Thrall cages provide a reliable alternative way to acquire followers.
A map-wide check occurs every 10 seconds, which assigns prisoners to about 33% to 50% of available cages. The tier and profession of the prisoner (fighters, archers, entertainers, or crafters) is randomized.
Not been my experience, ever. I’ve only ever found people in one cage… on the entire map. Bonebreakers bend. That is it. Now I may actually have found another here or there but it’s such a unicorn experience “eyyyy ahhh ummmm ya” doraleous. But if I was to judge the rest by how dependable the one at bonebreakers is, the rest are broken.
That’s pretty annoying.
Playing single player, I have the completely opposite experience. I guess the single player experience is the intended situation, as it pretty much fits the description you quoted.
For example, I’ve been visiting the four thrall cages around New Asagard in the last weeks (two in the town itself, one at the watchtower to the south, one at Lian’s Watch). They’re usually all occupied, and I often get pretty neat T4 crafters out of them. As a very rough estimate, I’d say a 10% chance per cage. May have been lucky, but it sounds too different from your experience to be explained by RNG alone.
This is has been on going since they introde it. There are cages I have never found anyone in. The villages around the sink hole are great for harvesting sorcerers. I’ve slaughtered them by the dozen during head hunters. The cage in thugrs stand has never had anyone in it. I’m up to 18 keys on a fresh game. In the chat the other day some one said they had 43 keys, because the cages are empty 98% of the time.
Do those of us experiencing the opposite need to provide a counter-“proof” video showing the opposite to be true? I don’t know why multiple posters act like anyone finding them empty must just be mistaken. Not sure what’s so hard to believe about some of us always finding them empty.
Like Deacon wrote, this is how I’ve seen it since they implemented them, or before when they were only on Siptah. Not just making it up for fun!
Not sure if the changes about wild thrall spawning in the latest patch did anything to affect it, since I do recall on Siptah them being more often full the longer my server was up. But I’ll find out fast, since 98% of the time they are empty, and I got tons of keys.
Even though some (including me in single player) regularly find thralls in cages, it is very well possible that others (e. g. in multiplayer) don’t, and that that’s a bug.
This experience may also be caused by a very dedicated other player farming cages in multiplayer - if somebody else frees thralls very quickly, you’ll only meet empty cages afterwards. But the 19 unused keys e. g. Deacon describes hint at something else going on. That’s a suspiciously long chain of bad luck.
So please, let us show some trust in the reports, even if one hasn’t had the same experience.
And that is the issue. It’s like the gas mileage on car the dealer gives you. That is under peak driving conditions. NOT how people that are having issues with this play. So your proof falls flat in the face of reality. Like the projected gas mileage of cars.
“if anything is going to happen it’s going to happen out there” Capt. Ron.
What quite likely is happening is those cages only have residents after the server restart and once they are taken they never respawn.
I like this mechanic. I was chatting with some one that wanted to get their son in to the game but with out the slavery, think he was looking for a mod. But this mechanic offers you the option of being a hero and saving captured slaves rather then being an evil head thumping slaver. If it actually worked right.
I actually do this on my current playthrough: no slave-taking, only thralls from jailor, purge cages and the tavern (which contributed very little as I started on Siptah). It works great - in single player. Armorer were a pita, but it can be the same with slave-taking.
Is a great way to play imho; you can actually play a good guy or gal for once in this… uhm… morally flexible world.
I’m doing the same on my current run, it can bring back a bit more challenge to the game as well (no armorer or blacksmith at all yet - but I’ve got a T2 tanner… My best fighter so far is Sully, but that actually makes some sense in my view - better fighters would be less likely to be captured in the first place.)
But like you say, all of this is only an option if the mechanism works in the first place.
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