I am thinking about buying Conan Exiles - but I got a few questions

Conan Exiles General Discussion
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Hey, since Age of Conan is really empty nowdays I am thinking of switching games to play something else, I love Hyboria and all of it’s lore so I thought about Conan Exiles since it’s the only game set in Hyboria I can get right now as far as I know. Before buying I wanted to ask some questions since AoC and Conan Exiles are two completely different games… well, if you consider the gameplay, in the videos I watched I heard a lot of sounds, saw a lot of models / animations and (especially) the music that comes directly from AoC.
I never really followed any of the developement updates or announcements on what is going to be in the game or what is currenty being developed at all, my first question is:

Will there be any kind of magic? Or will the religion system become more complex? I saw a few videos that you can build altars for a few religions, like Set and Mitra, is there any real use to them or do they just look cool and are necessary to summon these giants for sieges? In Age of Conan I love playing as a Tempest of Set or a Priest of Mitra (healers) so is there any way to be some kind of priest in Conan Exiles (like having the ability to create special potions to heal people and so on)?

This leads to my next question: Is it possible to kinda create an economy system on a server? Like you got a player that is a weapon smith, another player is a chef and some other players are farmers all of which are dependend on each other to survive. Or is the crafting system more like “Everyone can do everything”? I played the early access “survival” game Eco on Steam and I really liked the idea there to get certain professions that you need to specialize in to create a working community on a server.

Is building without cheats easy / good? I really like building in games, I know Minecraft is a bad example since it’s very different in gameplay mechanics but the building seems kinda similar and I loved building stuff in Minecraft, so is it possible to create good looking buildings without cheats (e.g. flying around, unlimited building materials) or is it more like the game Reign of Kings where you build a box with incredible thick walls so you don’t get your stuff stolen?

Will the expansions still be free if I buy the game after it’s release? I heard that there was a “free expansion” where you can go to a Cimmerian / Vanaheim-ish looking area, will they always be included in the game or do I need to pay extra when early access ends?

Will the character creation process become more complex? All the videos I saw are from 2017 so I don’t know if anything changed but in those videos the amount of sliders to use seemed a little low. I liked the character creation in AoC since you could basically change everything from your character’s nose size, leg thickness, to eye angle and much much more.

My last question: What about lore? Is there any kind of lore in the game (since there are the religions, ruins and so on) or is it just a survival game with a Hyboria skin? I loved roleplaying in AoC, I love the whole fictional world of Hyboria, if it’s just a empty slashing and tree cutting game I feel like it’s too much of wasted potential.

Right now I am really undecided if I should buy the game, not only because I had a lot of bad experiences with early access games in the past (Reign of Kings where the Devs just abandoned the game) but also because I made a lot of bad experiences with Funcom (Well, a lot of things happened during the 9 years I played AoC).

I would be really happy if someone can answer a few of these questions for me!

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Religion in Conan Exiles becomes part of your lifestyle. If you choose to be a follower of Yog, it is actually conducive to running around like a loincloth wearing savage, hacking limbs and meat off humans with a cleaver made of a large jawbone. You then offer up this human meat to a Yog altar, which in turn purifies your offering to a meal that doesn’t rot, and you can eat and heals you pretty strong. How cool is that?

As a follower of Set, you can build a special ritual dagger, that you use to carve out poeple’s hearts. You offer up these hearts to an altar of set, for Set outfits and food and stuff. Can craft arrows made of a snake etc.

Each religion feels very unique and actually has a HUGE affect on your lifestyle and identity as a character.

You can mine gold and silver, and mint coins, with which u can buy stuff at a neutral city from NPC’s. In a multiplayer setting, that very well be an economy, because you can grind those coins into powder, which are used for alchemical bases, which is a large component for the Map-Room, which is like… a Teleporter room.
Those coins have intrinsic material value, which could form the basis of a currency-based economy.

Material requirements of building is so high, that when I suggested an option should be given to lock the admin panel from singleplayer, the folks here nearly crucified me.

It is said that they have a few new maps planned. They will be paid for, much like in ARK. The amount of work and effort required to create new maps with (hopefully) new mechanics like mounts and stuff does warrant being paid.

Nope. As is usual in Funcom games, you can’t re-customize characters after creation either.

The land is STEEPED in lore. It’s wonderful :slight_smile: Each ancient ruin tells a story and rewards you with a recipe, or emote and lots of story. There are chests dotted around the place with legendary weapons. U get the keys off mini-bosses walking around. There is even a main quest that you start at the “Map Room”, which leads yo uacross the whole exiled lands, requiring you to gather several artifacts.

All I can say is, the game is enjoyable. It’s a great experience for sure. I haven’t regretted buying it. Eventho Funcom does have an ethically questionable marketing department, you still get your money’s worth, if your not too bothered about principles.

Poeple here really grate the game pretty hard (especially me) but it just shows how passionate we are about the game.

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This game is perfect for RP. It’s the only way to play and really enjoy yourself in the world. There are some good RP servers as well.

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Thanks a lot for the answers!

That sounds really great, I would really want to try the game right now but I guess I will need a new computer first since my current one is really crappy to be honest. I got a Radeon R9 280x, i5-4570 (3.20 GHz), 8 GB RAM and a SSD. Given that I heard a lot about stability issues in the game I don’t think my PC will be able to run the game at any settings.

Regarding the character creation process: I didn’t mean to edit your character after you finally created it, I meant if they want to make the character creation more complex in terms of adding more customization possibilities, right now all the races look the same (in the videos I saw), only the skin color changes as far as I know, in AoC the 4 races (Cimmerian, Aquilonian, Stygian and Khitai) look completely different from each other, just as they should (the stygians for example look very egyptian-like and the khitan characters obviously look chinese). The videos I saw showed very little options like sliders to change each individual part of the characters face, as I said things like eye size / shape and so on.
Did Funcom ever say something about expanding it? I totally love making my character’s face look unique in every game.

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I understand that most of the story elements haven’t been added yet. So as far as lore goes most of that will be patched in at launch. They stated that plot wouldn’t be added til then. All the maps that are in the game at release will be part of the full game’s original price, no extra. Expansions before release are “free” in the sense that they were always meant to be part of the core game experience from the start. Not sure about future expansions. They haven’t added magic yet but the system is there. From what was told in a dev stream, they are waiting on a graphic artist for the visual effects. As such, no magic at launch.
Building is fun but requires a grind to do. It is much better to have more then one person gathering mats to do so… which I think might be the point late game. Early construction is much easier to farm for. The building is one of the main reason I’m playing this game. Creative building is more effective and tons cheaper then thick walls in my opinion, though, you will still encounter people who have big harshly thick boxes for bases. Dig holes in these to teach them to build better. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: I personally have mangled someone’s base before just because I thought it was ugly. <_<;;

TLDR
At this point I would wait til full launch in 2 weeks. You’ll have all the better first experience for it. =^_^=

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Regarding character creation, the devs have touched on this topic somewhat since it is a frequently asked question. It is unlikely that it will become much more then it currently is. They have also specifically stated that there will be no differences between the the races whatsoever, statistically or visually. They have it there as more of a backstory/lore point to the creation process. Way early on in the early access they stated that if they were going to implement differing body types that they would be a select option similar to the face select, no sliders, just presets. This, however, I feel has been an abandoned feature. Creation will likely stay the way it is in perpetuity. T_T

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Character customization is not as robust as in some games but you can get a surprising amount of variety from the subtle tweaks to eyes and noses. Ultimately, most characters look similar in detail. It will be up to you to combine the character creation with specific armor combinations, warpaints, and dyes to be distinctive.

If you like RP, find a good RP server. There are a number of them around.

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Ah ok, well thats a shame that they don’t want to add more features to that system, especially the fact that they wont add face types for each race to make them look completely different from each other.

Thanks again everyone for the answers, I really look forward to buy Conan Exiles once I get a better PC and the game fully releases in a few weeks!

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Actually, I got one more question about building: Are there decorative items? I know there are banners and a few torchholders but what about shelves, desks, chairs, plates, pots, bowls for tables and so on? Is this a thing or are they not added yet? I really missed these in a lot of survival game, buildings looked too “clean” from the inside because all the tables had nothing on them or there were no urns standing around in the corners of a house.

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Lots of decorations. You even have a whole crafting line dedicated to taxidermy and baskets, vases, Papyrus, scrolls and candles of various sizes and colors.
You get alot of furnitures that are useful as well (can store stuff in them).

My favorite “furniture” are the fishing baskets, that I often line up in front of my house in the water.
It’s like a crop plot, but for fish :stuck_out_tongue:

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That’s awesome! I never understood why developers from other survival games totally forgot about these items, like in Reign of Kings for example, you can build your huge medieval castle but inside it looks like you were too poor to buy a few chairs, tables or anything else that a room normally contains.

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Form in function.
It’s a design philosophy that I actually like.
If an item doesn’t perform a function, don’t add it.

But in Conan Exiles, I actually find some function in decorations… cuz it makes sense to store oil in vases, raw materials in crates next to work stations, and alcohol in a beer barrel etc.

Decorations help you organize.

Like; just to clarify; you can’t store oil inside an actual Vase, but you can mark a crate with a vase on/next to it, to signify it’s content, as opposed to adding a label to it via a sign.

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For your concern about your PC not being good enough, the game scales down really well, although quality takes a big hit.

I’m running it on medium settings with a weaker system than you.

AMD fx 3.5 GHz
AMD hd 7870
16 gb ddr3
Standard hard drive

No noticable frame rate dips except when I first log in