Testlive Patch (22.05.2020) - Followers re-balancing, Avatar fixes and more!

[Ignasi]

Greetings Exiles,

We’re excited to bring to Testlive our first iteration of our next game update. As we mentioned in the past, we wanted to focus on game balancing regarding thralls and followers now that AI stances and the command system have been implemented into the game.

We’ve been listening to your feedback and we agree that they were perhaps a bit too powerful now. Followers felt like the heroes while players remained sidekicks to the AI deeds.We want players to take an active role in combat and be the hero, and then bring along a helper or sidekick to assist in taking out the biggest threats. In regard to PvP combat, we also want that to be more about players fighting other players, and less about avoiding one hit kills from followers in hopes to land some hits.

We’ve also given some attention to avatars and fixed some of the crippling issues they experienced, in hopes of being able to bring them back again in the near future.

As always, we’d love if you could give this patch a try and send us any feedback you might have about the new changes and balancing so we can keep improving on it in future revisions of this build.

Thanks again for your ongoing support and feedback. Stay safe!

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Please remember that updates can mess with your installed mods. We suggest taking a backup of your current database before updating to any new patch if you have mods installed.

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Currently Known Issues

• Recipes provided by thralls are not available on crafting stations. Current workaround is to restart the server or rejoin the session.
• The game might crash while refreshing session invites in the friends list, or when a certain amount of time passes while minimized.

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• Introduced a number of server optimizations.

• Implemented a new Funcom Live Services system. This includes functionality for an in game Friends List and improvements to the Server Browser.

• Fixed an issue where follower commands would not function correctly in certain sections of the Sunken City dungeon.
• Fixed a number of issues with world NPCs regarding the hate list.
• Fixed an issue where followers would not teleport correctly when leaving a dungeon.
• Archers should corrrectly use power shot when wielding a bow now.
• Ramps and sloped roofs are AI friendly now.

• Summoning tokens now have a 6h expiration (down from 48h)
• Summoning tokens can no longer be transferred between inventories. As an exception, they can be looted from a player’s corpse.
• Re-balanced followers HP and damage across the board.
  • Reduced HP gain by an average 33%. Some high tier followers received an additional 16% reduction on their base values.
  • Reduced melee damage by an average 40%.
  • Reduced ranged damage by an average 30%.
• Removed the penalties for thralls who use attacks outside of their specialization.
• Avatars should no longer be able to damage structures inside a protection dome.

• Fixed an issue that would make a player unable to attack, jump or dodge under specific circumstances.
• Lures should be working correctly now.
• Fixed an issue where a protection dome could remain active even after the destruction of its shrine.

• Fixed an issue that would render a follower’s health bar invisible after taking damage.
• Nameplates should now be visible when on horseback.
• Followers that have been renamed will now show their custom name instead of the default one in the event log.

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Separate TestLive Product on Steam

We heard your input regarding the inconvenience with having to switch back and forth between the main game and our TestLive servers. To make it easier for you and because we really value your testing and feedback, we added a separate product for the TestLive server on Steam.

If you own Conan Exiles on Steam, you should now see a separate Product called “Conan Exiles - Testlive Client” in your library which gives you the option to install an additional instance of the game specifically for the TestLive servers. Please be aware that this will prompt you for a full additional installation.

We are aware that not everyone wants install or has space for two full installations. For those of you who don’t want to play through the additional TestLive Client, you can still access the TestLive servers through our old method.

[TheLOLxd2]

This patch was made quite fast, but I assume it’s been in the making for longer.
Anyhow, I digress, these are guesses. I hope what has been implemented works well.

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Unofficial patch notes for previous TestLive patch, introduced alongside the console hotfix:

Testlive Patch (19.05.2020) - UI addition for mod loading order

TestLive Servers will be updated along the day. These are unofficial patch notes. Feel free to use this thread for feedback. Hey all, Along with the console hotfixes, Funcom released a small TestLive patch today. What is in this patch, you might be asking. UI changes You can now select your mod loading order directly from the launcher. You can pull from your mod directory, or from the Steam Workshop. [image] This feature will be introduced in Live in an upcoming patch. You can give it…

[Narelle]

@Ignasi

Re-balanced followers HP and damage across the board.

• Reduced HP gain by an average 33%. Some high tier followers received an additional 16% reduction on their base values.
• Reduced melee damage by an average 40%.
• Reduced ranged damage by an average 30%.

[Charmain]

Wow, nerfhammer is not joking around. Glad i have been using nub thralls so fare.

[Akomo]

Well this will be a welcome addition. Ill download and check it out.

[Akomo]

Needed to happen as im currently soloing warmaker and wine cellar with one thrall.

[Bourgmestre]

could this be the day i return on the game ? I hope this thrall fix is good cam <3

[Cyryus]

This are great news! i’ve been waiting for this for a long time, even longer than the thrall updates.
I wonder if there is gona be a boss rework at some point on their stats, mainly their HP pools. Their damage is fine but their HP is so high that it’s a very tedious task to kill one of them.

Nevertheless, i’m very happy to see this happening.

[Narelle]

Here is a sample of the new fighters:

https://gyazo.com/976678f08f7ed532a00fc079b16d4780

On the other hand the ranged damage multiplier seems to be very close to the melee one. Both Dalinsia and Daicas have now 2.2 ranged damage multiplier.

The relic hunter archers are now at 1.60 melee / 2.52 range. The relic hunter fighters are now at 2.21 melee / 2.20 range.

[Broc]

Ouch. Will be interesting to see how it changes how I can play…

[Korcheski]

I will wait to see how exactly this affects the game, but soloing this game seems like it just got a lot harder…if not impossible. With the new HP, Snowhunter would have died during the Arena Champion fight, and i had her in full Flawless Cim armor.

[Exkar]

I think there is no need to nerf Thralls, no need to make pve content more time consuming. The better idea is to give players more possibilities to make
their character stronger, more Health Points, maybe special armor attribut/mitigation against Thrall/NPC Damage. A PvP fight in this game is mostly very short anyway because of weapon damage and the low health pool
plus armor penetration on weapons. Just to make the Thrall a side kick with the nerf to the week Player stats, you have just side kick thrall and side kick player this way.

For Avatars, I don’t miss them, they should be much weaker if they return. It’s more fun to use regular ways to siege a base.

Till now it’s more than a bad patch, better fix elevator and the other stuff that is frustrating.

[Akomo]

Did you heal her at all? Because mine never dies

[Auculus]

@Ignasi

Any chance you guys could sneak in server settings for us to adjust minion power separately from NPC/monster power?

[Croms_Faithful]

@Ignasi

Followers felt like the heroes while players remained sidekicks to the AI deeds.We want players to take an active role in combat and be the hero

When I read this ^^ I was initially fairly excited. However

@Ignasi

Re-balanced followers HP and damage across the board.

• Reduced HP gain by an average 33%. Some high tier followers received an additional 16% reduction on their base values.
• Reduced melee damage by an average 40%.
• Reduced ranged damage by an average 30%.

This is going to make me sound like a snarky jerk. However for the record here, that is not what I am going for. The purpose of this post is not to troll, but to raise concerns. You all have said that you want to make players feel like the hero and thralls the sidekick again, and that is what you have addressed, correct? All I see is a very hefty nerf to followers without so much as a smidgin of upwards adustment or ‘buffs’ to the player character. Is that supposed to somehow make us feel more heroic? Because I assure you all it has not. It will simply make many players work and grinding feel like it has been devalued, and increase the time investment to kill some of the more hp heavy bosses. On a side note it also does not address the disparity between thralls and pets.

Ultimately this will have minimal impact on my playstyle, because as a diehard Crom loyalist I prefer to fight my battles solo. I dont often use followers, and when I do its usually my Tiger fo RP value, and because he is a cat (I love cats). But its obvious that PvE and Singleplayer were not in mind when this rebalance was devised.

Wouldnt it be nice if we could of added a Slider for ‘thrall to player damage’ values and balanced the modes seperately instead.

[Bodin]

So in other words, fights just got 30-40% longer = more grind.
What was once a 30 minute fight, now just became 40-45 minutes long.

It also means bases will now be much easier to raid, by both player and purge, since base defense just dropped by one third (coupled with the limitation on the thralls per clan).

Definitely not what I was looking forward to either.

[legion1976]

Having my thralls weakened and not buffing my character isn’t heroic.Sounds like I’m screwed in solo
.Should have thralls do reduced damage to players in pvp,not punish other styles of play.

[Entropy]

My favorite part is how most of the PvP players are welcoming this fix

[Treeglum]

I want to complain about the thrall nerf but, even with the missing hp bar, you could sleepwalk through Warmakers and the arena champion with a decent Dalisnia(though the new thrall AI has made things challenging, damnit why are you standing there!!!), now any decent thrall will probably still do as long you pay attention and have enough heal arrows, it just makes you prepare a little more for endgame, it does seem it was easy to shoot from mid to end game once you got a good thrall. I haven’t experienced the new patch yet, so we’ll see!

[fito]

@Ignasi

Re-balanced followers HP and damage across the board.

@Ignasi

we agree that they were perhaps a bit too powerful now.

Suggestion: Followers might simply not be able to deal the final hit when the owner is nearby. Then the follower would only be a helper and no matter how much life or strength they would have.

• When fighting a boss or other player, the follower owner would always have to deal the last blow.
• If the owner is not nearby (or offline), followers could kill the attackers invading the base / house without any help.

Note: It may even be that the follower will deal less damage as your opponent’s life percentage decreases to force the player to real fight at the end (not just shoot once with a bow from a distance).