So, you’ve just got your hands on a Steam Early Access key for Funcom’s Open World Survival game Conan Exiles, and you’re looking for some hints and tips, a guide if you will, to help you through the first dangerous, and rather ill-equipped first hour? Well, look no further.
Here are five simple things to think about when you first get helped off that cross and left to fend for yourself in the harsh barbaric deserts.
1. Get Armed Fast
First thing you need to think about is getting some weapons. Sure you can swing your fists around, but weapons are so much better for defending yourself, especially as everyone apparently wants to try to kill you.
At first you’ll only have access to a stone pick made from 5 branches and 5 rocks, but gain experience and you’ll soon be able to unlock more and more recipes. At level 3 you’ll have the option of unlocking the mercenary recipes. Do this as soon as you can. Once you make the stone sword and shield, you stop being such a pushover and dying becomes much less likely.
2. Enemies are Everywhere
It won’t take long, or many deaths before you understand the basic predator prey relationship of the nearby beasts and inhabitants. If a pink weird troll thing runs at you, you can punch it to death relatively quickly. If a crocodile does the same thing, you’re probably best off running.
Ultimately, this is why weapons are so important. Although, you can defend yourself with a stone axe or stone pickaxe, they are not as effective as a stone sword. Mind you, sometimes you don’t have a choice. Learn what you can take out and what you can’t and never be afraid of running.
3. Water is Dangerous
Just like in nature, thirst is a far bigger killer than any beast or murderous killer. However, just like in nature those beasts and murderous killers tend to hang around large expanses of water waiting for the unwary to get near and then they will kill you.
Even though you start Conan Exiles in the sandy desert, once you follow the path it won’t be long before you start to see the green trees of an oasis, with a cool, thirst-quenching river nearby. You won’t be able to survive without water until you get proper weapons, so be careful. Scope out the area, and be quick. Don’t loiter too much, until you can defend yourself.
4. You Will Die A lot
This rule is almost the caveat to rules 1-3. No matter what you do, you will die a lot. You’ll get taken out by crocodiles, scavengers and weird bullish rock things. You are going to spend a great amount of time staring at your own blood-puddled corpse.
When you die, your entire inventory remains on your corpse. You can do the naked-run back to your body to collect your stuff (minus a few things that are either stolen or broken). However, chances are whatever killed you is still roaming fairly close to your body) meaning you have to risk getting close just to grab your gear.
I’d advise in the early stages, that unless there’s something on your body that’s rare or took you ages to build, just start again. It doesn’t take long to scavenge fibres, branches and rocks.
It’s also worth noting that, you do not lose any skill points or recipes when you die.
5 Make a Bed and Lie in it
Making a bedroll is the equivalent of a location saver in Conan Exiles. Normally, when you die you are resurrected at given points which may be nowhere near where you were when you died. This was the reason why I didn’t bother with many of my corpse runs; I had no idea where I died. If you make a bedroll and place it on the ground, when you die you will be resurrected there. Sure you’ll still be butt-naked, with an empty inventory but you’ll know where you are.
”¦and Finally, Nudity!!!
Ok, this one isn’t so much as a way to survive but it’s certainly worth mentioning. When you create your character you have the option to have no nudity, partial or full. This is all depending on your tastes, and of course age. Whatever is chosen server-side is available during character creation.
Now, when I first created my male character, I rather naïvely thought “I’m 36, I can deal with nudity, and I am nothing if not a man of the world. We’re probably only taking about boobs anyway.”
So, I flipped the switch from ‘no nudity’ to ‘full’ and hello, there it was hanging down between his legs. It was a shock, but the juvenile in me giggled like a school boy. You can even extend the length of his John Thomas to suit your liking. Female characters are of course equally naked, and you can adjust the size of their boobs from small to average to spine-cripplingly huge, again if you so wish.
Your character will always start off naked, so if you don’t like seeing people in their birthday suits, keep the switch to partial or no nudity.
So there we have my top five hints for surviving that first hour in Conan Exiles. These tips should keep you breathing long enough to start putting up foundations for your first settlement. Stay tuned to the Zombie Chimp for more Conan Exiles, news, hints and tips.
