Conan Exiles, a game set in the Conan the Barbarian universe of hacking, slashing, and surviving monsters and men! If you don’t know of Conan, your parents probably have an idea, but is the game worth playing, especially for the price? I’ll tell you what I know from playing it myself, and tell you a bit of what the internet says. Then give you my personal thoughts, and you can decide if you want to give it a try.

About Conan Exiles

Conan Exiles is a multiplayer survival crafting game that lets you create your own character, play with friends or strangers, or play by yourself. You craft armor, weapons, and buildings. You fight monsters, humans, and other players, and all around survive. 

It was released on the 8th of May 2018 by Funcom for PC, Xbox One, and Playstations, with an enhanced version for Xbox Series X and S being released June 8th of 2021.  Within just 2 months the game sold 1.4 million copies, making it Funcom’s best-selling game, though it had mixed reviews, the free trial may have had an impact on how many people played the game.

Conan Exiles Story

The game kinda lacks in the story department, not that there isn’t one. Your character is found, hanging from a cross, by Conan himself, who takes you off, and says that his people kill in battle, not leave their enemies to die as dogs as the sun. (You wake up after a shipwreck in the Isle of Siptah DLC). From here, you can explore, rather freely, so long as you can survive the many dangers of the Exiled Lands or Isle of Siptah, and the story is found in various ways, it’s never told to you in the normal fashion, so you can miss a lot, but if you explore, you’ll find a fairly interesting plot.

A big part of the story is fighting boss characters or creatures that are dotted, and often annoyingly hidden, around the map. From them, you get more information and pieces of the game’s greater puzzle. Then there are mini-bosses, these guys give you the good stuff! Use a tool on their bodies when you beat them to get a skeleton key, find the locked chest and get the awesomely strong weapon!

Meeting Conan in a bar with dancing thralls behind him.
 

Conan Exiles Gameplay

The gameplay is similar to that of Ark Survival Evolved in that you begin by creating a character who starts with nothing, then you pick up scattered rocks, branches, and plant fiber in a large map you can get lost in, so you can craft your starting equipment, then you start your own story. You mine large stones and mineral ores, chop trees, and hunt animals and humans all while leveling up and slowly figuring out how to make better equipment, building, and crafting stations. You can play alone, though I suggest fiddling with the settings if you do, or play with friends and random players online to fight, or survive together and try to escape the Exiled Lands. Or perhaps you’d rather stay and pillage.

You also assign attribute points to your character's stats to make them stronger where you want, say in surviving the elements or doing more damage when you attack. And then you use knowledge points to learn better versions of things to make. This can be kind of confusing and frustrating, but once you play for a bit you start to get it. Don’t worry about putting points in the wrong thing, you can craft or find potions to retrain them!

A player using the carpentry table to craft wood-related items, probably working on their house.
 

Conan Exiles Combat

Now when you fight, it’s fluid, with dodge rolling, swords, maces, spears, axes, and blunt weapons as well as shields and bows, letting you choose what’s most comfortable to you, I usually go with sword and shield. You can set gear into your load wheel and switch quickly to different weapons or heal yourself. When you assign points to things like strength, your character gets stronger, letting them do more damage with each attack. Oh, and the max level is 60 so you only get so many points.

Conan Exiles Quest/Mission System

There isn’t much when it comes to quests or missions here, the game does have journey steps, which are things you’ll probably end up doing just by playing the game. Things like drinking water, eating, making different weapons, and all that good stuff. But you don’t get quests or missions from characters here, you end up hearing pieces of lore that draw you to new areas and usually a boss.

So you may be asking, “What’s the point? Why do I play then?” and that’s a fair question. Most people play to hang out with friends, and battle other players, while some just play to learn what the story is. However, there is an ultimate goal, to Conan Exiles, escape the exiled lands, and you can’t do that if you don’t play, right? As you explore, you find information and items that will help you escape the punishment that is the games map.

Conan Exiles Graphics 

 

I play on my Xbox One, so the graphics aren’t as good as they could be, but the game still looks great. The models look good, there’s not much clipping going on, you’re never confused as to what an animal is (unless it’s some monster you’ve never seen before), and the lighting is fantastic, I mean, you actually need to use a torch at night. I can say that it can be a bit jumpy because it is an online game. Even if you play single-player, a slower internet connection will make it skip around a little bit, but nothing too drastic from what I’ve seen.

Player-created structure in the Highlands biome. Looks like they’re getting ready to go out on horseback.
 

Conan Exiles Funcom

Funcom made this game, and until I played it, I can’t say that I remember them from anything else. Back when the game first released, it felt like an Ark clone with just enough differences to stand out. They’ve done a lot of updates over the years, and recently overhauled the leveling system and the crafting system, which has made a huge difference. Crafting is much easier now with the use of a mallet to craft building instead of digging through your inventory screen and crafting what you can from there, putting it in your item wheel, then placing it. 

It seems as though they are trying to keep the game fun and they’re adding new things. Age of Sorcery, which was just recently released as a free update, adds a deep magic system that I haven’t gotten too deep into yet, but I’m sure others have jumped in headfirst and are casting spells left and right. On Xbox, the game is fun, and I can imagine it’s a little better on PC using a mouse and keyboard instead of a controller, but that shouldn’t deter any console players. 

Conan Exiles Price

This is where things can hurt, with the base game costing an average of 50 bucks, but when you get into DLC or the complete edition that has everything, that runs you about $120. These prices are for the digital game, which I went for so I could grab everything all together. But you can easily find the physical game for about $15, and the digital is always going on sale for upwards of 60% off, which is a steal!

I’ve heard many people saying that the price is too steep for a game like this, however, if you like exploring and fighting animals and monsters, crafting your own base, and just surviving, this is a game for you. It won’t be for everyone, so give the trial a go before you buy it. It can be worth it, but no one wants to buy an expensive game and then not really play it, that’s just a waste! 

Final Verdict

I have to give the game a 6.5 out of 10. I love playing it, but it has its flaws for me.

Pros:

• Massive world to explore
• Engaging combat
• Tons of weapon styles to choose from
• Make NPC enemies into thralls
• New content being added
• Cool characters to meet and fight
• Beautiful visuals

Cons:

• Ment to be played multiplayer so it lacks a bit when playing alone
• No real story to draw you in and keep you going
• No quests to do
• A massive learning curve to the crafting system, especially with higher-quality items
• High price for what the game is

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