Year Five Completed

[Barnes]

As many of you know, I am an Early Access Player. Today, April 8, 2022, is my 5-year anniversary with Conan Exiles, and with Steam. I came to the Exiled Lands directly from the PS4, from GTA Online. At first, I regarded the move as a side step. But then the beauty of the game sank into me like a poniard, the rarest of all scurrilous weapons at the time.

This GIF is from my very first PvP Server, right before Climbing Patch and the Official Server Wipe. The totems you see are the boundaries of the world.

Does anyone else have memories to share? Good bad, no worries, have at it.

[DelRioServerMaster]

This is my first survival-esque game and the avatar attack trailers were what roped me in. Sweet whispers of Sorcery and the settlement system secured my purchase. I joined in EA and remember the whack-fest combat, damnable packs of hyenas tearing me to shreds, and random Rhino’s where now there are Rocknoses. I panicked during my first sandstorm lol. My very first ever building was a 2x2, flat roof hut on the south side of the river. When followers went live, I think I had 2 carpenters guarding my base. Oh the frustration of my knocked-out would-be slaves falling through the world on the way back home! My first real home was just west of the Sentinels, where that gap between a small hill and a tree is that leads to the croc-boss lake (today on my server that’s where the noob freebie hut is). Months later I would find my permanent home in the river valley SW of the Hand of the Maker. I walled off the entire section hoping to draw a purge when that finally launched (which failed btw). I remember logging in one day and seeing lots of naked dudes working my stations…

Ahh, memories.

[darthphysicist]

I was drawn in by bewbs and cool t shirts.

[Jimbo]

Somehow Steam thinks I’m a day -1 player.

Initially I heard about this game through a group I was in. There was about 20 of us that got into this game as soon as it came out. We rented our own server and just dived in exploring and learning the ropes. Most of us stuck around for a solid month and then kinda fell off.

Some of us came back when they added the north, and I’ve been playing more or less straight through since. The group broke apart some time ago and we don’t really talk anymore. I’m the last one left from the old days. A bit sad to think about how everyone drifted apart, but I’m happy with the community today and my new friends along the way

[Azazane]

@Barnes

Today, April 8, 2022, is my 5-year anniversary with Conan Exiles

I’m ‘older’ than you!

I started my journey into the Exiled Lands on February 28, 2017!

Before this I had never played a survival game of any kind, suffice to say it reeled me in and hasn’t let me go yet.

@DelRioServerMaster

damnable packs of hyenas tearing me to shreds

The endgame boss mob of the day, except you ran into them as soon as you dared cross the river…

[stelagel]

I cannot recall how many deaths I counted until I finally learn how ro start the damn campfire and cook something.
I cannot tell you how much fear I had against imps.
I cannot count the first deaths from, sandstorm, bleeding, poisoning, food poisoning.
My first effort for building was with walls only, I couldn’t see in this great crafting menu () the building piece “foundation” .
Greater hyena was my fear, I was building little boxes every now and then just to be able to climb an avoid this “beast” .
My first entrance to unnamed city was a great failure, since I got attacked from rising skeletons (booooo) that they crushed me at once.
My first thick leather from the rhino’s of Savanah, elephants were peaceful at this time and tigers didn’t attack to them. I was building a small box to climb and I was hitting with an arrow a tiger and a rhino so they will fight each other and I will kill the almost dead from both to loot them with my shiny iron skinning knife, we didn’t had stone back then on skinning knives and cleaver unless they were dropped by npcs.
My first visit on Sepermeru came with witnessing a green wall on the way, oooh whow what is this (?) can I touch it (?) bam respawn . I remember it was asking me something and I didn’t knew what to answer, omg I still don’t .
Beautiful memories, golden and more…
@DelRioServerMaster, I agree, especially the derketo avatar blowing this purple breath and killing everything touched me the most.
@darthphysicist it took me months until I find out that nudity existed in this game, I just didn’t knew, I was playing so absorbed, fixing my daily schedule and all my free time was Conan only, I didn’t even had time for YouTube research. When I managed to get derketo religion all the female fighters in my house was wearing Derketo outfits,… You know why .
Beautiful journey and still on the road…
Thank you Funcom!

[Barnes]

@Azazane

I’m ‘older’ than you!

I started my journey into the Exiled Lands on February 28, 2017!

Right On! Heh, I was skeptical at first, so it made me a late adopter. I think I’ve said this elsewhere but if it weren’t for XpertThief trying and failing so humorously, I would never have heard of Conan Exiles.

My first reaction, as an acclaimed self-talker in an Al Bundy voice: “You gotta feed and water yourself? No thanks.”

@stelagel

Greater hyena was my fear, I was building little boxes every now and then just to be able to climb an avoid this “beast” .

The very first time I started out, I was rounding the corner, heading up toward Sinner’s when that infamous mob of hyenas hit me. Oh man, that was horrible. Lost everything!

[Khaletohep]

Played Age of Conan before, a game plagued - as many - PvP, uhm, can I say idiots here? When Conan Exiles was announced, the PvP crowd was enthusiastic. Finally! A game all about naked female attributes** and killing other players’ toons.

So… was happy to see them switch to Conan Exiles and leave the adults* alone.

Only joined the game much later… don’t really remember why. Having a blast, though. It’s pretty much the original vision for Age of Conan, which was announced as a sandbox game, and can be played solo.
Also, the idiots seem to have left the game and the forum. It’s the most helpful and civil forum community I’ve ever seen for a game, including non-computer games.

Would love to see the Age of Conan maps ported to or redone in Conan Exiles. The Fields of the Dead, the Atlantean and Acheronian ruins, the Hyberborean war camps in the north… just great.

*Well, adults that like to play video games, but it’s the 21st century, so that’s not a contradiction anymore.
**World filters. Gotta love them. It’s a game with full nudity, slavery, random violence, but we got to protect certain puritan nations’ sensibilities in the forum.

[biggcane55]

May 6th 2017…
Weny into local gamestop to trafe in a few games and preorder WWE 2k18. Saw the bix for this. Immediately liked the idea, being a Conan 84 movie fan woth some knowledge of the ReH books. Preorder it.

May8th 2017…Jumped on a pve-c server. Immediately knew my 60 bucks was well spent. Died and learned along the way. Join some randoms on the black keep and climbing all around the red mountains. Realized the conflict was rare. Decided to move to pvp…

May 15th…
Joined a PS4 server pvp. Clan Name, Swamp Ass. Went directly to the edge of sandstorm in Jungle. Built up. Went to get iron, and was chased back to my T1 hut by Thieves Guild. Made it, dumped my loot, went out with steel ax and medium armo to return the fight. Won.

May 21st…After adding 2 noobs to my clan, we built in Highlands.

May 22nd, eagerly log into start prepping as a clan. Run out my door and looney toon fall to my death from 8th floor. We had been/were being trebbed. Got in game chat amd pvpd. Most fun so far. Won a few l, lost a few. The teenagers (6 of them) started to brag how the alphas on server were planning to attack and run off a toxic clan, and they were gonna help. I stored this knowledge. That night ran into toxic clans leader. He dropped me a legndary. Not so toxic. I snithced out the teens. Clan leader agreed for a price they would wipe the teens, or better yet be our support and let us raid them ourselves.

May29th…
We raid teens, alphas show up 50 statted, and the toxic clan protected us, even better likes us and added us to make a full clan of 10.
Get to the base of toxic clan, and realized, yeah my personal base sucked balls c9m0aref to the Gamenof Thrones Castle i alwas now living in.

June 5th…
25 players attack our base, 3 tokens in tow.
I kill one during summons. We treb the other guy during his summons, ,and our 100 snake arrow armed archers kill the last avatar. We loot 300 bombs. 7 vs 25 and we held.

June 8th,…time for revemge and to clean the server. We wipe every clan involved over the next 3 nights…

That is my story of becoming hooked in 1 month The next chapter living as alpha i may share next week

[JJDancer]

Congratulations on making it!

Playtime: 7014 hours
Purchased: Feb 5, 2017
I wanted to start in January, but actually had to wait for a new PC to start playing, since I realized very fast that my old one was a potato.

@stelagel

I cannot recall how many deaths I counted until I finally learn how ro start the damn campfire and cook something.

This is why I love you stelagel, we both shared the same crazy experiences. I tried for three RL days to get to the river and stay alive, dying dozens of times.
My BF kept telling me he would help me, but I was stubborn, and wanted to try learning it myself.

Eventually I had to google how to make a fire, lol.

[droch-aon]

I’m a day one of EA player.

Here is an early memory of mine.
I was built on noob river, and another player was complaining about not finding enough iron ore.
So I volunteered to show him my route to iron, it was up the left hand stream to almost the Hand of the Maker, if you stayed near the river you would miss the hyenas and stay ahead of the crocodiles.

He was ecstatic at all the iron he was able to gather.
I left him and went back to my base.

Instead going back the safe path I showed him, he ran across the map directly into the area where there were lots of spiders, crippling poison spiders. I still remember the screams.

[Taemien]

I’m not going to lie, I was a bit ticked off with Conan Exiles when it was announced. It was shaping up to have everything the PVP areas in Age of Conan was supposed to have. Well that turned out to be true and an understatement. Turns out AoC was just limited in what it could accomplish in its time. CE had far more potential to be the game they wanted AoC to be.

In the beginning though, it was very limited. The building system was bar none (and still is) one of the best in the genre. The combat and the content was lacking back then. But I still got it, and had a bit of fun in early access. Made some friends and did a little PVP. When it got the combat overhaul on the testlive, I saw that some servers moved to it. So I became a bit of a test player.

Turned out I loved the new combos and stayed in that branch for the duration of early access. Several years later, rest is history.

[stelagel]

Well my fire starting happened accidentally, I left the joystick to the table to go to pi and the R2 pressed by accident so the fire started, for a moment I forgot that I have to go in the toilet, so in a few seconds my wife witnessed me running to it . A beautiful accident that could end up really bad . Omg sometimes I feel very lucky I haven’t receive a divorce file, this woman is a hero.
I really missed you my friend, really, really, really, miss you here. I am extremely happy you are back sunshine. Best wishes for you, your bf and your beloved ones.

[Grymm]

I am guessing I first started playing 21 ‎March ‎2017 just after 11:21 - that was when the game was first installed on computer. It can be blamed on the great j0hnbane for streaming this new alpha release and watching the resulting fun and games.

Started Solo, then to Official and rapidly from there to private servers and that was that. Then finally got a couple of servers myself, threw on some mods and gathered in a small group of fellow players.

I have never played a better game. Happier than an Acolyte of Crom in a bucket of blood.

Thanks to the people at FunCom, the awesome Modding community, TestLive testers, and all those still playing or just starting to play this game and for keeping the game alive.

(I still remember my first sneaking through the noob area and into the North to make the ‘ideal base’. Who knew spiders could be so unpleasant. And now over 7,200 hours played)

[Barnes]

To be honest, I played and then gave up. I kept running into a killing bug that made me stay on the noob side of the noob river. Then the server evaporated. It was cool, it was called The Land of Kush. I had visions of fantasy temples dancing in my head. You know that little spit of soil north of the Shattered Bridge in noobland? There’s a low-end named NPC there now, but all noobs apparently liked to build there. Including me.

Anyway the server went away, I took a break, and then one day I saw VintageBeef. He dyed some armor, the next minute I’m watching a few more videos. And then I joined an Official and never looked back. It’s what made me dump my GTA Guides entirely, and aspire to broadcasting this incredible game. I still love it so.

Thank you all for your amazing stories. I’m really proud to be part of this community.

[Vahlok]

I have to say I’m thankful for senility setting in.
I can’t recall the early horrors of death I faced.
I came in a few months late but over 7 thousand hours later, needless to say I am hooked.
I’ve seen every “face” of this and the Steam Community …
I’ve run my own rented servers, but mostly have played solo.
I wish my experiences had been better but I understand people don’t change much.
A shining example of what humanity really is, and I’ll be glad when I’m gone.

[Barnes]

Nice to see you back again, @Vahlok. I’m sorry you had a watershed moment with the game, I was just talking about mine in the post about VintageBeef.

When I joined my first Official Server, I started out with a real sense of wonder. The map was huge and forbidding. In my mind, it was going to be at least a week’s slog just to get across the river. So I set about creating a smashbox near the Shattered Bridge in noob country. I experimented, grew my skills, learned to fight, got geared up and actually felt like I was ok.

So I prepared my loot and prepared my route, and ran for what I’d practiced in many different unladen drills. I might’ve been Level 17 out of a max 50. I drifted past the humanoids without attention, but a Kappa started following me. Instantly the drill was off. I began to panic. My route included brushing past a croc, but in my state I drew its aggro too…

After a few infuriating destaminated steps, I desperately flung myself into the water at about where I had planned to cross: about in line with the little lake below Sinner’s. None of this was named at the time.

I swam for safety. About halfway across, my screen started to fill with blood, there was a sensation of sinking, full blood screen then DEATH! Then game crash. By the time I got back in, my corpse was a distant hope, as I had no idea where I’d died. No corpse marker either. I ran for it. No aggro this time. I swam, but tangentially to the crash area. Turned right, crashed again.

Closed my laptop and walked away.

[droch-aon]

When I first started I played single player for around a day or so, then went to a PVE server.
I was fresh off a heavy pvp game and wanted a break.

After two weeks of no one talking and everyone running away? which was weird because it was PVE,
I moved to a PVP server. I was raided every time I left my base or logged out.

When I didn’t get mad, or whine or rant in chat, the people who raided me gave me better than they had taken, and we became friends.

Now for the crux of this story, we had names for everywhere even though nothing was named, eg we called the area just east of Sepemeru “the turkey bowl” because that was where most of the shoebills could be found at that time.

Now came a Dev Stream where Joel Bylos and Jens Erik mentioned the name “FingerFang Rock”

Our little clique on that PVP server found this extremely hilarious because we had given that spot a very similar name, only we used bang in place of fang.

I still think of that area by that name.

Oh and after they named “The Oasis of Nekhet” we started calling it “The Oasis of Necked”

[Sir.Henry.Vale]

Congrats. I started this game late Feb 2019 so I am youngling to many of you old-timers

First survival game would be Minecraft for me (modded of course - since could not stand those low res graphics). This is my second survival game, and have tried others since (Ark, Myth of Empires and Valheim). Out of them all, CE is still my favorite. Granted, each had their charm.

Amazing how far this game has gone since Early Access. Kudos to the development team and player base who made this game better with their feedback.

[Barnes]

There I was on US TestLive, just doing my thing, living a good life in an ore-rich area. Legitimately just playing and testing out new developments, which came at a pretty rapid pace. It was PvP, and I had made a nice little hanging cliff base up near ChaosMouth. Another player had taken the slot itself – you could build all the way inside the slotted “inner sanctum area” – and I was patiently waiting them out.

I was keeping a fairly low profile those days, I usually just played dumb, which seemed very natural to me. This was the first game like this I’d ever played, and I was enjoying learning while testing.

Then I watched a YouTuber post a video of him jumping over a shallow wall and repeat killing a player. This player was clearly testing in low armor, yet the trident guy kept killing him and stealing his Lucky Charms. I made an effort to find this guy, then rained some static onto him. Somehow that never ended up on YouTube, and I expected he’d say something in Global. But he took the beatin’ well.

The guy he repeat killed ended up leaving. On my way back from that guy’s abandoned base, I spied an opportunity to kill a Rhino. I was at the desert foot of ChaosMouth, thus close enough for safety so I casually drew my bow, and lined up the shot…

right then from somewhere east of PriestKing flew a yellow arrow-shot perfectly on the beast’s head. It charged off toward its new foe and I was simply amazed. That was an unbelievable shot, especially considering the terrain. That was the day I met the Master Archer @droch-aon .