For you don’t ever expect this day to come… Ever! You cannot undo the experience you have all these years in the game. For gods sake Kiki we know every freaking spawn, no surprises anymore. But for a new player it’s another story. If a new player now will go to volcano not proper will have nightmares at night.
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Absolutely a level of experience my friend.
New players rarely make their way to the volcano until much trial and tribulation.
As an aside:
I’ve guided newer players there to show them an entirely new aspect of the Exiled Lands map. Despite my PVP leanings I love helping people 
A good friend of mine who has over 12k hours in Conan just recently visited each dungeon with encouragement by the rest of us. He’d never been in the Well of Skelos or the Cellar. I’m sure the others felt the same as I, living vicariously through him despite his almost double hours to ours.
I just think that places that are extremely cold and hot should be difficult and now it isn’t environment wise. NPC wise? Sure. Nothing really that much harder though. It’s not like there’s new NPCs to worry about in the coldest reaches or the hottest crags.
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Short answer:
It is just another game now.
Because of what most of you wanted.
I am sorely disappointed in what it has become.
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Once upon a time…
After the official release on May 9th, 2018, I started playing the game just two days later. Let’s take a trip back in time to 2018 and 2019:
- The game was quite different, especially in 2018, still plagued by numerous unfixed bugs. Two notable issues were Thralls falling through ceilings and the elevator glitch, where using an elevator could result in death due to falling damage.
- My memories may be a bit hazy now, considering much has happened since then. However, I still recall people expressing frustration until 2019 because the game still felt more like a beta version rather than a well-polished product.
- It was a time of extreme weather conditions, from deadly storms to freezing cold and scorching heat.
- Another significant aspect was the itemization in the game. These days, items like Snake-Man or Obsidian Weapons might be seen as a waste of time or only good for transmogrification. However, there was a period, albeit brief, when Obsidian Tools, in particular, were considered the best in slot.
- The Volcano posed a significant challenge. Players initially had to gather the Silent Legion Set to survive its harsh conditions. Only named armorer thralls (which were quite rare and could take hours to find while farming in places like Sepermeru) were capable of crafting high-quality gear to withstand the extreme temperatures.
- Before venturing into the volcano, most players had to pass a challenging test: crossing the Bridge of the Betrayer, which was essentially a deathtrap without the proper equipment. The journey involved extreme cold before reaching the middle and then facing Frostbite beyond that (even with the old second perk in Vitality). This journey was necessary to obtain the Silent Legion recipe from the Black Keep.
In retrospect, it was a unique and challenging grind. To be completely honest, I’m not sure if I ever missed those times.
PS:
I have forgotten something. Today, people may even wonder why such items are present in the game, as they appear to offer no tangible benefits. However, back in the early years, almost everyone felt fortunate to acquire just one of them.
and/or
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I would like to offer a different perspective and challenge it is in fact a survival game.
You have to survive the updates to the game! 
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I tend to keep Solspeil and Mistmourn more as trinkets in a chest from a long forgotten time rather than actually use them anymore. Sure they can help but why when I have a plethora of ways to mitigate or outright ignore temperature?
Another is the Dragonscale Helm, it was very hard to get and took many runs through Unnamed and fighting Red Mother to get. Love that but not even really needed anymore either.
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Well… resistance equipment is generally disputable. It was a feature of the game in its early years. The game has changed. Do I welcome all the changes? Certainly not. Nevertheless, every game evolves. So, adaptation is the only option. I can’t speak for new players because I have simply spent too many hours in this game.
However, MODS are similar to updates. The only difference might be that one can always leave one private server and go to another. Still, in the end, adaptation is mostly the only way to proceed. By the way, there are days when I just prefer to stay on the official server, as all the modded madness simply makes me feel nauseous. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a bunch of mods, but there are also many that almost instantly make me leave a server.
So the only thing I would ever advise a new player is to skip single-player or cluttered PvE servers. Either choose an official PvP server with a low population or a private PvP server with as few mods as possible.
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This was such a great feature, I’m sure you know it well because in the Salad Days you started a new toon pretty often. Same as me, I love making a whole new character. You start out in the freaking fiery desert and barely make it out. Any one of the spawn points can have a different outcome on a populated server. It was a fierce welcome, and often a determiner of how a noob would play. Sandstorms, dang, that pressed you to get a mask and fast. Cold? Forget about it.
These things direct outcomes like a movie director, individually per each player. They cause a player to do the things that are next. Somewhere someone lost track of this.
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First of @Kikigirl this was an excellent post and I pretty much agree with all points of it. I would like to add a few things, and please excuse if they have already been mentioned but I am on vacation and I have not read all of the responses.
In regard to crafting thralls not only do some no longer offer any bennifits now (thank you worst chapter ever!) but there was a point when you HAD to have specific thralls to craft specific things. If you wanted black or white dye you HAD to have a darfari witch doctor, no other T4 alchemist could make it. Epic armor? You needed the right T4 armorours to make the sets you wanted. Now if you get a T4 off of Noob river you are set for all end game epic gear making the game that much easier.
Food was more unique, as was alcohol. The recent patches even included that pressing for oil now grants 2 oil instead of the previous 1 making oil production from the fuild press literally twice as easy.
Not only is Conan Exiles no longer a Survival game, I would argue that it is no longer a sandbox game as the devs are constantly attempting to force the players to do specific things, play specific ways and limit creativity.
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Exactly! Variables in playthrough should matter and I feel like the lack of “survival” is creating too much facsimile.
Replay variance in games has been a consideration since the '80s but even more important now with the thousands of titles to choose from.
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Completely agree, that functionality made it worth it to to go out and experience it all; seeking out the right worker thrall. Was it particularly “survival”, not just at face value.
A bit too RNG for some probably? But it also created smart workarounds as well. You made do and if you did happen upon the right thrall it changed the game significantly, hitting all the happy brain spots.
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One thing i know for sure. FC don’t read these forums and don’t respond anymore. They don’t give a rats ass about their customers or any posts they make.
They are a laughing stock in the games industry.
You made a great post but it falls on deaf ears unfortunately.
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There should be some consideration here for people who want to enjoy the game but can’t commit hours and hours to it. Much of what people seemingly think make it “more suvival-er” really just is a matter of how long things take.
Stuff should cook slower! Stuff should take longer to harvest! Thralls need to take 75 hours to break! You should have to commit seven full days of play on zero sleep to have 1 dragonpowder!
Seems grindy and all but the playerbase is already fairly low. Imagine alienating all of the employed playerbase. All of the parents, husbands, wives… You end up with 200 of the same cheeto-laden basement dwellers (kidding) and that’s it.
Funcom has to appeal to a broad playerbase. Period. They need players to make money. They can’t alienate half of them by appeasing the other half that have 20 hours a day to play Conan.
Don’t get me wrong I am all for weather, sandstorm, combat type changes. Make the world generally harder to SURVIVE IN. But making things take longer isn’t survival.
That said, PVE and PVP servers NEED to be very different.
PVE servers should specifically run purely hardcore. Starve, thirst, die, everything should be harder.
PVP, the survival aspect is hardly world-based (dropping the E for Environment and replacing it with P for player literally defines what you’re up against) so the world should pose LESS danger, so you can quickly be able to defend your budding bases from “alpha” clans who blow new players to hell to simply keep them from advancing.
Honestly I think asking PVP to be more difficult in terms of progression is a little elitist in the sense that only the seriously experienced and time-endowed can survive, build, or even attempt to dominate? No. Players with jobs and lives should be able to exist in PVP too. Sorry not sorry.
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Do I ever agree with you about artificial survival by means of making something “harder” by putting 10 steps in when it can easily take 2. It’s fake, not survival at all.
It’s one reason why I’ve focused more on environment, status effects and drops.
I’m a family person with a 40hr work week so no stranger to being vigilant about my time for sure. Other than during COVID, I’ve been employed during my years of playing Conan.
But I don’t agree that we should separate the PVE from PVP in terms of being easier to benefit PVPers.
Making things harder is what created variables as discussed earlier. It made it so you had to learn, be smart and get better. Inasmuch as in if you didn’t you would be rightfully raided.
Alphas entrenched on a server for years is a symptom of a larger problem and mainly is a result of exploiting game mechanics such as building spots, BVs and ease of having alts or use of Zendesk.
Making it easier isn’t addressing these problems because they will remain.
It definitely took a special kind of player to persevere. Now it’s anything goes.
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I don’t commit my hours like that. Drop on death is a single toggle, yet I’m on officials.
I tried to compare the commitment to WoW, but you know once you are in a group for a run that it’s real flaky to leave, on WoW. In CE, there is no such entourage. I’m sure something will come up and/or develop. 
By the way, Unnamed City is tougher than before 
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On chapter 4 or generally? On chapter 3 it was a bit annoying with the skeletons aggro, the tp hits from scorpions and the instant rotation of the hammer boss, but generally it was same all, same all. There are things and bosses like Brute that you should not go against a specific lvl. But i guarantee you that you can lvl up in unnamed city as long as your performance is at least proper. I can twitch an effort tomorrow zero to 60 on unnamed city. But you’ll allow me to run fast on Al Mera yah first 
. Musashi will make my life much easier.
It was a good feeling, true. It made you feel special. But at the same time it was silly that dressed with something was worst than being totally naked.
Now the armor temperature system is better, more correct than it was.
Then again, the bleeding! Wearing heavy armor the bleeding was less severe than wearing anything else… If you bleed, how armor helps?
With heavy armors we couldn’t dodge, yea right. And if i remember correctly, in the progression of the game, falling damage with heavy armor was less…
Too many not wise decisions has been made all this time, too many.
I believe that the lack of survival is not hiding behind these decisions, people who go heatstroke or frost bite should loose drastically stamina and get crippled. Bandages (omg fortnite) should not heal sandstorm, but a dive under the water should help you with it. However your underwater breathing ability should not last as long as the sandstorm. On some places on specific hours of the game the temperature should rise or drop dramatic. Harvesting materials with tools should rise your temperature always. This will be beneficial in cold biomes, but in hot biomes more water should be required.
Water! Must be clean or else should not cover thirst.
Many things can be done with survival, many. Death, must have greater penalties!
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I visited Unnamed City after several months and yes, the aggro of low level and the speed and rotation of bosses was tough. I almost got killed two times when low level skeletons pinned me down 
. It’s ok, that place should feel scary 
.
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I agree the maked it to easy with everything in the old days it’s was harder with farming then
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You eat and you drink. There is your survival.
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