Warmaker's Sanctuary - Bad night. Lost everything three times. Somehow depressed now

Conan Exiles General Discussion
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I play on 1732 PvE official. I’ve been playing since early access and have really had a wonderful time in this game. The bugs and little issues have generally been things I’ve kept up on so that I can avoid them. I play on a PvE server because I get attached to my little builds, try to make them pretty and want to keep what I earn or generate through effort.

I was pretty excited to get into the Warmaker’s Sanctuary. I’m a solo player - partially by choice and partially because my server is dead. I knew going in that I’d have to be careful and may even risk losing my Captain thrall and would have to even possibly have to get all his items and carry them out. I prepared for it.

What I didn’t prepare for was ol’ Captain deciding not to attack at all, which we killed the previous day with little issue - when Captain was doing his job. I tried to continue the fight hoping he would figure it out. Then I died (I just couldn’t get away). I wasn’t happy but I licked my wounds and put on new kit to get in there and recover my gear - gear that I had been farming for weeks from the Unnamed City. I went back in and recreated the sanctum key and went back to the spot where my corpse should have been, to no avail. The Champion was nowhere to be seen either. Looking around for my corpse the Champion appeared out of nowhere and pinned me against a wall and killed me again. Strangely there was no captain. However it did seem like he was following me in some invisible form because I had trouble getting through doors and so on. Trying to work down the problem I tried attacking simple mobs and sure enough Captain reappeared behind me. I gave him a few more mobs to see if he would attack, which he did. So now, Captain was back in action and I felt confident to get back in and recover my gear. I went through the process again and again there were no corpses and the Champion was not in her place. She appeared out of nowhere again and proceeded to beat me about the face and neck. This time I was not as effective. However I was just there to recover my gear and items, which were not there again. I died again, which was my fault. I shouldn’t have tried to find my gear because it clearly wasn’t going to manifest itself in game. Again, working down the problem I thought if I killed the Champion, my gear would appear as some sort of mechanic trigger.

Like you, I play this game to enjoy myself and nerd out. I get invested in MMOs and I have a need to play games like this. This is still, hands down the best survival game I’ve ever played. I have a private server that I play on also. But I earned my way in vanilla on 1732. It means a lot to me. However, lately it seems like Conan Exiles has receded into early access level bug density. Now, I know that’s not fair to say because obviously it’s not accurate. However the bug density as it pertains to my daily experience in game and how many obstacles to gameplay occur for me personally is my metric. I’m already dealing with a strange decay bug on one of my builds (in the same spot on different servers) that I’ve given up on getting attention to by the devs. Losing everything tonight, it just saps my enthusiasm for the game. Sure I can just go on my server and admin the hell out of my character and carry on. But on 1732 it meant so much that I earned it. And where do I “file a ticket” about the incident? We’re on our own out there. Even if the server is having issues it takes a group effort to get it noticed.

I left ARK over things like this (however if far greater quantities and potency) because my time is so precious and I’m not as resilient as some when it comes to powering through the shortcomings of the game I’m playing. Which, is why I don’t even bother with PvP. I don’t have the heart or stomach for that. I know that about myself. Losing so much tonight really hurt. It’s irrational and lame. I’ll regret making this post in the morning. But my goodness, in a market saturated with “battle royales”, lootcrates (“surprise mechanics”) and Early Access purgatories, Conan Exiles really stood out and offered me the distraction I need.

Hey, guys. Thanks for listening. I really needed to vent. I hope the game is giving you joy and finding you new friends. If you’re a solo player, no matter your skill level, be careful. The game will work against you at random times. It’s not your fault. Again, thanks for hearing me. I appreciate it.

  • Kimi
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Thanks, Shadoza. Your comments were aligned with my thinking as I was looking. But I kept checking the log and when I saw that my corpse/lootbag had decayed and my items were lost, I logged out for the night and possibly for good.

Thanks for your support however. Your little kitty icon is adorable.

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@Kimiko I have personally enjoyed the dungeon and find it great for the following reasons:

  • a bit more challenging
  • gives you a reason to return (farming the pieces for the armor, buffs, etc)
  • tons of new loot and recipes
  • the traps are pretty funny as well and overall the way the dungeon is designed.

However, I must agree with you on some points. While the dungeon itself is great, the experience gets spoiled by AI not attacking, death means you likely losing all because it is almost impossible to get back in time to retrieve your items, bugs such as the boss disappearing and glitching.

The updates are great, new content is always welcome but it is time for the developers to focus on the AI and whatever is causing the bodies to disappear. Fighting a challenge and getting victorious at it is exciting but losing stuff due to bugs and glitches is really demotivating and even frustrating. The bugs and glitches amongst other reasons are what made move to private servers as you can at least recover what you have lost due to bugs which you have no control over.

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Thanks for sharing this, @Kimiko. While it sucks that you had to go thru this, it’s a valuable warning for the rest of us. Sounds like maybe waiting for another patch might be advisable before I go exploring. :grimacing:

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Sorry, @Kimiko, and thanks for letting the rest of us know. I’ve been exactly where you are, but for the Midnight Grove when it first came out. I lost two sets of flawless epic armor and weapons, and would have given up until I realized I could figure out the dungeon in solo mode before giving it another try. Like you, I am a solo player, so these things take a little more planning for me. That’s how I plan to tackle Warmaker’s Sanctuary.

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Sorry to hear about your loss of items, always hurts when that happens. A little tip for the next time you want to try out a dungeon is to make a single player game, turn on admin and make the toon the same as your multiplayer one. Can test out the whole dungeon for bugs or even if you should try doing it with your current gear. I find this to be useful as can find out if it’s even worth my time with what you get as a reward

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Take a day or two to breath real air, then come back refreshed and determined. Most of us have been where you are and we know your pain. Everything comes into prospective after a break.

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Hey @Kimiko

Apologies for the frustration and hope you can recover from the loss. We’re collecting feedback about the new dungeon and features so our team can improve it with upcoming patches. Hope you’re still with us once they come out :slight_smile:

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Remember the good old days. . . When MMOs actually charged a monthly fee and GMs/DEVs would actually appear IN GAME to answer your trouble ticket and help you out on the spot???

Yes I am old. . . been playing games forever. But the old maxim remains true, you get what you pay for. I really think we are losing many things in the free-to-play era, and I hope it swings back to monthly fees at some point. I think people will be pleasantly surprised by the better customer service, more frequent content updates, decrease in bugs, etc.

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A few years ago I purchased a large amount of EA stock as a Christmas gift to myself. It’s been a very good investment and I made the purchase against the advice of the people who manage my money for me. It made me feel smart. The best part of the experience has been getting to ask questions and getting the actual answers rather than some carefully and strategically crafted answer. I give a lot of unsolicited input which seems to be tolerated thus far. The thing I bring up the most is how much I miss the BIG GAMES like World of Warcraft and Old Republic, games that one can lose themselves in and waste portions of the day in. I’m always told that those games are of a past era, if anything mobile is the future. I’m told people are wary subscriptions but yet they are susceptible to being nickle and dimed by micro transactions and loot crates. It bothers me because I’m being told what I want to play. I don’t agree with that doctrine. Yet, my stake in EA keeps growing and growing. So who’s right? The gamer dollar I spend as my voice and my vote, is the same dollar having babies in my EA investment.

It’s a strange time for gamers. We’re fed a steady diet of trends (zombie modes, battle royales), subversive monetization (surprise mechanics) and influencers whoring themselves out so publishers can ■■■■■■ up that sweet, sweet age 13 - 17 parentally subsidized gamer dollar. The problem I’ve seen is that the aging gamer, age 25+ seems to be left out of the equation. We have less time to play and when we do we demand quality. It’s much easier to crap out unpolished, buggy and heavily monetized titles to kids because they are subsidized players with different values and motivations. Younger people tend to play games in keeping with trends. My nephew was all about Fortnite until it was out of fashion. He’s also a rich kid, so he gets all the lootcrates and microtransaction store fodder he wants. However there’s little difference between him and his peers because a lot of kids can weasel a few bucks out of mom and dad for games and game related purchases. Even the kids on a budget playing on Xbox seem to be able to keep up with the trends.

I need to write shorter posts. Especially when they’re just responses. But I hope you get my point. - We’re just in a different era and we have to be more demanding when it comes to quality and substance. Now, I’m not saying go out and spend 300USD on a Star Citizen buy in and support a dream that my be simply that. But we also need to stop pre-ordering games based on a nice announcement trailer and some scripted “gameplay” videos.

My God I’m old.

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I remember the days when MMOs charged a monthly fee and had no customer support. Conan Exiles is free to play after you buy ther product, and we can at least contact the devs via the forums, even though I am disappointed that their customer service is otherwise unresponsive to issues regarding the game.

I’ve learned to be cautious regarding all new games and all new content, no matter who develops or publishes the game. All new releases tend to be more or less game-breakingly buggy, so I’ll happily let the greater community discover the problems and the devs to fix the problems before diving in. Consider Conan Unconquered, for example: I bought it on the day of release, but haven’t played it yet. There are few games where I bother to spend by valuable gaming hours beta-testing and bug-hunting and otherwise doing the QA people’s job. Conan Exiles is one of the few I find worth the time and effort.

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This Dungeon is not for solo play…It was designed for a group of players to explore. I had a great time designing this dungeon with Funcom. Sorry you feel the way you do. I suggest you play with friends as it makes for a great experience. Or if you have admin power you could reduce the difficulty for solo play so you can enjoy it and then bounce your settings back up to where you had them previously. :wink:

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I’m sorry to hear about that bad experience @Kimiko and maybe I can help prevent that in the future.

What weapons was ol’ captain using each time?

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And did they attempt to switch weapons on their thrall at some point? That’s virtually guaranteed to break their AI. I’m guessing that once they’ve equipped and used a certain weapon, if it’s subsequently switched out, it can’t find it in its inventory anymore, gets confused and just stands there like a turnip. Restarting the game is the only thing I’ve found to fix it for certain.

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I haven’t been able to get a sword of Crom, which is my target item for him. In the meantime I’ve been running him with a blade of the adventurer. Full black keep armor too. We kill everything we see with time and smart maneuvering…when he’s doing his job. In fact, we killed the Arena Champion the previous day with moderate effort. I’m a good player. I’ve had too many near impossible encounters thrown at me, both solo and as part of a team, to fail as bad as I did that night in the Warmaker’s Sanctuary without having crazy bugs, which is what in fact happened.

Do you have some wisdom about thrall gear, Ranson? What do you like to run with? Are you using healing arrows on your thrall too? Thanks in advance for the help.

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Not true in my experience. They always equip the weapon, but just stand there in combat mode making growling noises, and blowing bubbles. On that same note, shields keep disappearing into my thralls secret pocket. I give them a shield, they equip it sometimes, sometimes not, but when I look in their inventory there is no shield. Putting the sword in thier hand and waiting for them to go non combat mode usually returns the shield.

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It’s weird, right? Everyone eventually sees the same bug but our workarounds tend to vary in effectiveness.

By the way, thanks to both you and Megatron for posting. It’s nice that people like the two of you, Shadoza and others sorta came to my rescue the other night in this post. I just needed to vent and you all did a great job listening. Big ups.

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Sorry you had such a bad experience. I have had the same on a few occasions to the point where I said, “I am DONE!” and walked away for a few days. I started playing the EA version around release in February of 2017 and its been a bit of a hair-puller sometimes, but the game is a magnet to me and always draws me back. I have over 5000 hours in game time and still log in every night, sometimes just to chat with everyone on my server. The community aspect is the best part by far.

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They equip the weapon, but since it’s changed, it’s like it has no idea what to do with it. Not sure what’s going on internally, but it’s definitely broken behavior and not difficult to reproduce.

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I’ve given my thrall a mix of heavy armor and never seem to have any problems with that and until recently he has always used a lifeblood spear. We were the problem solver for any dungeon, any clan mate trying to solo new content or a new ally being overwhelmed by a purge, need help - problem solved (He did most of the heavy lifting). A high hp thrall with the lifeblood spear was ABSOLUTELY OP for PvE content. Mobs with healing prevention could be more difficult but I never had to use healing arrows.
My favorite was Captain but then swapped to bearers. After this patch nerfing bearer damage and lifeblood spear, I tried swapping back to captain with a SoC and that did NOT work. I’m almost positive that thrall stamina is a mechanism now. Volcano fighter thrall seems to work well with just a Papyrus Blade I believe is what I gave him. Honestly it is still a mystery why the AI is suffering currently but their behavior is unpredictable now and that is frustrating many players.
I would not make Sword of Crom (SoC) your goal any longer if you want the best thrall weapon, and @JJDancer seemed to have had similar problems with Adventure Sword. Although this makes no sense to me because I can see no signs of it having extra stamina drain.
Healing arrows currently won’t wonk on dancers (known bug) but they fight pretty well. Wish I had more answers for you @Kimiko but I’m really asking more questions ATM. Best wishes and hope it gets better

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