Guide to Thralls: Leveling & Management
Combat thralls (Fighters, Archers, Bearers and Performers) are placed as level zero and can be leveled to 20 maximum.
Experience is gained when your character or the thrall makes a kill and varies with the difficulty of the target.
Please note experience is only gained when they are actively following you, not while on guard.
Thralls have three leveling rates, easy, medium and hard.
What you have named your thrall, or the default title.
What Class of thrall is it, Fighter, Archer, Bearer or Entertainer (this may include pets/horses). The distinction between Fighter and Archer is still in effect, but there are some Fighters with more Accuracy than Strength and vice versa. So far, the reversal is minimum, but it may signal a trend (opinion).
What state the thrall is in: Guarding, Following, Scouting or Returning Home
The thrall's current level
Additionally, the following is available:
1. The ability to show or hide the follower on the map. It's an easy way to locate a lost thrall, by turning off all but the one in question and scouring the map for their icon. Should the follower not be at that location, a server restart may solve the issue. If the thrall's icon is not on the map, check the event log for anything that may have happened to them.
2. Right-click (or the console equivalent) the thrall for the following:
View the follower stats page as shown above.
Rescue the follower. Be aware the follower will return without gear or inventory but will not lose level, stats pr perks. Not a good option unless all other means have been exhausted, including restarting the game, your computer and allowing time for a server restart.
Break Bond will send the follower off to some nice place, never to be seen again.
Cancel is obvious.
Newly placed thralls are relatively weak and require support from you and, if possible, good armor and weapons to survive. At higher levels, their ability to withstand damage increases and appropriate leveling areas may include the Jungle, Shattered Springs or the Unnamed City to increase experience. At high levels, their ability to withstand damage will exceed yours and make them fine tanks with agro control. Similarly, ranged-leveled thralls, appropriately placed, provide excellent defense for your base.
Stand and Defend allows the thrall to select the weapon of choice based on the range to the target. If the thrall has a bow and a melee weapon and the target is far enough away, they will select the bow; if close, they will pull out an in-your-face weapon. The thrall will not move, but switch to a melee weapon when the enemy gets close.
Selecting Prioritize Melee, the thrall will run towards the opponent.
If Prioritize Ranged is chosen, they will back away to keep the range.
While not well known, there is a minimum distance for ranged weapons; closer than that and the damage falls off drastically.
Guard Me makes you the center of the guard area.
Guard Area makes the thrall the center.
Attack All Enemies will make the thrall aggressive to anything within its attack range.
Attack and Chase Distance define the radius of a circle and are covered below.
Attack Nothing is taken literally and is a welcome addition for entertainers; just stand there, we will handle it. Be aware they will not defend themselves.
An interesting use of Attack Nothing is using your follower as a meat shield when trying to get that one thrall knocked down.
The selections are situational but you can find a combination that fits your playstyle and vary it, or not, leaving it preset for any location or fight. There are a few things to stay aware of, though:
Attack All Enemies is good for guarding, not so much for following, depending on the surroundings. If trying to single out and draw targets one or two at a time, this selection will bring more than you anticipated. This can be quite interesting in Sepermeru.
While following, Guard Me is a good choice since the thrall will attack the target(s) that are on you. Guard Area may draw in more enemies if they are in range. Similarly, Attack All Enemies is dangerous since the thrall can bring 3 more to your party of 3, leaving you in a pool of blood.
On guard, however, Attack All Enemies is a good choice, as is Guard Area since you want the thrall to engage anything that gets within range. Guard me is ineffective since you may be at the other end of the base.
Attack applies to the initial engagement and any enemy that wanders into, say, 15 meters, will get their clock cleaned. No bunnies were harmed in testing this.
Chase is how far your guard will continue to attack a fleeing enemy.
There is another use for Chase distance best explained by example:
A guard has an enemy engaged and your follower's chase distance is set to 15 meters.
Your follower will not attack at 16 meters, but will jump into the frey at 14 meters.
While more important on guard, this also affects a following companion. You really do not want your thrall to go running off and leave you partnerless. Similarly, running through the Unnamed City a thrall that runs off to attack something that is of no use to you is, well, useless. Play with the distances and find where you want each one for your playstyle.
Move will command the thrall to move to the targeted location. If it is too far away from you, they will return to your location. If in combat, they will also return to the enemy, but it's still a good way to bring the enemy to you, especially with others close-by that you do not want to agro yet.
Attack will send your thrall after the target, whether an enemy or a docile critter, like a deer. You must be within a certain range for this command to be effective.
Return tells the thrall to return to you. The same conditions apply as with Move; they will immediately return to combat.
Stop is dangerous since the thrall takes you literally. Not only will the thrall stop where he is, but he will not defend himself. You must 'turn him on' again to fight.
Shortcuts are available and welcome if you have a pack on you!
Singleclick to move if nothing is targeted; attack if something is targeted.
Doubleclick to stop; repeat doubleclick to resume.
Tripleclick to tell your thrall to return to you.
Stop Following is one of the best adds to the follower system and adds a level of control in previously unavailable areas. You can command your thrall to Stop Following in almost any place. Simply command your thrall to Follow to return to the previous state.
Thralls do not get experience for kills while not following
They will not return to their last guard spot unless:
You die.
You log out.
You leave the general area for some period of time.
Under these conditions, the thrall goes into Scouting Mode and will return to their last guard spot after approximately 15 minutes of inactivity.
Stop following is useful in a number of situations, most notably visiting another clan's area (ever been blocked in a doorway?). Sepermeru also comes to mind, as does conversational NPCs.
Deploying
Fighters, Bearers, Archers and Performers can be placed anywhere that isn't within the claim radius of a different clan or which is prohibited by certain landmarks and zone as determined by the game (e.g. Unnamed City). This means a combat thrall can be placed within a base, or even out in the world. To deploy a combat thrall, move it to the hotbar and place it like any other building item. Thralls can be useful for defending an area against weak, stupid, or disoriented opponents. They are particularly useful in defending a region against NPCs or against other players during a raid. On PvP servers, it is usually a bad idea to leave a combat thrall out in the open, or anywhere a passing enemy might snipe the thrall with their bow. They will still offer protection when placed inside a building structure. Combat Thralls will attack other players that come within range, but only during raid times (e.g. 5 pm to 11 pm PST on official servers) (Building damage must be set as Thralls are considered buildings, other wise they won't attack players). This does not apply to Offical PvE/PvC-servers.Combat Thrall Attributes & Leveling
Combat thralls (Fighters, Archers, Bearers and Performers) are placed as level zero and can be leveled to 20 maximum. Experience is gained when your character or the thrall makes a kill and varies with the difficulty of the target. Please note experience is only gained when they are actively following you, not while on guard. To view the progress of your thrall and determine the effect of feeding on attribute increase probability, use the Stats option (i) by long-pressing the interact key on the targeted thrall. Thralls level at one of three rates: easy (1x requirement), medium (2x), and hard (3x). To determine which rate applies, please see XP requirements and the section below it. Thrall starting attributes (strength, agility, vitality, accuracy, and survival) are fixed based on the specific type of thrall: a Cimmerian Berserker will always start with 15 strength and 30 vitality. Total growth chance, summed across all stats, is also fixed for each type of thrall: a Cimmerian Berserker's growth chances will always add to 295%, while Beastmaster Teimos will always add to 356% or 357% (depending on rounding). The distribution of growth chances across each attribute is randomized within a range that's again unique to each source thrall type. At each level gain, thralls will increase their attributes according to their corresponding growth chances: the listed chance (with any bonuses from food) applies to a +1 gain of a stat point, after which a second check at half the listed value is made for a second +1 gain. A thrall with a 100% growth chance in strength, then, has a 50% chance to gain +1 and 50% chance to gain +2 per level, with a total of 30 points expected over 20 levels. It's theoretically possible for a thrall to gain 40 points in one or even all stats over the course of 20 levels, though the chances of such "perfect rolls" are astronomically low (~1.3 per 100,000 for +40 in a single stat at 100+14% growth). Additionally, at levels 10, 15 and 20, the thrall is randomly assigned a selection from the pool of Follower Perks that add to (and sometimes subtract from) attributes. The randomization of initial growth chances, realized per-level attribute growth, and selected follower perks makes for an enormous range of possible outcomes and renders discussion of the "best" thrall somewhat academic. A "worse" thrall with even marginally better luck with attribute growth and perks can easily be significantly better than a "better" thrall that didn't get as lucky with its random chances. Crafting thralls cannot be placed in the world to become followers and cannot level. They are immediately ready to be assigned to an eligible crafting station and cannot be improved or changed in any way.- The Effects area shows what buffs and debuffs are on the follower at the present time. Each effect will have a unique icon and description.
- The Attributes show the current level for each attribute in the left column, any additional bonuses due to armor, weapon or buffs in green adds to the value; red subtracts. The second column shows the weighted percentage that, upon leveling, each point of several will be added to a base stat. The number of added points is random, but seem to average around 5 per level. In this case, the thrall has been fed gruel which increases the probability of getting each point to strength when attaining a new level.
- The Attribute Bonuses area shows the result of the follower's current stats. Be aware there are hidden multipliers to strength and accuracy that do not change with level. These values are unique to individual followers and can be seen below at All Combat Thralls for a list of pure combat thralls. Entertainers and Bearers are in a separate list further down.
- Perks are gained when the follower reaches levels 10, 15 and 20. There are quite a few that are available, subject to random selection along with other constraints. This Cimmerian Berserker gained +3 to strength with Strong Arms and added to the armor strength bonus of +7 shows in the Attributes section in green as (+10). A complete list of available perks can be seen at Follower Perks.
Thrall Management
At the top level, this is what you get when you long-press the interact key while targeting your thrall, leading to submenus that set behaviors. These controls persist through logout and server reset. Currently, there is no way to determine where those various controls are set, but we remain hopeful for a future release. Several items on the wheel are self-evident, such as guard, follow or stop following, cancel. This section will delve into Behavior along with others. You may find the command Stop Following extremely versatile and useful. Break Bond will send the thrall to a peaceful valley, never to be seen again. Their equipment and inventory contents will appear in a loot bag where they stood. The pair of gears in the lower left opens his inventory, but that can be done with a single interact click.Tactics
Of the first selection, Tactics is the simplest and has three options:Engagement
Engagement has several key selections and can be fine-tuned for the situation. Thralls on guard will want different selections than those following. Thralls can be set to guard or attack and the ranges allow fine tuning.Attack and Chase Distance
Setting the above up, the last two allow you to fine tune the guard and attack area. The scales are the same; the effects are quite different.Combat
So, that's setup, but what about while in combat? We now have plenty of options to control the thrall's attention. With an active thrall, you have the option to long-press the interact key and control their immediate behavior. Caution is advised to avoid using this and the single press option in bushes or too close to keep from picking up greens or a rock instead of issuing a command.
Type
Guide, How-to
