Conan Exiles

Conan Exiles is a survival game in which the map does most of the work against you. The Exiled Lands are huge, the camps that hold the NPCs you want are scattered across them, and fast travel sits behind a recipe you have to go and find. The Isle of Siptah expansion then hands you a second island with its own building sites and its own dungeons. Our Conan Exiles pages cover that loop from the moment you are cut loose in the desert to the afternoons you spend lobbing explosives at fallen meteorites: the first hour, the thralls, the camps worth raiding, the obelisks, the eleven materials everything is built from, armor and legendary weapons, the dungeons on both maps, and the sorcery that costs you health to learn. This page puts them in the order you will need them.

The first hour, and the two questions before it

Character creation asks you for a race and a god, and only one of those is a real decision. Race changes your build size, hair and skin and nothing else, so pick what you want to look at. The god changes which recipes and ritual tools you can reach, and there are eight of them now where the game once shipped with four. Our race and religion guide sets out what each one gives and how to convert later, because you can: Jamila the Pirate Queen, Mek-Kamoses and Nunu the Cannibal will each take you into their own faith, while Jhebbal Sag can be reached only through his Child.

After that the game is a route rather than a sandbox, at least for a while. Take the water pouch off the rock beside you, walk north gathering stone and branches, turn west at the river and hunt things that do not fight back. Our leveling guide follows that route to the gazelle oasis at G9, the workshop at E7 and the base sites at F7, and makes the one argument that changes how the whole game feels: experience comes from crafting far more than from killing, and past the mid thirties it comes almost entirely from making explosives.

Start with a workforce: capturing thralls

Thralls are the NPCs you knock out, drag home and break until they work for you, either at a crafting station or as guards on your walls. None of it opens up before level 10, when three skill points go on Thrall Taker for the Truncheon, Fiber Bindings and the Lesser Wheel of Pain. Almost any NPC can be taken this way; the named story characters are the exception.

The capture is a matter of restraint. The truncheon knocks a target out rather than killing it, but wild swings finish a job you did not want done, so watch the white marker above the health bar for the moment the NPC drops. Bind them, drag them to the wheel, and feed the wheel as you would fuel any station: any meat works, human flesh included, and so does gruel made from fiber or seeds. An empty wheel breaks nobody. A finished thrall goes into your inventory like an item and is placed wherever you want it.

Which thralls to take depends on the station you mean to fill. Priests of Mitra, Set and Yog summon avatars from their shrines and are recognisable on sight, in blue clothes, an Egyptian-style mask and carrying a jawbone sword respectively. Fighters and archers defend the base, up close and from the walls behind them. Smiths, armorers and carpenters work their benches and alchemists their cauldron, entertainers clear corruption and speed up healing, bearers carry loot and taskmasters run the wheel. Every type comes in tiers I to III plus a named tier IV: a tier I thrall crafts roughly 10 percent faster, a tier II also cuts material costs by about a quarter, and a named thrall halves the cost and adds about half again to the speed. Faction matters too: the Dogs of the Desert keep to the northern mountains, the Darfari Cannibals to the far side of the river, the Black Hand pirates to a landlocked ship, and the Relic Hunters to a city so well guarded that only high-level, well-equipped players should try. Our thrall capturing guide has the full list and the placement advice. The tier four crafters are worth a hunt of their own, and our named thralls page covers where they stand, Sepermeru's five districts chief among them. On the Isle of Siptah none of this applies, because thralls there are summoned by surges at a cost of fifty decaying eldarium, which our Isle of Siptah thralls page sets out.

Know where to hunt: camps and NPCs

A thrall run is only as good as the camp you pick, and our camps and NPC locations page marks 85 named settlements across nine factions, from 22 Black Hand camps to the two held by the Forgotten Clan. Its colour key is the quick read: green starter camps along the southern edge are easy to farm, red camps are the common thrall camps, purple marks the major settlements where care is needed, and Yog's settlement, the city of Set and the pirate ship each carry a label of their own. Named thralls are never guaranteed, but the bigger settlements hold more spawn slots, so that is where the odds, and the danger, are highest.

The same map places sixteen story NPCs. Three of them teach a religion, Set through Mek-kamoses, Mitra through Jamila the Pirate Queen and Yog through Nunu the Cannibal. The Child of Jhebbal Sag may offer quests, Arcos the Wanderer walks the southern shore, and the Archivist teaches the recipe the next section is about. Twelve cave and NPC codes round it off, covering a Giant Spider's lair, a giant crocodile's den, Hanuman's cave and its imps, and the route down to the Undead Dragon. All three location pages are gathered, with what each kind of place gives you, in the locations guide.

Stop walking: the ten obelisks

The Exiled Lands have ten obelisks, and together they are the game's fast travel. They stay useless until you have visited the Archivist in the Unnamed City for the Map Room recipe; from then on each one is wrapped in a purple cloud that makes it easy to spot, and every one you reach becomes a destination. Our obelisk locations page runs them as a single loop: the Archives, Shattered Springs, the entrance to The Dregs, the Sinkhole, the City of Xel-ha, Dagon's Eye, the Ruins of Xullan, the volcano, the Temple of Frost and the Mounds of the Dead. Only the volcano has a catch, since it turns you away until your level is high enough.

Everything you build is a chain

No material in this game is interesting on its own, which is why our resources guide arranges all eleven of them by what they are a step toward rather than by where they sit on the map. Two rules run underneath the lot. The first is that your tool picks the material for you: a hatchet takes wood off a tree where a pick takes bark, and a skinning knife takes hide off a body where a pick takes bone. The second is that tool tier behaves inconsistently: it pays on ore, it is worth nothing on bark, and on star metal it stops being an efficiency and becomes a hard gate.

One ladder carries most of the game. Ironstone smelts two to one into iron bars. Brimstone and tar cook into steelfire, which turns five of those bars into steel, and that is where most characters stall, because steelfire has to be cooked on a cauldron and nothing in the world tells you so. Steel plus black ice gives hardened steel, and a pick of that tier is the first that will pull star metal out of a meteorite. Armor runs a parallel line through the tannery, where thick leather, oil and alchemical base become hardened leather.

Gear: what you make, and what you take

Armor is doing three jobs at once. It stops damage, it decides whether you can stand in the snow or walk into a volcano, and by the level cap it is where most of your attribute bonuses come from. The weight class is really a question about the dodge roll, and the quality tiers are unlocked in different ways: epic armor behind a level 60 knowledge and a hardened leather habit, flawless behind a named armorer standing at an improved bench. Our armor guide covers the classes, the tiers and the sets worth the outlay.

Weapons at the top of the game mostly cannot be forged at all. Legendaries come out of guarded chests, which want level 60 and a skeleton key off a boss, and off a long list of elite NPCs who carry them directly. Our legendary weapons page has the roster by class and two things worth knowing before you start: Lovetap deals one point of damage on purpose, because it is a concussion weapon that knocks NPCs out without killing them, and a duplicate legendary dismantles into ten to twelve star metal bars, which can beat mining for them.

Settle the Isle of Siptah

The Isle of Siptah expansion brings a new island, new creatures and new building sets, and its resources are spread evenly enough that where you build is a question of terrain rather than supply. Our Isle of Siptah base locations page splits its six picks by how you play. For PvE it likes The Valley, which lies between the Giant King City and the mountains on the west side of the map, with coal, iron and a Tanner and Taskmaster nearby; The Cliffside in the south, where a rock bridge to the mainland doubles as a road to The Crag's vendors and to Black Ice; and the Redwood Forest, where a ruined archway makes a ready foundation and iron, coal and brimstone sit alongside a Priest and an Alchemist.

PvP flips the priority to safety, which on Siptah means caves and height. A crevice at The Crag has two entrances and nothing more, so it stays hidden while the vendors stay close. North Island sits far enough out in the water that most players never make the trip, and an underwater cavern beneath it hides your loot. The broken bridge is the boldest choice: a shattered span high above the ground that keeps attackers off your chests and off you, without giving up the resources around the Crag.

Dungeons, on both maps

Once the base stands and the gear is good, Siptah's fourteen sigil dungeons are the next step, and our sigil dungeons walkthrough covers every one, from the Den of the Wolfmen to the Harbor of the Drowned. They are built to punish and to pay out: the enemies are dangerous, and the chest behind the final boss is the reason to go. Most share a rhythm. Pressure plates open the way forward, a boss holds the last plate, and the treasure room sits behind the boss's door.

The variations are what the walkthrough is for. The Den of the Wolf-Brothers hides its levers behind rotating contraptions and a pool of blood, and the Refuge of the Gremlins runs on levers alone. The Refuge of the Goblinoids asks you to platform above a fungus-filled cavern where a fall is not recommended. Two harbours go underwater: the Harbor of the Twice Drowned has you dive for levers and turn a ship's helm, and the Harbor of the Drowned sends you down a hatch for three missing pieces that go back on their pedestals before the boss door opens. The Volary of the Harpy has you drop from a bridge by way of the trees, and the Volary of Jhil has you climb cages to its boss. Read the entry for the dungeon in front of you before you step on its first plate.

The Exiled Lands have their own, and it is the one most players meet first. The Dregs sits at the end of a river in D4 beside Skulker's End, and getting in is neither a key nor a level requirement: a round stone sits in the floor by the doorway, and somebody has to die on top of it. Lure one of the humans out of the camp nearby and do it there. Inside, the way forward is a water puzzle rather than a fight, since shooting the round targets on the walls raises the water and floats you up to the platforms, so a melee character with nothing ranged will simply stop. The Abysmal Remnant at the bottom is a slug that lunges and then pauses, and the pause is your window.

Sorcery, and what it costs

Magic is the one system here that no knowledge point will buy. You loot a dead sorcerer for his map, follow it to Shaleback Hollow or the Cave of Kurak, and put your hand on the tome at the altar, which hands you a staff and the Tome of Kurak on the spot. From there the thaumaturgy bench is where spells are installed rather than learned, and the tome takes fifteen separate upgrades before you have all of it.

The price is corruption, which permanently lowers your maximum health and stamina, so the system makes you weaker as you advance. A dancer placed at home is the practical answer, since entertainers clear corruption and restore your health. Our sorcery guide covers all of it, including the best reason to bother: Mass Cull harvests a whole area at once, and a dense pocket of crystal will give up more to one cast than to an afternoon with a pick.

Reading order for a new exile

1. Race and religion: spend no time on the race and some on the god, because only one of the two changes anything.
2. Leveling: the water pouch, the walk north, and the point at which crafting starts outpaying combat.
3. Thrall capturing: reach level 10, take Thrall Taker, and learn how the wheel works before you go hunting.
4. Camps and NPC locations: pick a green camp first, then work up to the red and purple ones as your gear improves.
5. Obelisk locations: find the Archivist, learn the Map Room, and collect all ten so the map shrinks.
6. Horse locations: take Stablemaster at 15 first, then go and pick a foal up out of the grass.
7. Resources: learn the ladder from ironstone to star metal once, and stop guessing what to farm.
8. Armor: choose a weight class deliberately, then let the leather chain decide how fast you climb.
9. Named thralls: sweep Sepermeru properly rather than raiding a corner of it.
10. The Dregs: bring something ranged, or the water puzzle will stop you halfway.
11. Isle of Siptah base locations: decide PvE or PvP before you place a foundation on the island.
12. Sigil dungeons walkthrough: one dungeon at a time, once your Siptah gear can take it.
13. Legendary weapons and sorcery: both are endgame, and both are taken rather than bought.

Two guides sit above the rest as summaries. The locations guide is the map side, with camps, obelisks, foal spawns and Siptah base sites in one table sorted by what each place pays you when you arrive. The resources guide is the workbench side, with all eleven materials sorted by what they are a step toward. Between them they answer most of what a new exile is about to ask, and each section above links the page that carries the detail.