Thralls get stuck on everything

Game mode: Single-player
Type of issue: Bug
Server type: PvE


Thralls and npc’s in general get stuck on so much of the environment. Sometimes they “teleport” back to you, but sometimes they do not. Same goes for enemies. Often you can just stand in shallow water or find some area after running around on horseback for a while where the enemy will just stand there and die. It takes all the fun and threat from the game and makes it very frustrating.

I have had a thrall get stuck now twice in about an hour of play where the only thing I could do to fix it was engage the admin console and teleport someplace and hope the thrall came with because I could not set them to guard and thus, pull them to a different space so they could move.


Please provide a step-by-step process of how the bug can be reproduced. The more details you provide us with the easier it will be for us to find and fix the bug:
Bridges, near some buildings, water, near cliffs, near harvestable items (stone, iron, etc.).

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Hey @Morgander

Thanks for the feedback. We’re aware of pathfinding issues with NPCs and we’re looking at ways to improve them in the future. Apologies for any frustration until then.

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When?? These forums have posts from years ago where funcom talk of the future. When is the last time that funcom released a patch that wasn’t DLC or some other paid service related??? If you lot keep dragging the chain especially on the console side your not going to have to worry because you won’t have any customers left. Conan is a great game, but I don’t think it’s worth waiting years and years for funcom to finish floundering and actually wrap up some decent bug and exploit fixes instead of only constantly concentrating on getting things done that will get you paid. You’ve already been paid, how about fixing everything that you’ve already been paid for first. Who knows maybe actually delivering what your customers have paid for will be good advertising for Funcom and convince a few more people to spend money here.

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The current state of things actually is the “fix”. After longstanding complaints about poor pathing and general AI glitches, they made a concerted effort to make it worse and released patch 2.2 featuring everyone’s favorite new thing “Thrall in a Wall”. I can only dream of what 2.3 brings!

Conan is an amazing foundation for a great game, but I wish someone competent would take it over and actually make a great game.

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Thanks for the acknowledgement. We, the community, agree, that AI pathing needs some attention.
(I don’t think I’ve ever gotten the chance to speak on behalf of everyone before, but I’m fairly certain this is a universal opinion)

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Thralls became more… stupid. Last playtrough I had no human company I did not notice that. But now me and my slave were wandering in the celestial plaza area where the steep steps are. They now got stuck ON STAIRS too.

Can you fix the issue with dragons too ? thrall are always getting under the environment…

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Seriously, I’m trying to play single player, so I have a higher dependency on my thrall. It’s basically unplayable… it took me all night to kill the Red Dragon… thrall and dragon constantly stuck and going underground.

I spend most of my time in this game trying to manipulate my thrall into getting unstuck. It’s so incredibly frustrating.

I’ve been playing this since the early days, I don’t expect it to be fixed anytime soon or EVER. But please, is there some kind of admin command I can use to warp the thrall back to me? I don’t want to cheat, I just want to finish the narrative. The game is an absolute work of art, but this is just ruining it for me.

Literally a about a month ago.

Not pointing fingers or anything of the sort, I just wanna comment here to provide some context:

Yea. For whatever reason, pathfinding in the silver mine broke horribly after the release of 2.1. The scorpions were completely unresponsive and followers (such as mounts and thralls) would not follow me into the silver mine. I don’t remember what hotfix this got fixed in, but in the process of fixing this, the whole issue of “Players can build in the silver mine” was introduced. Which was rapidly–thank you BTW-- fixed in another hotfix.

However, since 2.2 the AI has been VERY bad.

Prior to the Followers update a while back, the AI in Conan was pretty dang bad, but I have REALLY appreciated all of the work that has gone into the AI over the past year and a half and overall it has improved substantially. I am saying this to provide context to the fact that the AI has been relatively solid since the followers update, up until 2.2. Right after 2.2 things got REAL Janky. With the kind of issues that people are describing: “Must Place on Walkable Floor”, Thralls Getting Stuck on Objects, AI response time slowed way down, etc.

I am hopeful that this is a minor setback for the Conan AI and that this issues will be addressed in the future. I would like to thank Funcom for their hard work on Conan and mostly point out that the purpose for this post is to provide some context on the order of events regarding AI leading up to this patch.

Furthermore: I would like to suggest that the AI devs take a careful look at whatever Navmesh Agent Settings that may have changed in the 2.2 release.

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Yes, the AI for thralls now doesn’t teleport to you anymore. So when they do get stuck, you have to backtrack to them, use the move and guard function and place them somewhere on terrain, then order them to “Follow” you again, otherwise they will not move.

The return command only has them forget the previous “move to” order, and no longer works as prior to the point where the thralls decided to take overland routes and cheat their way to you. Now they don’t, because I assume they were bogging down the game to where it was unplayable. I would rather be able to play the game than have runaway AI code, so I’m okay with this.

You have to be very careful now when taking thralls outside, they are very prone to situations where they get stuck in terrain, can no longer zip to you, and get gibbed. If you have to run away, an NPC camp will chase your thrall until they kill it, sometimes crossing zones.

If you are running alone, they give up and return to their previous spots - this applies mainly to archers, they give up easily when you creep up on them. You take a few steps back and they will reset. But if you have your thrall out, be ready to run to the ends of the map. They will never give up trying to kill you or the thrall.

This is why… Having them get stuck in terrain is such a big issue. Also them not being able to swim in water is a problem. Because they can’t follow you until you get to the other side.

I haven’t played with a horse + companion yet. But it should be even better now. :slight_smile:

Seriously though, I have noticed attempts at making the AI more responsive and better alert to reacting to your presence and overall I feel path finding has really improved, but the “stuck thrall” has nothing to do with path finding, it’s just a glitch that occurs once in a while that ruins the whole experience.

Also, NPCs and thralls equipped with a shield, sometimes just hold the shield out and stop. And…that’s it. They just stand there with their shield out, waiting for something to hit their shield. Until it does, they don’t…do…anything…else. There is a glitch where they get stuck in “block” stance, they are not actually reacting to anything anymore.

The “shield block” stuck is the other variant of the stuck thrall issue, which is not as severe. They eventually recover from it. But the serious one is the one where the thrall does not move anymore and stops responding until you directly micro manage the situation (even if you can’t because there is combat).

It’s really hard to have an AI follow a player around, since a player does not move like an AI and is not hindered by rules or terrain. It’s quite a challenge. Especially since in CE, a player can climb and swim. I think you guys have made great strides to improve it but it’s still a formidable hill to climb.

Just played AC Valhalla and followers jump through windows, climb walls and rooftops, even swim or mount on the same horse as you or a different horse if they have one. Then I return to Conan Exiles and my follower get’s stuck into a fist-sized rock and stands there for minutes.
They have to disable collision channel for thralls vs other objeects. Set thralls climb angle to 90 degrees so they can step over uneven terrain other meshes, and make thrall teleport on player command like a hold E command - regroup.
Also, please disable rhinos and dragons collision box, remove it completly.

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This sounds like overkill, but I love it as a temporary solution. I would much prefer this to the current frustrating jank.

Fighting this right now with a thrall suck in the mounds by a wooden walkway. will not move at all. tried moving the thrall, jumping down off the cliff running to an open spot where thralls can be placed and not to far away. then get the must be placed on a walkable surface. wtf. it is the damn ground. tried 10 times to move the thrall to a good location but still stuck. Ran all way back to my base and will not move. took all the gear off her and will try the rescue once the attack timer goes away.
so frustrating. what happened to a thrall teleporting to your side when you get to far away? why does this not work when they are stuck.

The problem here is that Funcom as an entity does not value the integrity of this product as much as it values its profit. As such, clearly development was not completed by release, but so as to stay within a schedule a project manager likely just made up that could be communicated to managemen and thus, to stakeholders, they decided to release unfinished. Then after release, a hierarchy was made of where to put development time into. This hierarchy included plans to make expansion content in which they could charge for, and to do free content patches and bug fixes.

It’s likely that an analysis was done, though it’s hard to say how much of one, to scrutinize the fallback of their sales and reputation for leaving certain bugs in tact, and for not providing free content that was promised and hinted at and prioritized those first, alongside the expansion packs, of course.

I work executive level in IT pertaining to software development life cycle and this is fundamentally how it works. The problem typically is that you need a moral element that goes beyond the typical business model of “value added” to hold any kind of integrity for what it is you’re producing. Integrity should be the priority, else you’re just a peddler of cheap wares with no intention besides profit.

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Summoning them would be something yes.

I mean, how many resources would we lose if we rescue them all the time?
My Mate and I just lost 2 level 20 Champion Armor wearing Fighters in The Dregs, not in the Dungeon itself, in the Staircase to the Entrance below the Altar.

I mean, even Skyrim and Fallout were able to fix it…
There are like 20 Bugs you could name with your Followers and they are still after 2 Years not really fixed. Like browsing through Reddit Topics and such, they are STILL there.

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