Dev blog #10: Dominate the Exiled Lands

Conflict, war and strife are a daily reality of the world of Hyboria. And nowhere in the world is this as true as in the Exiled Lands – filled as it is with outcasts who fight and scramble for their very survival.

In Conan Exiles, you have been condemned to the Exiled Lands and must now battle to survive. There is one sure way to secure your survival and that is to dominate!

Conquer the land

If you fight hard, progress and survive you can conquer the land around you. Others cannot build where you have already made your mark by setting up your camp. If they wish to possess the same area, they either have to drive you away by destroying your buildings or you can decide to work together and form a clan.

The wider you build your base the more land you claim. But this also leaves you vulnerable to attack. Bringing down buildings is not easy though, as players need weapons which are at least one tier higher than the building piece they are attacking. For example, attackers need iron weapons, which are tier two, to do damage to a sandstone wall, which is tier one.

With strategically placed walls and castles you can control vital chokepoints in the terrain. Building near important strategic resources like iron or brimstone is very important, as you need such rarer resources to make powerful weapons and armor.

To secure your buildings and make them more defensible you should try and build them out of tier two or tier three building pieces. These require a lot of resources so it will be a big advantage to build them together with other players in a clan. Anyone can form a clan and invite any other player not currently in another clan can join.

But even if you have formed quite a big clan with many other players, there will still be times when your base is left undefended. This is where captured thralls can act as crucial guards. Attack NPC factions, such as the Darfari cannibals, the Black Hand pirates or the Stygian relic hunters, to knock their archers and warriors unconscious and drag them back to your wheel of pain where you can break their will and turn them into thralls.

Place archer thralls high on your walls so they can rain down arrows on attacking enemies, and place warrior thralls inside your settlement, where they can charge any attacker which has breached your outer defenses.

Crush and defeat

When your base is secured by towering walls and teeming with thralls the time has come to seek out and crush your opponents.

Before going out on raids it is always a good tactic to make sure you bring a wide array of weapons. You never want to be charging enemy archers without your trusty shield, and any weapon can break in the heat of battle, so without spares you may soon be rendered defenseless.

If your enemy is located far away, a smart strategy would be to make a small forward camp to strike from. Here your clan can store weapons and ammo and make crucial beds for respawn points.

But if the enemy walls are tier three, then not even steel weapons can bring them down. For such formidable fortifications only explosive jars or the power of avatars will do. Explosives are powerful tools, but expensive and time consuming to make. They must also be placed right next to enemy structures to be effective, and that can be a very dangerous place to be with arrows raining down on you.

The ultimate tool for crushing your enemies comes through religion. By building an altar to your god, gradually gaining his favor, upgrading the altar to the highest tier and capturing a high priest thrall you will eventually be able to summon your god’s massive avatar.

All your effort is consumed once you summon the avatar, and you can only control it for a short time, so be sure to have your plan of attack ready. The summoner controls the avatar, and like a weapon of mass destruction the avatar will crush everything in its path.

If you find yourself under attack by an avatar, all hope is not lost. The player summoning the avatar is vulnerable during the ritual and while controlling the avatar. A tall pillar of light marks his spot, and if the summoner is killed at any time the avatar is instantly banished. A keen eye and a few well placed arrows may well save your city from utter destruction. There is also a server setting to disallow avatars, so you can choose to play on a server without them.

Crushing your enemies will not be easy in Conan Exiles. The world is full of dangerous creatures, hostile factions and aggressive players. To dominate you will need skill, you will need a strategy, you will need perseverance and you will need to be merciless.