Dear exiles,
On Tuesday, we announced that we're rolling out Attributes, Perks and leveling for pets/thralls in a future update. You can read the full announcement in this post.
The TL;DR is that this new feature will make individual thralls/pets more powerful and also makes engaging with them more rewarding.
At the same time, we're implementing a limit on how many thralls/pets you can own at once. The details about this limit can also be found in the post we linked to above.
Naturally, a lot of you had questions about pet/thrall leveling and the limiter. We addressed these in a livestream on Thursday, which you can see below, but if you're not able to sit through an hour-long video we've posted an FAQ below the video. You can also check out Multigun's thorough summary of the stream in this thread.
YouTube Archive of Thursday's stream
FAQ about thrall/pet leveling and limit:
How many pets/thralls can I have following me after this update?
- Still just one
Thrall/Pets Limit
Will there be a “grace period” where players can remove unwanted Followers without killing them? How, specifically, will removing old thralls work? Which thralls/pets will take priority when being removed?
- We are planning to allow for such a grace period when this rolls out, where players can remove old pets/thralls using the Break Bonds command so their total number of pets/thralls moves below the maximum allowed number.
- When the grace period is over the system will periodically delete a random active pet/thrall. At the moment this happens once every 30 minutes, but it might change before the feature goes live. Remember that pets/thralls in crafting stations (or in storage boxes) won't count towards the max limit and will not be removed.
- Break Bonds will remove the thrall from the world and leave behind a loot bag with all their old equipment, so you won’t lose those resources.
When does the system start removing thralls?
- The length of such a grace period hasn't been decided yet, but we will announce this once we've decided.
How was it decided to limit a full clan to 100 followers?
- The limit was decided after talking it through with programmers and designers and reaching an agreement that would allow for enough protection for a decent sized based and still be a viable gain in terms of performance.
Can you turn this limit off in a single-player game or on a private server?
- Yes, absolutely. This was mentioned in the post we put up on Tuesday.
Current numbers mean that in a 10 man clan, you can have 10 Followers on average per person. Wouldn't it be better for that clan to disband and have everyone run solo, thereby discouraging large base builds and clans?
- You can of course do this – but there are other gains for being in a clan than just thrall limits. You won’t be able to help your friends out in PvP situations, etc. The amount will not be increased.
Let’s say we’re a clan of 10. If one of us leaves the clan, will we suddenly lose 5 random thralls? How soon will we lose thralls/pets?
- The periodicity is set up as a server option. The period is one thrall being purged every 30 minutes (at the moment)
Will PvE and PvP have separate Follower caps? PvE rarely has people covering the whole map like in certain PvP scenarios. The cap seems low for PvE.
- Official servers will all have the same cap. Private server admins can set their cap to whatever they please. We won't distinguish between PvE and PvP modes.
Will this limit address the thrall decay system and the fact that it only seems to work intermittently? Some PvE servers have a lot of orphaned thralls remaining from departed clans.
- The limit itself does not interact with the decay system as such; they’re separate systems. We also want to remove orphan thralls but this system does not specifically target them.
Is there going to be a tab available in the inventory/anywhere where we can monitor and view how many thralls/pets the clan owns?
- Not in this patch, but we have considered doing that in the future (for example, being able to view this through the Thrall Pot and Clan UI)
Will the ability to order thralls and pets to stand down/be passive be implemented as well?
- Not for this patch.
Will mounts be counted in the Follower limit? What about dancers?
- Yes and yes.
Will a private server be able to lower the number of Followers even further?
- You can, yes.