Hi everyone!
I wanted to share my first impressions playing Conan Exiles and leave some feedback for the dev team. Some of the points I’ll mention might already be known to the community, but I think it’s still worth sharing my experience as a new player in the world of Conan.
I consider myself a casual explorer, mostly focused on PvE. I’ve had my hardcore days, worrying about min-maxing, optimized builds, and keeping up with the meta. These days, I prefer to enjoy the creative work of game studios, taking my time to appreciate the journey instead of rushing to the “endgame.”
This feedback, based on my first 300 hours in Conan Exiles, is a summary of some specific aspects of the game — both positive and negative — reflecting my more immersive, exploration-focused playstyle.
What I liked about Conan Exiles
One of the first things that caught my attention was the building system. It’s intuitive, easy to use, and on official servers, you can really see how creative the community is — the constructions people create in unexpected areas of the map are real surprises, things I never imagined seeing while playing solo.
The open world is also stunning. Many structures are massive and impressive, and the world design creates a visual and immersive experience that makes simple exploration truly enjoyable.
Sorcery was another pleasant surprise. Instead of going for the typical fireball/lightning route, the game takes a darker, more utility-focused approach, using spells that drain health and stamina — which I felt was very fitting for the Conan universe and also a unique take on magic.
But the absolute highlight for me is the NPC Followers system. Thralls, zombies, golems, pets, mounts… everything around this feature won me over: inventory, diet, attributes, gear customization, different methods of acquisition, animations — and more. I’m a big fan of games that deepen the connection between players and NPCs, and Conan Exiles delivers that beautifully. In my experience, this system far surpasses what I’ve seen in games like World of Warcraft, Guild Wars 2, and even Baldur’s Gate 3 (excluding the narrative aspect).
What I didn’t like
Even though I loved the NPC Followers system and everything around it, this is also where my biggest criticisms lie. Two bugs in particular really frustrate me: followers disappearing inside my base and the inconsistent behavior of followers when they’re actively following the player.
One example that annoys me is the “rescue follower” option offered by the devs (shown in the image below). The idea sounds useful, but in practice, it’s really discouraging. Imagine you equipped your follower with valuable gear, but they bug out and disappear. You use the rescue option, and they come back — but without any of their gear. It’s extremely frustrating, and honestly, I don’t think this feature should work the way it does.
A much more interesting and practical solution would be to adopt the Summon Followers feature from the Improved Thralls & QoL mod available on Steam. This function offers more control and avoids frustrating losses — it’s a much friendlier option for players who enjoy NPC management and exploration.
If you’re in a mountainous region or high terrain, the summon feature helps a lot by repositioning followers closer to the player. It avoids frustrating situations where you’re fighting enemies up high while your followers are stuck down below, unable to interact with the battle.
Another disappointment was the Archer Thralls. Even though they don’t need arrows, they often just freeze and don’t shoot at all — just stand there, threatening to attack but doing nothing. Also, their arrows are frequently blocked by allies in melee combat, which greatly reduces their usefulness. On top of that, raising the Agility stat is much harder compared to Strength, Vitality, or Grit. Unlocking fishing takes time, and even then, there’s RNG involved to get the specific fish needed to raise Agility, which makes it very discouraging. It would be great to have a more accessible food item to help with that stat.
Followers stuck inside a building
Golems are amazing in concept — I love the idea of collecting parts and summoning them with cool animations — but in practice, I didn’t find enough value to justify using up a follower or pet slot. Even with their resource-gathering ability, they’re slow to respond, can’t be healed, take too long to fully assemble, and still risk vanishing from your base. I think there’s a lot of room to improve this type of follower.
Another issue I faced was the performance instability on official LATAM servers. As shown below, in the morning the ping is excellent — between 16, 33, and 66 — yet performance is still inconsistent.
Official LATAM server ping (morning)
In the afternoon, even with a slight increase in players, the same server’s ping skyrockets to 320–430, which doesn’t make sense. Meanwhile, private servers in the same region can support up to 40 players with a queue and still keep a stable ping between 30 and 50. The official server becomes completely unstable.
Official LATAM server ping (afternoon and evening)
I avoid private servers because I never know when the “owner” might stop playing or shut the server down — which would wipe all my progress. So I usually stick to solo play or official servers.
But official servers also have issues, especially with lag. I can’t pinpoint the cause since my connection and hardware are just fine. Enemies take too long to react, thralls struggle to keep up or engage in combat, and sometimes I get kicked out because the ping spikes so high — even though my connection remains stable in private or other official PvP/PvE-PvP servers in the same region.
Another thing that bothered me was the jungle region, where panthers and gorillas live. Many areas there are practically empty, with no monsters or activity, which breaks the exploration flow.
And last — but not least — the male beard textures are quite weak. They could use better detail, and there’s a lack of hairstyle options for male characters as well.
One more thing worth mentioning: it’s really hard to recognize dungeon entrances. Important structures or walls are often easy to miss, which makes exploration feel unintuitive at times.
Finally, once I found out that northern NPCs drop much stronger gear than those in the desert region, there was little incentive to build bases elsewhere. The game ends up feeling smaller, since it only seems “worth it” to invest in the north.
I also think that limiting followers to only two in the official version is a bit restrictive, especially given how many fun and interesting NPCs are available. In my opinion, two should be the base, with options to expand to three or four — maybe with some kind of damage or efficiency penalty for balance.
After 300 hours of playtime, even with the issues mentioned, I still felt like the open world wasn’t big enough. Once I geared up my followers and started hunting world bosses, a kind of “emptiness” kicked in — like I was reaching the end of my journey but still wanted to live more in that universe. I truly enjoyed my time with Conan Exiles, and I plan to buy the Isle of Siptah expansion once the follower-related issues — my favorite part of the game — get more attention from the devs.
. As you might know many of us on the Forum are getting into double digit thousands and yet at least in my case still learning. Good luck Exile 
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