Conan Exiles Early Access, take two



It's been a while since I last took a glance on Funcom's Early Access Conan Exiles, so now that it has had some time to brew and has just had a major update rolled out that added more diverse land areas to the mix, I thought it might be a good time to do so. Not that I'm the best person to comment on the real meat and butter of the game, multiplayer elements, as I play it delicately wrong as a single-player game.

Conan Exiles is, just as it has always been, a survival game. You start the game naked, thrown into exile and forced to stay where you are and try to survive as best as you can. Again, you start your journey crucified, baking in the hot desert sun when you are suddenly released by a stranger. He gives you a fighting chance, despite you still having a bracelet that denies you leave the exile on your wrist.
From here, the fight for survival begins. And perhaps it even has an end.

As survival is the name of the game, you need to act accordingly. Crafting is a major aspect of the game, so the first thing to do is to gather materials to make clothing and weapons, so you're not utterly defenceless against nature or the monsters. Climate damage is on a new addition, as besides hunger and thirst, you can now die of heat stroke or freeze to death. This means, that depending on where you are heading you need to dress up accordingly. Among other new items, there's now a possibility to make fur clothes for those dark and cold snowy nights.



Moving around has also gained some improvements, as now you can also climb walls and cliffs in order to travel to places you weren't able to previously. If you have enough stamina, you can for example climb up the huge stone spires to admire the landscape from there. For combat, there's some new weapons and animations as well as new dodging manoeuvres to use.

As far game content goes, there's been a lot of additions to items and crafting before this new content update, but this one is definitely a huge update, thanks to new locations and a new survival mechanism. Funcom has also stated, that there should be server improvements, but as I don't really do multiplayer on this, I wouldn't know.

At this moment, Conan Exiles still doesn't have any meaningful storyline going for it, so if you're looking to play it with a story in mind, it is, at least for now, a bad choice for that. Survival is what it's all about, but you never know.

To finish this up, all I have to add is, that Funcom seems to be dedicated to chugging along with Conan Exiles. But it still is an Early Access title, so if you're going to get it, be prepared that this isn't going to be finished for a long while. But then again, unlike on some other Early Access titles, Funcom seems to update CE relatively often, so it does, at least for now, seem like a safe bet.

Conan Exiles can be bought from Steam.





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