Thralls are a bit bugged right now. Been doing some testing on my server.
If you fill up the inventory with junk to force the weapon to be equipped, you will continue to be annoyed by the not enough inventory space message spam. Sometimes relogging will clear the message.
Thralls, with full inventories to force the weapon to stay equipped, will not attack enemies.
Archer thralls will run up to enemies and fist fight them if there is a clear path to the enemy. Only way to get that bow to pop out and shoot someone is to pedestal or encase the archer with structures to block the movement pathing.
Melee thralls will not equip shields.
(already known) Thralls will fall through player made objects to the ground below sometimes resulting in death of the thrall (falling on palisades being prime example). Only workaround found is to break the blocks thrall falls through and build a new one; gets expensive quick.
Placement and rotation of thralls doesn’t always work. End up looking in the wrong direction.
Changing location of thralls can result in this painfully slow movement through other game objects.
Thralls have a really bad habit of just getting up and walking away in a random direction unless movement path is blocked.
Bearer thralls have a really bad of trying to fist fight everything. Inventory space is the same as other thralls. Could just take a fighter with me to achieve the same results.
Performer thralls sometimes will dance away from they original location and get themselves killed. Repositioning the performer to the original placement location sometimes only results in the performer moving back to the new location.
Breaking thralls on any wheel of pain only take half the time. Leave the taskmaster slot empty. Place all the thralls in the wheel. Once the thralls are 50% broken, place a T3 or T4 taskmaster in the slot to instant complete breaking all thralls.
Thralls are incapable of dodging and incapable of breaking player stun locks.
NPCs
Enemy NPCs cannot go through open doorways, as in the doorway has no door attached to it. This allows players with spears to poke to death any boss or NPC that gets hung up on that doorway.
NPC pathing around rocks and other in game objects hangs them up allowing players to effectively dodge and heal.
NPCs can’t dodge or break stun locks.
Black hand area has observed invisible NPCs that attack players.
Some NPCs aren’t really there. You can walk through them, but not interact or attack them.
Black hand area has three locations that so long as the NPC stands in those locations, you cannot harm them but they can kill the crap out of you. This is more of a map bug and not a NPC issue, but it directly affects the NPC so I mentioned it here. The tent game objects are the suspected cause.
NPCs will walk by player made objects and ignore them; only attacks players.
KIlling or knocking unconscious causes them to disappear from view or fall under the map. Player has to immediately relog to refresh the render location of the fallen NPC.
The PURGE
Fun and crazy when it works, but more often it is a whimper of failure. Only encountered one full purge of multiple waves (and I died on the 4th wave.)
Spawns attackers under the map.
Doesn’t spawn anything then concludes a few minutes later.
Spawns one wave then concludes.
NPCs of the purge don’t do doorways.
NPCs of the purge will attack some random wall and ignore you and thralls until attacked; unless you get really close they won’t stop what they are doing and come after you.
NPCs of the purge will run up to a structure and stand there; doing nothing.
NPCs of the purge will toss pyro orbs at their own feet doing the obvious NPC suicide.
NPCs of the purge will spawn and not move. Will stand there doing nothing so long as you don’t aggro them.
NPCs of the purge commit mass suicide without ever spawning in where you can see them and rain loot down in front of your door.
NPCs of the purge commit mass suicide and dead bodies fall from the sky. (my personal favorite.) There is loot on the bodies.
NPCs of the purge will spawn on top of you or in my case on the floor above and start killing the thralls located there. I was located underneath in that screenshot. After taking out two waves I placed spikes to prevent further spawns in that spot. Empty loot bags started falling to the ground after 5 minutes. Few minutes after the loot bags spawned in the purge concluded.
In the middle of this all this, my thralls fell through player made foundations and ceilings to the ground below. None of the thralls equipped their bows. All of them tried to fist fight the purge NPCs.
After the purge concluded the server had to be stopped and restarted to fix the thralls falling through the foundations and ceiling tiles.
If the option for allowing a player to build during a purge is enabled, a player can defeat the entire purge once they know the exact spot of where the purge NPCs spawn by placing barriers or spikes at the purge spawn location. It will kill any follow up wave before they render in and drop empty loot bags.
Thanks cattibria for trying to help here.
However what we want to know, is if the devs are aware of these issues and if they are working on it.
As you are a moderator of funcom, i’m sure you have a way to find the answer.
Thanks
Depends on when you broke the thrall will determine what equipment they come with. Older archer thralls left in storage do not come out with melee weapons when you place them. My list was compiled prior to the addition of archer thralls being given melee weapons and being able to use them.
The next question that I have is whether or not the Tier 4 Heirs of the North, Freya and Lian, are suppose to have wildly different HP pools. Lian is 1,350 HP and Freya is 1,800.
Thralls will frequently use their fists even if they have both melee and ranged weapons in their inventories.
Mine typically starts off using her bow, then she’ll fist fight for a bit, then switch to her spear, periodically switching back to fists.
Been giving this problem some thought on how to solve it.
A menu system for giving orders to thralls is needed.
Must include aggressive and passive modes. Keep the load bearers from charging the enemy for example. Passive mode would cause thralls to move away from the threat.
Have a target list as well as things to ignore. No sense in a thrall chasing after rabbits.
Weapon priority selection to include disabling fist fighting for combat thralls.
Add waypoint mapping for thralls to patrol along.
Add a home waypoint for a thrall to guard so if the thrall moves off it for any reason the thrall will return back to that point.
Other items of note that should be added.
Add the option for thralls to seek cover or return fire when attacked by players at extreme range.
Add the ability for thralls to use first aid items.
The use of the horn or warhorn when attacking or being attacked causes the thralls to merge towards the point of conflict (a preselected wp or where ever there is a thrall being damaged.)
Add the ability for thralls to dodge attacks and break locks.
The player needs to be able to rotate a thrall in place to fix errors in placement. As it stands now players have to move the thrall to a different location before trying again.
A whistle system like Ark has would be great. My thrall stops fighting a lot of the time and after combat she’ll chase down passive creatures. Being able to whistle orders would help a lot.
I have experienced many of the issues listed in the original post.
The worst issues, in my opinion, are Archer thralls refusing to use their bows, thus rendering them not really archers. We basically have a game of fighter thralls, and pretend fighter thralls.
The other worst issue is the fact that NPCs will not equip weapons period. They just fist fight.
Lastly, your bodyguard thralls are extremely slow to respond and aggro to help out. If I get attacked, or am actively fighting something, many times my thrall just stands there and ignores the battle happening 2 feet away.
Maybe it’s good that archers won’t use their bows sometime. I have a dancer traveling companion that’s always shooting me in the back with poisonous arrows - when she decides to not use her fists, that is.
All of this is part of the City system that was postponed due to the AI not being robust enough.
I have older thralls that have been placed for over 6 months and some pulled out of storage. All of them will fight and equip weapons as needed. The archers will start with the bows and switch as needed. Other than that, the all stand around looking bored.
The AI over the last 8 months has change remarkably fast for the game. This is something that players that have been player since last have seen. With the AI presently we cannot give the thralls orders. This was explained in one of the Dev streams late last year when the announcement was made for systems that were not going to make the release date due to lack of time. Even though the thralls do have a great sense to defend their leader and base, they are not smart enough for complex orders or commands.
