Conan Exiles

[Crice]

The base is complete in the volcano, I did test the goop wall torches and they do cool the place down. I spent an hour getting goop out of the lake and made it so the room with the beds is only at hot when totally naked. You should be able to die without having to panic you will stroke out before getting dressed. You can run around naked upstairs pretty much at your will. The down stairs is at "very hot" however that won't kill you either, just stay away from the furnaces.

We had to cover the walls in goop and cover all exposed ground positions to get it to cool down. It is fairly safe now.

HAHA I knew you would be living in the Volcano. I don't know if they adjusted the heat settings but it was a pain several months ago to live and explore there.

[Vllad]

HAHA I knew you would be living in the Volcano. I don't know if they adjusted the heat settings but it was a pain several months ago to live and explore there.

You have to have a named Armor guy to live there to make the exceptional armor. Standard heat armor doesn't give enough protection. The hard part is you have to carry cold gear with you since it is surrounded by extreme cold.

This is a challenge since we play with a limit of Thralls that you can have.

You have to build correctly to pull it off and while difficult it is possible to live there.

[Vllad]

I was doing more research on the thrall cap.  It looks like the only things that count toward the cap are the placed ones, eg fighters/archers/pets.  They are the only ones that can be leveled and have the stat systems aligned to them as well.

All other thralls for use in stations are separate and we'll need to manage those manually outside the server enforced caps.  Still not sure which ones it picks to delete if you exceed the hard caps on the placed ones but the dev notes seem to suggest they are picked randomly.

So our cap it too high then?

[Crice]

Any interest on a PVP official server or is the "Purge" settings just too weak? The main issue I had with Conan was that once we had a foothold on an official server, we didn't have any real competition. So yup build build build because that was enjoyable while we waited for our next twine tax people to come say "this is our server now"...

Good times though against the Whiskey Drunk douches.

[Vllad]

Any interest on a PVP official server or is the "Purge" settings just too weak?

No. All the live server settings are simply too easy. The Purge can be negated way too easily by players and players don't play Conan as a survival game but a weak PVP game. Server sizes are too small so once you take over a server their is no reason to play it any further. Plus it really isn't made well for PVP.

Conan is a really good PVE survival game. It is really only set up to support a few players and probably only shines as a solo game. We are trying to make it as much of a challenge as we can and we aren't sure we did enough of that.  

I have no interest in getting an actual server with our own settings.

1. No one but us would play on it because we would make it too difficult
2. Since 1 is true we might as well stick to our own private server and not pay $10 a month


In general games like LIF, Atlas and Conan all share is once you built X what is the point after that????

People want to play the game and experience all the cool thralls and own the biggest castle. That is not what makes it fun to play. It is not a Wow where you want to experience all the content. The only way a building pvp game can keep players playing is to destroy everything constantly.

OR

Make it a real survival game where you never quite reach the point where your castles and NPC's can over power the game. PVP does nothing to change that.

Day Z is the only game that got close to what it needs to be and you didn't build shit in Day Z.

The only way Conan can be fun is if you are on the verge of death constantly and you are losing your shit. Otherwise it is just Minecraft with MMO combat. PVP is totally unreliable to contribute to the difficulty.

What we are experimenting with on Conan is to see if we can create an environment that can be played multiple player without people getting bored. We still haven't achieved a hard game as of yet beyond the solo game.

[AnneWildcat]

Please post how to the purge goes at the volcano base as I’ll probably be at work.

[Dharus]

I can tell you even in the hard settings solo the game gets easy but since you put restrictions on your building then that's what really makes it hard. All of the environmental effects, even in the volcano, can be countered even if you have to drink water every few minutes (which is what I did with gear/skills).

Basically, you guys are doing the same thing with Conan as you did with HOI. If you don't allow hanging bases, cave bases, cliff bases, pillar bases, then the game is significantly harder with the Purge buffed. You cannot get that from any public server (or 99.9% privates either) as there are no real building rules. You are right though that it can be entertaining but as with most PvE survival you'll find a balance eventually. Though, building in the volcano with Purges maxed is probably worse than playing Commie China!

[Arsilon]

I was doing more research on the thrall cap.  It looks like the only things that count toward the cap are the placed ones, eg fighters/archers/pets.  They are the only ones that can be leveled and have the stat systems aligned to them as well.

All other thralls for use in stations are separate and we'll need to manage those manually outside the server enforced caps.  Still not sure which ones it picks to delete if you exceed the hard caps on the placed ones but the dev notes seem to suggest they are picked randomly.

So our cap it too high then?

Probably.  So open question is do we want to set the base at 0 or 1 (1 to allow for keeping the horse)
and then the per player number at 1 each

Or just set a hard base number of X and then 0 per person.

We'll have to see about adjusting the building damage rate too once we see the harder Purge mobs in the volcano. At the other base I was still easily able to keep up with repairs between the rounds.  They are definitely doing more damage but at most we only lose 1 or 2 wall sections; albeit with the easier mobs.  When we fought the dragon last night he never got close enough to the base before it got stuck to see what type of wreckage it would have been able to do with the increased damage settings.

[Arsilon]

oh and for whatever it's worth, I found the admin settings to adjust Thrall stats. So we can ratchet down their str/vit/agil settings lower if we think they are still too powerful.

[Crice]

Do you guys have a clan of thralls that attack the base daily or something? I am trying to envision the change.

Are the animals harder, instead of 1 pack of wolves does it change it to 2 or?

[Vllad]

Do you guys have a clan of thralls that attack the base daily or something? I am trying to envision the change.

Are the animals harder, instead of 1 pack of wolves does it change it to 2 or?

The Purge frequency is set by the actions you do in the game. We have it set so very few actions start a Purge so we have a Purge every single day sometimes 2. Basically we take damage, fix it then it is almost time for the next Purge. We occasionally have time to do some other things but primarily we are just fighting Purges.  

We also have the Purge strength set to maximum. So we get multiple waves (up to 6) of mobs that attack us until you defeat the main boss of the Purge. A single wave can represent 6 to 10 mobs depending on the Purge faction that attacks you.

We only play with three crafter thralls (blacksmith, carpenter and armorsmith) the rest you have to go with no thralls. Each player is allowed one body guard. Anything more than that the game randomly kills a current body guard to allow the add. (if you cheat you may be killing one of your mates body guard) So make sure you kill your own body guard before trying to level another if you don't like him. i.e., Arsilon dragged his in the lava last night since he wanted to replace him.

Dophuz plays with animal pets rather than humanoid thralls so he is still cooking them just incase his main dies. In otherwords we may have back-ups in a wheel or pen but you can't take them out and use them unless you kill your current deployed body guard.

We also have damage taken by the purge set at 50% higher than normal. If a Purge mob reaches your base they really only need about 3 attacks to start putting holes in your base.

We have only fought one Purge faction that was higher than T3 and we darn near lost that one. So in typical Guild Purge fashion we now jumped to T5 purges and are awaiting what that is like now.

Killing a Purge isn't the issues. The issue is can you repair fast enough without immediately kicking off the next Purge. We are trying to create a state where you repair, fight, repair fight. We haven't found that balance yet.

You have to keep in mind that not all Purges are equal. You can get easy ones multiple times in a row or extremely difficult ones.

Right now I suspect while the mobs in Purges are more difficult in the Volcano I don't think the Purges will be more difficult. What gets you is when your base is attacked from multiple sides. In the Volcano there isn't enough room to build a place that can be attacked on all sides. We will see. The one primary failing of a Purge is the mobs hit players before the building so it may be possible to agro the mobs and run them away as to not have your base hit.

That was my point above that it is very possible unless in Single player or 2 player the Purges are still not strong enough.

[Arsilon]

The other added difficulty from the Volcano likely will be we need to go much farther away to get materials needed to survive/repair.

The last place we didn't have to go farther than 2 minutes away to get anything you could possibly need to repair, replace, etc.

[Arsilon]

At some point we should run a test on a back up version of the world (or even our live world -- I'd just offer to take a backup if it ends up not making a difference). Delete all the structure around the barn to see if that forces the purges to spawn at the volcano instead. Since we know its not beds or bedrolls at this point, I wonder what the threshold is that all the purges we had yesterday were there instead of at the volcano.

It could be totally random and our sample sizes are still relatively small but even then why have we not seen any at the original galleon location, or even at anne's noob spot? Why have we not seen any at the Asgarath location after we it was razed and there are still some things there.

I would imagine that there must be some points factor either in how many items were placed or the aggregate score on materials cost or something that effects the probability of what we see and where. Ideally we would be able to pick our spot and building strategy to ensure that every Purge would spawn where we want it to and what exactly allows them to trigger elsewhere, so we can get the highest probability for having the highest tier purges.

My concern is the variance in purge types make it so we ratchet the difficulty up to the point to not make the lower tier purges yawners which in turn makes the higher end ones all but impossible. While the ones we had yesterday are definitely closer to the level of difficulty we were hoping for due to the open nature and the mobs all coming at once vs. trickling in, unless we get the army versions, they are still pretty trivial. If we ratchet up the damage so even the trivial ones aren't trivial, then when we do get the top end its a for sure wipe. Which is fine, but I'm not convinced we even know what the top end actually looks like yet -- I'll have to see if there is an actual list and corresponding admin commands to force which one we get to test them vs. waiting to see what RNG gives us.

Only then would we be able to make the final tweaks to purge damage levels and buffer time between purges. If we can find the point that it's not a lot of down time if we succeed in a purge and if we fail there is only enough time to repair if we have the majority of mats already available. If anything more than minimal rebuilding is required, we wouldn't have time to do it before another purge spawns. If we get lucky on the next one and its a lower difficulty one, great. If we get unlucky and we get a top tier one there is a good chance we get knocked back to a previous location to 'start over'.

This then creates the question on if the settings only work steady state. If we truly were starting fresh, what would that do? Is it even possible to start from nothing with the same settings that make the end game interesting? As long as we are playing in a private server that may still be OK since we could just agree that we create the world and use admin rights to set the board up initially, eg everyone is level X to start and/or here is your starting set of materials, etc.

[Arsilon]

Vllad

I pulled the named fighters out of the wheels and placed them down to check stats.

Downside, they start with 1 strength 2 agility and 3 vitality
Plus side, they level pretty easily and they start with more HP at L0 than Larry and Curly had at level 7+; we'll need to keep them topped off with gruel to let them catch up in strength and to heal. (Sully has more starting HP than the other guy did)

I blew up both Larry and Curly and placed down all the new named fighters so we're at the limit again.

I leveled up both Ringo and John a bit since we likely won't have a lot of time later before the next Purge hits. If I have some time this afternoon, I'll see about grabbing another Sully or something as backup in case we get smashed again this round.

Paul is sitting there waiting to be geared and leveled - one trip over to the rocknose is enough to get them to L5

And the other named guy is ready to be destroyed but wanted you to be able to go see his stats before we do (or we can put him on guard somewhere out of the way as backup till we get more Sully's or whatever cooking).

[Vllad]

 If we truly were starting fresh, what would that do? 

Given what happened last night I think we have our answer. We got wiped. Hell of a good time.

That is the first time with 4 of us there no less that we couldn't handle a Purge.

That same faction wiped me multiple times in solo play. It doesn't matter what level you are or build at that group can wipe you. Ironically the other purges in harder area's so far haven't been as good. We will never know about the Volcano since they spawn in the lava!

That place is out.

[Arsilon]

So noob area is volcano. End game is the dessert. Makes perfect sense!

[Dharus]

I was wondering about that... the Lava was a great defense. I made a little hanging base over a lava river up there on the public server.

[Vllad]

From what I have been reading 2 of the 4 hardest Purge raids are in the desert.

1. The Disciples of Sobek which we learned last night can happen on the east/blackhand area.
2. The Rocknose since it spawns AOE mobs that knock you down (mid Desert)
3. The Zerker one up in the mounds of the dead (8 to 10 Zerkers would be rough but people say it is no harder than Sobek)
4. Ice Giants in the NW of the map. (debateable but less hard than Zerkers, Rocknose and Sobeks.

I think it is possible to get both Sobeks and Rocknose if you build in the right sweet spot.

I see their are charts that list what kind you can get in certain area's. If those numbers are correct that is why with a small sample size you see the same raids repeatedly. It would appear it is like 90% for one kind of raid then a bunch of 1% chances for other things.

The Purge targets a single foundation then hits the nearest thing to that. If that foundation is not reachable (on the ground) mobs teleport to it. It only targets foundations connected to others. The reason Anne got hit that one time is she wasn't in the clan, it first picks clan/non clan then it hits foundation.

Either way it doesn't appear just because you live north means you will get hit the hardest. Type of Purge means as much as other factors. You may get hit with the hard ones in the desert but you will also get easier ones.

[Diggles]

I started playing on a private admin'd server, Vanguard -PVP- Harvest 4x / XP 6x, to try and test pvp changes.  I'm up to steel tools if anyone wants to join me and mooch stuff to catch up.

No fights yet but Server is pretty active and without mods.  308 unique players in the past week and 70 player max limit is higher than official

Also since there are no GODs on this one and god shields dont stop treb, i might try and test out some hanging bases.

[AnneWildcat]

Since the purges we have been facing recently have been annihilating us, maybe we should be working on building two bases at once, as the purge can only attack one base and we cannot rebuild fast enough before another purge starts. Start working on a base near the south river? (where if you die and spawn in the desert it will not be far). That one can be t1 while the blank hand base can be built up to t3. Kind of like a dummy base to keep them busy?

[AnneWildcat]

I read that building on islands and river can cause the purge to spawn in your base (like it did to mine) so do not build on the river.

[Vllad]

Since the purges we have been facing recently have been annihilating us, maybe we should be working on building two bases at once, as the purge can only attack one base and we cannot rebuild fast enough before another purge starts. Start working on a base near the south river? (where if you die and spawn in the desert it will not be far). That one can be t1 while the blank hand base can be built up to t3. Kind of like a dummy base to keep them busy?

If you build two bases without being able to defend the first you will make the Purge hit us faster. Every action speeds up the Purge. If you build two, basically the purge may kick off before you get either done. We have to build one and be able to defend it before we build the second.

I worked a lot last night on getting a T3 done where we have been annihilated. Dophuz sleeping on the roof got in the way but I worked around it. I should have a T3 building done by the next Purge. If we can't defend this area we may have to come back to it if the T3 isn't enough. (which it may very well not be).

Ironically we may have picked the perfect place for the hardest Purges so...

[AnneWildcat]

So Diggles, I created a character on the Vanguard server. Only was on long enough to build a small place down south to keep out of sandstorms.

[Vllad]

Just FYI to Maren and Dophuz on what the end game looks like. Anne, Arsilon and myself kind of came up with a plan.

We think we have a pretty good idea where the hardest purges are now. We will build 3 bases. 1 in each of the difficult area's within a few minutes run of the portal stones. We need big enough bases to have a map room in each base. This way we can have some diversity of Purges.

Ultimately we should get a purge or two every day at 1 of the three locations. This way they are spread out and are different rather than the same one over and over.

Whatever we are doing we have to run back to the base and portal to the attack. This should make it tight. We will see if it is possible to defend given the thrall settings we have now. The current barn and wheels will not be attacked since they are not sitting on foundations. Something to consider in the future.

The three bases will be:

1 where we currently live in the desert (Sobek and Rock purges)
1 near the Mounds of the Dead (Beserker purges)
1 in the North West in the snow (Frost Giant purges)

You will only have to change gear when going to the snow. The Volcano is out and dumb other than potential thralls.

What the above does is it gives the purges a few seconds head start on us unless someone is at the base when the Purge message initially starts.

Below is the basic rule set:

*Only 3 productions thralls can be used at any one given time. (not sure if priest are included in that?)
*1 body guard per player. Timer set to 30 or 60 minutes before the game randomly removes a body guard. (This way you can put a thrall down to decide if you want to use him or not) the long timer is there so you can decide which one to delete and we have a technical issue before one is deleted. (don't waste time making the decision otherwise you could end up killing one of our bodyguards)
*You have 2 minutes to prepare for the purge
*NPC's do double damage on buildings
*Purges last 45 minutes
*Maximum difficulty
*zero time between purges (so we can get them back to back)
*Bases only exist in the 3 most difficult area's in the open
*No palisades
*Building and repairing during a Purge is turned on
*Keeping spare thralls in a cupboard is encouraged

Did I miss anything Arsilon?

[AnneWildcat]

I’d say even build one base in each biome so we experience all the purges.