense in-game. None of the skeletons in Unnamed City or Wrights above or Silent Legion men are temporary. It’s been hundreds of years and they’re still kicking. That’s what I want too. Something about Darfari sorcery can achieve that, while that deadbeat sorcerer I stole the zombie recipe from is advantaged in some ways but also limited in others. I think Conan Exiles can accommodate both systems simultaneously both in lore and in play, and I dearly wish for it to as well.
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Visual clarity. This is a topic that applies to the current game but was accentuated in 3.0. Clarity is something this game struggles with. Most players, including myself, know we need a wiki open to play it. In some regards, figuring things out or exploring can be its own reward, so I won’t mention recipes here. Instead, I want to look at the new follower attributes. For a thrall with a weapon, strength and agility are very clear. But pets use no weapon and also have strength and agility. Do panther swipes use strength? Agility? A 50-50 split of both? Is it strength for the normal attack and agility for the special attacks? Is the greater rocknose’s fist all strength and agility is a worthless stat I should avoid? Is Sand Reaper Queen’s vomit agility? There is no way of knowing, it is entirely unclear. This is also true for many of the new perks and attributes. How much damage, hp, stam, carrying, etc. does each attribute point give? The corrupted Auth 5 perk tells you how much each corruption point buffs it, but the corrupted Vit 5 just says “scales” vaguely. Is 5 points for just that identical or worse than the normal Vit 5 perk? How much better is corrupted Vit 19 vs corrupted 20? What do attributes do for pets specifically? Also, if I throw “+follower damage” gear on a follower thrall, does that help them too or only their weapon-specific damage type gear?
Expanding on this, I hate that we don’t know what attribute (now stat) gear buffs until you’ve made it. You already give the armor value in the feat/crafting screen for that piece, so why not also it’s stat bonus? I usually have to go into singleplayer and spawn in full sets of everything to figure it out (like how I saw bug 1 and 2 above), but with all these new unspawnable microtransaction items cluttering that screen, it’s getting harder to do so and will get even harder in the future. Your visual representation of temperature is also very poor. Hyrkanian raider pants shows 1 bar cold, 1 bar hot, yet it actually gives twice the cold protection as hot. I wish temperature bars corresponded to flat values, or else had numerics accompanying them. I also wish we had visible timers on the new zombies and demons. The decay effect is really, REALLY cool. Clever and thematic, just like this whole patch. But I want to see the real time too. Lastly, I only recently found out we could show hp values on health bars. I also wish we could see damage on hit and xp values on kills as well, even if it’s optional and buried behind the “immersion ruining HUD” category of settings.
- Final thoughts. These are my final nitpicks, the last of the 5% negative in an otherwise 95% positive patch. The microtransaction store isn’t out yet, but I’m incredibly disappointed by the revealed prices so far. I’ve bought all the DLC in this game so far, almost always for a sale price as my budget demands. In an example, the Jewel of the West pack cost me $4 and got me an entire building tileset (39 pieces), a collection of placeables (25 pieces), three complete armor sets (light, medium, heavy), a skin for each weapon type (at the time), and some warpaint skins. In your stream showing the Bazaar, it showed a single armor set cost 900 Chrom Coins, or about $8. Even a full price DLC pack for all those things before was $10. A fraction of a fraction of that pack is already $8. Likewise, you had a single table at $10. A half a tent for $8. Three emotes for $6. A single candle for $1.50. It’s insane. In one screen, you had less content than a full-price $10 DLC pack now asking for $40. I get that this is just “the times” of crummy microtransactions, but suffice to say my streak of collecting all the DLC has now ended firmly, with the battlepass likely being my final purchase. The base price of “Aesir Accountrements” shouldn’t be higher than 100 chrom coins by your old methods, and I’d still have waited for a sale back then. Moving on, I don’t hate the new construction system. It has some very clear advantages, but I wish you’d keep the old system along with it simultaneously, maybe as pieces crafted from a special bench (or artisan table). One of my joys in this game is playing with a friend who likes to build. I leave DLC’s construction pieces in a chest for him to build with. It’s a great system, and “don’t worry, you don’t have to buy that because I already did” was my strongest convincing argument to get him to play with me. Now, we’re trying to figure out a system like he builds in sandstone and I’ll eventually get around to replacing them with dlc pieces, but he can’t see what he’s really building at the time, so it’s really a drag if this is the future. Next, I think you should add “Press c to cancel climbing or sorcery” to the contextual controls. I have already seen that I’m not alone in struggling to figure out how to cancel sorcery. At least having that memo will help some people. Likewise, I think unequipping the staff should cancel a spell, just like how you have to unequip the hammer to stop building. It keeps things consistent, especially in the same patch introducing both new systems. Finally, especially with the arrival of sorcery, I think corruption from obelisks (especially) and other worldly locations should be rapidly increased. I think it was much more in the past. As is, you can sit there for ten minutes and still barely enter “Light Corruption.” I liked it more in the past when standing carelessly was a risk and concern, and with this patch it could even be an advantage.
I think that’s everything on the patch. I know the bulk of my post is all these little complaints, but I really am overjoyed by the patch. Even if not a single bug or complaint was answered, which may be the case, I’d still get a real kick out of the patch (because it’d be the same as Testlive, which I’m already enjoying so much right now). I’m eagerly awaiting the release date and still trying to cajole some more friends into accompanying me and my builder friend into playing it on release. If you’ve read this far, I’m going to sneak a chance to mention three last complaints/bugs in the base game that I hope get some redress by 3.0 release: 1) there are two 1H black ice swords with the same craft cost and move set yet different damages and appearances, I think the lower damage one was meant to be a short sword; 2) the harvesting rates from pens are unimaginably bad, maybe unintentionally so. For example, at the statistical odds of rolling a gold rocknose, it takes 100 real hours (!) to recover that cost in gold in the pen for each rocknose, more with worse luck. It takes less than 1 hour to mine that cost yourself. It is prohibitively awful. 3) Epic Hyperborean heavy armor is mysteriously weaker than all the other epic heavy armors, despite its regular form being better than many other regular forms like the Heavy heavy set.
Thank you for reading.