Conan Exiles: Tips for survival in the first hours

In this beginner's guide to Conan Exiles you will learn:

  • Why you should avoid fights in the beginning.
  • How you can quickly find food in the beginning.
  • Which character stats you should improve first.

Conan Exiles is a tough survival game that can quickly cause frustration, especially at the beginning. Similar to Ark: Survival Evolved, you start with nothing and have to collect and build clothes, weapons, food and shelter.

Every living creature in the game world is a danger that will end your adventure faster than you can spell the word Conan.

Conan Exiles was released on May 08, 2018 for the PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4, after being in the Ealry Access phase for a long time on the PC. So, based on the final release, here are some tips on what you should do in the first few hours of Conan Exiles so you don 't have to keep starting from scratch.

Table of contents

Tip 1: Collect everything!

You start your fight for survival as an outcast in Conan Exiles with nothing on your body. You have no clothes, no equipment, no food. Therefore, you should take everything you find in your surroundings right at the beginning. So loot bushes for plant seeds, plant fibers and insects. Bag all the stones you spot and take all the branches lying around.

At your starting point, make sure that you take the drinking tube that is lying on a rock. This supplies your battered hero directly with a little water, so that you don't die of thirst after a few meters.

If you have collected these basic materials long enough, you can quickly start making useful items. Simple clothing, for example, a stone sword, an axe for cutting down trees or a pickaxe for chopping rocks. This will help you get materials even faster in Conan Exiles.

Right at the starting point you can collect a drinking tube. You should not miss this one!

Tip 2: Avoid every living creature in Conan Exiles

Since you will be released into the game world of Conan Exiles unarmed and without clothing or armor, you should avoid every living creature you meet at the beginning.

At first glance, you can't tell which inhabitants of the game world are peaceful and which aren't - but most of them will attack you if you get too close.

In the starting area you'll mainly encounter:

  • Humans
  • Crocodiles
  • Hares
  • Tortoises
  • Tortoises

Except for the hares and the turtle boys, everything will knock you off your feet if you get too close. So don't be fooled by a few fellows camping around a campfire. They are not out for a nice chat, but directly pull out their weapons.

The turtles in Conan Exiles are also tough and will beat up your hero with just a few blows.

Additional tip: If you get too close to a danger, the background music changes. From then on you have to take your legs in your hands and run away. As soon as the music returns to normal, you have managed to escape.

First, assume that every human and animal is hostile to you.

Tip 3: Find food

Your hero will get hungry and thirsty over time. For example, your throat will dry out faster if you run around a lot. Indicators at the top left of the screen will tell you what your basic needs are.

You can find food quite easily by simply harvesting every bush you see in Conan Exiles. This brings plant fibers and seeds, but also insects. These satisfy your hunger only minimally, but they are better than nothing.

Water is not hard to find either. As described above, take the drinking tube with you and fill it up later in the lake. To do this, simply put it in the quick selection button, go into the cool water and crouch down. Then your protégé will fill up the hose and you will have nine chances to take a sip from it from now on.

Another food source at the beginning are turtle eggs. To find them, just look for turtles and turtle hatchlings, because somewhere around them you'll usually find a nest. There you can collect the eggs in Conan Exiles, which satisfy both hunger and thirst and are much more effective than insects.

However, be careful not to attract the attention of the turtles. They are a guarantee of your hero's death in the beginning.

Food and water are very important in Conan Exiles. Turtle eggs are a handy resource here, as they combine both.

Tip 4: Build yourself a shelter and a crate

Once you have acclimated to Conan Exiles to some extent and your hero has basic tools and clothes on him, you should take care of a shelter.

Learn how to build stone foundations and walls. Then look for a good place that has as many resources as possible nearby, but at the same time is located at a safe distance from dangerous "roommates".

You can mine the necessary stones, wood and so on in the world. It is important that you produce both the stone axe and the stone pick, because this is the only way to chop boulders and cut down trees.

As soon as you have the resources, you should build the foundations and then walls, an archway and a door. This will give you a safe dwelling in Conan Exiles for the time being.

You should also equip this with the following items:

  • Bedstead: This is especially important because once you put the sleeping bag in your cottage, you'll spawn there again if you ever die. However, you will have to build a new one afterwards.
  • Crate: Also hugely important. You are constantly collecting resources, especially at the beginning of Conan Exiles. Wood, stones & Co. are quite heavy in the long run, so that your character is quickly overloaded. A crate, or crates, help you to safely stow away items you don't need.

Crates are helpful. You can store items you don't need so that your character isn't overloaded - this will prevent you from running away.

Tip 5: Important character values and talents

If you've followed the previous Conan Exiles tips, you've probably already spent a few hours in the game and have laid a solid foundation for your character's survival.

Therefore, we now advise that you should first focus on the talent of the Stonecutter 's Apprentice, so that you can build a stable refuge. Later on, you should pay special attention to the survival area, because here you'll find some practical talents that will make it easier for you. Starting from level 10, you'll also find some practical skills that will allow you to process animal skins, for example.

The attributes in Conan Exiles at a glance.

The inventory from Conan Exiles.

The only question left is which attributes you should increase at the beginning. We would recommend the following character values in Conan Exiles:

  • Stamina: If you invest points here, it will increase the stamina of your protégé. This helps enormously, since at the beginning of Conan Exiles you're usually more likely to run away than attack yourself.
  • Load: This value determines how much your hero can carry. Since you'll be busy harvesting stones, wood, etc. and hauling them to your dwelling in the beginning, a high load value is practical.
  • Vitality: The vitality value determines the maximum health of your character in Conan Exiles. Investing points here again and again isn't a bad idea in the long run.

Apart from these three focus attributes, it is also advisable to spend a few points on this every now and then:

  • Strength: You can use strength to influence how much damage you deal out in close combat. Since at some point a fight can no longer be avoided, you should be able to hit to some extent.
  • Survival: The Survival value controls how good your hero is at enduring inhospitable environments. This affects how well he can metabolize food. Thus, it's helpful to upgrade a bit here so you don't have to constantly stuff food into your Conan Exiles character.

Tip 6: Choose the right server

Since Conan Exiles is an online game, you should pay attention to which server you start on. There are three different types here, which make different ways of playing possible:

  • PvP servers: On such servers, you not only get to deal with the monsters in the game world, but also with other players in the worst case. This can be fun, but if you want to experience the survival aspect and concentrate on building, crafting and so on, it can quickly become frustrating. Fighting between players is possible here at any time, only buildings and bases of others may only be attacked at certain times.
  • PvE servers: On such servers, only computer-controlled characters and monsters can attack you, and you can also only attack the AI opponents. Thus, nothing stands in the way of peaceful coexistence with other human players.
  • PvE Conflict Server: This type of server is only available for PC players. This is a mixture of the previous two. Only within a certain time window per day players can attack each other here like in PvP mode, the rest of the time this server works like the PvE variant. Bases and buildings cannot be damaged.

For absolute newcomers in the field of survival and online games, it is therefore recommended to start on a PvE server first. Conan Exiles is certainly challenging enough here.

After a little practice, however, there is nothing to be said against the other two server variants, but keep in mind: You can create one character per server, i.e. you start from the beginning when you switch.

Tip 7: Choice of religion

When you create your character at the start of Conan Exiles, you should also choose a religion. This decision brings certain bonuses in the course of the game, but they are only minimal and especially helpful at the beginning of the game.

It's best to choose Mitra at first, as this will give you the ability to heal yourself. As Conan Exiles progresses, however, you can worship any god to use their bonuses as well.

Tip 8: Be creative with your tools

As in all survival games, you have to collect resources in Conan Exiles in order to craft tools. With the tools, on the other hand, you can collect resources even more easily. But be creative here and test every tool at every resource source to see what happens.

If you need wood, for example, you cut down a tree with a hatchet. That is understandable. But if you plow the same tree with a pickaxe, then bark quickly moves into your inventory. So such effects can be exploited well.

Tip 9: Look at your Journey

Conan Exiles always gives you certain tasks that you should fulfill. This journey gives you a bit of orientation when you don't know what to do next. You'll also earn a lot of experience points by completing the tasks.

Be careful, though: at the beginning, these challenges are relatively easy to complete, but they quickly become more dangerous.

Tip 10: Do not play alone

As you have probably already read from the previous tips: Conan Exiles is not an easy game, especially at the beginning.

That's why it's advisable to join a group in the fight for survival right from the start, because then both the battles and the gathering of resources will be easier.

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