i think one of the main reasons, it didn’t do that well was that there was no connection to the main game, except the short live server transfer.
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As much as it pains me to say it, you’re absolutely right.
The only way of saving CE would be to assign a new team to the game. A team with a legendary amount of patience to comb that code. The game is too old for that. I don’t see why they would do it.
They could send the game for a Chinese team to work on it. Some incredible games from relatively small teams came from them. Lower costs, devs with less crap going on… maybe that could work. Other than that… nah. It will be a slow decay until it finally dies.
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The Kithai expansion for AoC had some problems, but the visuals were stunning at the time. New World took - in my view - some inspiration from Conan Exiles and Age of Conan, and had similar China inspired areas with very similar design, but more current technology - also looked great.
Some mods have similar areas, and they show that the Conan Exiles framework works for that. Would be really cool to see a map like that, be it an official or an unofficial one.
Regarding Siptah: Siptah has/had some great mechanics, but also problems. The first iteration was interesting mechanics-wise, but very boring map-wise. The map was pretty, but had little diversity the only distinct biome was the redwood forest in the north east. Resources were distributed all over the map, removing the need to move across the map. The wild surges were just weird and immersion breaking at least for me.
The ideas were good, the execution was good, but overall, the map apparently didn’t “click” with a large enough part of the customer base. They changed a lot and picked up a lot of ideas proposed by the players (including me), such as map transfers, prisoner cages and more PvE content. But still, it just didn’t work.
Splitting resources between several maps was a courageous decision back then, and it still would be. An event like the Dark Dregs cannot be copied and pasted to Siptah, and it couldn’t be easily copied to an Asia inspired new map.
That’s something one would have to keep in mind, and for example design new maps and events so that events or additions can be used for both. Maybe even just copy dungeons like the Dregs, possibly with slight changes such as a different ingame reason for that dungeon to exist, such as it being the sewer of an abandoned Kithan city.
Could it be done? I think so. Will it be done? Most likely not, sadly.
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I agree, and that’s why I only gave screen shots to show off the visuals of what they accomplished just shy of 16 years ago. And that isn’t even touching the outfits!!! The outfits were phenomenal!
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It’s actually really interesting to see how much AoC nostalgia and Siptah discussion this brings up, it kind of shows how strong the memories and ideas still are.
That’s also exactly why I’d really love to hear more concrete thoughts on map structure and gameplay loops. What actually makes a Conan map work long-term? What encouraged movement, PvP, exploration, or cooperation, and what killed it?
Whether that inspiration comes from Exiled Lands, Siptah, AoC, mods, or something entirely new doesn’t really matter. I’m mostly curious what people think should define a great Conan map today.
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What makes a map attractive? I’ll give it a try:
- Making the map look good, obviously.
- Spread out resources, levelling areas and dungeons, so that players are forced to explore.
- Add interesting lore as a breadcrump trail, similar to the lore stones in the Exiled Lands.
- Add diversity, i. e. different biomes, difficulty levels and so on.
- Give the map a consistent reason to exist and for us to experience adventures in it.
- In the Exiled Lands, there’s the story about the Giant Kings, the Serpentpeople and Toth Amon’s questionable idea to send exiles into the area to dig for relics. Its themes are the inevitable destruction brought by wars, mystery and feeling imprisoned.
- Isle of Siptah has us arrive as a shipwrecked prisoner and leads us to discover the teleporter-gate-feast-fallout-vault-story of the ancient races. Not as good in my opinion, but still workable. The themes are… well, that’s a weakness of the map, I think. There’s a story, but no real motif or moral in that story. The humans killed off the ancient races. In turn, the ancient races use magic to abduct and eat humans. So… who’s the bad guy here? What’s the moral? Genocide is okayish, but don’t complain about being eaten afterwards? The isle still has a good atmosphere. Finding the various attempts to (re)settle the island, all of them failed due to underestimating the danger of the ancient races, gives us some discovery. But it stays weird. A single player character with steel weapons can clear most of the vaults. How in Crom’s name did these degenerates kill off the Acheronian settlement!? In short: Not great, not terrible.
- Most of the mod maps are pretty great in their own way, but lack such a central story or theme. Savage Wilds, for example, is a really good map with lots of great elements. But it does not have (or I don’t see) a central theme, story reason or something like that. The dreamworlds in the tavern, for example, tell something of a story. The area with the Hyperboreans, the story of the cast out werewolf tribe - all of these are pretty cool. But the various elements in the map don’t seem to have much of a connection. Before anybody understands this as Savage-Wilds-hate: The map is fantastic. I spent many, many hours on it and can only advise to try it out (for console players: get a PC - it’s worth it for this map). I take it as an example because it is so popular and so great instead of dumping on lesser known works.
- Make the map semi-realistic. Having a snow and hot desert biome within walking distance is one thing, having square isles or wildly different biomes right next to each other without any explanation is not.
- Don’t just copy or remake the Exiled Lands. Taking inspiration is good, copying is not.
- It’s “Conan” Exiles. There should be a connection to his stories, and the themes and content of the map should be lore-friendly. Expansions of his world are okay, contradictions should be avoided. Some stuff such as the SciFi elements of the original stories can be included, but one should keep in mind that modern audiences (← not meant politically) are not accustomed to SciFi elements in fantasy stories any more. The same goes for Lovecraftian elements: May be included, but don’t overdo it. “Conan Exiles”, not “Charles Dexter Ward Exiles”.
A rough draft to give an example of what I mean by these points. To take the Asian inspired idea as a basis:
- In a forgotten valley in the Himalayan mountains, there’s an ancient temple with a library, where a long-dead sorceress and her cult stored their knowledge.
- Various tribes (e. g. Hyrkanians, Turanians), warlords (e. g. Kithai, Vendyan) and sorcerers (e. g. Yamatai which are secretly controlled by serpentpeople) have come to the area to control the library and the various ruins left by the sorceress and her followers.
- A local tribe, maybe descendants of the sorceress’ followers, tries to stop that. There’s a good reason for that: The knowledge was gained by summoning demons and is tainted by corruption. It led the sorceress to her doom, and the same happens with all those who follow in her footsteps.
- This setup gives us conflict between the various factions and a reason for them to be hostile to the player characters: They expect everyone to be a competitor, spy or scout for a rival faction.
- We also have an opportunity to install various dungeons, e. g. the library as an endgame dungeon where one can learn sorcery, an ancient prison/laboratory where the sorceress created undead and other abominations, an ancient border fortress recently conquered by one of the warlords, but still filled with traps and ancient monstrosities. Old Stygian ruins hint at a previous attempt to conquer the valley, but they were hit by the Sorceress’s death curse and transformed into undead.
- There are several possible reasons for the player characters to arrive, i. e. starting areas: They might be prisoners brought there by various factions to serve as cannon fodder / experimentation material / livestock / slaves. This can be implemented as the varying spawn locations we can choose in Siptah, all dumping us into a different scenario.
- The central story also offers opportunity to have strange areas and biomes, as those may have been caused by the sorceress and her experiments. For example, she may have bound a powerful fire demon that emanates so much heat that it dried up the area over the centuries. A volcano my have erupted where her palace once stood, and we can visit and loot remnants of her riches if we can survive the lava, her remaining demon sentries and other dangers.
- And we can give the map an overarching theme, i. e. “power corrupts”. With that, we can tie areas and dungeons together thematically, such as a faction that went mad and possibly even mutated due to using her magic, a dungeon filled with undead survivors of her cult that chose undeath and exile over falling with their brethren, and the vanilla sorcery system being useful, but far from making you really powerful and always at the price of gaining corruption.
- Resources can be spread out and put into distinct spots. Maybe the only two major sources for iron are an ancient mine infested with undead and a new mine created by the Kithans to resupply their army. Brimstone can only be found in the volcano area. Black Lotus and White Lotus can only be found in the Garden of Day and Night, a terrace garden created by the sorceress to fuel her drug addiction. Black Ice is created from the library’s corruption seeping into the area, and can be found on the way to the library in areas with corruption clouds, so that harvesting it corrupts the player in a dangerous area where one doesn’t want to have reduced health.
- A map also need a reason why we cannot leave it. In the Exiled Lands, that’s the curse wall, on the Isle of Siptah, it’s the ocean (and the inability of the player characters to build a boat, even though they can abduct pirates and build fortresses single-handedly). In this map, we could have mountains surrounding the area, with the few passes guarded by impenetrable fortresses.
- The presence of various factions also gives a reason for the diversity in equipment and building sets (and sell us new stuff…). If we put our characters into a mountain valley, pirates are a bit difficult to explain, but hey, maybe the Kithans captured a pirate kingdom and send all the prisoners as slaves to the valley - where they broke free and now recreate their pirate shacks. Same goes for the “western” factions: There may be a Nemedian warlord in the area that is looking for magic artifacts he can use to topple the hated King Conan of Aquilonia, and some Aquilonians were brought as prisoners or followed him as scouts for Conan. With some heavy-handed handwaving, it should be possible to give somewhat plausible reasons for all the game’s major assets to exist in this scenario.
It’s only a spontaneous draft, and much more thought should be put into any new map concepts. But I hope it illustrates what I mean by creating a central theme and so on.
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This is really solid feedback, thanks for taking the time to write it out. It’s honestly refreshing to see a reply that looks at map design from a world-building and thematic perspective instead of just “more content pls”.
I agree with a lot of what you’re saying, especially the importance of a central theme and a clear reason for the map to exist. Exiled Lands works so well partly because everything, biomes, dungeons, lore, even the feeling of being trapped, ties back into that core idea. And I also agree that Siptah, while having interesting mechanics, struggled with identity and biome diversity in the long run.
One area I’m personally very curious about, and which you touch only indirectly, is progression and difficulty. Should progression feel closer to Exiled Lands, with a gradual increase in danger and clear “you shouldn’t be here yet” zones, or should a new map push that further? Harder progression, more risk, more punishment? Or more accessibility with smarter rewards?
Related to that, how do we reward players without making things trivial? Especially when PvE and PvP players share the same world. Would something like a more map-specific journal, dungeon progression, or layered unlocks make sense, rather than just raw power upgrades?
I also strongly agree with your thoughts on resource distribution. As someone who plays very nomadic and spends a lot of time in world PvP, spreading resources is one of the best ways to avoid “Brimstone Lake” style hotspots and instead encourage movement, risk, and encounters across the whole map. That gradual escalation in danger and value is something I think any new map really needs to get right.
Overall, your post hits a lot of points that I think are essential for making a map feel alive rather than just visually impressive. I’d genuinely be interested in hearing how you’d imagine progression and difficulty scaling on such a map, and how far you think Conan should lean into being harsher versus more accessible.
Hard to say, as we have a very diverse player base.
For a newcomer, the base game is pretty rough, I assume even after the many nerfs and rebalancing. Personally, I really struggled with Conan Exiles in the beginning. I did, for example, not understand that one is/was supposed to bring thralls with you - I only used them for base defense. Imagine my fat ass standing in front of the Executioner with an iron sword and wondering how one is expected to hack through 15k HP. I didn’t find a single dungeon naturally and didn’t even know the game even had dungeons before I saw one in a video guide.
The game has changed a lot since then, and the players with it. If one knows what to do, you can be equipped with looted Cimmerian armor and epic weapons within a few hours. Weapon progression my recent playthrough was stone → hardened steel → skeleton key epics. That’s… weird. The PvE-siege-katana-situation was even weirder: take one of the best weapons in the game without any equipment or fighting. Cimbing is winning.
Creating a map that satisfies everyone cannot be done. But I’d advise to look at Legend of Shem. It starts out pretty brutal, as one curiously starts in one of the more dangerous and desolate areas, and has to escape that hell hole to start leveling, crafting and so on. That was a lot of fun for me at least, and it gives excitement to various levels of experience and play styles. The inexperienced or bad (← what I include myself in) player can enjoy a frantic escape story, whereas the experienced and talented uber-players can jump straight into the action.
What I want to say: Maybe dump the players in a medium difficulty area, so that they get a taste of what is to come, but with a clear way on how to reach easier terrain. A journal or friendly NPC might tell us about a hideout in the noob zone, where escaped slaves as us may find refuges, trade harvested stone and wood for their first iron weapons and so on. And those who are able and willing to beat half a dozen Cimmerians with only stone daggers may stay in the starting area.
Overall, I’d say raise the difficulty for endgame. Not unfair, but brutal, so that we have a good reason to gear up, collect buff items and so on.
I tried to recreate that with a “live another life” style restart on the vanilla map, and it was pretty fun: My character was an Exile from the Heirs of the North, and started near their village. The beginning was brutal. Killing heirs with stone weapons is pretty challenging (for me). My first thrall was a level 4 smelter from a cage (Matthias Snowmelt), who turned out to be a pretty great fighter. Building up from that weird base was a fun experience.
P. S.: One more thing. The Exiled Lands and Isle of Siptah (pre-expansion) have a pretty obvious difficulty scale. The farther north in the Exiled Lands, the farther to the center on the Isle of Siptah, the more dangerous most things are. There are exceptions to that, but overall, players are likely to understand the map layout and where to go.
In some of the popular mod maps, at least I completely went off trail on my first game, as there was no clear way on where to progress to next. That’s not that good in my view.
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There are probably a million ideas for new maps, dungeons, content and features. That is not the issue. FC didn’t run out of ideas. They just focus their resources to something else, ((Cough) Dune) and we are left in the void. 
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And another afterthought:
The motif of the Exiled Lands is, in my view, doom, i. e. an inevitable, negative fate:
- The Giant Kings had a great thing going, but their naivety (or arrogance? Or even kindess?) led to their whole civilization being wiped out, not by losing battles, but by irreversible environmental damage, where one cannot even hope for a surprise victory.
- The Lemurians escaped the end of their civilization several times, but their genius, semi-immortal Witch Queen eventually led them to their doom. She had to fight the Serpentpeople, she had to lead her people into an unwinnable war.
- The Exiles are sent to the area to die. They cannot escape because of the bracelets, and no matter how successful they will be, their struggles will only serve to amass treasures for Toth Amon.
- The Serpentpeople are dying out. Fleeing into volcano, even interbreeding with lesser species, nothing will save them, and they know they’re only delaying the inevitable.
There’s no hope for any of these people, and the few we meet know that.
- The Warmaker stands among the ruins of their city, doomed to live an eternity in solitude and regret.
- The last true serpentman is a degenerate weakling, who starts combat knowing it’ll be his last.
- The Witch Queen (or whatever we encounter) still has fighting spirit in her, but also knows that she f’ed up badly (“I was supposed to be your saviour.”). The other Lemurians have turned to Derceto, numbing their desperation by mindless debauchery and death worship.
- Arcos the Wanderer and Gilzan the Treasure Hunter understand their fate at least in rough terms, and the Forgotten Tribe even believes to be dead already.
Doesn’t help in creating new maps, but I wanted to add that.
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thanks for mentioning my map among some legends 
interestingly, i had done some preliminary work on a yamatai map but like most of my projects it petered out pretty quickly when something else shiny caught my eye
perhaps i could be persuaded to pick it back up, if there is actually interest in the setting.
as far as new maps by funcom, it has been asked numerous times with no response from funcom. considering the game is at end-of-life, and the skeleton crew in north carolina is pretty much just propping the game up until they run out of bazaar items the artists already created, i think the chance of funcom making another map is somewhere between 0% and 0.000000001%
more likely (tho still incredibly unlikely) would be if console versions of the game could add mod support. they would need the infrastructure built to support it tho, as the PC version of the game is intrinsically linked to steam workshop, they’d have to build some system for mod deployment on consoles similar to how bethesda has done. believe me, most of us modders would love it if console players could play our mods.
also it is kind of a shame that funcom never teamed up with modders again after they hired snowhunter to do Warmaker and Wine Cellar dungeons. two best dungeons in the game.
in my opinion, this game is dead for console players, but will live forever on PC because of modding community making new content. it’s a shame that console players can’t play mods 
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Credit where credit is due.
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I’ll reply on this one
Sorry for the late reply, had some real-life obligations. Thanks for taking the time to share this, it’s really solid and thoughtful feedback. I like a lot of your ideas, especially the notion of giving players an early taste of danger instead of dropping them straight into a completely safe noob bubble. That kind of tension, combined with a clear way toward safer areas, feels both exciting and instructive. I also agree that clearer difficulty gradients are important. Exiled Lands works well because players intuitively understand where things get harder, and that sense of direction helps both new and experienced players plan their progression. At the same time, I’m a bit torn on how much guidance is ideal. Showing players what’s coming and roughly where they “belong” can be helpful, but I’d personally want to be careful not to remove too much player freedom or discovery in the process. Your breakdown of the Exiled Lands’ theme of doom and inevitability really resonates with me. That strong underlying tone is a big reason the map still feels cohesive, and it’s something I’d love to see any new map lean into in its own way. Really appreciate you sharing your experience, this kind of input is exactly what makes the discussion interesting.
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That’s really cool, thanks for sharing this.
Even as an early concept, it’s interesting to see a Yamatai-inspired layout visualized. It honestly reinforces why this theme keeps coming up when people talk about new maps.
For me, the exciting part isn’t so much a single culture or region, but how a map like this could evolve into something with strong biome contrast and progression, similar to how Exiled Lands moves players through very different environments. Yamatai could easily be one part of that larger world.
Even though Yamatai isn’t explicitly explored in the original books, the game has already introduced armor, weapons and building pieces tied to it, so using it as one of several regions could be a natural way for Funcom to flesh that culture out lore-wise through gameplay.
I think the interest here is less about a “finished” map and more about direction, identity and world structure that encourages movement instead of collapsing into one or two meta hotspots. Early sketches like this are exactly what help spark that kind of discussion.
One thing I’m really curious about after reading all this feedback is progression and endgame.
Not just visuals, but how a map teaches players where to go, how dangerous things are, and how both PvE and PvP emerge naturally from the world instead of being forced by systems.
PvE and PvP often pull in different directions, and that’s not unique to Conan, it happens in a lot of games. Still, I think it’s worth asking how a new map could better support both, especially for solos, nomads, new players, and returning players.
Some open questions I’d love input on:
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What parts of Exiled Lands progression still work really well today?
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What parts of Siptah worked, and what clearly didn’t?
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Should early game be safer, or should players get a taste of danger early and learn to navigate away from it?
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How do we reward players in the endgame without making everything trivial or turning the map into one giant meta hotspot?
I’m also curious about lighter endgame structures that help players recover and re-engage after setbacks, without removing risk entirely. Not necessarily “easy mode”, but systems that encourage people to stay, experiment, and try again instead of quitting after a wipe.
This isn’t a proposal, just ideas to spark discussion. I’m genuinely interested in how others experience progression, PvE, PvP, and long-term motivation on different servers.
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This is just a quick visual mock-up I made for inspiration, based on the map concept described earlier.
Nothing final, nothing official, and definitely not a “this is how it should be”.
It’s just meant as a way to visualize biome contrast and overall world structure.
If it sparks ideas or helps anyone imagine the concept better, feel free to draw inspiration from it.
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oh yearhnow we talking, i love that photo as a map les citys and bigger map the cencept is really good for funcom as a map to make
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You made this?
Yes, it’s AI-generated. Just a visual mock-up to illustrate the concept, not anything final or official.
Pretty sweet picture.
About difficulty: The Exiled Lands have become to easy imho. Opponents have too little health, and the only real danger comes from being staggered to death or being killed by lag, getting stuck in the terrain and similar effects.
The game was harsh for beginners when I started, but not primarily due to the combat mechanics, but because many systems are not explained, you don’t know the map and so on.
For experienced players, the game is much too easy now, I think.
So, I’d advise to make a new map harder than the Exiled Lands. I’m not an expert in video game mechanics, but I’d say that NPCs should primarily have more life and come in greater groups, not greater damage output. The Conan Exiles combat system is great for separating groups, using crowd control, clever pulling and so on. One hit mechanics, on the other hand, are frustrating, especially when you’re still exploring the map.
Imagine meeting a new faction and trying if you can take them: If they just stomp you with their first attack, it’s a frustrating trip to your bed, i. e. being punished for not knowing something. Not a good incentive. Imagine, however, that they don’t hit as hard, but come in a group and with health pools so large that you quickly realize it’s time to retreat - then you faced a dangerous opponent, chose a tactical retreat and can swear revenge or work out a strategy.
The current endgame in the Exiled Lands also is too easy in my view. Killing bosses requires little if any strategy. If one dies, than by lag/game stutters, getting stuck on terrain and/or being staggered to death.
Siptah’s difficulty is a bit weird in my view, but overall a bit better. The Grey Ones do the exact opposite of what I said above: high damage, low health. But they still work. Personally, I find this design a bit strange lore wise: They are big and live harsh lives, which might translate to high health pools, but they only use stone age weapons, thus should deal less damage than a Cimmerian with a star metal sword. But hey, it’s still okay. The vaults are too easy in my view, except for the harpy one, they’re just grind with little excitement. No terrain hazards, just a one way tunnel with spongy mobs. One of the werewolf vaults can be exciting if you purposefully pull too many enemies, but else, I find them boring.
Some mods show interesting alternatives. The Endgame Extended Weapon Arsenal (EEWA) adds bosses with mechanics as we can see in MMORPGs, such as doing a front AoE attack every third attack you have to avoid. Their damage output is far too extreme in my view, at least for single player, but the concept is pretty neat in my view.
Savage Wilds has some similar, but less pronounced mechanics, especially with the four elemental bosses. The Hyberborean area is possibly the best example of endgame difficulty: The Hyberboreans hit like trucks, are tough as nails and have great reach due to their size. Even against “trash mobs”, you have to stay alert and plan your attack. But they are neither bullet sponges nor one hit wonders.
Isle of Men and Isle of Woman have larger mob groups, which works pretty well in my experience and doesn’t require to create new enemy types - if I understand it correctly, these maps just use standard enemies most of the time.
The Desolate Lands is also good in both regards.