RPGHQ Conan Exiles server

No RPG elements? It probably goes here!
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rusty_shackleford
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RPGHQ Conan Exiles server

Post by rusty_shackleford »

Having fun with this game so I decided to rent a server to play on. Server settings are almost identical to an official Funcom PvE server. Added some QoL mods that don't affect balance. Won't be doing any sort of admin meddling.

Just search the lobby for RPGHQ, if it's password protected(will probably remove it soon), it's "rpghq" without the quotes.

You only need the base game to play. If you want something from one of the DLC just ask and I can make it for you, I bought the package with all the DLC.



Think it's on GamePass too if you have that(yuck)
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Fedora Master
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Post by Fedora Master »

Very cool. How's the gathering? I feel the game quickly descends into endless waiting and grinding for higher tier materials.
SDG

Post by SDG »

Fuckin based ass mother fucker. I always knew you was a chill bro Rus *salute*
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Post by rusty_shackleford »

Built my base on top of a plateau and decided to make stairs.

There's also lifts(elevators) directly next to the mountain to take you up, but they're kinda slow.
Image

The support beams are necessary btw, buildings require a certain stability rating or else they crumble.

Here's a screenshot from me building it with the scaffolding in place for creating the supports:
Image
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Post by rusty_shackleford »

Taking the lift up with a tied up slave being dragged up :king:
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Post by Hando »

If my craptop will run it I'll join in. Will I only need the standard edition?

Nvm you already answered that
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Fedora Master
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Post by Fedora Master »

Full nudity and no item drop on death, good.
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Post by rusty_shackleford »

Fedora Master wrote: March 19th, 2023, 17:08
no item drop on death
This was a compromise that I disliked but disliked the alternative even more. I couldn't find a way to completely disable body decay, and strongly dislike the idea of losing your stuff just because you had to go do something else after dying.
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Post by Fedora Master »

I found corpse runs annoying as fuck especially when you're solo and it took ages to get higher tier gear. I find that Exiles doesn't lend itself to solo play much to begin with.

Anyway I'm Ayyo Holup but right now I'm just a bare ass nibba at the river.
SDG

Post by SDG »

I'd join but game isn't playable on steam deck and it doesn't have cross play as far as I know.

I had a dope ass castle that was filled with nekkid dancer slaves and dragon heads mounted on my walls to strike fear in my enemies. Game was so fun.
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Post by Gregz »

I intend to play but it may be a week or two.
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WhiteShark
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Post by WhiteShark »

Does this game/server have PvP?
Nevermind, reread the OP and saw the line about being identical to an official PvE server.
SDG

Post by SDG »

PvP fucking sucks. Unless you plan on joining a clan have fun watching your shit get blown up over and over.
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Post by WhiteShark »

SDG wrote: March 19th, 2023, 22:45
PvP fucking sucks. Unless you plan on joining a clan have fun watching your shit get blown up over and over.
What about the actual man-to-man combat? I imagine there's probably some server setting to turn off base destruction, and I agree that it's hard -- maybe impossible -- to make that aspect fun for the defender.
SDG

Post by SDG »

WhiteShark wrote: March 19th, 2023, 22:55
SDG wrote: March 19th, 2023, 22:45
PvP fucking sucks. Unless you plan on joining a clan have fun watching your shit get blown up over and over.
What about the actual man-to-man combat? I imagine there's probably some server setting to turn off base destruction, and I agree that it's hard -- maybe impossible -- to make that aspect fun for the defender.
I was ganked every time. Never stood a chance. If you don't join a clan then you might as well be partaking in a ass rape simulator. The actual combat seemed fine when I would run into the occasional solo player. Never encountered anything that I would consider to be cheap or dirty play in 1 on 1 combat.
SDG

Post by SDG »

I will say that people are pretty good about leaving low level players alone. Once you start building bigger structures is when the clans come and plunder all your shit.
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Post by Shillitron »

Oh boy, can't wait for this server to hit 9 or 10 players.
Then you can start using 'rewind time' ability.. where you stab a dragon in the head, then rubber band back and forth while your health bar starts spasming - then t-pose clip through the floor and die.

Funcom/10 game.
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Post by rusty_shackleford »

Shillitron wrote: March 20th, 2023, 05:22
Oh boy, can't wait for this server to hit 9 or 10 players.
Then you can start using 'rewind time' ability.. where you stab a dragon in the head, then rubber band back and forth while your health bar starts spasming - then t-pose clip through the floor and die.

Funcom/10 game.
Funcom themselves have done significantly better than this wrt networking. Age of Conan was one of the first full action MMOs that actually felt like playing a singleplayer action RPG.

I suspect the issue is that they have heavily coupled the server architecture to the game's client. If I had to guess, the game likely started development as a single player or small co-op game, not one intended to have a dedicated server hosting for dozen(s) of people. The server itself is running a headless game binary, meaning it has all the overhead of UE4 and likely not at all optimized for what it's actually doing.
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Post by rusty_shackleford »

The modkit requires 250gb of free space to install btw
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Post by rusty_shackleford »

Thoughts on weapons so far:

Agility weapons suck. I wish the 2h spear was an agility weapon.
2h spears are cool because of reach.
Maces are kings. No damage tradeoff compared to an equivalent sword, significantly higher armor pen, applies sunder on combo. Axes, despite having higher raw damage, are incredibly weak.

Compare and contrast, assuming an enemy with 50% damage reduction:
https://conanexiles.fandom.com/wiki/Har ... Variant_A)
https://conanexiles.fandom.com/wiki/Har ... Variant_B)
https://conanexiles.fandom.com/wiki/Har ... Variant_A)

With 0 strength and other modifiers, the sword would do 20/21 damage(depending if it floors or rounds), the axe 19, and the mace 23/24(again).

But wait, there's more!

The basic 1h mace light attack combo has the following damage modifiers:
  1. 33%
  2. 10%
  3. 20%
  4. 50%
The basic 1h sword light attack combo has the following damage modifiers:
  1. 0%
  2. 10%
  3. 20%
  4. 50%
The axe shares the same progression as the mace.

For heavy attack combos, 1h mace:
  1. 0% (!)
  2. 50%%
  3. 70%
  4. 100%
Sword:
  1. 25%
  2. 50%%
  3. 70%
  4. 50% (!)
Axe:
  1. 50%
  2. 50%%
  3. 70%
  4. 100%
You don't have to spam only light or only heavy for a combo. The combos can be chained in any order of light/heavy attacks, so I assume each weapon has its own optimal order.
Mace looks like LHHH, but it's also not accounting for animation time.

Axe does apply bleed, but quite frankly it's rather weak. Only time I've seen it be semi decent is with daggers due to how easy it is to stack up. But I rather dislike how much daggers move your character all around, they constantly put me in a bad position and I end up getting hit.


Also, I strongly dislike how a shield uses up an additional combat bar slot that are already very limiting.

So, does the question become: "maces are better against highly armored targets?"
No, not really.
Lightly armored enemies tend to have 60-100 armor, which the mace and the axe do about the same (raw) damage against. Heavily armored enemies are heavily armored. A coal Rocknose has 4700 armor. The axe will do about 3 (raw) damage, the mace about 12. Medium armored enemies(your bears and such) sit at about 1000-1200 armor, about 67% damage reduction, well past the point where the axe really sucks.


I assume this is actually an error on Funcom's part honestly. Armor penetration does not work as you'd expect.

50% armor penetration does _not_ reduce an enemy with 1000 armor to 500. It reduces their armor to 250. Armor penetration is acting on the mitigation value, not the armor value. And this makes maces by far the best weapon most of the time.
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Post by Shillitron »

rusty_shackleford wrote: March 20th, 2023, 06:10
Funcom themselves have done significantly better than this wrt networking. Age of Conan was one of the first full action MMOs that actually felt like playing a singleplayer action RPG.
This game has nothing to do with Age of Conan, other than some asset ripped rigs from AoC & TSW.
rusty_shackleford wrote: March 20th, 2023, 06:10
I suspect the issue is that they have heavily coupled the server architecture to the game's client. If I had to guess, the game likely started development as a single player or small co-op game, not one intended to have a dedicated server hosting for dozen(s) of people.
No the game was developed as a Rust Clone from the start. Rust I think was referenced in it's first launch trailer.
IIRC the "Survival" game mode was the pitch that got this game greenlit - they were trend chasing.
rusty_shackleford wrote: March 20th, 2023, 06:10
The server itself is running a headless game binary, meaning it has all the overhead of UE4 and likely not at all optimized for what it's actually doing.
Blueprint certainly contributes to the problem and the lack of distributed workloads / lack of cpu utilization, this is all true.
IIRC the a big offender on CPU is Foundation counts because they have the overhead polling event for "land claiming"

--

But the real issue from my memory is the "Relational Database" that backs the servers statefulness. IIRC they use SQLite and this accounts for the persistence of everything.. Actor Locations, Base Components, etc - all state changes must be CRUD'd - I don't think the server really cache's anything in a meaningful way for the clients to sync off - and the database is not distributed either.

Server Desyncing & Database corruptions happen when people build or destroy lots and lots of foundations at one time or just in general when the pipeline queue to syncing with the database starts to fill, you start getting DBZ teleporting & bases disappearing / reappearing / disappearing / reappearing after you blow shit up.

I've seen servers even have pipes close / crash mid-write, resulting in DB corruption and you needing to perform a rollback, bam anything you did the last 30 minutes is gone.

I'm sure they've made improvements but I know fundamentally their design is broken and they can't justify improving it since the game has sort of peaked already, like it or not, the game is in the Funcom stage of 'milking mode' life cycle - highest ROI possible, except with minimal to no investment.
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Post by Kalarion »

How many people playing so far?

I think I might try it out.
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Post by rusty_shackleford »

Enabled two mods to improve building. Likely the last time any new mods will be added.
Kalarion wrote: March 21st, 2023, 04:13
How many people playing so far?
Just me & FedoraMaster so far.

If you have the Steam version of the game you don't need to worry about enabling the mods btw, the game will sort it all out for you when you connect. If you have a different version... I dunno.
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Post by rusty_shackleford »

Shillitron wrote: March 20th, 2023, 19:35
IIRC the "Survival" game mode was the pitch that got this game greenlit - they were trend chasing.
And instead they ended up making R rated minecraft with good combat(if your server isn't lagging)
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Post by Shillitron »

rusty_shackleford wrote: March 21st, 2023, 04:19
Shillitron wrote: March 20th, 2023, 19:35
IIRC the "Survival" game mode was the pitch that got this game greenlit - they were trend chasing.
And instead they ended up making R rated minecraft with good combat(if your server isn't lagging)
I love the Conan IP and Funcom has a really good art department.
Had Conan Exiles been a Skyrim-esque moddable single player game, I wouldn't be shit posting here.. I'd be playing that.
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Post by Fedora Master »

They did a surprisingly good job at keeping to the spirit of Conan.

Looking at Rusty's base he already sperged a lot. I set up shop in a nearby ravine, doing my own thing. The new Journey system seems bugged in parts though.
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Post by rusty_shackleford »

Would be nice if there was some type of return home system. Even if it's not fast travel but requires a mount riding you that finds an optimal path back to your base.
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Post by Dead »

Let's see more screenshots of the base.
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Post by rusty_shackleford »

Dead wrote: March 21st, 2023, 22:14
Let's see more screenshots of the base.
The base itself isn't very neat, it's just organic growth of me adding new things as I need them. I'll probably reorganize it when I get the materials to build something that looks like a proper fort.
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