Currently reviewing posts for the Bugs & Issues list. Since this one requires a little bit more info I’m just going to put a pin in it.
But I think this is a pre-existing bug.
The thrall was a capture, of course. Had it on the wheel, then put it in a box for future use.
Okay, for the third time: how did you capture it? Was it by knocking out a tavern patron? If not, where did you capture it?
In days gone by, you used to be able to knock out the Stygian Soldiers in the purge camp and put them on the wheel.
Age of Heroes launched and they would universallt turn into Geralt of Rivia (the null white hair male model). Seen similar issues with tavern patrons.
Also, on occasion, if the thrall on the rope disappears for some reason (teleporter malfunction, such that going thru the trans stone sometimes lags the one you have in the chain and they seem to stretch back to where you port from) and you put the vanished rope wearer on the wheel, boom, the null model.
Now this one takes an extremely dim view of how popular it is to make huge numbers of humanoids unthrallable.
It’s been bad and absurd ever since the bandits in Sepermeru got thonk immunity. Clucking why? It’s not like they even have impressive stats (anymore) as followers. At least Prowlers show up in the tavern every so often.
To call bonking tavern guests an exploit is… Disingenuous a touch. Those who deep dive the code know it is not supposed to happen… But how in the cluck is the regular players supposed to know which people can be enslaved and which ones can’t, and which ones aren’t meant to be but who can anyways and result in these things?
The clucking British navy experienced it’s greatest dominance off of exactly beating and enslaving sailors in port town bars. See impressed into service for those who got the Corgi version of English history. Or Shanghaied for the purple lotus gas version. There is no reason in game one would think the tavern guests are off limits, and historically out of game the pub was a primary source of prisoners with jobs.
But back on topic, when the system either loses track of which thrall it is processing, or processes one that, for whatever random reason, it is not supposed to, it seems to offer up the Gerald of Trivia bleached hair model.
This is anecdotal, not a deep code dive. Just observation of an ongoing trend.
Exploits are unintended, therefore it is not standard practice for devs to insert notifications into the game that tells people which things should not be done.
You can figure out if something is an exploit by observing an obvious intended way of doing things, such as seeing that you can pay money to hire a patron, and then learning that you can not do that and get away with doing something far easier with no risk at all and think to yourself, wait… this is clearly too easy, surely they did not intend for this.
Another way to learn that something is an exploit is by seeing someone informing you that it is an exploit. Because it is an exploit.
What would be very unhelpful toward realizing something is an exploit is if someone said calling an exploit an exploit is disingenuous.
Consistency is funny.
See, given that humanoid NPCs in this game can generally (unless dialogue NPCs) be beaten into submission and enslaved, the default assumption should be the dialogue NPCs for hire should not be bonkable, but everyone else in the pub should be fair game. Reasonable supposition based on how things work in the game is that these are slave stock and anything interfering with that is a bug.
They don’t start aggressive, but neither do the NPCs in Sepermeru.
The assumption that, by default, the thrall fodder in the tavern should not be valid for enslavement is the exception. And requires more assumption on the part of the devs intentions than expecting them to work like the majority of other humanoid NPCs
But, point conceded, an exploit is whenever the game is played in a way other than what the devs intended. Which in this case they have made no effort to communicate in game.
Edit: Removed 12.5% of unnecessary snark
That was still possible some weeks ago. Don’t remember the time, but I saw it in a video, tried it, and it worked. They don’t have good stats, so I fail to see any exploit value in it, but it’s funny.
I always thought it was
a.) intended, just clunky, and
b.) totally appropriate to knock out tavern guests.
Kidnapping tavern patrons has a long and valued tradition, and fits very well into the world of Conan. One of Howard’s stories is about that - cannibals capturing guests of a suspiciously cheap tavern.
That’s MY tavern in the Exiled Lands.
The cynic in me is tempted to say that we just went from “a touch” to “bonked on the head” on the disingenuity scale. However, my previous experiences on these forums have taught me that people will sometimes read things very “creatively”, or write things that sound like something completely different from what they meant. So let’s assume you wrote this in good faith.
Yes, exploits are unintended. An exploit is an unintended emergent property of gameplay that breaks the normal gameplay rules. The key word here is “normal”, which means that yes, devs very much do “insert notifications” into the game about things you aren’t supposed to do. Most of the time, these things are nowhere near as crude as actual written notifications. A well-designed game will have its gameplay rules and conventions conveyed to you organically, without big honking signs “HEY PLZ DON’T DO THIS KTHX”.
Which leads us to @LostBrythunian’s complaints about how Conan Exiles is far from a stellar example of this, because of Funcom’s legendary propensity for half-assed changes to the gameplay. Here are some bonk-related things I learned over the years of playing the game:
- You can bonk human any NPC on the head and put them on your wheel of pain to use them as thralls.
- Oh, wait, (now) you can’t do that to NPCs that have the dialog UI. Got it.
- What’s up with these bandit dudes? Huh, it seems (now) you can’t bonk some non-dialog NPCs, either.
- It looks like bonkable NPCs have a bonk bar in the UI and non-bonkable don’t. Glad we sorted that out!
- Hm, this NPC has a bonk bar in the UI, but I can’t bonk it.
I could go on, but either my point is clear, or it’s not worth belaboring anymore.
See, I used to believe that, too. But then I found myself explaining that fence foundation stacking is not an exploit, because it was explicitly labeled as “not an exploit” by a Funcom employee, only to have a different Funcom employee suddenly declare it an exploit.
I know we don’t like that kind of nuance here, but both things can be true. Funcom made a pig’s breakfast out of the gameplay conventions and muddled up player’s expectations. The abstruse nature of those gameplay conventions is what makes it disingenuous to call this an exploit, but it’s also technically true.
If it’s important for you, the thrall, a T4 entertainer, was bonked at Sinner’s Refuge, then put on the wheel, then put in storage for future use. The one specific to the aforementioned bug was not available for hire in my tavern, was bonked, put on the wheel and immediately turned into the generic male. I then took the converted female entertainer that was in storage and when place into the world also turned into the generic male. Hope that clears things up for you, a.k.a. per my last email.
No, it’s not, since I’m not currently affected by this bug. But it might be important to the devs, if anyone from Funcom is even bothering to gather these reports and pass them on to the devs. Which means that it might be important to you, if your intention is to get the bug fixed 
Okay, so to double-check if I understand this correctly, the bug repro would be something like this:
- Knock out a female non-tavern NPC.
- Put it on the wheel of pain and wait for it to convert to a thrall.
- Store the thrall.
- Knock out a tavern NPC.
- Put it on the wheel of pain and wait for it to convert to a thrall.
- Place the thrall in the world.
- Observe that it turned into the “null thrall”.
- Take the thrall from step 3 out of storage and place it in the world.
- Observe that it also turned into the “null thrall”.
Are those steps correct?
Have you tried it since the most recent update.
The soldiers in the purge base, as well as now Relic Hunter Treasure Seekers (Archers) are immune to the truncheon and the chloroform.
RHTS (Fighters) are still fair game for now.
As far as why?
This one could make wild suppositions for comedy purposes, but in earnest, that would be speculation. This one lacks the psionic power to steal the secret from their minds and (oh and this is the uncomfortable part) lacks the mythos score to make rhyme or reason out of most Funcom decisions.
This one chalks it up the the same reasoning that commanded the hearth “foundations” in the Vanir off grid prepped bush-craft build set to not work like any other foundations and to have such awkward placement heights and restrictions.
Funcom do Funcom things.
Is it a bug?
Is it a feature?
We won’t know until they say, if they say.
And even then they are prone to retraction.
There ya go.
And to expand if I may be so bold, important for me to understand in logging on the player Bugs & Issues list.
Truly no one has to tell me exactly but… it helps.
I tried on my server today can knock them out but if don’t get them with a binding fast they die was experimenting