Conan Exiles News

Dear exiles,

On Tuesday, we announced that we're rolling out Attributes, Perks and leveling for pets/thralls in a future update. You can read the full announcement in this post.

The TL;DR is that this new feature will make individual thralls/pets more powerful and also makes engaging with them more rewarding.

At the same time, we're implementing a limit on how many thralls/pets you can own at once. The details about this limit can also be found in the post we linked to above.

Naturally, a lot of you had questions about pet/thrall leveling and the limiter. We addressed these in a livestream on Thursday, which you can see below, but if you're not able to sit through an hour-long video we've posted an FAQ below the video. You can also check out Multigun's thorough summary of the stream in this thread.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

How many pets/thralls can I have following me after this update?

• Still just one

Will there be a “grace period” where players can remove unwanted Followers without killing them? How, specifically, will removing old thralls work? Which thralls/pets will take priority when being removed?

• We are planning to allow for such a grace period when this rolls out, where players can remove old pets/thralls using the Break Bonds command so their total number of pets/thralls moves below the maximum allowed number.
  
• When the grace period is over the system will periodically delete a random active pet/thrall. At the moment this happens once every 30 minutes, but it might change before the feature goes live. Remember that pets/thralls in crafting stations (or in storage boxes) won't count towards the max limit and will not be removed.
  
• Break Bonds will remove the thrall from the world and leave behind a loot bag with all their old equipment, so you won’t lose those resources.
  

When does the system start removing thralls?

• The length of such a grace period hasn't been decided yet, but we will announce this once we've decided.

How was it decided to limit a full clan to 100 followers?

• The limit was decided after talking it through with programmers and designers and reaching an agreement that would allow for enough protection for a decent sized based and still be a viable gain in terms of performance.

Can you turn this limit off in a single-player game or on a private server?

• Yes, absolutely. This was mentioned in the post we put up on Tuesday.

Current numbers mean that in a 10 man clan, you can have 10 Followers on average per person. Wouldn't it be better for that clan to disband and have everyone run solo, thereby discouraging large base builds and clans?

• You can of course do this – but there are other gains for being in a clan than just thrall limits. You won’t be able to help your friends out in PvP situations, etc. The amount will not be increased.

Let’s say we’re a clan of 10. If one of us leaves the clan, will we suddenly lose 5 random thralls? How soon will we lose thralls/pets?

• The periodicity is set up as a server option. The period is one thrall being purged every 30 minutes (at the moment)

Will PvE and PvP have separate Follower caps? PvE rarely has people covering the whole map like in certain PvP scenarios. The cap seems low for PvE.

• Official servers will all have the same cap. Private server admins can set their cap to whatever they please. We won't distinguish between PvE and PvP modes.

Will this limit address the thrall decay system and the fact that it only seems to work intermittently? Some PvE servers have a lot of orphaned thralls remaining from departed clans.

• The limit itself does not interact with the decay system as such; they’re separate systems. We also want to remove orphan thralls but this system does not specifically target them.

Is there going to be a tab available in the inventory/anywhere where we can monitor and view how many thralls/pets the clan owns?

• Not in this patch, but we have considered doing that in the future (for example, being able to view this through the Thrall Pot and Clan UI)

Will the ability to order thralls and pets to stand down/be passive be implemented as well?

• Not for this patch.

Will mounts be counted in the Follower limit? What about dancers?

• Yes and yes.

Will a private server be able to lower the number of Followers even further?

• You can, yes.

What happens to my old thralls/pets when the leveling system rolls out?

• So called "legacy followers" (pets/thralls) that have been placed out in the world will have 0 in all Attributes and 0 potential for growth. The leveling system will not apply to them.

Will “stored” Followers be considered part of the “old system”, or once placed, after this update goes live, be useable under the new leveling system? If I have unbroken thralls “cooking” in the Wheel of Pain, will I be able to level them if I keep them tucked away somewhere until after the update?

• If you have a thrall/pet tucked away somewhere, and then place them out after the leveling system goes live, they will be able to level up and gain grow their attributes.

Why can’t the leveling system be added retroactively to old thralls?

• It is technically a much more difficult task to do so because the stat system would need to be split into two separate progressions that would read from separate tables. Additional resources and time would need to be spent on maintaining both new followers and legacy followers. We felt our efforts were better spent on adding new content and systems into the game than spending those resources on legacy followers.

Will I have to “re-farm” all my thralls?

• Yes, unless you have some tucked away in a box somewhere (or you want to keep the old ones for some strange reason).

How many thralls/pets will I have to farm in order to get the stats growth I want?

• That’s hard to tell, but the thralls that are currently worthwhile are still worthwhile getting. If you want the absolute maximum super-uber mega-combo of death and health, it’ll take a while longer because you’ll be wanting a maximum growth rate for certain attributes as well as the right perks if you’re going for “pure perfection”.

When you say that old followers will be less powerful, how less powerful? For example, if I take my actual Spinas and I capture a new Spinas, will the level 1 new Spinas be as strong as the old one, or a bit better or worse? How much stronger will a fully leveled Spinas be?

• Your old thralls will not compare at all. The reason for this is simply put that the system we are putting in is not compatible with already spawned thralls, so they cannot gain access to bonuses from growth or things of this nature.

As with Pets, I would like to also name my Thralls. Can I do that after this update?

• Not yet, but we want to implement this.

Followers won’t have a Grit stat at all? Can’t you give them Grit but give it a new purpose like increased Health regen out of combat or something?

• We did discuss it and there simply wasn’t enough time to pull that through. The same goes for Encumbrance incidentally. Also – looking back at it now, it might’ve been a good thing; this way we focus more on the stats that matter more.

What level would non placed thralls/pets be? Like when I pull one out of a Wheel of Pain or an Animal Pen?

• They all start at level 0 and max out at 20, so you have 20 level-ups. That goes for admin spawning as well.

Does the thrall have to make the killing blow to earn exp? If the thrall has a truncheon does knocking out other potential thralls count for exp?

• No – the thrall does not have to have the killing blow, but they have to be following you when something dies near you in order to earn XP. Knocking out does not count for XP in terms of kills.

If I kill something does the thrall get exp? If so, how far is the range of the exp the thralls get? Do they simply have to follow me, or can they be stuck somewhere and get exp before they teleport to me if I am killing something?

• Yes, as long as it follows you, the distance shouldn’t matter

Will equipment that has bonus stats increase the thrall’s stats? Like an axe that gives +5 strength, will the thrall get +5 or a lower amount or none? Same question goes for armor bonuses

• Yes and yes – you can finally pump up your thrall by putting on actual stat armors and weapons.

Can you get a follower with perfect growth in all stats?

• No – however, you can get followers that have very very high growth in stats you care about. A perfect 100% growth chance for all stats cannot be reached.

Is the growth system completely random?

• No – it's based on faction and tier. There is some randomness on top of that. Darfari always start out with some basic points in Survival as an example, and they are generally more prone to have a higher growth for Survival, but you MAY get a Darfari that has a very high growth chance in Strength or Vitality instead (or both)

Are there still going to be “thrall tiers” depending on faction, etc? Are Volcano thralls still more powerful than others or will those differences be evened out?

• Yes, and yes and yes and no. Tiers still matter – but you MAY encounter a lower tier thrall that – by pure random growth chance – has a higher potential than a higher tier from the same faction. Volcano thralls are still very powerful, as are Relic hunters. We have had cases internally however where I’ve run around with a Tier 2 Exile with 5000 hitpoints simply because the gods blessed him with good genes (perks).

Will Purge Followers be unique from T4 Followers?

• Not to start off with – we may do this after we see the system live for a while.

How will the leveling system impact pets? Pets are largely less effective than Thralls, as thralls can equip armors and weapons. Will a level 20 elite pet be weaker than a level 20 Tier 4 Thrall?

• Pets will be – on average – on par with thralls. Their base attacks are modified by their level and strength same as thralls, and in addition, they gain more armor than thralls from base progression since they cannot equip armors.

Will a regular pet be able to “evolve” into a Greater pet?

• No – however – basic pets can become on par with a greater pet (and in some cases, given enough luck, better) with this system. You may encounter situations where a normal Rhino will beat the snot out of a Greater Rhino (although this is admittedly rare).

Will this in any way alter the equipment decay for thralls? Maintaining armor decay on 10 thralls doesn’t sound like fun

• Thralls to my knowledge do not lose equipment durability unless someone shoots them with acid arrows.

Will Potion of Bestial Memory also reset the Follower attributes?

• No

Will followers be susceptible to temperature?

• No

How will the witch doctor pets that you create in the firebowl cauldron be affected by the new system? Will they still have bleed and poison immunity like undead NPCs? If they do have immunity how is the Survival stat dealt with when they level up, because they would have no use for it?

• They still have immunity to poison and bleed. Survival still affects them for other things like cripple, or other over-time effects

The perks that come along with leveling new followers, will they be selectable or are they fixed for a given follower?

• Randomly selected from a range available to the race – so no, you can’t select which perk to get

Unless I read it wrong, it sounds like perks aren’t guaranteed? Are perks randomized across the board or per Follower class/type?

• Perks are guaranteed at specific levels (typically level 10, 15, 20). The specific perk your pet gets is not guaranteed.
  
• One may get “Jack of All trades”, “Unfliching” and “Bestial Strength” while another gains “Paragon”, “Unholy Strength” and “Bird Brain”.
  
• Perks are given out based on the race of the follower – Birds, Reptiles, Humans, Apes, Undead, Canines, Felines, etc.

Are the perks like player perks?

• No, the perks are stat modifications (so far). We would like to make more perks that alter the gameplay of pets and thralls but it’s too much work for this patch.

Are any of the perks non-combat related?

• I would say they are all combat related, given that we focused on making stats from pets and thralls be centered around combat.

I play Solo/Co-op on PC. At end-game, I use the keystone to replay (reroll.) The new character uses the old map with all the old buildings, crafters, and followers in place, but they are hostile to the new character. How will this system treat those ‘abandoned’ followers? Will they still be there for my “mock raiding” on old bases? Will they be considered as my new character’s followers in the total count?

• Abandoned thralls do not count to your new characters maximum. Decay may be a factor but if you’re playing in singleplayer, there are options for that in the “server” settings.

You mentioned in the article that the system will be moddable? Would that include the possibility of player’s choices in which stat to increase for their followers? I don’t understand why this is not an option already.

• We didn’t want players to be able to pick and choose. Think of perks as flavor that adds a spectrum of random bonuses to followers. The system behind the tables is in code, but levels, specific perks, stats and suchlike are fully moddable.

Will private server admins be able to break bonds with thralls belonging to any player?

• Only the owner of the thralls can break bonds. Admins can get rid of thralls by Shift-Delete.

Might we see a return to thrall feeding out of necessity?

• Unlikely. The reason we took that away was that it also produced a certain server framerate overhead, given that it had to keep track of thralls. However. You can now heal your thralls and pets by giving them food from their diet table. Doing so will heal them over time.

Join us later today for a Conan Exiles dev stream on the Funcom streaming channels! This week we're talking about the upcoming Follower Leveling System and the new Follower Limit coming to Conan Exiles. There will also be a stream on Conan Exiles' store page!

We'll discuss what these new features mean for you, the player, what's being added, and we will answer questions you've asked in the wake of the announcement on Tuesday.

We'll see you there!

Dear exiles,

As you know, we're working on adding mounts to Conan Exiles. You may also know that we're adding mounted combat, so you can crush your enemies and drive them before you using weapons from horseback.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

What you may not know is that we're also adding a leveling system for Pets and Thralls (collectively called Followers going forward). Please note, this is only for Thralls and Pets you can place out in the world and have follow you, not crafting thralls.

The upcoming leveling system allows you to to level your followers through combat in the same fashion that you do as a player. Leveling a Follower grants them stat-points that are automatically distributed through a weighted system (see below), and these stats grant various bonuses such as improved health, improved damage, and so forth.



Stats

Stats for Followers are based on what you might expect in Conan Exiles: They use the same stats as a player; Strength and Accuracy improve melee and ranged damage; Vitality determines the health of a Follower, Agility grants a bonus to armor, and Survival reduces the effects of negative debuffs on the Follower. Endurance and Grit are not used for Followers, since no-one wants to have a Follower that all of a sudden runs out of stamina mid-fight and has to go and have a lie-down, hilarious as that might've been.



When placing a Follower, they have a base level and base stats. Different Factions and Tiers of Follower have different base stats and base level. As an example, a Darfari Follower will typically have more Survival, while Votaries of Skelos have more Vitality. Higher tier humanoids (Fighter III for example) may start with even higher stats. Stats are also affected by worn items, such as armors and weapons.

These stats inform secondary stats, such as damage, hitpoints and resistance to debuffs in the same manner as they do players. All the effects from stats can be viewed by inspecting your Follower with the radial menu and selecting "Info" from it.

Leveling

As mentioned before - Followers have a base level. They also have different learning curves; some may level slower or faster than normal. You will need to find out which of the factions and races that level the slowest/fastest yourself. However, it should be said that the slower a Follower levels up, the more powerful (on average, given the variance of growth curves) they become.



The maximum level for a Follower is currently set to 20. This is not to be measured up against player-levels, as Followers gain more points per level than a player.

How do I level up my Followers?

Having your Follower come with you and being a part of combat will award them experience points in the same manner as your character would normally. Crafting, Exploration and other activities will not grant your follower experience. Easy prey like Hyenas are ideal for a newly obtained Follower - although you may opt for a more risky approach and take your newly hatched Spiderling to the Unnamed City. It's risky but if you're careful this strategy may work out for you.

An important note here is that your Followers only gain experience points while they are following you. You will not be able to post your followers in a circle around a world boss and just wait things out.

Stat growths

Your Followers have a growth-curve for each stat, represented as a percentage value. This is how likely it is for the stat to level up when your follower levels up. This growth-curve is largely, but not always, the same throughout factions for humanoids/races as for animals, but you may find rare outliers that will prove to be extra useful. Keep a look out for that extra rare super-ostrich and get your own Battle Chicken!

The growth-rates make it easy to see if you really want to keep your new Follower or dismiss them.



You can dismiss your follower by using the "Break Bond" command from the radial menu. This will immediately remove the Follower from your employ - no more dragging them over to the Volcano in order to watch them die horrifically in lava (although if you are in a particularly nasty mood, you can still do this, of course).

Perks

Followers may gain perks as they level up. These perks further enhances the capacity of your Follower. The more specialized the perk is, the more bonus it will grant. Followers may have up to three perks once they have fully leveled up.

What will happen to my old pets and thralls?

When this new system comes into play, your old Followers will be less powerful on average than the new Followers. The new thrall leveling system won't roll out retroactively, so old Followers will be without levels, stats and perks.

Why are we doing this?

We have been wanting to incorporate a leveling system for Followers in Conan Exiles for quite some time, but the timing has never been quite right.

With the implementation of Mounts, we felt there was no better time to implement this system than now. Finding super-rare followers will now be a more rewarding experience, as you can now nurture them further and make them stronger by taking them into battle.

In short: We wanted to have a system that is interesting to dive into while also making each individual Follower more special.

What about Modding?

The leveling curves, base stats and growth potentials are all fully moddable through tables. There will be a guide available for modders on what the different aspects of pet leveling and growth are available.



Thralls and Pets will become a limited resource going forward. Specifically - [cur]placeable[/cur] combat thralls and pets. You can still have as many crafter thralls as you please. When Follower leveling rolls out the Follower limiter will also be set in place.

How does it work?

A player/clan will have a maximum amount of Followers available to them. This maximum amount grows depending on the amount of members in the clan. A solo player will have a maximum of 55 available Followers. If they create a clan, and a new member joins the clan, this maximum goes up by 5 to a maximum of 60. Each new clan member will add an additional 5 to the maximum allowed Followers. A full clan will have a maximum limit of 100 placed Followers total.



Do note that these numbers are not final, but largely represents the growth of the cap we want.

Is this the case for private servers as well?

Partially - private servers MAY opt to use the system if they like but it's not mandatory and is part of the server settings. Your server admin may allow a bonus of 400 thralls per additional clan member if they decide to use the Follower limit.

What happens to Followers already placed when the patch hits?

Since we need to implement a limit for followers, random followers will be deleted periodically until the cap is respected. We recommend organizing any thralls you definitely want to keep before the patch hits. We are not able to allow you keep "legacy Followers" that go over the Follower limit (let's be honest here, no-one should have 400+ Followers strewn about their base as a means of lagging out other players).

Why are we doing this?

We are doing this for multiple reasons, first and foremost of which are reducing lag and increasing server frame-rate, especially for consoles. In addition to this, a limit like this will make building enormous landclaim areas more difficult to defend, which is one of many steps we intend to take towards solving problems with sieges and PvP going forward.



Join us on our streaming channels on Thursday at 5pm CET / 11 am EST / 8am PST where we will go into further details about the new Follower leveling system and the limiter mechanic.

Please direct any questions you might have about the leveling system and the limiter to this forum thread and we will endeavor to answer them on stream.

Greetings Exiles!

We’re releasing a new patch with fixes to many of the performance issues introduced in the latest patch. These should solve many of the low FPS and abnormally long load times you’ve been sending us feedback about.
We have also bulked up in cough syrup and distributed it to thralls and player characters to stop the pneumonia outbreak when they were idling, as well as fine-tuned the running stop animation.
Many of the issues regarding altered item stats (such as different temperature protections) should also be tackled in this patch, along with some other bugfixes.

Thank you for your continued support and for your invaluable feedback.

Please remember that updates can mess with your installed mods. We suggest taking a backup of your current database before updating to any new patch if you have mods installed.



Currently Known Issues

• We’re aware of an issue with missing SFX for NPCs and player characters, particularly during combat situations. We’re working on that and it’ll be fixed in the next update.
  

• Optimized some material and texture sizes to generally improve performance.
  
• Optimized current assets to improve performance.
  
• Fixed a number of crashes related to asset conflicts.
  
• Optimized files by deleting outdated and invalid assets.
  
• Additional file size optimizations to improve performance across the board.
  
• Increased the amount of logs in case of blueprint Virtual Machine crashes.
  
• Fixed incompatibility with upcoming Windows 10 20H1 update (currently Insider Preview).
  

• Fixed an exploit regarding infinite stamina
  
• Battle Standards can no longer be used to prevent players from placing objects around their base.
  
• Fixed an exploit regarding undermeshing.
  

• Fixed an issue where some equipment would grant you double the amount of attribute points.
  
• Blood and Sand equipment had their temperature resistances swapped by mistake. This is now fixed.
  
• Particles for the end-boss fight in the Wine-cellar should now work as intended.
  
• Pit of Yog and Rift of Yog (and their placement brushes) can no longer be used to kill NPCs and players.
  
• Fixed a couple of issues with the Debaucheries of Derketo DLC emotes.
  

• Tweaked the male stopping animation to make it much less extreme; it will no longer look like your character has a stomach-ache when movement ends.
  

• Distributed cough syrup in the Exiled lands, which effectively removed the groans and moans from idle animations.
  

Trello Report Board

We have a public bug tracking board here! You can check this to track the issues that get brought up by the community the most. In the “For prioritization” column you can vote for the issues you would like us to prioritize and we will make sure it gets moved into development asap. You can read the full details on how it works on the forum post here.

If you attended this year’s TwitchCon, you may recognize this goofy group! From left to right we have Andy, Nicole, Natascha, and Eirik who manned the Funcom Twitch booth through the weekend.

Let us start off by saying it was an absolute pleasure meeting everyone who stopped by to check out Conan Exiles or see what’s new. Everyone was incredibly kind, welcoming, and happy to talk with us.


We had a very large amount of people who came to the booth that were Conan Exile fans! It was such a pleasure to speak with them and talk about what they do in game or things they’d like to see for the future. Many of them were from private RP servers, so hearing about their characters and backstories was absolutely amazing. In particular many players from the Hyborian Age RP server showed up!


We also were able to meet up and chat with a lot of great and notable streamers of Conan Exiles. Here are just a few. You can click their name to be taken to their Twitch channel!

SvalaGaming

CletusBueford

INDIE, FistofTheWalrus, and TheOnlyRyan.



We were also incredibly happy to learn a couple that came by who met in Conan Exiles and plan on getting married in the near future!


We also got to meet ErynLyn, yanDreaya, HeartOnMySleeve, Cotastus, and so many others.

They also got to try out the horses. Mounts are still a work in progress but those who tried them out gave us valuable feedback on it, saying they felt smooth and intuitive. Those that were hesitant about mounts initially, quickly warmed up to it after cantering around the world. The dismount animation in particular garnered a good amount of excitement! :wink: We hope you all will feel the same once it’s out!

You can see a little on how they’ll look and work here, along with swimming and mounted combat:
https://twitter.com/ConanExiles/status/1178060396500017152
https://twitter.com/ConanExiles/status/1178017494344310785


If you visited the booth, you may have also discovered our Streamer Program sign. If you weren’t able to attend, here’s the scoop! We are currently researching and planning on putting together a Partner Program. A survey was open at the convention to those who would be interested. The survey is still here so you are more than welcome to take it as well. The survey is to gather what you find important or prioritize in a streamer program. Survey Link.

And that’s that! Again, we had an amazing time at TwitchCon this year and meeting so many of you. If we missed you at the booth or were there and have pictures, please share!
Cheers!