New player to Conan Exiles

Conan Exiles General Discussion
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Hello everyone.
I have been browsing Steam the past few days to try and find a good or appealing survival game, since i stopped playing DayZ years ago i couldn’t find another survival game that would give me that hitch, i mean i tried a few like H1Z1, Miscreated, RUST, and a few more i think but none got my attention for me to invest my time into any of those games, one day i decided to try Subnautica, yes single player, i loved it.

About Conan Exiles well it may seem pathetic to many of you but this game has been in my library since it released, i think it was also a early access game but i never gave it a proper try, i think i had something between 3-4 hours so it’s not near enough to see what the game had or has to offer, yesterday i decided to install it again and I’m already at 14 hours in xD, it’s just the base game, i don’t have the Isle of Siptah DLC and no mods and i want to avoid mods as much as i can, i wish to play it as it was originally created.

I have a few questions about the game:

1- How much content is there to do? I mean the original/base game map does look big but i wonder if the game has any verticality to it like exploring caves, catacombs, dungeons…maybe underwater areas? This something that i believe many survival games miss, vertical exploration.

2- About the DLC, besides Isle of Siptah all the others are only cosmetic or do they add more to the game?

3- About the lore of the world, i noticed 2 letters with voice acting behind them telling a small story of characters and what happened to them, i thought that was a super nice touch and i wonder there are more lore like that to be discovered in the game?

4- I was very excited when i discovered that i could play the game as single player and that’s the plan, maybe later i will join a multiplayer server but for now i think that solo is the best for me but it makes me wonder if there any any substantial differences or impacts in the game for someone that plays solo instead of online?

Thank you for taking your time with this post, it’s long, I apologize.

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Greetings.
From a gaming point of view, a solo game (which you play on your computer’s server) differs from a game on a third-party server in the almost complete absence of bugs and lags (except for two small, specific and now very rare bugs that I can observe). All those problems and failures that are discussed here every day occur, as a rule, on multi-user servers.
In addition, on your computer you can add a variety of mods to the game and use the admin panel as you please.
So if you are an introvert and do not feel the need for gaming communication, then a solo game will give you maximum pleasure. :sunglasses:

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#1 Yes, Caves up top, Some location on top of things, below things. You’ll do abit of exploring as you learn map(s)

#2 Outside New Map, Mostly Cosmetic, some come with gear thats on Par with In-Game stuff.
Several of building pieces have better looking parts, or clearier view thru window.

#3, Notebooks and Lore stones that are voiced. You don’t need to know Conan Books Lore, But if you do, theres nice nods and winks.
The Lore is abit spaced out, which is nice. You’ll discovery it as you go.

#4 Single Player is just that, You have access to Admin Panel (wont break trophies) and how World Map works is abit differnt.
Example. On Online Server, that game keeps track of everything, were enemy is, items. 24/7

in SP, Only whats around you is loaded in, If you travel far from a location it’ll just reset. (which is nice, so you dont have to wait a location respawn) You can walk far enough away to respawn tree and rocks and plants.

Love game solo, Server Setting for SP, are almost as indef as Online. You can tweak damage, stam drain, etc and really make it feel and work for you.
Or make it even harder.

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Hello and thank you for reaching out, i apologize for the long post, i have a tendency to chat/write a lot at times.

About the game’s content, so me playing Conan Exiles solo I can do everything that players can do in multiplayers servers? There are no limitations in terms of strong bosses or places i can risk to explore?

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The map and game content are identical in single player and on official servers.
Administrators of private servers can install different mods and supplement them with game content at their own discretion, for example, arrange arenas where players can fight bosses, etc.

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There isn’t much difference between Singleplayer and Multiplayer except with a few things. Mainly with how time works, and with how the map is loaded.

When you play singleplayer time only goes forward when you are playing. When you exit the game, the time stops for your character. This sounds pretty obvious, but the ramifications aren’t. So if you have 10,000 stonebrick cooking and decide you’ve had enough for the day and exit the game to go to bed. Those bricks cooking will pause until you come back. On an online server they will continue while you are logged off. There is no ‘catchup’ fastfoward for single player unfortunately. You can offset this by adjusting the crafting speeds to be faster. But you’ll still have some waiting for some of the larger jobs.

The next one is a bit more annoying. When you play in singleplayer the game ‘emulates’ a server. But it only does so around a certain radius of your character. This means events outside that radius are frozen in time. This has very little effect except for Starmetal meteors. The way these work is every so often (about an hour or so) they check to see if they need to fall. They have a higher chance to fall if they haven’t fallen in the last hour or so until they do.

On singleplayer if you are not in the area they fall into, this check is never done and they do not fall. You can get around this by living in the area that they fall, but this limits where you can build to just that area (and you better like snow). But still freezes the area (no pun intended) when you leave it to do dungeons or whatnot.

Singleplayer is typically used by everyone to try out the game before going to multiplayer or to test things out without affecting their normal play. Usually those who don’t play on servers will do is actually load up their own server. Either renting one for themselves and a few friends, or starting one on their local machine or network.

If you’re on the PC version, I highly recommend this. In Steam you have access to the free tool that is the Conan Exiles dedicated server. So if you’re serious about playing the game, but don’t want to play with others yet, I highly recommend this. You get all the benefits of singleplayer, but none of the draw backs. It also keeps your singpleplayer map seperate so you can ■■■■ around on there to test new updates and fiddle around with stuff.

In fact if you’ve played a few survival games before, you’re probably already familiar with this.

But one thing I would say about Conan Exiles. You can have a bit of fun with singleplayer. But it gets exponentially better with even a single buddy. Especially if you’re both new, learning with a friend will be some of the most fun you will have in this game.

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Hello and thank you so much for this information! I didn’t know that server part, so if i wish to play on my own on a online server what exactly do i need to do?

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The game has a lot of things and areas to explore. I’d say it’s small then Skyrim in content, but the thrall capturing and base building aspect adds a lot of content.

The story is hidden in many little hints across the map. It’s more of a big puzzle to solve: Where are you? Why are things so weird? What happened to this once thriving land?

Even the big plot points have to be found by searching the map, and there’re many little aspect unsolved to this day. Even if it’s hard to see at first: The map tells a pretty interesting (and grim) story of war, love, betrayal and the folly of mortal existence…

…, oh, and of nude people. It’s a Sword and Sorcery world, after all, inhabited by steroid-fueled body builders and generous silicone padding.

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I have a slightly different point of view. If you don’t have a super-powerful computer, it’s better to leave everything as it is. Better fps 90 without a dedicated server than 30 with a dedicated one.

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You have a few options. You could play on the funcom servers that are free to all, subject to the terms of service which restrict how wild you can get with your base as well sharing space with more entrenched players that may or may not have built where you would like (my least favorite option), you can rent your own server from one of the several providers and password protect it so only people you want to play with can join, or you can host your own server using the dedicated server launcher, which in theory can run on the same gaming machine you use if it has enough memory and cores, or on a separate pc on your home network (even a dell micropc is sufficient for a couple people running the base game map). The way you approach it varies with personal taste and budget.

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Someone might have a more detailed guide handy, but I’ll get you a rough description in the mean time.

First thing to do is download the tool off of Steam. When you look at your steam library tools aren’t shown by default. So you’ll need to enable that. In your steam library where you see all your games on the left, just above them is a search bar and above that is a drop down that will say Games or Games an Software. Click that and then enable tools.

All of the steam tools will show in your library. Don’t panic, they’ve always been there. You’ll want to scroll down till you see Conan Exiles Dedicated Server and install it. It might help to right click it and create desktop shortcut so you can rehide all those other tools.

Next you’ll want to open the folder that the dedicated server is in and adjust the server settings. The file path to that I believe is similar to the base game one. These are in I believe the \ConanSandbox\Saved\Config\WindowsNoEditor folder for dedicated server. The Saved folder will hold your map file as well.

But the main one you want to adjust is Engine.ini with these settings:

[OnlineSubsystem]
ServerName=Server's Name
ServerPassword=Server's Password

And then most of the actual game settings will be in the ServerSettings.ini file. Though most of those can be altered in game by logging in as an admin. You can choose to setup an admin password (if you want to keep friends honest if they play with you) in ServerSettings.ini as well under AdminPassword=.

Now this is just a quick and dirty guide from someone who hasn’t run a dedicated server on their local machine in a few years. I usually use a tool provided by server hosts, the most common one is TCAdmin. So if you find you really like the game and want to keep playing on your own, then renting is an option. Makes things a bit more smooth that way. There’s community tools as well, but someone with a little more experience with those will need walk you through.

The last time I tried this was on a i7 4790k and a GTX 970 and didn’t notice any framerate drops. But this was a while ago, and the system requirements are a tad higher nowadays. I think Ram is going to be the biggest factor there.

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Yes. In a single player game, I have up to 8-9 GB occupied by CE. I have 16 GB RAM in my laptop, when memory consumption approaches 80%, the game crashes. I can’t even imagine how much it will take to keep the entire map in memory. Probably 128 GB. We need to ask the server administrators.

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I think 16GB (without mods) will suffice. I think your issue was overheating. Laptops are notorious for that, even gaming ones.

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A vanilla server without player structures in it for EL and Siptah is about 5 GB of RAM for the server. It doesnt have to load graphics or anything. Even a fully loaded map in the devkit, all assets loaded and everything takes less than 32 GB. For a casual player to run the game and host a server, 16 would be tight but 32 would be more than sufficient. With a few friends on a 6 month server that has a no littering rule, the server database will consume less than 12 in my experience even with lots of mods.

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What does overheating have to do with memory consumption?

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Its probably why it crashed. I used to use a gaming laptop for CE and I needed a fan platform to make it run smooth, but I think that was mostly the graphics card (was a 1070 max q iirc).

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It’s clear.
But I still don’t understand why I need a dedicated server and all the hassle with it if I’m playing a single-player game.

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You dont. I switched to a server purely so crafting would run when logged off and so frags would replenish.

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I play at most 2 hours a day. At other times, I need to work on my laptop, launch other programs, a browser, etc. With a dedicated server I won’t be able to do this. Why do I even need these hemorrhoids with constantly humming coolers etc, if I can easily set my crafting speed to 10? I’ve never had any problems with crafting in a single player game.

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It’s just personal taste really. I have found that when I boost rates of any kind it trivializes the game a bit, so I like to leave them on base rates. A server tho also let’s your friends play on the same map while you aren’t playing, but I wouldn’t ever do a server on the same machine as my gaming pc. That’s why I used to use micropcs before I upgraded. If I was hosting on my gaming machine, that would be the same for me as co-op because I don’t like to leave my gaming rig running all the time. My server is only a conan server so it sits quietly and cool in the corner drawing almost no power.