Testlive Patch (29.11.2019) - Mounts! Follower leveling system! More combat rebalancing! But...by Crom! There's even more?!

Greetings Exiles!

The time has come! Saddle up and ride into all the goodness packed into our newest free content update! We couldn’t let this year go without a bang. As a thank you to all of you for your amazing support since the game launched, we’re bringing the most anticipated and long requested feature since the early days of the game! Coconut clapping Mounts!

From a foal to a majestic and loyal War horse, you can now breed and train your trusty steed and ride into battle (or where adventure calls you) with the new Mount system. Not only you can use your horse for faster traveling, but you’ll also be able to engage in combat with many single-hand weapons, bows and a new weapon archetype: Lances!

And what better complement to this new feature than the new Follower Leveling System? That’s right! You can now level up and perk up any companion you bring with you as a follower -be it a Thrall, pet or your new mount. You can read all about it in our recent write-up. As a huge thank you for all your dedicated support, we’ve also squeezed in the possibility to rename your own thralls, so they can be more unique to you and reflect the time and effort spent in training them.

We have also continued our work in balancing and overhauling more aspects of the combat system in the game. We spent some time bringing improvements to the dodging mechanic, which along with a new momentum-based player movement focuses on a fighter’s commitment to their actions, raising the skill ceiling during fighting situations. We have also overhauled the trebuchet, as well as a myriad of tweaks and balancing to weapons and fighting situations we’d love to hear your feedback about.

And of course, we’ve packed in tons of other general bugfixes, QoL improvements and refinements based on player feedback you’ve been sending us.
We can’t wait to let you give this new update a try before its official release so you can share your opinion, thoughts and suggestions with us in the comments below and our Testlive forum section.

Thank you all for being the best community this side of the Exiled Lands!


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.


highlights

Mounts and mounted combat!

Ride your trusty steed right into battle with the new mount system, supporting mounted combat with a variety of weapons, including a new weapon archetype, Lances! Charging into your foes now feels… joust right.

New Follower Leveling System!

Level your followers (thralls, pets… even mounts!) through combat in the same fashion that you do as a player. Leveling a Follower grants them stat-points that are automatically distributed through a weighted system, and these stats grant various bonuses. You can read more about it in our detailed announcement.
And as an added bonus and huge thanks to our community, we’ve squeezed in an oft-requested feature: you can now rename your thralls, to make them more unique and personal.

Additional combat refinements: Trebuchet, dodging and momentum-based movement!

We’re continuing our efforts in revising, tuning and refining the combat system in the game with an overhaul of the dodging mechanics, momentum-based movements for player characters and new and improved trebuchet mechanics, along with a plethora of other balance and combat changes aimed at making combat strategies more varied and viable.

tldr

  • Mounts!
  • Mounted combat!
  • New weapon archetype: Lances!
  • Follower leveling system!
  • You can now rename thralls!
  • New and improved trebuchet mechanics.
  • New dodge-roll mechanics.
  • New momentum-based character movement.
  • Further combat balancing.
  • Plenty of bug squishing!
  • …and much, much more!

notes
performance

  • Fixed a number of crash bugs.
  • Optimized building replication from server to client for huge databases - this should bring a slight increase in overall performance to players that suffer from “huge-base-itis”.

exploits

  • Fixed an exploit in regards to attributes.
  • Fixed a couple of undermesh locations in the world.
  • Fixed an issue where it was possible to loot corpses through walls.
  • Fixed a minor teleportation exploit in regards to the maproom

newadditions

  • New Feature: Mounts! You can now tame and ride horses. You will find foals in various locations in the world, which can be picked up and put into a stable. Feed these foals and soon enough you will have your own majestic steed! schwing!
  • New building placements and equipment have been added related to mounts. Saddles, new stables and more surprises have been added.
  • New Feature: Thrall/Pet leveling. It is now possible to level your (new) pets and thralls. Previously placed thralls and pets do not have access to this feature.
  • Thrall/Pet population limit has been implemented (but not activated) - when the population limit takes effect, thralls and pets will be removed slowly from a clan until the population limit has been respected. Please read more detailed information about this in the blog-post about this particular topic.
  • There is now a feat called “Apprentice Butcher” that grants Stone Skinning Knives and Cleavers.
  • Added Lances to the game - these weapons cannot be used while on foot but do very high damage when used while mounted. Damage from lances increases by the movement speed of the mounted player.
  • Added a third armor set that can drop from the boss at the end of the Wine-Cellar. In addition, there is now a 1% chance that he might drop the weapon he himself uses.

building

  • The Lion and Atlantean thrones now have new sitting animations more befitting of royalty.
  • The recipe for Spikes and Palisades has changed and should now be much easier to build.
  • Fixed an issue where Walls, Doorframes and Fences could not be placed in third horizontal axis of a Treehouse Foundation.
  • Inverted Wedge Sloped Roofs can now be attached by the bottom part of the wedge.
  • Palisades are now easier to place.
  • Ladders should now be possible to place more easily when hatchframes are next to ceilings.
  • Fixed a number of clipping issues with barrel stools.
  • Auto-close option of every kind of doors should no longer reset to default on server restart.
  • Fixed an issue where Ceilings could not be snapped to a Wall if Crenelated Wall or Fence were placed first on top of the Wall.
  • Increased the hitpoints for the Giant King statuettes when placed
  • Fixed an issue where Arena Wedges could not be replaced with each other.
  • Siege foundations should now be easier to place.
  • Stage pieces from the Debaucheries of Derketo DLC can now be placed next to stairs and other sloping pieces.
  • Ceilings, Hatch Frames and most of the Crenelated Walls now snap to the bottom part of Stairs.

crafting

  • Fixed an issue where several items from the Debaucheries of Derketo DLC would not be processed inside Dismantling Bench.
  • Fixed a number of inconsistencies with recipes.
  • There is now a cooling down version of the Godbreaker armor. If you learned the feat, you will already have access to it.
  • Fixed an issue where certain scrolls could be dismantled into Black Blood, which was only intended for the Black Blood scrolls.
  • Crafting Exceptional and Flawless Light Hyrkanian Bows now requires the correct feats and thralls.
  • Fixed an issue where the recipes of Black Corsair Chestguard and Gauntlets were switched.
  • Specific maces did not require wooden resources to be crafted - this is now fixed.
  • Fixed an issue where clearing the crafting queue in crafting stations resulted in displayed number of items available to craft via Craft All button being one higher than correct value.
  • Fixed an issue where Recipes and non-armor items can be moved to armor’s slots under certain conditions.

combat

  • Siege Boulders no longer bounce from bottom of water.
  • Hammers no longer penetrate shields on their first attack.
  • 2H Sword Overhead smash damage has been reduced by 1/3. In addition, this attack has been slowed down and stamina cost reduced.
  • It should now be easier to get hits in using the Katana Light attacks courtesy of hyper-armor.
  • The falloff damage to buildings from Explosive Jars has been reduced.
  • The weapons “Havoc and Malice” and “Whirlwind blades” now do less damage.
  • Dagger hyper-armor during swings has been reduced somewhat.
  • Dagger stamina cost throughout combos have been slightly increased.
  • 2h Hammer speed and hyper-armor for light swings have been reduced.
  • 1h Mace now have hyper-armor during the swings for the first two light attacks.
  • 2h Swords now have slightly faster combo queueing.
  • Great Axes have gotten slightly increased damage modifiers through the combo, and will speed up after the first spin.
  • Serpentmen weapons have been reduced in damage.
  • Fixed missing damage types for bonus multipliers:
    • 2h Mace, Light attack 2
    • 1h Mace, Light attack 1
    • Daggers, Light attack 1
    • Daggers, Light attack 2
    • Bow, Light attack 1
    • 2h Axe. Light attack 2
    • 1h Axe, Light attack 1
  • The critical hit from Doomhammer and Act of Violence and Sharkbite is now much less severe.
  • Characters no longer receive damage outside AoE effects from the boss in the Wine Cellar’s dungeon.
  • Attacks can no longer be inflicted on the Wine-cellar Boss through the gate from outside the room.
  • Bleeding debuff can no longer be applied to the Undead Dragon from The Sinkhole.
  • Bleeding effect can no longer be applied on the Smoke Demon boss in Wine Cellar Dungeon.
  • Fixed an issue with players being able to exit directional attacks too early by abusing the system.
  • It is no longer possible to poison Riptide and the Black Ice Javelin
  • Man on the Wall now drops loot.

ai

  • Thralls and Pets no longer instantly consume “Tablet of Power”.
  • It is now possible to rename your placed thralls.
  • Oiled Weapon no longer disappears from Thrall’s Mainhand if Oil applied to the weapon expires.
  • Fixed an issue where hitting certain NPCs with a weapon that deals concussion damage would cause them to stop attacking.
  • It is now possible to feed your thralls and pets to provide leveling up and combat bonuses to them again. Feeding pets will also heal them and any amount of food present in their inventories will be eaten slowly over time if the pet/thrall is hurt.
  • Skeletons in the Wine-cellar boss room should now behave better and not pop up ahead of time. Way to spoil the surprise, skeletons!
  • Fixed a number of pathing issues with the Wine-cellar boss.
  • Wine-cellar boss should no longer go invisible when hurt by AoE effects during its spawn animation, or players rejoin the same session with two or more players.
  • Fixed an issue where Thralls in work stations would become frozen upon leaving and re-entering the render zone.
  • Szeth the Drunk has been told to respect his hitboxes and no longer does damage to players that shouldn’t have been hit by them.
  • It is now possible to “Break Bonds” with your pets and thralls. This will dismiss your pet from your employ - and the world. They will drop any equipment and/or inventory they have on themselves when dismissed in this fashion.
  • Elephants should no longer huff and puff continuously.
  • Fixed an issue where one of the tamed scorpions could not be harvested when it was killed.
  • Removed one of the two Dina, Master Huntress’es from the world.
  • Thralls and Pets no longer instantly eat full stacks of Consumables after server restart.

purges

  • Armorers from the Purge can now make Redeemed Silent Legion armor, which is a flawless version of the Silent Legion armor, provided you have unlocked the feat for yourself.

balancing

  • Trebuchet Overhaul:
    • The trebuchet can now be set to release its boulders at an angle. An additional lever has been added to the trebuchet that controls this. The maximum degree arc is 80 and the minimum is -20, allowing the trebuchet to shoot down in front and almost straight up. Bombs ahoy!
    • The trebuchet is now easier to maintain and build - it no longer costs iron reinforcements to build the actual trebuchet but the cost of other resources have increased.
    • The hitpoints for the trebuchet and siege foundations have increased significantly.
    • Siege boulders no longer costs twine to craft but instead require more stone.
    • The Siege boulder and Demon-fire barrage has had their damage increased
    • The missiles fired from a trebuchet can now pass through the god-shield without bouncing off.
    • The trebuchet no longer takes damage when it is being fired.
    • The AoE from Siege boulders has been reduced in size.
    • Lastly, the stairs leading up the siege platform have been removed.
  • Dodging overhaul:
    • Dodge now has 2 components, a dodge move and dodge settle. Agility affects how fast dodge settle is played; as in the more agility you have the faster the character can act after a dodge.
    • In addition to this, the dodges have been uniformed in length and the animation updated to a roll.
  • Nimble Tumbler perk has been reworked to double armor-values while dodging.
  • Climbing now takes a minimum amount of stamina to perform, and it’s no longer possible to climb for free using specific combinations of gear.
  • Gold Circlet no longer provides Temperature resistance.
  • T1 and T2 fences now stop climbing.
  • Adjusted base armor sets to put the temperature resistances on par with DLC armors. This was always the intention but a goblin stole the data.
  • Strength perks that previously granted 25% bonus damage has been reduced to 15% bonus damage.
  • The healing from healing arrows has been reduced.
  • Bones can now be harvested from Skeletons with both Pickaxes and Picks.
  • Dream Dust and Black Cove Rum droprates have increased, but Rare Spice droprates have decreased.
  • Increased bonuses from the Flawless Relic Hunter armor.
  • Increased amount of corruption removed with Cleansing Brew.

qol

  • Several base resources have had their max stack amount increased.
  • Khari Steel bars and Fragments of power now automatically stack after being collected from specific chests.

general

  • Using the Keystone in non-character’s inventory no longer results in teleportation to Sepermeru.
  • Fixed a bug where the Soothing regenerating buff would not be applied after death or to new characters until you would rejoin the session or gain and lose a temperature buff.
  • Fixed an issue with the skinning of the Khari armor sets.
  • Changing from Night-Stalker Mask to another head piece no longer causes it to be not functional after equipping the Mask again.
  • Fixed some stretched textures on male’s Nobles Chestpiece sleeves.
  • Fixed an issue where Fiery-Hot consumables did not provide any food or water.
  • Fixed an issue where characters might start shaking when getting in direct contact with a locked on target during specific emotes.
  • Frost Giants again drop loot as intended.
  • Reduced the amount of hitpoints for the Half-Child of Dagon.
  • Pirate bosses again drop their Scourgestone pieces.
  • Set’s Tongue now functions as intended.
  • The Smoke Demon in the Wine cellar no longer loses aggro after character moves from one edge of its arena to another.
  • Pick held by characters no longer clips through their chest.
  • Fixed a skinning issue with the Inn-Keepers Vestment.
  • Satiated buff no longer overrides Elixir of Freedom’s effect.
  • Fixed an issue where equipment granting Stamina would not do so. These now grant Grit instead.
  • Dark Templar helmet’s plume now has a holder.
  • Fixed an issue where the Nobles Skirt with any footwear equipped by a female character had physics only when camera is in very close range.
  • Fixed a visible gap between textures on the bottom of the Khari Soldier Mail.
  • Added functionality to the Endowment potion. #darksecrets
  • Tombstone markers are no longer assigned to the character corpse’s ragdoll but rather the location they died, making it easier to find your items.
  • Players can no longer avoid fall damage by landing on an NPC.
  • Fiery-Hot consumables do now provide Heating buff.
  • Fixed an issue where Khari Soldier or Raider Bracers were not visible when the Noble Chestpiece is equipped.
  • Fixed a bug where Asura armor and the Black blood tools would give double the intended bonuses.
  • Corrected an inconsistency between bonus attributes of ‘Gold Circlet’, and ‘Gold Circlet and Earrings’.
  • Armlets of Dark Templar Chestguard no longer hover over the Character’s arms.
  • Fixed a number of emotes not using the female version.
  • Reduced the weight of Seeds.
  • Empty flasks no longer weigh more than a flask filled with dye.
  • Epic Reptilian Armor values are now correct for the helm, chest and gauntlets.
  • Modders now have access to a plethora of additional professions in the profession Enum table.
  • Added 20 new map-levels for modders to play with.
  • Hunter’s Potion is now correctly overridden by the Prince of the Black Shores manuscript.
  • Fixed an issue where Drinking Night-Eye Potion affected brightness differently for 1st and 3rd person camera.

terrain

  • Fixed some boss-cheesing locations in various places in the dungeons. #notgrate
  • Fixed a number of visual inconsistencies and texture gaps in various locations in the world.
  • Moved some of the chests inside the Wine-cellar dungeon so they can be reached.
  • Fixed some floating decoration objects in Flotsam.

animation

  • There are now new sleep animations in the game and a way to learn them as emotes. #secrets
  • Running is no longer instant but has a very small acceleration phase until the player reaches max speed.
  • Fixed an issue where the Locust’s Queen animation would freeze after being hit by the player.
  • Fixed an issue where Idle variation/fidgets were missing the idle facial animation.

ui

  • After countless and definitely non-maddening sessions, our #spellchekker team fixed a number of spelling errors and grammar grammar grammar grammar
  • Added a label to The Maelstrom to make players aware of the attribute bonus.
  • Fixed a number of missing keywords from items.
  • New Asagarth should now correctly be listed as such for all references thereof. #newasgorth
  • Fixed the grading keywords for Iron Short Swords and Great Axes.
  • Fixed a number of missing/incorrect weapon and armor keywords.
  • Bindings of the Dead are now marked as Legendary.
  • Fixed some named NPCs that did not have a golden health-bar frame but should have.
  • Razor Gord has been humiliated enough for thinking he is a world boss and he now only has one skull on his health bar instead of three.
  • Fixed an issue where certain Darfari NPC’s would not spawn properly from the admin panel.
  • Emotes menu is now accessible through the Vanity Camera mode.
  • Fixed a misleading instructions sidebar for the Fluid Press.
  • Peg Legs no longer have interchanged icons.
  • Fixed a number of issues where white boxes would appear in armor dye screen for certain armors.

audio

  • Fixed an issue where inconsistent SFX was played when walking on Turanian DLC buildings.
  • Wine-cellar boss now has VO as intended.
    *Waterfalls in the wine-cellar dungeon now have ambient sounds.
  • Fixed a couple of issues that would prevent player characters and NPCs from playing sounds correctly during battle situations.

community

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.

26 Likes

Oh patch notes, lets see what they say. The DLC video was so good already surely it can’t get any bette…

23 Likes

Oh. My. GOODNESS!!! If this means what I think it means, thank you so much!

Duuuuuude! :grin: :heart:

Oooh, nice! That should make certain NPCs go back from “what the hell was that” to “nicely challenging” :wink:

You gotta be kidding me?! :heart: Guys, it’s not my birthday yet, you’re gonna spoil me! :grin:

Don’t take this as a complaint, but why? Did their visual aspect change to indicate this?

Anyway, sorry for gushing so much, but I figure that if I’m going to be as vocal as I am with my non-congratulatory feedback, I might as well do the same for the stuff I love, too. So thanks! :smiley:

13 Likes

And I though I had recovered from the first surprise! I don’t even have the words, these are amazing fixes, it’s all I could ask for!!!

Wait… actually, I do have a request!!
While on the subject of building fixes, can you please please please make the sloping inverted walls easier to snap when doing it at a 60 degrees angle? instead of it insisting on doing it on a 90 degree angle? I don’t know if PC’s have the same issue but it’s sooo hard for PS4 to get it to snap it right, sometimes it does, but sometimes it just bloody refuses. :woman_facepalming:

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’ve always assumed he was inspired by Gordon Ramsey. And if he is, how dare you treat him as anything other than a world boss? :stuck_out_tongue:

9 Likes

Well your timing could not be better. Just finished building my new server and now I get all these great improvements to try. This is really quite an update. Super excited for the thrall changes and mounts. So many great QoL improvements here and hooray for the base armor sets being viable again.

One thing I am leary of is the dodge changes. I’m just going to get online and start testing it, before I drop any comments about the good or bad of it.

Thank you for this awesome update!

2 Likes

Mounts are great, easy to mount, rides smooth, turns well, jumps, falls, and does everything horselike great. Glad to finally have these. It will make long trips back to base more reasonable. I look forward to clearing out hordes of low lvl content for noobs to harvest. Or maybe taking out some rocknose before I gather brimstone.

Endowment changes? #darksecrets - Got me curious, does not appear to work on women as is. Does not work on thralls. Won’t increase tiny to large, or large to larger. Still appears to work on males, increases length as usual.

Is this part of a new recipe?

Renaming Thralls is an amazing change, glad to finally have it. Will be nice to really theme out our base finally. Makes tier 1 dancers or fighters much more bearable, if you rename them to something tough sounding.

I think I will rename one of my fighters Thunder Gut. Don’t stand behind him. -.-

2 Likes

THE GOOD :+1:

Awesome! I am really looking foward to these two features once they make it to live. Also a question:

-Will some enemy NPCs be mounted on horseback too or not?

This is a most welcome fix. Up until now my Ladder leading up to my attic periodically breaks before my eyes, and I must resort to climbing walls then shimying across the ceiling to get up there.

This is a positive step foward, both of these weapons needed a bit of a buff. Ignasis or for that matter any other testlivers: are enemy NPCs now wielding Great Axes and Short Swords yet or no?

Yes! I will now be more willing to take my Tiger further north. Will Healing Arrows work on them now too or not? Also, will this Feed-Healing mechanic work for our ‘pet’ Undead and Frost Giant too?

Do we have any additional details as to which resources specifically available? Unless it was one of them (in which case cheers!);

PLEASE increase the stack sizes for Gold & Silver Coins.

I am going to take a punt on female chest proportions.

Is this the war cry/sound bug you refer to…? If so thankyou! The silence has been deafening.

3 Likes

Arrow in the hand bug is back after you fire your bow from horseback

Remarkable ! Having fun on testlive, and will feedback anything odd.

First noticed …
When autorunning on foot, I can open inventory or map, etc. and continue travelling. When doing the same on horseback, the horse stops until I close the offending window. Intended?

Regards

jim

4 Likes

Is it just me or “accelerating” in this patch is way too slow while in combat? I understand that funcom is trying to get people to commit to a fight but this approach makes the game feel unresponsive.

Per the dev stream yesterday, no, not at this time. It’s in my summary.

2 Likes

My only DEV question is WHEN is it going live.

Some of us that have 60 odd thralls and pets have a line of 20 of them up for deletion.
they are naked and ready for dismissal.

If by chance NO delay time between the patch going live and all our collector rare thralls are auto dismissed by FUncom.

I hope you all are ready for the fallout when you delete thralls for being over limit.

Dont you think this will aggravate players?

They just talked about it in the dev stream yesterday. Early December is still the current ETA.


They aren’t immediately turning on the Thrall limit. You can find all the Thrall information in one of the various sources below.

https://forums.funcom.com/t/follower-leveling-system-and-follower-limit/92642

1 Like

THE NOT SO GOOD :-1:

But why…!? It has never been an issue beforehand, so why after a year and a half do we suddenly have to nerf this now too!?

Another frankly uneccessay nerf.

Boo!!!

#Ifitaintbrokedontfixit
#Downwithsushiroll

4 Likes

Make sure to properly test it first :slight_smile:

8 Likes

I will, I will…I promise. :innocent: And I know Im just being a grouch. But thats just me on a normal day. :laughing:

4 Likes

I’ve been doing some dodging and I feeeeeel soooooo slooooooowwwww now. That combined with the running makes me feel like I am constantly encumbered in battle. This is going to take a long time to get used to. Now you don’t dodge to get away. Feels like walking away would achieve the same result, unless you put points in for the armor buff perk.

Not a fan so far.

2 Likes

Yes, PCs have the same issue. When I want to do that, I have to build a whole bunch of sandstone walls, pillars and wedges to make it work. If I don’t forget, I’ll do a tutorial on how to make that work pretty consistently. But yeah, it’s a HUGE pain in the nethers.

They have stated repeatedly that there will be a grace period. I don’t think they’ll change that.

2 Likes

I love tutorials and looking foward to seeing it!

Here’s a question I don’t think I’ve seen asked yet…

Once they start deleting the over the (ridiculously low) limit thralls, will legacy thralls be deleted in preference to level able thralls?

2 Likes