Conan Exiles (Enhanced)

I don't generally yearn for the resource-gathering involving gameplay of open world survival crafting games but Conan Exiles eventually got onto my wishlist because I wanted to play a game set in the Hyborian Age created by Robert E. Howard. There are not many of those around. Conan Exiles doesn't provide a narrative experience: its focus is on online multiplayer sandbox on persistent servers. But it does have the setting's lore and in many ways absolutely nails the atmosphere. Conan Exiles can be played solo and smaller scale co-op, too. In solo you will miss out on the good and bad things that come with random players, as well as the possible issues that would come from playing a game that runs on someone else's computer you have no control over.

The most beautiful and immersive take on the Hyborian Age yet

I bought the base game over a year ago when it was on sale for an extremely low price. The game's turn proceeded to come up on my backlog, too, but it had to wait still because I needed at least the achievements-including Isle of Siptah DLC before I could start. Conan Exiles with all its DLC had always been rather pricey even when discounted and I had been considering eventually getting only Siptah (and Debaucheries of Derketo -- for reasons). But then in this year's May, the complete* edition bundle got its biggest discount yet when the game (on PC) became Enhanced: it got an engine upgrade from Unreal Engine 4 to 5.

I wasn't overly enthusiastic about that because the system requirements went up by quite a bit and I wasn't sure if I could even run the game anymore. Fortunately the claimed performance enhancements did seem to exist and Conan Exiles Enhanced runs at quite acceptable 60 fps for most of the time on about Medium settings for me. The UE4 version I could probably push higher, although I'm not sure which version would look better: the UE4 one on higher settings or UE5 on lower. If your PC can't run the Enhanced version, you can choose to install the Legacy edition instead (on Steam at least). It will of course lack all the updates the game is getting but that's not necessarily a bad thing with how volatile things have been since the Enhanced released.

Conan Exiles was originally developed and published in 2018 by Norwegian Funcom (owned by Chinese Tencent since 2020). Funcom's own developers are probably now mostly on Dune: Awakening, which was released last year, and the Conan Exiles Enhanced upgrade was instead commissioned to Edmonton-based Inflexion Games. They are now also maintaining the game, as far as I understand.

Inflexion's own project, Nightingale, doesn't seem to be doing too well, so I guess they sought out other work to stay afloat. The graphical upgrades seem generally good, although many non-daylight lighting sources seem awfully weak, not illuminating things properly. Inflexion's grasp on the game mechanics code base comes off shaky as well. Weekly hotfixes have been breaking as much as they've been trying to fix. One patch even got a rollback on the official servers due to how bad it was.

Crom laughs at your weakness

This past week or two there have been a few loud voices in the player base because the in-game microtransaction store, the Black Lotus Bazaar, got a new collection of stuff costing nearly 100€ in total -- all the while the list of known issues with the actual game is long. The Bazaar is why I put the asterisk (*) on the complete edition earlier in the post. The stuff available in the Bazaar is not entirely cosmetic either, although that is mostly because before Enhanced there was a battle pass system that allowed players to unlock things without spending more money. But even if the system was still there, the Bazaar wouldn't be great.

The Bazaar is utterly predatory in fact, stock full of Dark Pattern design. As is typical, you can't purchase items with real currency directly, instead having to first get Crom Coin bundles, which mask how much things really cost and try to lure you into buying bigger coin packs because you'd get more perceived value that way. The store's inventory is also on a rotation: even if you wanted to buy everything there was (however much that would cost), you couldn't do so right away but would have to keep returning week after week to check what is available. Bundles seem to be always discounted so the supposed full prices are never even seen. And if an item from a set is available separately, it costs a disproportionally large amount of coins compared to the bundle it's a part of.

I am yet to fall victim to these rapacious MTX stores and Conan Exiles didn't change that. People can complain all they want but Funcom doesn't seem to move a muscle unless the complainer is someone with a large audience. Streamer CohhCarnage tried the Enhanced edition for a bit and voiced his dislike for how the single resource type storing chests were behind a paywall in the Bazaar: it's quite easy to accidentally dump your whole inventory into normal chests by hitting the quick stack button twice and there being no filter for what the chest takes. Cohh's 10k viewership was enough to have Inflexion/Funcom react and the chests were made available to everyone after few weeks.

Imaginary location in a semi-imaginary world?

Where the game's Exiled Lands exists in Hyborian Age is undetermined. A popular speculation appears to have been that the region is some sort pocket dimension. Before the UE5 update, the game's sun even rose from the south and set in the north, which is unusual and would fit the magical snow globe theory. Now the sun rises from the east and sets in the west as is normal. However, it travels across the northern sky, implying you are south of the equator. The Hyborian Age, being semi-historic, is much like the real world's, meaning there's not a whole lot of land mass in the southern hemisphere -- at least if we assume the equator is around where it's in real life, somewhere in the Black Kingdoms. Where could the desert and other biomes of the Exiled Lands be located realistically in such a case?

I felt there were hints of that the Unnamed City in this game was the capital city (or one of them) of Acheron that existed few thousand years before the Hyborian Age. But Acheron, to my understanding, was north of the equator. Otherwise it could be a very matching location: the "current day" Shem (plus other nations) and the desert to east from it.

The Exiled Lands and the Isle of Siptah DLC are now available in the same game, initially traveled in-between by talking to Adherents of the Outer Dark. Previously you had to make a separate character for each. At character creation you can choose on which map you start (assuming you have the DLC). The Exiled Lands is probably the right choice for most; Siptah was clearly meant for clan-based PvP action with how symmetrically it's set up. Siptah is also harder as far as enemies go. Clearing all the many (way too similar) Siptah vaults is worthwhile once you're powerful enough because each gives you a different, indefinitely lasting sigil buff. Death removes all but 1/3 of them, and 1/3 are dropped on your corpse where you can pick them up again.

The Isle of Siptah (or Siptah's Isle) is a canonical location in the Western Sea, near the Black Coast. In Conan Exiles, sea water there is drinkable but I guess that's a game balance thing: to not have you die to thirst at the starting locations.

People found in the Exiled Lands are of the familiar nations of the Hyborian Age. Mostly they are criminals whom have been exiled for various reasons and are now wearing an irremovable bracelet that kills them if they cross the glowing green barrier at the edges of the map. One person not wearing the bracelet is Conan the Cimmerian himself who helps you off a cross you've been crucified to in the game's damn heroic opening cinematic.

Your alleged goal is to discover how to remove the bracelet but actually doing so will delete your save and feels like an antithesis to the game. There's not much of a reason to do it. The game doesn't hold your hand to get there either. There is no quest log, at least not in the traditional sense. Instead what you should do is what Conan suggests: live, love, slay -- or something along those lines.

There are multiple little "journeys" that help you to get started and work as tutorials for the game's combat, survival, crafting, and building systems. It doesn't always tell you everything a step requires, though, like where things are located.

Utterly authentic

Conan Exiles can feature, as per your choice, partial or even full nudity. Not a thing I often see in the games I play. It maybe isn't that uncommon in the survival crafting genre, though -- all manner of degenerate titles there. I'm damn glad that it is a thing, though. It adds to the authenticity of the savagery.

Combat is bloody and gory, and limbs come off -- which is awesome. There are brutal sync-kills, though they are janky: character models rarely connect properly. I'd imagine with server latency it would be even worse. Combat does feel pretty good in general, though, even when your character is not built for it (like mine hasn't been most of the time). Dodge has generous i-frames and most enemies can be staggered at least for one full combo chain.

You can capture people as slaves -- or thralls, as the game calls them -- to assign them to crafting stations or to accompany you. The thralls are a big part of Conan Exiles, and one of its oddly compelling features. Thralls can be rescued from cages and even hired if you build a tavern to invite patrons in, but trying to find a specific type named (tier 4) thrall to bludgeon with a concussive damage dealing truncheon is where the biggest thrill is at. A knocked-out thrall is dragged to a wheel of pain, in which they will eventually become persuaded to join your cause.

The wheel of pain was without a doubt taken from the 1982 John Milius film, Conan the Barbarian, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. A lot of Conan Exiles' audiovisual presentation in general was clearly inspired by it. The movie is not the only source the developers used, though. There are a lot of direct quotes from Howard's Conan stories in item descriptions and many references in general. Just like how Conan is an extraordinary climber, you too can climb about any vertical surface (as long as you have stamina).

I have a feeling Funcom had also been reading the d20 system using 2004 Conan: The Roleplaying Game (2007 for the 2nd edition). Conan Exiles is not the first Conan game Funcom has made either: in 2008 they released the MMORPG Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures (later rebranded as Age of Conan: Unchained) which is still running. Thus they've been utilizing the setting for a while now.

Marvel's Conan the Barbarian comics were probably another source of inspiration. They -- and I suppose Howard's original work, too -- often dip into Lovecraftian horror to have more imaginary monsters as enemies. The Hyborian Age blends with it smoothly. One difference between Conan and the stories of H.P. Lovecraft is that the hero of the story (you, in this case) doesn't crumble before the hopelessness of the cosmic horror but emerges victorious.

Glorious magic system

I remember seeing Conan Exiles getting an Age of Sorcery update at some point but I had no idea how damn authentic and fantastic the magic in the game would turn out to be. From killed enemy sorcerers you can find a map that leads you to a cave that in turn holds the Tome of Kurak and an arcane staff to get you started on your journey of sorcery. To unlock more spells, you need to upgrade the tome at a thaumaturgy bench. At some point, an upgrade will require you to build a sacrificial stone and perform human sacrifices -- I hadn't expected the process to get so involved. The fact that there is an animation sequence for about anything involving sorcery was a great touch.

Spellcasting is slow and ritualistic, meant mainly for utility. That is extremely lore-accurate, although frequent combat spells wouldn't necessarily go against the canon either. As I recall, Howard's Red Nails story had a scepter that was used to spam lightning bolts.

Some spells require a reagent pouch but getting corrupted is always the price paid for anything sorcery-related. Corruption reduces your maximum health and stamina by up to 50%. Your character's whole skin also becomes gradually grayer and covered in thick red veins, and their face gets a twisted ghoul-like appearance. I fucking love how cool that is. Corruption is not permanent: the common and reasonably easy way to clear it is to simply stand nearby a dancing performer thrall. In the aforementioned tabletop RPG, corruption takes more effort to clear but because corruption tends to be common in this game when using the fastest way to get around the Exiled Lands, it also needs a fast way to get rid of.

The final upgrade for the Tome of Kurak grants you the ability to build transportory stones, between which you can fast travel. The only fast travel system Conan Exiles had before the Age of Sorcery (as far as I know) were the few obelisks scattered around the map. In order to use them, you need to build a whole lot of space taking and tricky-to-roof map-room. That kind of fast travel is one-way only as well: from the map-room to the obelisks. It's not as corrupting as the transportory stones, though.

While standing within a transportory stone, other built stones are presented as floating rocks you can interact with for fast travel. Unfortunately the rocks don't have collision with each other, and thus if there are many stones in the same map direction, their rocks overlap and it gets challenging to hit the one you want. It's especially bad now with Siptah being in the same game because one map's rocks get all clumped together when in you're in the other map. Maybe it will get fixed eventually.

There's a mod for it

Quite in the style of Bethesda, Inflexion/Funcom appears to rely on the modding community to provide features and quality of life solutions the game needs. I haven't installed any large mods in fear of having a chance for my save to get corrupted with a nasty update.

I can highly recommend Xevyr's Twin-Bar and Lore & Loot Highlight mods. I feel both are nigh mandatory to play the game. 16 action bar slots is so much better than 8 -- damn controller-parity again limiting mouse and keyboard in a game. The mod does funnily enough function with a controller as well, simply adding more slots to the selection wheel. The mod could easily be a base game feature. And it is so easy to miss treasure chests and lore items without the highlighting mod.

If you want to populate your base with house cats, I would recommend Alternate Kitty Sounds to make the cats sound content instead of upset. Sadly the mod hasn't been updated for the latest versions of the game yet and I had to remove all cats because I couldn't stand the noises. The cats can be recollected in the neutral NPC town of Sepermeru.

The Lore & Loot Highlight mod gets disabled whenever you activate a night vision effect which is damn unfortunate because the game's nights are near pitch black. It's so easy to strain your eyes while playing Conan Exiles. According to Xevyr, night vision breaks the game's own subtler highlighting as well. It might be related to the whole dysfunctional lighting, from UE5's Lumen tech or something. If you can alter server settings -- like you always can in solo play -- you can set nighttime to last for only a short while. Solo game appears to get set to the same daytime hour whenever you load in, thus relogging will get you out of a night as well.

I left every server setting on default, wanting to experience the game as the developers intended. Once I had to enable the admin mode to get out of the Midnight Grove dungeon. It had (was fixed in 1.3.0) a misplaced teleport trigger before the exit which took you to under Jhebbal Sag's avatar overlooking the dungeon. And from there you couldn't get out with mundane means.

When playing on an actual server, entities are active everywhere (I assume) but in solo they are so only within the area the player is in. The radius is not that wide and you can take advantage of it to quickly reroll camps and such to hasten the process of finding a specific thrall. Dead enemies respawn in the same manner, prioritizing it over their respawn timer, which can be annoying when trying to get back to your corpse, for instance. You can also exit and load back in for the same effect, which can be used to quickly farm a dungeon boss.

By default you drop all your inventory upon death. Corpse runs from a spawn point (bed, bedroll, or the start of a dungeon/map) naked and all enemies respawned can be quite challenging. I experienced it a few times but didn't change the setting. Later with better gear and everything, I rarely died anymore. There is also a Summon Corpse spell that can be used at a built circle of power to get your stuff back -- another cool use of magic.

Down by the river

Your adventure in the Exiled Lands begins at the southern edge of the map. The first landmark you're likely to find is an eastwards running river that is colloquially known as the Noob River. Many start building their first base there without advancing any further. It's a beautiful region (more if you can max out the game's video settings) and having a nearby body of water is helpful -- Conan Exiles must be the only game in which running into water saves you from crocodiles! No enemy will follow you into water, in fact. I guess figuring out in-water combat was too much for Funcom.

Ultimately it doesn't matter where you build your base: with the obelisks and a transportory stone network you can get anywhere quickly. It comes down to which biome aesthetic you like and maybe the music tracks that play there -- I probably wouldn't like constantly listening to the flute track north of Sepermeru, for instance.

I, too, initially built a small base on the northern shore of the Noob River while figuring out the game. Eventually, after a lot of research, I found my permanent spot at the northeast corner of the F6 map square, atop a hill with a huge tree, just outside the Unnamed City. The hill gets the visual effect of the sandstorm that periodically sweeps over Sepermeru and the City but it's far enough from its center that the damaging effect doesn't appear: no need to don a sandstorm hood.

My screenshots don't show much of my base. I think I'll do a separate post for that later when I have decorated the place more. I currently have a lot of empty space inside the walls: I was thinking of building maybe another tavern and some housing for my thralls to wander between.

The game's Living Settlements update in the past freed thralls from their assigned crafting stations. Like in Fallout 4 and such, in addition to working, thralls since then sleep in beds, sit on chairs, and drink from wells. Their schedule seems random, though, not related to the time of day in anyway. And I kind of wish you could manually assign thralls a bed so that they wouldn't arbitrarily sleep around your base. The thralls walk around surprisingly long distance (with mostly successful pathfinding). At least you can disable thrall use on a piece of furniture so that you won't find a thrall on your throne or in your bed.

Build options included

I decided I would use a shield and a spear. I reckoned that with shield taking the damage, I could use less covering light armor -- and that largely was the case. Sadly Conan Exiles either doesn't allow attacking while blocking. But since you can have a thrall with you, an enemy attacking your shield means the thrall is free to wail on the enemy. One of the cap perks of maxed Authority attribute allows a second follower, which sounded very handy to me and I pretty much beelined to it.

I also maxed Expertise because one of its cap perks gives you unlimited carrying capacity weight-wise. It's so nice to be able to loot everything you find. You will still be considered overburdened for mounts if you're over your normal capacity, meaning they will move slowly. For that reason, I usually didn't take a horse with me on expeditions during which I expected to loot a lot of stuff. It doesn't matter if a horse is following you as an extra, albeit with many enemies preferring to first try attacking the horse, combat becomes a bit chaotic with everyone running in circles.

With 2/3rds of my attribute points taken by utility, my potential to be effective in combat got severely limited. From the last 20 points, I spent 5 in Agility and Grit each, and 10 in Vitality for passive health regeneration and increased healing from items. Thus my character is mostly in a leader role and the followers do the hard work. And it does work. There is some jank in how followers teleport to you (or don't) and sometimes disappear when zoning, but they are very effective in combat most of the time.

Acquired thralls start at level 0 and gain experience up to level 20, getting 3 perks and increases to attributes along the way. There are also 2 special companions added in Age of Heroes update (with a third one potentially coming with Legacy of the Giant-Kings update) that require a quest chain to complete before they join you. I did Freya's because she's considered the best follower by many due to the special perks she gets. My other endgame follower ended up being a regular, though strong, tier 4 fighter, Dalinsia Snowhunter whom I think is named after a mod creator/community member.

I ditched spears as my weapon of choice because it's so easy to accidentally yeet them by hitting the alternate attack which is on RMB by default. (I suppose I should've carried more than one spear with me...) They're not that great of a melee weapon damage-wise either. I also learned that the difference between light and heavy armor didn't matter as much as I was led to believe. You regain stamina slower while wearing heavy but with my build and playstyle it doesn't matter. The thaumaturgy bench turned out to provide a transmogrification feature as well, so I could wear more protective armor while still using the looks of the Derketo Acolyte set (from the Debaucheries of Derketo DLC) which I had fixated on before even starting the game. (It's the one my character is wearing in most of the screenshots, with a Khitai light armor headband.)

The ol' completionist woes

I had skimmed through the achievements of Conan Exiles beforehand and thought it was going to be a straightforward 100%. Instead the game will go to my hall of shame, at least for the time being. The Siptah DLC achievement, 'Tower of the Elephant', of killing ""something"" by standing on its head turned out to be a PVP one and not straightforward to accomplish either: it pretty much would require 3 players to work together. And the base game achievement, 'The Gilt, the Craft and the Lie', is currently unobtainable because you no longer assign thralls to a working station like before (at least I assume that's the reason). Another Siptah achievement, 'The Silver Key', is obtainable but easily missed. You need to gather the required '????' in the correct step order of the Surge Defender journey (while having it active, probably) to not skip past the achievement unlock. I missed it and made a new character to speedrun the journey's first 2 steps and then used the admin panel to spawn in a 'Greater ????'.

Despite its jank and many bugs, Conan Exiles surprised me positively with its sandbox experience. I only wish singleplayer wasn't as clearly the secondary option: the transparent server simulation is a bit too visible for immersion purposes. And I suppose not having the Bazaar hide things behind additional paywall would also be nice.

I even liked building stuff for the sake of mere creativity -- usually the lack of any functional benefit in such an activity leaves me unsatisfied in the end. Not that I've played many games that allow it, namely Minecraft and Fallout 4. Building a castle is definitely more satisfying in this one: I love that there is an actual, functional gate piece as well as a drawbridge.

I currently have over 300 hours played and I still haven't seen nor tried everything Conan Exiles has to offer. One thing I'd like to do is to beat Rockslide world boss. It doesn't drop anything the crocodile world boss by the Noob River doesn't yet it's amazingly difficult to kill. Maybe I should summon a god's avatar, just for that sacrifice a tier 3 altar and a t4 priest thrall.