I’m very frustrated here. I can kill a corrupted croc with about 40% health remaining. A corrupted hyena kills me pretty fast. Take on a legendary creature? haha. Four hits I have to run and wait for his AOE. If its a bleed weapon I am aggroed immediately.
I don’t want to play this game watching my thrall do everything with both hands tied behind his back. Appreciate any tips.
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Just, in general, you need the best gear you can find/craft. You need to have the best healing items you can find/craft. You need to master your weapons of choice. You need to be very good at dodging or blocking, preferably both. Study your enemy. Learn his attacks, his timing, his maneuvers. Study yourself. Learn your attacks, your timing, your maneuvers. Study your weapons and the different weapon types. Learn when to apply bleed, when to sunder, when to cripple, when to poison. And arguably the most important, learn when you are bested and know when to flee.
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That is pretty much the best way to put it bbtech. Great post.
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Play with multiple people now. Before thralls or really before thralls became powerful, we had good movement to be able to dodge and dance around a boss or creature with fast weapon animations to get out attacks before the creature/boss being able to counter. This isn’t really do-able anymore so now u have to have either a good thrall with healing or have a group of people with you if u want to kill something in a reasonable amount of time.
Different defenses works against different bosses. Something like a Giant spider or Reaper Queen broadcasts its attacks so it can be easily dodged, even with the shorter dodge we have now. I use the Spider to train my low-level thralls because of how easy she is to kill, but I can solo her without taking any damage unless I screw up. (I don’t use the Reaper queen for thrall-training because the risk of the noob-thrall taking a full blast of poison puke in the face is too great.)
On the other hand, the Giant snake strikes so quickly that dodging its attacks is basically a matter of getting lucky. Not worth the stamina expenditure. Blocking with a shield is more effective.
Third, against some enemies, the dagger backflip is actually the best defense. Stab-slash-backflip, rinse and repeat, is basically in my muscle memory now.
And sometimes, tanking with armor, trading blows and trying not to die, works best. Not really against bosses because they will out-tank and out-hit you.
Which brings to the point, different weapons are more effective against some enemies, just like different defenses. Axes, spears, swords, daggers, two-handed swords all have their applications.
And finally, in the words of HEMA instructor Guy Windsor when he was asked what the best weapon to fight multiple opponents was: “an army”. When asked what he would bring with him to a medieval bar if he was expecting a fight to break out: “a group of friends”. If you’re playing in multiplayer, find other people with whom to team up. Not everything in the game is designed to take on solo (although you can if bringing a thrall is okay for you). If you’re playing Single-player, adjust difficulty (because some of the game’s features are balanced with groups in mind).
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As far as I know, thralls were always there. However a T4 Thrall like Dalanisa simply did the damage of the weapon she was equipped with (no STR bonus, no modifier) and she had about 750hp.
We didn’t take thralls out with us much. And they served as distractions during sieges.
This was during Beta and even into live for about the first year. How did we deal with some bosses? Well there was bosses. We had the Dregs Abomination, the Barrow King, Kinscourge, Degenerate, Witch Queen, and Undead Dragon. We also had the legendary chest world bosses.
There was a couple of different ways to deal with these.
You could have heavy armored it up, used a shield and one hander. You simply tanked the damage and healed when needed. Many used spears, that was a meta for a while.
Some of us used medium armor and got our dodge on. Dodge was a little better back then. Or rather I should say different. With 20AGI now, its not so bad.
But no, the game is definitely playable without thralls, even now. You need 20 AGI, period. AGI makes you recover from dodging quicker. The heavier the armor the more AGI you need for the same result. And then you need to learn how your opponents move and attack, know when to dodge, know when to block, and know when to simply walk out of an attack.
By the way, everything in the vanilla game is soloable. And without a thrall. The only true group content I’ve seen is in the Age of Calamitous mod. And even there, bosses like Rayth the Harbinger of Souls, and others I’ve already been able to solo. Those bosses have attacks that hit for 750-2500 damage. though admittedly its rough and I prefer to have friends. Or a group of thralls.
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Another thing is, are you playing solo or with friends? With just two people you can be under leveled and still kill most boss’s. As an example a friend an I took one several boss’s while still in our low 50’s. I had heavy armor, an axe to apply bleed when I could and a shield to block the majority of the damage. My friend mostly used a bow with Set arrows to get a nice stack of 10 poison damage then switch to another arrow type for some damage. Swap to healing arrows every now and then to keep me nice and healed up. And every now and then swap to daggers to get some extra bleed in. We were able to take down most boss’s we fought that way and had a nice stash of keys waiting for us to hit 60.
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most of what you list you have problems with were put in after thralls were made into followers. there was a time early on all they did was stand at your base. They did not follow you any where. the corrupted mini baosses were put in after that, as was most fo the “tougher” dugneons. The only “dungeons” pre thralls I can remember werethe Black Keep, Volcano one at the northern part, Barrow King, Witch Queen. all were solo-able, but it took cheesing them. gorup fighting them was easy as well. The world bosses were easy due to various quick ways to build archer towers/stair case kill zones.
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Got GuD. XD
I never used them really… even before Pets. Solo and the game was fine.
World bosses… didnt hit like trucks, so you could solo them…plus old roll system and stam drains. You could kill several of them pre-lv60.
As game changed over years… I was already battle harden, So alot of changes havnt hurt me to much. (some have…)
Most cases, I just send thrall after thrall at world boss these days to speed it up.
By time I get to later journey steps, I have Greater Wolf, or a nice looking thrall I take with. (specially with new roll and slow movement… )
I don’t feel its requirement… itlest to me since I’ve played so long. Its just easy button. It makes sense I guess, that people who use them from get go, feel so handicapped when they don’t.
Tip wise… Maybe I’m spoiled by Souls games, Monster Hunter and Dragons Dogma. I find CE combat laughable… It overwhelms player by numbers of enemies, bad hit boxes, and high damage. Dodging and being built to dodge and know enemy movements is really only tip I can think of solo player wise.
In SP, You basically cheat with admin panel, or go nutts with flock of thralls to counter “online stats” game has for world bosses. =/
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This is the cheese method in use when I started playing.
Then there was this method
They built elevated yog shrines and lured the bosses below it for insta kill.
Or build stairs up high and killed them with fall damage.
Before the thralls, bosses and legendary creatures had vastly less health. From what I’ve understood from reading old patch notes and discussions, the damage and health of thralls were massively increased due to thralls being too weak in PvP. Then, as a result of this making the thralls overpowering against bosses, they decided to increase the health of all bosses and legendary creatures.
The end result, of course, was that the players became essentially useless in boss fights and thralls became dominant.
Next patch should change that some. I really like the thralls and pets as a concept, but honestly, I don’t think they can ever balance this well if they want to focus on both PvP and PvE at the same time. It’s just not going to happen, simply because it’s such a vastly different situation when you put an AI vs AI and when you put a player vs AI.
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Did they?
Kinsource from June 2018:
Same health like now.
Croc Giant June 2018:
Had 76k hp. Now it has 17k… (since April 2019 - where thralls got strong. April 2019 was the time, when T4 bearer were the strongest thrall ingame).
Giant Snake June 2018:
53063hp
Giant Snake since April 2019: 18k hp…
I dont know how correct the pre April 2019 wiki data is. And I started in Feb 2019…
@PizzaNuggs Its Diablo2 all over again. What does that mean? You have to use a ludicrous amount of healing items, during boss fights.
This is considered kinda bad nowadays and lets be real, it is…
Boss fights should evolve around tactics. But thats the wrong game for that anyway 
I am still not sure, if bosses had low HP at all… But I only play since Feb/April 2019 and since then, the bosses are the same.
Hmm, last I played (in 2018) the bosses were definitely more killable for a 2-3 players without thralls than they are now for 2-3 players without thralls. Did something else change at some point or did I simply not realize how long the boss fights took even back then?
Many weapons were stronger. The whole serpentman-things got nerfed.
SoC had more dmg. Lying bastard sword had more dmg.
The 2 dual-wield swords had more dmg.
But its hard to say… Its a game and it was nearly >2 years ago. Normaly people tend to remember important stuff and not boss-battles 2 years ago 
We would need actual footage from YouTube or sth like that.
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This is actually still a fave of mine. Make stairs/Floor traps.
Thou one of my fave-faves, is making ramps up to Gaint kings Towers with Fire on them.
It kills everything, even yourself in God Mod. XD
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My memory of this is the opposite, actually. But that may be because two years I sucked and my character was less optimized for stats and equipment. Didn’t have nice toys such as Venom-infused daggers back then either.
I have a pre-nerf set of Whirlwind Blades with the original damage, and recently made a new set with the lower damage because I wanted to test how bad they are - they used to be one (well, two) of my favorite weapons. The reduction in performance isn’t as bad as it seems on paper. Noticeable, yes, but hardly “nerfed into oblivion” as people on the internet have a tendency of saying. And frankly, as someone who used them a lot - they were too powerful. What I did not appreciate was reducing their durability by a significant amount along with the damage, I think that was unnecessary.
But that’s just one example of how balance in this game has shifted, sometimes dramatically, over the past two years. Sometimes individual “meta” weapons get nerfed (like the Lifeblood spear, which was nerfed into oblivion). Sometimes something (such as thralls) gets buffed to become instant must-haves. Sometimes they get something just right.
I know most people these days are playing with endgame-tier named thralls, such as Dalinsia, Lian, RHTS, Cimmerian Berserker or Volcano T4’s. We’ve all seen how incredibly powerful they can be. Most of us can probably agree that the game shouldn’t be balanced around these endgame thralls doing all the heavy lifting.
What I’ve been recently trying is getting one of the bottom-rung thralls. Not a second-stringer or a third-stringer - the worst of the worst, a T1 Exile Fighter. My feeling thus far is that she doesn’t need a nerf. If anything, the bottom rung should be brought upwards a little because I think the difference between the tiers is too wide. The top-tier ones people use should be brought down a notch or three, but the weakest thralls are already in mortal danger against any serious opponent, even leveled up and with Epic gear.
That said - and this is to alleviate the fears of people who are afraid their thralls will be “nerfed into oblivion” - even the humble T1 Exile Fighter is helpful. She doesn’t do much damage, but she’s still there, staggering opponents and drawing attention in, say, a brawl between a half-dozen citizens of Sepermeru. I’m not comfortable with her low hitpoints - if she had 3000 I think it’d be fine, but with 1000 I need to stress over her survival, and couldn’t bring her into an endgame boss fight. (Of course, being a starting area NPC she doesn’t need to be capable of fighting engame content.)
With this perspective, I think they could (and it seems they will) cut a modern-day Dalinsia’s hitpoints and damage in half, and she’d still be useful.
I barely use thralls now, so I do now what I did then: I run away a lot, spam bleed damage, and shoot from a safe distance.
Which the game isnt anyway… Thralls are a help for solo-players. Many dungeon are made for MULTIPLE people. Not solo.
Funcom said that in streams and in patch-notes.
I am currently running around with T4 beares. If they wouldnt bug out so often, it would be great… Nothing is more annoying then a thrall who doesnt do anything and just getting hit…
In the end, all you need to have to clear 99% of the content, is a tank. While you are hitting the bosses from behind 
My t4 bearers have great health At lvl10 already over >10k