It would be great if we can craft them or on the isle of siptah we could find ones like in the image here that are filled with water somewhere on the beaches.
If we have wood and tar in our inventory we could click on it and repair it then float around the island and move them up the small rivers and creeks to get around or scout out base locations.
They could even be set up that after using it so much we would have to repair it much like you have to repair everything else.
These small boats are all over the place and no one is using them so it would be a waist to see them just sitting around.
Idk, if they made boats work, I guess that’d be interesting, but boats don’t exactly scream conquerer to me. I kinda think theyd get minimal use and wouldnt be worth the development investment.
All the pirates on conan exiles would of used boats to spread out their locations, as would the stygians and the nordheimer who are much like vikings and vikings love their boats.
Even onquistadors used small boats to conquer my aztec people so having small boats does scream here we come to conquer your lands.
I’m thinking of how they would likely be implemented though. Small traveling boats would just be visual for the most part. There isnt really wide open seas and the game isnt boats first. Thats a fine idea if it were but that would likely be a pretty massive overhaul if they wanted to really emphasize warfare using boats. The rivers on EL are all fairly shallow and confined and while deep ocean is on Siptah, people would build inland and it would interfere with the starting zones. I mean yeah it could be worked in but I think the development costs and the fact that it isnt fitting with the core game design as it stands mean it wouldnt happen in a meaningful way. The only thing I would say that could be on the table are small fishing boats.
Well sitting in a boat and riding it would use the same actions as sitting on a chair and moving it while stearing it could use the same mechanics as moving and steering a horse or rhino so some of the mechanics are already in the game.
Also those small boats in the game have flat bottoms so they are made for ocean water and shallow rivers and streams.
it was a while back, but boats would be very hard to implement. They stated the water physics in the game were not designed for boats. Which means they would have to code that. And adding new calculation codes and physics codes main drain resources from other parts of data base.
But where would we really travel if there were boats? There is only one main river, and there are waterfalls everywhere.
(but it would be fun going down one in your boat XD)
Plus swimming across takes thirty seconds, and running alongside the riverbank is probably faster than a boat would be.
For the exiled lands anyway, have not yet seen the isle of Sitpah.
, 100 wood raft) and a mandatory 1hr decay timer 
as default.