Conan Exiles Ups Thrall Survivability And Damage, Adds Repair Kits, And Considers More ‘Free-Flow’ Combat System

If you think thralls are good for nothing more than cannon-fodder, last week’s Conan Exiles Testlive patch might make you think differently. Funcom has made these bot-like NPCs infinitely more useful by giving players the ability to equip them with weapons and armor allowing them to survive longer and dish out more damage. There is, however, one drawback. Funcom explains:

“One side effect of introducing the thrall inventories was that you could no longer pickup these thralls once they have been deployed [due to inventory item restrictions]. This makes it more cumbersome to move thralls over long distances. We are therefore adding support for archer, fighter and dancer thralls to follow you around instead. This should make it easier to rearrange your defenses. The follow mechanics also opens up the doorway for rescuing thralls in the future.”

The devs also introduced Repair Kits and Patch Kits on the test server as part of the sandbox MMORPGs new repair system. New roofing pieces have also been added to the test build to give player housing more variety. If you’re playing on the Xbox, Funcom rolled out a hotfix for client crashes caused by memory and texture loading problems.

The team is hard at work taking care of other bugs, balancing the new temperature system, creating new weapons and craftable items, and fleshing out the new Volcano dungeon. They’re also considering reworking the game’s combat system. “Something that’s being considered is a more free-flow movement and combat system, where your character won’t end up facing the camera during combat,” says Funcom. “It’s still on the experimental stage, and might not make it into the game at all, but it’s a possibility.”

You can check out this week’s Conan Exiles Community Letter for more info.