Conan Exiles

[Vllad]

What is the password of the private server?

[Arsilon]

Server Name:  Redshirts
Server Password:  thepurge
(if you need the admin password, let me know)

Server should be visible under Play Online;  you can use the following filters if just searching under the name isn't enough:
Combat Mode:  Player vs Player
Region:  America
Show Servers Without VAC:  checked


Now that I have it sorted its not that bad to get it set up;  hardest part is making sure you have the ports exposed to outside world on your router.

There is an executable now available that will set up the server and launch it for you via a 1 screen configuration window.  Then you just have to adjust the server settings file (shareable if need be).  The world file itself is also shareable if we ever need to change the host server.

While my machine is likely more than capable of handling it (I have it limited to 5 players currently but that can be changed), the open question is whether my wonky internet can support it reasonably if we're all online and doing different things around the world.

[Diggles]

What are you playing for on a private server? PVE'in?

[AnneWildcat]

I think just testing mechanics. But it’s a PvP server so join and fight against me.

[Arsilon]

Messing with the Purge mechanic.

[AnneWildcat]

My question is, since I’m now in the guild, should I destroy the base I was building? If the purge happens soon, it might attack my base and not the main one. Although named thralls can pop up in that area so it might be good just to keep the wheel there.

[Arsilon]

Part of what we want to see is where they attack...so leave it. Worst case, if our main base gets blown up that can be a fallback to rebuild.

[Crice]

What are you playing for on a private server? PVE'in?

Thank you. I was curious myself but didn't have the balls to post and ask. 

I was on 1590 for a few weeks. 1590 had whiskey and spice girls. It was pretty boring since it was just me and 1000000 sqft of T3 base for spice girls to break into and find nothing. 

Decay rates are fixed IMO. I spent more time slow walking full of stuff than blowing into bases.

[Dharus]

Part of what we want to see is where they attack...so leave it.  Worst case, if our main base gets blown up that can be a fallback to rebuild.

From when I messed with it the Purge mechanic was more of a nuisance than a real threat.   Sometimes they'd magically spawn inside your base if they cannot walk up to it which was sort of annoying.  Also, the bar really didn't mean much as they'd randomly pick a base over the bar.  I remember having a little hidey base over the bar limit for weeks and then finally getting attacked but the NPCs spawned in a weird spot and never reached the base.

I did see they had mounted archery and became curious to play again but I'm still in Eve and having fun.

[Vllad]

From when I messed with it the Purge mechanic was more of a nuisance than a real threat.   Sometimes they'd magically spawn inside your base if they cannot walk up to it which was sort of annoying.  Also, the bar really didn't mean much as they'd randomly pick a base over the bar.  I remember having a little hidey base over the bar limit for weeks and then finally getting attacked but the NPCs spawned in a weird spot and never reached the base.

I did see they had mounted archery and became curious to play again but I'm still in Eve and having fun.

You can't play the game like it is a PVP game and expect the Purge to work. I have been destroyed multiple times solo.

You have to play it like that game Slamz used to play where you land on a planet and hope to survive. You can't build in a cave or a tree. You build in a castle in the open and control the settings of the server so they happen constantly with more difficult settings. Then the Purge works and is fun.

Conan is a hard challenging survival game as long as you play it as one. If you try to play it as a PVP game it sucks.

It should be played with very few players or solo. The more that play the easier it gets where we have to crank up the difficulty. Plus you can't just go building all by yourself somewhere. In multiplayer you have to play in one spot or it screws up the Purge. If you are a player that wants to build its own place then play it solo.

In a nutshell if it is played correctly the game is a good survival PVE game. If played incorrectly it hasn't changed from a suckage perspective.

[Vllad]

In summary, if you want to play with us that is fine but we are going to have to crank up the difficulty to a point where a newb player can't really do much on their own.

[Dophuz]

links to the tell all spreadsheet

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1...2117511723

[Dharus]

I see. You guys are setting up base building parameters to welcome the Purge attacks and fight against them. Yeah, I mean, if you are doing that then you could find it a challenge as the Purges are tough. Sort of a team vs PvE survival challenge.

[Vllad]

I see.  You guys are setting up base building parameters to welcome the Purge attacks and fight against them.  Yeah, I mean, if you are doing that then you could find it a challenge as the Purges are tough.  Sort of a team vs PvE survival challenge.

Combine that with possibly some other server settings that ramps up the difficulty then you have a PVE survival game that you can play with other players.

You can adjust things like NPC damage, Farming rate, Survival rate (how fast you starve or die of thirst), leveling speed, Purge rate, Purge difficulty, Thrall cook time etc.

Basically it is possible you could make the game so bunny rabbits can one shot you and the Purge attacks you a couple times a day while barely having enough food and water to stay alive.

I believe we can reset the server and still keep our characters however I am not sure that matters. You can be max level in 2 days regardless.

With our current game I think we found somewhat of a balance. We haven't been wiped but our base has taken considerable damage to Purges. I do think we need to ramp up the difficulty or it will get routine. Optimally we want to lose occasionally so it stays interesting. If you always win I think you can ramp up faster than the AI can keep up. Especially with how Thralls work now. i.e., I think it is possible to build an army to beat the max difficulty of the Purges.

[Dharus]

Yeah, I messed with all of the server setup a while ago.  My friends didn't like that I set the nighttime to be similar to daytime but it made the game feel more realistic.  Getting attacked at night was more thrilling.  You know how I am... I like to make things painful.  I did that with the server too.

[Slamz]

You have to play it like that game Slamz used to play where you land on a planet and hope to survive.

Rimworld, yeah.

I was actually thinking it's a shame these "survival games" tend to have so little of a survival aspect to them -- at least the multiplayer ones. They have the elements but the default settings tend to make it trivial to survive so you're really only boned for that 5 minutes or so when you spawn naked and have to find bugs to eat. Once you get the basics, you're rarely in danger again.

Atlas had some extremes (hot and cold, anyway) that you at least had to work a little for but still, not really a "survival" aspect to it. Didn't help that the NPCs were basically just farmworthy dolts.

An actual survival game could be fun.
I'm still knee deep in this other 4X MMO that's in alpha. "Outscape". I don't really recommend it but I angered a huge clan and now I'm too stubborn to quit. I'm #2 on the scoreboard for "most things killed". I think the top 3 players are all fighting this zerg and it's pretty much going like fighting the Axe Gang in Kung Fu Hustle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o59l7MhpL-g

[Zouji]

I have been playing Rimworld for my survival/lolz fix. I installed the Rim of Madness pack where you can form cults/worship elder things/go insane. Lots of "fun". 

Current game is in a swamp. Went with the "Lost Tribe" so no electricity for a lonnngggggg time. Vegetation is everywhere and you can't build on 70% or so of the ground. Not really many plants to harvest in the wild for food. About 60-70% of it burned down before I got a rain storm. Lucky for me, my place was on the edge of the map.

[Vllad]

Yeah, I messed with all of the server setup a while ago.  My friends didn't like that I set the nighttime to be similar to daytime but it made the game feel more realistic.  Getting attacked at night was more thrilling.  You know how I am... I like to make things painful.  I did that with the server too.

Some suggestions on server settings.

Set the Purge to max difficultly (6). Set it to 12,000/10 as far as activation goes. (10,000/10 is probably good for single player)
Purge duration 45 minutes,
Minimum time between Purges 60 minutes
Set Thrall count to 3 plus 1 per active player
Set damage done to buildings at 1.5
Keep the night and day equal at 1.0

For real single player challenge

Reduce Harvesting amount below 1.0 (.75 is probably good, .50 is a real challenge)
Increase damage by NPC's to 1.25
Change the water and food settings to 1.5 (This really means you need regular sources of water and can't go too far without multiple skins)
Increase the cost of Stamina to do actions to 1.25 or 1.5.


Don't be bashful about increasing the xp gains. There is no shame in leveling quickly, you won't survive long otherwise. You may have to restart multiple times.

Build in the open near resources with no obstacles to your base, In the Volcano their are obstacles everywhere but the Purges are the hardest there.  

The Thrall count setting may be the key to a good game:

You will have to make some tough choices. Do you want crafters, taskmasters or just body guards? Without crafters you don't have access to some nice gear and it takes longer to repair Purge damage, without taskmasters you can't replace your losses quickly, without body guards that are leveled up you aren't defending very long. You can swap in and out some crafters but once the body guards are deployed there is no putting them back in the box.

The game will kill (decay) one of your thralls (not sure how it picks) if you have more than the limit out at any given time. Sure you can cheese it and swap out crafters as needed but that means one of your body guard positions will always suck so their is a price to be paid for making that choice.

Once you put in the time to level up your fighters (thralls or pets) you are not likely to pull those crafters out of the box.

In single player I am not sure you can do less than 3 +1 and actually make it to higher level purges. Even 1 god like Thrall (assuming you get lucky enough to make one) can't hold off the Purge. Plus those Thralls have a way of bugging out or falling into the Lava and dying when you least want it to.

[Vllad]

You have to play it like that game Slamz used to play where you land on a planet and hope to survive.

Rimworld, yeah.

I was actually thinking it's a shame these "survival games" tend to have so little of a survival aspect to them

Conan is still not an MMO and has some deep issues in regards to many players on at the same time.

However the nice part of the game is you can play it as a real survival game because it allows for easy server adjustments that can make the game fit to your taste. If you really want a hard time just staying alive and is always at risk of starving you can have that. The best part is it will generate marauders that seek you out to destroy what little you have.

You can still have that living out of the box feeling or still just working on where your next meal is coming from.

It is a much more dangerous place than the game we played a few years back with a lot more content. Dungeons, random mini bosses, bosses, quest, merchants, thrall leveling system, better balance of weapons and character traits. You now actually have reasons to kill the bosses to get items that are required to teleport to other area's you can't travel to normally.

You can try to experience all the content or just make it so the newb area is overpowering enough as is.

[Slamz]

Been trying to keep tabs on New World, the Amazon game that's coming. Lots of rumors flying around but apparently one thing they have recently changed is that you can only build in pre-designated locations.

Made me think of this discussion (and Shadowbane). It's probably the smart way to make these games. Limit players to certain areas and while it may force them into large clans because hiding is no longer an option (assuming PvP is a thing), it would let the game designers make much smarter implementations for things like NPC raiders. You'll never get NPCs to smartly attack someone's tree fort that can only be hit by a catapult from one spot on the map but you can certainly get them to assault a designated "settlement" area.

Free form building is probably too much freedom for these games. Certainly it helped lead to the loss of performance in Conan, LIF and Atlas. (LIF limited your building to large pre-fabs but screwed their performance anyway with terraforming. Atlas kills you with 150,000 bricks loading in while LIF killed you with 150,000 terrain adjustments.)

[AnneWildcat]

This is the reason for attuning to the obelisk, the map room.
https://conanexiles.gamepedia.com/Map-Room
Once you have the map room built you can teleport to any obelisk you are attuned to, to make it easier to get around.
For example, there is an obelisk near brimstone lake and an obelisk in the volcano. Build a map room near both and you can get resources and quickly go back to our volcano base.

Now, I have never built one, and so haven’t tried it.

[Vllad]

Conan went the route for cases when you need a catapult in a single spot some of the NPC Purge mobs shoot acid bombs from their mouths at range.

That sometimes works but the problem is getting the AI to stand in the right spot to hit you consistently. Hence why you need the damage modifier.

Free form building is why they cap the server pops which is why the pvp sucks. If you have free form building you need the ability to hide and the Conan map is too small for that. LIF map was the perfect size but that created performance issues.

The technology I don't think supports the appetite for what gamers want.

[Slamz]

The tech problem is just that MMO engine makers don't release their engines. You can't make a game on the WOW engine or the Planetside engine. All the games that have sucked have been using FPS engines never meant to do what the developers are trying to make them do.

Which is why I'm excited for New World, which at the very least is meant to be a tech demo for the Amazon MMO engine, released for free for any developer to use with the slight catch that you have to run your game on Amazon's servers...

LIF, Atlas, and Conan Exiles were all made with the same game engine, if I recall correctly: Unreal Engine. Great for 30 player FPS maps. Not so hot once they all start building forts or being stitched together to form 10,000 player "MMOs" where the zone lines lock you up for 10 seconds and teleports your horse two miles away.

It is one of those baffling aspects of gaming. I thought the year 2020 would be pretty much Ready Player One but instead it's MMORPGs from 1998, but this time, on your phone.

[Vllad]

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.

[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.