Conan: Exiles

[TheFeniX]

Anyone in on the Early Access for this?

Steam Store Link: Adult Content Warning, it's fucking Conan. So... Havok enabled boobs! And Dongs! Ok, so we got that out of the way.

I got tired of Ark. Not that it was a bad game, but I can only kill/tame so many dinos. I'm looking for something with NPC "people" to deal with and my days of dealing with PvP are about done. I just don't have it in me even if I had the time to dedicate to keep our base from getting ransacked. Games like Neverwinter Nights are great, but they are very much on rails. There was the "NPC Bush people" mod for Ark but it was buggy and the developer was.... an interesting fellow to say the least. He seemed more concerned with adding off the wall shit into the mod rather than releasing a solid proof-of-concept.

I've been looking for Co-op Skyrim/Fallout/Oblivion/whatever for years. Conan's NPC don't seem to be much more than loot pinatas, but the game (or at least, the desires of the developers) seems to want to move to scratch that itch I've had forever. At the least, it's a start. But I'm not about to drop $30 and ask my buddies to do the same on another game like this, but it does look interesting. And even though the official servers have issues, it looks to require less on the server end than Ark and my server runs Ark just fine.

They seem to be shooting for a survival game with MMORPG elements on top, which is perfect really. But the game seems to have a long way to go. Was really just interested to see if anyone had already bothered with it. I plan to watch a few videos over the next week.

I'm keeping my eyes open for a sale. I figure $15 is worth the gamble just as it was for Ark.

[Flagg]

I got a code in the email for free... I don't know why I keep being given these survival, explore, and PENISES FOR ALL! games (the full games, not just beta's) unless it's internet karma for actually buying 'No Man's Sky'.

But this one actually sounds interesting.

[Elheru Aran]

That looks fun enough. Kinda got a little burned on Age of Conan. If this is good enough I might have to actually upgrade my computer...

[TheFeniX]

I got a code in the email for free... I don't know why I keep being given these survival, explore, and PENISES FOR ALL! games (the full games, not just beta's) unless it's internet karma for actually buying 'No Man's Sky'.

Well, that IS a lot of karma accumulated for a single purchase. Either way, if you fuck around in it, do me a solid and let me know about the NPCs and what you can do with them.

I heard about sacrificing them to Set (doesn't interest me), but mainly about how you can kill them for resources, recruit them as thralls peacefully, and/or brutally subjugate them. I would prefer something more akin to making peace with them and having someone to trade resources with, but I'll take what I can get.

I refuse to deal with public servers these days which is why Ark is fading fast: a large portion of the fun and gameplay is focused around PvP.

That looks fun enough. Kinda got a little burned on Age of Conan. If this is good enough I might have to actually upgrade my computer...

I just tried AoC the other night. Graphics are "meh" but who cares? What I was annoyed with was instantly having that slave girl to rescue and her acting as a guide right off the bat. Man, I am SO tired of themeparks. Dump me off somewhere for a while and let me just figure things out.

Like, Star Wars Galaxies WITH TITS AND DICKS!

[TheFeniX]

I went ahead and picked this up because I should support something like this if it scratches an itch I have.

Character creator is pretty in-depth. The dudes can look all kind of dude like, but I think I've finally proved I'm broken. Maybe I just played doods in video games for so long I'm burned out? Either way, wasn't digging playing as Conan, so I'm playing as Red Sonya.

Graphically, this game is pretty solid. It's U4 engine, so no real surprise. For the record: Ark is also U4.

Setting up the server was about as painless as Ark. I had to pull it because my Ark server uses the same ports and we're not getting into Conan yet as I'm the only one who owns it. The configs are spread way out for some reason, which is dumb. I shouldn't have to edit 3-4 different .ini files for server settings. Not when you already have a serversettings.ini.

Gameplay wise, things are already pretty solid at least in Single-player (read: listen server) and connecting to a server on my LAN. Within 5 minutes my topless body (only had time to craft pants) was brutalized by a pack of human NPCs, then some kind of mutated freak things, and then a pack of hyenas. I finally got a small house up and a few bedrolls.

The crafting UI will need to be overhauled, but it all seems to work.

Overall, this game is pretty promising. I started messing around with the SP console. They include one in the game menu: this is great. I teleported around the map in a few places and ran into more than a few different enemies trying to kill me: skeletons, cultists, some kind of werewolf thingy. I haven't yet had the time to try and beat any NPCs into submission for the thrall system.

Mod support is out. Nearly all of it is item stacking overhauls. There's also a weapon reblance mod. Also, and this is a must have: clean-shaven and oiled body textures. Aw yea, oiled boobies. This is 2017 gaming. I should download that one.... you know, for research purposes!

Seriously though, I would like to take a crack at the modding system for just one thing: being captured by NPCs. Because dying and finding your body is old-school. I was thinking how funny it would be to have to break one of my buddies out of NPC jail because he was dumb enough to get hijacked. Maybe even a time limit until they get sacrificed to X god or something.

Warframe has something akin to this. If you die to the Zanuka hunter, the mission autofails and you're stuck in a new missions where you have to break out, find your weapons, and escape. I've never been able to activate it since by the time the Zanuka Hunter was added to the game: I was way to badass to lose to that POS. But watching some video of Conan, it's easy to get rolled by 2-4 NPCs no matter how geared you are. Rolling in a time-sink where you either wait for rescue or try and kill yourself to respawn might get our guys (one in particular) to quit fucking YOLOing everywhere.

Anyway, gaming is one thing, but I'd be better served studying than modding U4. But a man can dream. A man can dream.

[bilateralrope]

Character creator is pretty in-depth. The dudes can look all kind of dude like, but I think I've finally proved I'm broken. Maybe I just played doods in video games for so long I'm burned out? Either way, wasn't digging playing as Conan, so I'm playing as Red Sonya.

How does that prove you're "broken" ?

In third person games, the choice of my characters gender is usually decided by: "Which ass do I want to spend a lot of time looking at ?"
So I play female characters.

[TheFeniX]

I keep making a big deal out of it, but it isn't.

I got no shame in admitting I don't give a fuck: my Nord killing machine uses the 7B body because "those HIPS!" I just always play a dude first, it was always my style in a game that had a main character. Mass Effect, Morrowind. Though those are newer style RPGs, whereas in the past most of them were about the party, not the individual. In older games like this, such as those DnD games in the vein of Menzoberanzen (SP) or Ravenloft, Wizardry, or Eye of the Beholder there was a "FeniX" in there (or, when I was younger and stupider: Slayer).

It's just... weird to me. Because "maining" a female character never interested me up until a few years ago. I would just never consider starting a game as a female. Except Saint's Row 3 and 4: Laura Bailey, man. A voice actress after my heart.

Not much to report on Conan right now. I plan to dig around to try and find a good public server. Hopefully one without a lot of asshats. I'll hold off on any of my own hosting until my buddies get the game. One thing that is annoying: Character names are tied to your Steam name. A woman running around as the TheFeniX.... meh.

[Lord Revan]

I could see Fenix or Phoenix as a gender neutral name, I my steam name is my actual real life name which is exclusively masculine. As for playing female characters, for me it's "what looks the best with this art style" these days, I never liked the muscles on muscles 90s comic book hero look so I play predominantly female characters (though I also have male characters now that you can choose males that don't look like they take literally tons of steroids daily).

One of the reason I liked the old Quest for Glory series was that hero didn't look like your typical overly bulky musclebound brute with negative IQ since being intelligent enough to form coherent sentences was uncool (God I hate some parts of the 90s culture).

Funny thing to bring it tangently back to the OP was that in the first film at least Conan was actually quite smart if uneducated and simple in manners, even though he's looked as the first one of these types of heroes.

[TheFeniX]

I lied, you can changed the name. It's just the UI defaults your Steam name and the field doesn't look selectable at a glance.

I joined some random private server and had a good laugh. Got jumped by another new player while I was spending skill point even though I had just done a visual sweep with V and I had clear visibility in all directions. He got two swings in before I could react as the menu doesn't close all that quickly. At that point, two hits down, I died. And the guy tea-bagged what I guess was my corpse on the server side, but on the client side he was about 20 feet from my corpse. Must be differences on how ragdolls are handled.

I laughed and thought "people still do that (teabagging)?" It's one of those things that tells more about your personality than actual skill. Every single person I've ever talked to who actually teabags (all of these are from WoW) have been general handjobs of human beings.

Got a small base setup and did some exploring. The game has some collision issues or some kind of weird scripting with NPC bases. I was searching one that was already cleared out and went to go around some cages and got clipped inside one. Getting out was as simple as running against the wall for a second. The same thing happens in their sacrfice pit, little tents, or basically any structure that has exterior collision, but a space large enough inside of the collision box large enough for your character.

[TheFeniX]

Got my server setup. Been talking to my brother and the conclusion is "I'm tired of running an Ark server for just you." Seriously, the thing is eating up 9.5 GB of RAM and I finally found out why when I logged into it and found he's basically tamed every dinosaur in existence. And also built this huge hatchery and other such nonsense. Whatever, he has till the end of the week.

This game just "feels" better than Ark. The animations, the character proportions, just the assets all around. Though the combat continues to be very basic, I feel like I'm swinging a sword, stalking with my sword and board, running. My characters isn't just playing a X animation while the model is moved Y+1. This is a major issue in Ark. The character animations are just plain "bad."

We've established a base in the NW area of the map. Rob went crazy and built Valhalla or some shit while I got our crafting up. We are Corrupted City and Thrall City adjacent. Spawn times are an issue the developer is working on: they just keep spawning and spawning, sometimes you haven't moved past 2 groups before the first is already respawned.

However, this means many Thralls are not an issue to acquire as Thrall City has given us everything but an Alchemist. The Gods have provided me with a large breasted Priestess of Set, so I'm happy. I'm 43, so here soon I will be able to test out the Avatar system and rain vengeance down upon my enemies. Early armors and weapons are a fucking joke, but the later end-game sets are a massive boost both in damage/armor and durability. And this is needed because the AI will mob you at any given opportunity.

We ran into one (of the tougher) Dragons last night. Not even a hard fight as the Heater Shield let me tank and the combat is fairly buggy. I just held Block and ate Girl-Scout cookies while Rob and Kyle beat it to death over the course of about.... 20 minutes. He dropped nothing of value.

Another plus, the game also supports non-workshop mods. This is good because you can just copy workshop mods into the folder and never worry about updates breaking them. We can update on our own terms. This is gravy.

God damn, I really like this game. If they continue to make progress in the areas they are talking about, this is going to be great. My only CURRENT beef, besides the aggro radius of enemies and the spawn rate is the lack of travel options. I hope to see horses and caravans soon. But really, since the U4 dev kit seems so easy to work with and I haven't seen a mod, I was hoping if I had time to work out some kind of teleportation device. The console commands are already there, so I can't see it being TOO HARD to develop.

But if I just give it a few weeks, I'm sure someone will do a better job than I ever will.

[TheFeniX]

There more than a few changes coming in the near future. Of note:
New weapons and Armor
Siege Weapons
A dye system, which upon looking in the Modding tools, most of the logic is already implemented in their "tintmask" system. But damn I suck at visual scripting.

The Purge are enemy NPCs that will be sent into the Exiled Lands from neighboring nations to raid, pillage and destroy everything in their path. Players will have to band together to stop this menace or hide and pray to whatever god that might be listening that The Purge will pass them by. If you do decide to risk it the rewards might be worth it, but you should definitely take the time to build up your defenses.

Taming animals will mostly work the same as taming thralls. Players will have to drag their chosen mount back to a special pen that will break the animal’s will and turn it into a mount. The idea is that taming is an active process. We will also be adding animal thralls that will work as pets and transports for players, as well as mount and pet gear so you can customize your animal companions.

Awesome.

A bit of detail about the magic system:

Our sorcery system taps into the corruption debuffs that affect your character when they descend into the dark and corrupted places of the Exiled Lands. The more corrupted you are the more powerful your spells can become, but it also comes at a cost. To gain power you are forced to cut into your health and stamina, making your body weaker. The sorcery system will, in turn, give you access to necromancy and summoning rituals, letting you call upon evil, twisted creatures to do your bidding for you.

Additions to the Thrall system:\

Thralls will see an expansion through the settlement system that adds city life, thrall schedules, barracks, farming and trading. More thrall types will expand what you can do in the Exiled Lands as well as add more life to your cities and downs. Thralls will animate and move around, needing rest when night falls, forcing you to keep abreast on who does what and when. We’re also going to be adding a system for rescuing already captured thralls, getting them to come and work for you without needing to break them on the Wheel of Pain.

The addition of new biomes is coming as well, so no more just desert with a few oasis.

[TheFeniX]

Ok, so new Exiles stuff. I got my server online and we've been building and murdering our way to victory. Supposedly release is coming soon.

The character creator is still pretty barebones. There have been a few quality additions here such as a "physique" slider which applies a progressive muscling/weightlifter normal map to the character. It is pretty well done. The general animations have been cleaned up considerably. Nearly every movement looks and "feels" natural. There are still some (what I call) dead animation frames and some bugginess, but on just a movement/combat animation, this is a release candidate level of polish.

There are some issues with the male character model and movement I do not like. When compared to the female (gee, wonder why ANYONE would spend more time on female models and animation...) it's kind of grating. So, I've been playing more Sonya Exiles than anything.

Many different armor sets now give different bonuses, per piece, to stats. Dyes are annoying to make, but work pretty well. It breaks up kind of the monotony of Light > Medium > Heavy. I now have an excuse to run a lighter set of gear if I choose. Currently gearing up as a "Tank" by running board with Medium Armor. K is going with a spear and lighter armor to deal damage after I get aggro and he can move out from behind me, then fall back after doing the damage.

A few new religions. I was going to go Ymir, until I saw Derketo's opening gear. And then I almost had a heart attack.

This is a bit older of an addition: but you can climb pretty much anything you can get hands on. This also makes for some really fun parkour since you can drop off a ledge, then grab the wall, and slide down. To go faster, you can continually release and regrab. It's a fun mini-game in of itself.

Combat is now a lot more about combos and locking up opponents. This is also makes fighting multiple opponents harder as a matter of course because you can get stagger-locked. However, with the addition of dodging, you can at least almost always retreat if need be. Bows are still awful, unless a Thrall has one, then they murder roll. Especially since Thralls seem, stupidly, immune to friendly fire. At least melee thralls can be lined up to block arrows for you.

Different weapons do different thing now, so it's not just spam spam spam. Spears have their uses due to length and can also be used to stagger enemies in a cone in front of you. 2-handed swords seem a bit underpowered. They do more damage, but not enough, I don't feel, to negate the disadvantage of the long wide-up time. The animations look fun though.

We have yet to really get to the new biomes. We dealt with our first Purge. If you build up too much influence, you can be attack by a group of NPCs whose size and strength is based off your clan membership and land claim radius. We ended up having to fight about 20 NPCs to end the purge. There's also at least one neutral city. Barebones, but it's nice to have groups that aren't always hostile.

All in all, a good diversion. We're missing out on some action not playing on a populated server. But we're also not getting the shit trolled out of us.

Vertical and horizontal elevators that are easy to place and work with (at least from what I've used them for) zero issue. The horizontal one in particular is great because as long as there is SOMETHING valid to attach to on the other end IT WILL PLACE. Fuck yes. I don't know what the max distance is and I don't care. This is a great addition to the game.

[Feil]

About how much of your time would you say needs to be spent farming/mining/building/administrating/etc, vs thieving, reaving, slaying, and treading the jeweled nations of the earth beneath your sandaled feet?

The game looks pretty cool, but then so did ARK, and that turned out to be a work simulator...

[TheFeniX]

Nothing like what you would deal with in Ark. There's no "tech gap" like in ark where you go from Crossbows to motherfuckin' rawket lawnchairs and your farming TONS of mats to get the weapons, armor, and (to the point) AMMO. Getting a base up, sans PvP bullshit, is pretty straight forward and in the southern areas there's enough mats around to get the job done fairly quickly. If you're doing single-player, just up your progression gains.

There's a cave in the starter zone that is filled with low-level thralls and (more importantly) Brimstone for making Steel. Then later, hardened Steel. But you can also farm certain mats off mobs. The "Nords" in New Asagarth drop steel like it's going out of style. They'll also wreck your shit if you come in under-geared/leveled or don't know how to cheese.

The annoying part is certain things take tons of Iron and Steel Reinforcements. They take a lot of time to craft, it's not so much the materials themselves. Following the "Journey" (basically, DO X, get XP) which is shit like "build a slave wheel) is a key to easy XP. But you can have a base up and be slavin' your way to thralls in no time.

Moving about the map can be annoying, but the map really isn't THAT large. Once we discovered the majority of it, we just loaded the Teleport mod anyway.

The biggest annoyance for us right now is Star Metal. It has to be mined from meteors which land randomly in the Snow Biome.

I'll tell you the same thing I tell a lot of people: I can't make the call if Conan Exiles is worth the money to you. From a PvP aspect: it avoids most of the cheesy bullshit Ark deals with. No Mashin Guns or T-Rexs. You wail on dudes till they die, but also try and avoid people trolling your base. From a PvE aspect: it's easy to get a handle on things, but then you're really just hunting down named Thralls and certain harder to find mats.....

There's some fun to be had with building your base, upgrading, and making your "temple."

Or just filling your base with Rank III big boobied Dancers. I mean... we all got our priorities. I'll try and post some Screenshots of what we've setup.... not of the Dancers.... of the base. I mean, if you WANT SSs of the dancers, I can deliver.

[LaCroix]

Also, it is a game where studying how people built castles and applying these principles makes a huge difference.

A properly built castle hugging the proper terrain, with towers & bastions placed correctly along the walls, and the correct staggered defences will be a huge force multiplyer when the unavoidable raid comes.

[TheFeniX]

Yea, this is one thing my buddy didn't get. With the way the mod system works, it's unlikely anyone would join the server anyway, but I disabled PvP building damage because none of our bases are defensible in any way if we're not online, especially with the climbing mechanic. I tested this in SP by copying the server files over. Reorlling then boosting my level to around 20 and giving myself a setup of basic steel gear, I was able to ransack one of our bases by killing a few Thralls, then running to recover. It took a few deaths and respawning at a near-by bedroll, then quickly looting my body and running, but I got the job done. Some thralls didn't even aggro and I was able to break down a door and steal all the loots.

Realistically, I think aside from decent base building. You're going to need mostly level 3 thralls with heavy armor and about half having spears and the other half rocking Mace/Axe and Shield. Archers mounted high wouldn't hurt either. Also, with the addition of trebuchets, you can really wreck a base. Thankfully they take a while to setup (which has to be done on-site) and don't have a crazy amount of range.

[LaCroix]

That's why you should set up a castle on one of the rock plateaus, have a wall hugging the rim of it, and bastions and towers jutting out to give the archer thralls optimal field of fire.

Entrance should be only through a funnel of multiple walls, each higher than the other, and with archers covering each approach...

Look up the Carthar castles in france, or Castle Hochosterwitz.



Good luck getting a trebuchet in position against one of these. And climbing only makes you a target for the archers on the nearby walls.

The idea of a fortress is to make forcing entrance so hard that you either end up an arrow-pincushion or so frustrated that you give up.