Hi guys, I started playing this game about a month ago with a group of friends, on a g-portal server. Since day one, I have occasional problems with levelled named thralls, who I can raise so far then when I take them out to level them higher, when ordered to attack they stand weapon and shield drawn and do…nothing. This has now happened with 5 thralls so far. I have avoided making them carry too many weapons so they don’t get confused, I have tried moving to an inaccessible location so they have to teleport to me, I have tried rebooting the server. This has never solved the problem. The last time I tried re-booting the server this worked for 2 attacks by my thrall then went back to bugging. I understand this is a well known and reported problem which has never been addressed. Does anybody have any tips or fixes to solve this problem? Many thanks for reading this!
In my experience they really don’t like shields… do they work fine without one otherwise?
Yes, the above post 
There really isn’t any reason to give them shields. It does not grant them any sort of protection, since shields in this game don’t have some passive armor bonus, they’re actually weapons and just alter combos and allows you to actively block a hit if you hold it up. (which is most likely the root of the issue - thralls not being taught how to use an offhand weapon).
In any case, my point is that it does not provide any benefit to the thralls since they lack the human intelligence to use it at the right time so all it does even when it works well is prolong the fights unnecessarily (your thrall holds up the shield… doesn’t take any damage, but doesn’t deal any damage either and then randomly lowers it at the totally wrong time and continues face-tanking the hits 
just like enemy NPCs do with your player when you attack ones equipped with shields 
)
The best thing to do is just give your thralls a 1 handed mace with no shield and they’ll be just fine.
It would be nice if it worked properly ofc, even despite the above, the bug has been in the game for ages.
Anyway, hope that helps somewhat
Many thanks for the suggestions I will try without shields and see what happens
Removing the shield should fix the issue like the others stated. But I’m going to go into a little bit of why this is, just in case someone is curious or someone does a search and the thread comes up.
Now I’m not an expert on this here. But from what I’ve been able to glean from the devkit on attacks is that thralls use a combo table. It has a list of attacks that it will randomly select from a pool. Usually it looks something like:
Light Light
Light Heavy
Heavy Light
Heavy Heavy
Then there is an advanced table that includes three and four combos alongside the ones I listed above. I believe this also applies to NPCs, and the tier may decide whether they get 2 or 3-4 attacks in (I don’t know which tiers get which).
When a shield, throwing axe, or a two hander is involved (daggers count) they will randomly have an attack that uses the special. When your thrall just blocks, its because it selected the special combo. Now here’s the stupid thing. It didn’t block because it felt it needed to block. Its blocking because it randomly decided to use special instead of another combo.
You’ll see this with NPCs with daggers… they’ll run up and then immediately backflip. If that same NPC had a shield, they would have run up and blocked. In fact I’m certain many of you have seen NPCs do this.
This is how all non-archer NPCs work. They run up, and randomly choose a combo to use. Special (which is backflip, blocking, throwing offhand axe, and two-handed sword) is considered a combo of its own that can randomly be selected.
It is entirely random, no logic or AI is involved. Just RNG.
At risk of going slightly off topic… but not really since this issue can cause thralls to not attack as well or in weird ways. Is when thralls use weapons like Javelins, Katana, Shortswords, and many of the unique weapons.
First we’ll talk Javelins. I think they use these somewhat correctly. But the issue is they will randomly use Light attacks (melee) and Heavy (ranged) regardless of where the target is. If they have a shield or other off hand then they will randomly special as well. Thralls with javelin and throwing axe have some of the most asinine attack decisions you will ever see.
Next is Short Sword. People might be looking at this one and wondering, ‘is that bugged?’ Well kinda. The Short Sword combo list just reuses the Broad Sword one. It will randomly do light and heavy attacks in combo and for the layman user it works. But if you know how Short Swords actually work, then you know your thralls do not use them optimally. For example there is a special combo of Heavy Attack followed by Four Light Attacks. This combo is NOT in the combo list for thralls and NPCs.
Same thing with the Katana (though this has been heavily mitigated recently). The special attack that Katana has requires someone to hold down special and then use light attack. Thralls will randomly use special and not do anything because Katanas use the Two-handed sword combo table. At long as they choose non-special combos, it works fine. But occasionally they will not attack because they use the special. If the attack wasn’t nerfed recently, it would be a bigger loss since thralls also do not do the special combo of 3 light attacks, followed by a special dash attack. Which would require an entry in the combo table to be light light light special light.
This also affects some of the combos used by offhanding throwing axes. Such as the Axe and Throwing Axe which has attacks beyond just four attacks.
Then the unique weapons like the Chakram and claws I believe just use dagger tables, which should work fine, and even with special. But I’m not 100% certain here.
I don’t know how thralls do with Two-Handed Axes. I imagine the random special causes them to go into block like with a shield.
Sorry for going on this tangent, but it helps players understand why thralls may not attack under some circumstances. And give them options that will avoid it. I pretty much use maces (mainly for the hyper armor) on my strength based fighter thralls and daggers on my agility ones.
Hope that helps.
Hi Guys, quick update- I have removed the shields and restarted the sever. Everything seems to be working fine for now so many thanks to all that contributed and made suggestions. I am in your debt.
I disagree about the shields, especially if you have a thrall doing tank duty. Watch the thrall. If attacked by something you want tanked, the thrall will actually use the shield just like a player. Now, I have had thralls hesitate, but often that is when their AGI rating justifies making them archers. However, I will give this a shot as I have had some issues, but most of the time, even when “guard me” is active and I attack something, my thrall stays put. Makes me do all the work, the dang slackers!
Yes, Purges, AI pathing, thrall behaviors – its all long overdue for an overhaul. One of the best, most loved systems in Conan Exiles desperately needs some love.
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