Today I almost ragequit Conen Exiles for good. Went exploring a cave on the "easy" side of the map (eastern lands), and encountered a shit ton of skeletons and their boss. Taking on 4 or 5 at a time with me & my 20th lvl thrall, fine. But 15 + their 15' high boss? I also think there's one of those punishing mechanics present where if you die then enter the respawned area, there are MORE enemies than before. So it's one of those games. This was all before I disabled the annoying "corpse run" feature (fine for multiplayer but NOT for single-player). "I can recover from this." I thought. "I mean, I'm still in one piece (well, three pieces actually, spread throughout the map waiting to be retrieved) and I still have my base and my small army of thralls (albeit low lvl) protecting it." Then a Black Kappa came raging into camp and killed all my pets and thralls. But I disabled the corpse run and used your suggested settings so I'm ready for a new beginning.
This game is the most fun I've had not having fun in a long time but maybe with the new settings things will be sweeter. There's just so much in this world I want to explore and it's my first serious crafting game which I kind of enjoy.
Animal spawn points have a small chance of generating an elite variant that can make mincemeat of your thralls; this happened to me early in my game, but then I realized that placing building foundation materials over a spawn point disables it, which should be a priority for any spawn points close enough to your base for the animals to attack.
Not sure which boss monster you encountered, but there are some higher-level dungeons even in the lower-level areas. The 'journey steps' don't provide as much guidance as they should, so if you're experiencing too much trouble in determining where to explore next you might look up some information on a suggested route by level / equipment.
I might take a break until I can figure out how to create a dedicated server in singleplayer. The two options most preventing me from fully enjoying this game in SP mode were "corpse runs" and the respawn rate for NPCs and monsters. Apparently the "NPC Respawn Multiplier" doesn't work in singleplayer unless you're on a dedicated server. This is what most kills my fun in this game. I clear out that cave of monsters except for a few remaining minions and maybe the boss, then I take a few steps away from the cave to recoup, turn around, and the cave is filled with monsters again. This becomes tedious. I like games where I clear out an area, at least for a little while. A few random respawns, fine. But respawing EVERYTHING within seconds? Nuh uh. Don't like it. The problem I foresee here though is that if I create a dedicated server I have to start a new game, which sucks.
One other, less negative observation: I like the "corruption" system, for both you and monsters. It forces you to stay on your toes, otherwise you rush through an area to get somewhere specific, turn around and find your thrall dead because he encountered a corrupted hyena or crocodile. But what the game really needs is corrupted cows:
I just play on whatever the default single-player 'server' is, and I was able to change the NPC respawn time. It helped with thrall hunting as enemy settlements were repopulating too quickly for my taste. It requires exiting and reloading the game to take effect though, as many changes do. I play the Game Pass console version, so maybe that has something to do with it.
I've had corpse run off for 90% of my game. It's a time waster, not a challenge.
I've been able to defeat a few of the 3-skull bosses, including the one in the skeleton cave you mentioned, while others still only take slivers of damage from star metal weapons and a 20th level Cimmerian 3 thrall. I killed three of the giant crocs (not the one near the noob area, which might be the toughest of all of them), a big rock creature in the rocky area west of The Den, spider cave boss, etc. They are all boring at any rate, it boils down to circling with a shield up and attack when they aren't facing me. I've found the story bosses to be a lot easier to beat but still not interesting or fun. You're not really missing anything by not doing any of that shit, honestly. I have about half a dozen of the legendary weapons and...meh. I just play when I have a new build idea or want to explore. I've really enjoyed it but it is ultimately under-cooked as a SP game. I would just wiki anything that has to do with getting to the end-game and decide if it is worth pursuing to you. Since the boss fights are so basic and bland, I wouldn't even blame you for changing the settings to make them go down faster; I didn't feel rewarded after beating any of them, it isn't Ninja Gaiden or Dragon's Dogma. Or there is a mod that balances them for single-player.
