[2019] Testlive Patch (21.12.2018) - Purge Fixes and Building Optimizations

Hear ye, hear ye! We have another Testlive build ready to go, hot off the presses!

This is a pretty huge patch that comes with a multitude of fixes, but the most important things in this patch are the Purge fixes and the building optimizations. The Purge should now attack more reliably, and Purge NPCs should no longer be naked when attacking you. Buildings should also load in significantly faster than before, which should cause better performance for the server.

Additionally, we've done a major balancing overhaul to the game, increasing the amount of XP you get from crafting and from killing enemies as well as tweaking rewards. This balancing is an ongoing project but we are very interested to hear your feedback on the changes present on Testlive so far.

Finally, we have gone over the map with a fine tooth comb in an attempt to find, and block, areas where players have been able to access areas beneath the ground mesh.

If you want to test this build, here's how to access Testlive[forums.funcom.com].

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.

Patch Highlights
Major Balancing Overhaul (more details below)

• Human NPC progression across the factions has been increased in difficulty.
• Human T4 Loot-pools have been adjusted to provide better rewards
• Monster/Animal difficulty curve has been adjusted to better conform with the intended difficulty-bands. Certain monsters are more challenging to fight
• Many animals and monsters may now spawn as "Elite" versions of themselves
• NPC equipment has been adjusted
• Crafting and killing gives more experience points overall
• See below for more details

Roleplaying Updates

• Players can now write their own biography for their characters in the STATS/ tab. There is an option to make the biography public, private or clan-only. You can find this setting under the GAMEPLAY/ heading. Please not that you currently cannot change Biography Access option. This will be fixed in the future.
• After placing the "Note" item, it's now possible to actually write on them. Picking up the note again will remove any text written on it.
• New Feat: Boneshaper - this feat allows the crafting of dice that function in the same way as the /Dice chat command. The stack of dice determine how many dice are rolled. Dice come in 4,6,8,10,12 and 20 sided variants
• You can now see where your fellow clan-members are on the map!

Building Optimizations

• We have been working on improving the loading times and general optimizations for buildings. Conan Exiles doesn’t have any limits for how big you can build and we want you to put these changes through their paces. Please note that this is for structural buildings only, and not placeables such as torches, campfires, crafting stations and doors.
• Loading buildings has gone from this:
  
  
• To this:
  

Purge Fixes

• The Purge is an important aspect of the game's PvE content. While it's been working on a technical level, it hasn't hit the mark from a gameplay perspective and has been confusing a lot of players. We have rewritten several parts of the Purge to improve the core mechanics and make it a more reliable threat.
• The Purge should now happen more reliably and Purge enemies should no longer be naked. The Purge meter should fill as intended. You should also reliably be able to knock out NPCs and not halt the Purge in its tracks.

Picking Up Crafting Stations

• It's now possible to return crafting stations to your inventory through the radial-menu. This change does not affect Altars, Wheels of Pain or Animal Pens. If there are items in the crafting station inventory, those items will appear in a loot bag on the ground. In the future we aim to make it so the inventory is automatically transferred to your inventory

TL;DR

• Updated the Purge to be more reliable
• Building Optimizations
• Exploit fixes to prevent Undermeshing
• You can now see where your fellow clan-members are on the map!
• T2 and T3 building pieces now yield XP as intended
• Increased Stack Sizes for Wood, branches, Stone and Plant Fiber
• Bearer NPCs will now supply materials when killed
• Reduced damage for the 2h Spears' first two heavy attacks, and increased damage for the two last attacks.
• Significant balancing overhaul (see more below)

Currently Known Issues

• Only the Notes you can place on horizontal surfaces are writeable. The other types are fixed internally, but did not make it into this patch
• Please not that you currently cannot change Biography Access option. This will be fixed in the future
• Inventory slots can remain highlighted even when they are not selected. If you re-select them in the inventory this goes away.

Patch Notes
Performance and Stability

• Fixed a server crash

Exploit Fixes

• Fixed a number of locations where it was possible to gain access to the area under the world in order to build unassailable bases (Undermeshing fixes) - Please report any locations we may have missed
• The Thrall Pot has had it's placement checkbox increased to more accurately reflect its size to prevent placing it on top of players/self and get stuck. This should also prevent players from getting beneath the ground mesh
• NPCs that are not thralls do not consume thrown weapons anymore and you cannot loot the weapons they throw

New Additions

• Players can now write their own biography for their characters in the STATS/ tab. There is an option to make the biography public, private or clan-only. You can find this setting under the GAMEPLAY/ heading
• After placing the "Note" item, it's now possible to actually write on them. Picking up the note again will remove any text written on it.
• New Feat: Boneshaper - this feat allows the crafting of dice that function in the same way as the /Dice chat command. The stack of dice determine how many dice are rolled. Dice come in 4,6,8,10,12 and 20 sided variants
• You can now see where your fellow clan-members are on the map!
• It's now possible to return crafting stations to your inventory through the radial-menu. This change does not affect Altars, Wheels of Pain or Animal Pens. If there are items in the crafting station inventory, those items will appear in a loot bag on the ground. In the future we aim to make it so the inventory is automatically transferred to your inventory

Building and Placeables Fixes

• Yamatai fences now prevents climbing, as intended
• All placeables now have a minimum building score of 1 instead of 0 - this change will increase the decay-timer for smaller bases and thus the time it takes for them to decay. A consequence of this is that having a large amount of placeables might make you eligible to be attacked by a Purge at a faster rate.
• Almost all placeables can now be tilted/rotated to fit the landscape for easy placement

Crafting Fixes

• Crafting speed bonus progression for thralls has been adjusted. Firstly, Alchemists now progress correctly in crafting bonuses. Also, all purge thralls now craft items much faster than before. The high-end bonus time multiplier is 4x crafting speed
• Alchemists now have a "Fill flask" recipe available to them when placed in the Firebowl Cauldron. This is a quick 1 second recipe that allows quick filling of crafted waterflasks to help with the crafting of items that require such filled waterflasks (Dyes, etc)
• Fixed an issue where certain recipes were missing for Werk of the Lost Tribe and Njoror Battleborn armorers
• Fixed an issue where XP would not be granted when crafting items from the radial menu
• Crafting T2 and T3 building pieces will now yield XP as intended.

Combat fixes

• Fixed an issue with the Rocknose King hitbox that made hitting it with arrows difficult
• Gorillas now apply "Sunder" with their attacks
• Removed the taunt animation from the pet Hyenas, Shalebacks and Rocknoses in order to make them more reliable during combat
• Added the venom spray attacks to Sand Reaper pets to boost their usefulness in combat
• Serpentmen Brutes should now deal damage correctly
• Hits against a character should no longer briefly display the non-combat button layout legend

AI and Thrall Fixes

• It should now be possible to swim with captured thralls. Doing so will make them float.
• Thralls should now be able to use throwing axes correctly
• Fixed an issue in the spawn table (Shout-outs to Alex02 on the forums) where Rokur and * Marn had incorrectly been set up and would not spawn as intended.
• Fixed an issue where archers did not exit combat properly and their AI got stuck
• Taskmasters are now more instantly recognizable from the equipment they wear (Hyperborean slaver outfit pieces). Dancers are also now generally wearing either the Stygian or Zamorian dancer outfits
• Combo rule sets have now been set up for NPCs. Tier 1-2 (and Bearers) are considered novices and do not use optimal combos, while Tier 3-4 NPCs will be more efficient at using attack-combinations, including offhand attacks. What this effectively means is that human melee-oriented NPCs should now attempt to use real combos instead of randomizing their attacks.
• Removed the threaten animation from Grey Apes, as it would cause them to get stuck
• Fixed an issue where certain pet rhinos could not attack
• Pets and thralls should now smoothly follow the player as opposed to "run-stop-run"
• Thralls that are set to follow players should no longer teleport like crazy when they cannot reach you. They still will attempt to teleport but now there is a reasonable delay between each attempt.
• Thrall items now go into the thrall slot when shift-clicking them in a crafting station
• Fixed an issue that allowed expanding thrall inventories

Purge Fixes

• Fixed an issue where the Sixth wave of Frost Giant purges referenced itself as the next wave to start
• Knocking out an NPC from a purge will no longer halt the purge - instead, it is treated as if the NPC had been killed.
• Human NPCs spawned through the purge system no longer spawn naked
• Fixed an issue with the purge that would prevent it from spawning for certain building configurations. The purge should now happen more reliably.

Balance Updates

• Increased the hitpoints for the Rocknose King boss
• Adjusted hitpoints of Tier 3 and Tier 4 thralls to match the rebalance of NPC damage output and hitpoints
• NPC Bearers are now better capable of defending themselves (not as well as fighters though) as their stats have been slightly adjusted. They have slightly more hitpoints and do slightly more damage when attacking
• Obsidian Skinning Knife now harvests more skins (it erroneously had the same harvest-rate as steel skinning knives)
• Named NPCs now do increased damage, have more hitpoints and yield more XP when killed (balancing change)
• Yog Cleaver, Mitraen Ankh and Setite Ritual Knife have had their damage and armor pen lowered to reflect other religious tooks of the same rank
• Epic bows now offer a slight increase in damage as their quality is raised from normal to exceptional to flawless
• XP curve for crafting has been adjusted - in general, crafting should now yield XP properly
• Lemurian and Reptilian armor now grants a total bonus of +9 between the dual stats of the armors as intended (it gave out too much earlier)
• Reduced armor for medium armor by about 6% as it was too close to Heavy armor in performance
• Significantly increased XP from killing monsters and animals
• Slightly increased bow damage across the board
• Reduced damage for the 2h Spears' first two heavy attacks, and increased damage for the two last attacks. This was done to increase reward for committing to full combos using the right-hand attack while still retaining the utility of the spears long range poke-ability. We want to make the spear useful and not nerf it completely #babysteps
• Reduced the weight of heavy armors by 10%
• Human NPC-progression across the factions has been increased in difficulty-range. The hitpoints, armor and damage output of the NPCs have been adjusted for this. Very small adjustments have been made to the Exiles factions, but Darfari factions and upwards have been scaled up to match the challenge levels intended for them (20, 30, 40, 50, 60+). These changes also affect the base stats of thralls from the factions being captured, giving players an incentive for getting the best fighters/archers/etc.
• Human T4 Loot-pools have been adjusted to provide better loot-rewards - in particular for higher-level enemies in the Highlands.
• Monsters/Animal difficulty curve has been adjusted to better conform with the intended difficulty-bands. In general this has made certain monsters much more interesting and challenging to fight. Most monsters have gotten increased damage, hitpoints and/or special features to their attacks. Some of them are also now immune to knockback since it trivialized combat with them (Ostrich, Were-hyena, Bear, Imp King, Witch Queen, every Undead creature).
• Many (but not all) Animals and monsters may now spawn as "Elite" versions of themselves. There is a 2% chance that this happens for every spawn point these monsters have. These elite monsters and animals are bigger, tougher, looks different and drops additional loot - with a guaranteed drop rate of Demon-blood, a key ingredient for high-end crafting.
• Equipment for NPCs have been adjusted, most notably for crafter-NPCs that were previously using very low-level default weapons, such as the Iron Dagger or Iron Mace. Now they're using more level appropriate weaponry. In addition, crafters and taskmasters are now using specific armor-setups (aprons and worker gloves) to make them easier to distinguish in camps.
• Various issues with certain (Rare) thralls not spawning has been addressed
• XP from monsters have been increased significantly, since they are now harder to defeat. XP from killing T4 humans is also greatly increased.
• Added 15% armor penetration to the Reaver's Axe, to match it's actual description
• Lowered the damage by the Jedias Greatsaber by 3 points

Quality of Life Improvements

• Coal nodes no longer give stone and instead gives an increased amount of Coal
• Modders can now remove MapMarkers by their ID through the GlobalMapMarker system
• Fixed a number of visual imperfections for collisions, textures and floating objects in the world
• Significantly increased the effective range of Lures
• True Indigo Seeds can now be obtained from True Indigo plants
• Reinforced Hatch Door (Metal bar variant) now has a short and long description as well as the correct visual.
• Exceptional and Flawless Lemurian warrior armor now grants additional stats in comparison to the normal version
• Fixed a misleading level requirement for the Savage Frontier Totemic Feat (only visual impact). Yamatai still remains
• The Potion of Bestial Memory and the Potion of Natural Learning now have a decay timer of 2 minutes.
• Eating the Shroom Amanita now has a chance of causing food poisoning as the description suggests
• Short description of Elixir of Vigor now differs from that of the Elixir of Ingestion
• Spiced Pork and Spiced Exquisite Meat now grant "Warming Up" buff
• Stack-sizes for Wood, Branches, Stone, and Plant Fiber have been increased from 100 to 1000
• Explosive traps now follow the same placement distance rules as Vapor Traps, meaning that they can no longer be placed very close to each other
• Wall Torches can no longer be placed under water. This only affects Wall Torches that have flames. Torches with glow stones are not affected.
• Red and Green dragons now also drop Dragonhorn
• It's now possible to return crafting stations to your inventory through the radial-menu. This change does not affect Altars, Wheels of Pain or Animal Pens. If there are items in the crafting station inventory, those items will appear in a loot bag on the ground. In the future we aim to make it so the inventory is automatically transferred to your inventory
• Hardened Steel Javelin, Hardened Steel Dagger and Hardened Steel Bow now have the correct feat-unlock requirements
• Bearer NPCs will now drop supply materials when killed. These supply materials can in turn be opened and reveal their contents. The higher tier the NPC, the better rewards. Free loot! For free! #freetheloot
• Fixed a misleading description in the Acolyte of Set feat recipes
• Unconscious bodies in the desert starting areas should now be invisible if they have nothing in their inventories
• Voice chat should no longer activate while typing

General Bugfixes

• Fixed an issue where some female NPCs were loading the wrong presets resulting in incorrect visuals
• Sandstorm damage will now re-apply to the character if you remove your sandstorm mask while in a sandstorm
• Lemurian weapons are now correctly marked as High Grade instead of Low Grade
• Starmetal spear, Dragonbone spear and Serpent-man War Spear now requires Long Handles to craft. These used to require the wrong feat
• Food poisoning debuff no longer has a description saying it is causing "0" damage every tick. You lying meat, you.
• Fixed a LOD issue that would make the Aquilonian Brazier look misshapen
• Fixed a number of typos and grammatical errors #spelchekker
• The Claws of Jhebbal Sag are now correctly displayed in the weapon racks
• Spiders are no longer attracted by the Scorpion lures
• Fixed an issue where the Frontier and Aquilonian Sloping Inverted Walls had inconsistent icons
• Hyperborean armors now both grant the same type of temperature protection
• Fixed a durability error between the normal and epic versions of Royal Armor Breastplate item
• Altar of Set no longer glows mysteriously without light-sources
• Frontier door is now removed correctly when dismantled (visual only)
• Using a cleaver on a pet's corpse will now correctly yield meat-items
• Exceptional Obsidian 1h Sword no longer has 2h sword damage
• Fixed an issue where the LOD (level of detail) of the Khitan Jar would make it look misshapen
• Fixed an issue where corruption in one location of the Citadel of the Triumvirate was not visible
• Shaleback Hatchling Shell, Weathered Skull and Impaled Skulls can now be obtained via the Admin panel
• Vines to Bread transmute recipe for Derketo can now correctly be crafted in the Pleasure Place of Derketo (Used to be Pleasure Dome of Derketo)
• Dragonbone weapons are now labeled as "Legendary"
• The potions granted by the Jhebbal Sag religion did not unlock the "Obtain a potion" Journey step. This is now fixed.
• Target Lock should now prioritize nearby targets correctly
• Fixed an issue with the Map Room where you would sometimes sequentially jump to multiple locations, if you'd selected several teleportation points at the same time
• Fixed a bug where the dagger on the male Zamorian thief armor would stretch in an unnatural way
• All wheels of pain can now take the same food-items as "fuel"
• Fixed a bug where the Awakened Staff of the Triumvirate would display the "Talk" widget while it was still being placed
• Fixed a bug where Numbing Wraps could be used while a weapon was equipped
• Fixed an issue where some DLC awnings were more expensive to craft than basegame awnings. Frontier, Yamatai and Khitan Awnings still reqires Hardened Bricks to repair
• Fixed an issue with Yamatai and Aquilonian Awning corners that only allowed them to be placed on the bottom of foundations
• Noxious gas debuff from Vapor trap no longer stacks over time (damage is not affected by this - the stacking was a visual only effect)
• Vathis should no longer randomly spawn as a woman
• Fixed an issue where two chunks of flesh would float around your head after being decapitated
• Fixed a bug making it impossible to loot certain containers using the quick-loot GUI
• Placeables can no longer be placed on an elevator cabin. This change is intended to help with undermeshing exploits
• It should now be possible to place wedges underneath the Aquilonian Gate Frame
• Fixed an issue with misplaced lower jaws on certain animal-corpses
• It is no longer possible to use weapon mod-kits on the Claws of Jhebbal Sag. This was never intended, and doing so would reduce the expiration timer to 5 seconds
• The Set Brazier can now correctly be crafted at the Sepulcher of Set
• Inverted Thatch Wedge Sloped Roof no longer has improper destructible mesh
• Glowing Standing Torch should now correctly lower the temperature rather than increase it (from +1 to -1)
• Decorative Planter (Highland Bush) now uses the correct bush
• Fixed an issue where it was possible to stack placeables in the same spot.
• Input from the R1/RB buttons no longer trigger while having a sign input box active
• Fixed a bug where recipes could disappear from the crafting queue. This predominantly affected the DLC items
• Fixed a bug causing the split-stack dialog to ignore the typed value when being acknowledged by clicking the "Ok" button rather than hitting enter or using the gamepad
• Fixed an issue where RCON commands were parsed as ANSI instead of UTF8
• Fixed an issue that allowed expanding container inventories

Terrain and Environment Fixes

• Fixed a number of places in the world where you could get stuck if you fell in
• Sandstorm should no longer cause damage to players in the Swamp biome

Animation and Cinematic Fixes

• The Two-Handed swords first light attack now has the correct animation while in first-person view
• Improved responsiveness for the second heavy attack for Hammers - this attack can now be initiated slightly quicker than before.

UI and Text Fixes

• The event "Tier 3 Tech" entry now correctly reads "Religious Warfare"
• The Effects list icon in the inventory next to the paper doll is no longer cut off
• Fixed an issue where it was not possible to scroll through the list of creatures in the Feed Box/Thrall pot
• Improved feedback when learning emotes from interactable objects in the world. The UI will no longer show "Unknown Emote" and instead list the emote/s and feat/s learned
• Fixed an issue where some interactive objects would not display the "Press E to interact" message
• When learning the Mountaineering feat from the Mountaineer, it should no longer claim it is a religion.
• AdminPanel Can now be closed with esc and the back button on a gamepad
• Improved the visuals on buffs located on enemy hotbar; It's now easier to read the amount of stacks for buffs/debuffs an enemy has (e.g. "2x Poison, 3x Sunder, etc)
• Fixed an inconsistency in the "Days Passed" slider in the Event Log
• There is now an Event Log entry for when a thrall or pet is stolen or destroyed in a single-player game
• Building information shown while hovering over a building piece with the Repair hammer should now load better and not show a placeholder white square for a few frames
• After entering a dungeon, player map markers will now appear at the correct location on the map (the dungeon entrance). This is a work in progress and might not be implemented for all dungeons yet,
• Fixed a number of text bugs for the Russian language
• It is no longer possible to open the interaction GUI for objects while other GUIs are open.
• Controller sensitivity for Powershot can now be set using a client setting
• The description of "Trick Shot" now also mentions that it affects Throwing Axes
• Fixed a bug causing names of items in the inventory info panel to sometimes be scaled down more than needed.
• When a player's Thrall attacks an NPC, their health bar should now be displayed.
• Encumberance value should no longer show "-0" after throwing away bows and arrows from the inventory. This was a visual rounding error and had no effect on gameplay.
• Fixed an auto-correct error that made certain NPC nameplates read "Ii" and "IiI" instead of "II" and "III"
• Encumbrance and Movement Penalty should now update properly when the Attributes Menu is open
• Removed the sort dropdown from the crafting panel since it only had one option populated
• Changed the wording for upgrading altars to correctly reflect where you upgrade an altar from one tier to the next (no functionality change, only a communication improvement)
• We no longer show a message when looting items if you were already Encumbered. This should get rid of most of the "Encumbered" message spam. #cucumbered
• Highlight should now appear correctly upon navigating up/down in the Settings while using controller
• Fixed an issue where the last character before parentheses was removed when using chat to display emotes
• Inventories can no longer be accessed while editing sign text
• Applying Search filter now scrolls the tab to the sought-out item
• Altars placed in the world no longer read "Noname". Note that this change is not retroactive, as the nameplate for this is generated on placement of the altar. All new altars should work correctly though.
• Fixed an issue where a player leaves an empty corpse and the "Looted" tag appears, but a corpse containing loot would display simply "Death"
• Confirmation prompt is no longer displayed twice after attempt to discard unconverted thrall via double clicking Left Mouse Button
• Diet icons in the pet inventory GUI can no longer be dragged
• Item highlight is no longer moved to the player's inventory when the user uses "Info" button in the crafting station's inventory
• "Heaviest first" option now sorts stackable items properly
• When a pet that follows you dies, you should now get a message for this and not merely the "xxx stopped following you" message

Audio Fixes

• Your character will now start panting while sprinting with an equipped weapon, as intended
• Crouching footsteps now have audible audio

Community Tools Trello Report Board We have a public bug tracking board here[trello.com]! 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[forums.funcom.com].

Separate TestLive Product on Steam We heard your input regarding the inconvenience with having to switch back and forth between the main game and our TestLive servers. To make it easier for you and because we really value your testing and feedback, we added a separate product for the TestLive server on Steam.

If you own Conan Exiles on Steam, you should now see a separate Product called "Conan Exiles - Testlive Client" in your library which gives you the option to install an additional instance of the game specifically for the TestLive servers. Please be aware that this will prompt you for a full additional installation.

We are aware that not everyone wants install or has space for two full installations. For those of you who don't want to play through the additional TestLive Client, you can still access the TestLive servers through our old method[forums.funcom.com].