Conan Exiles Overview: Survival, Sieges, and Sorcery in the Exiled Lands

The 1982 Conan the Barbarian film has its fans, but plenty of those fans never realized that a full multiplayer adaptation exists and holds up surprisingly well. Conan Exiles by Funcom carries the same gritty universe into a 39.99 USD open world sandbox where survival, siege warfare, and sorcery share the same map.

The Premise

You start as a lone exile dropped into the harsh frontier of the Exiled Lands. Whether playing solo or rolling with a clan, the goal is the same: stay alive, claim territory, and carve out a legacy. The world is filled with brutal weather, mythic monsters, hidden ruins, and rival factions who would gladly raid your base if given the chance.

Nothing about the story is scripted past your spawn point. The direction your barbarian takes is yours alone to figure out.

Core Features

Surviving an Unforgiving World

Open world survival sits at the center of the experience. Hunger, thirst, body temperature, and stamina all matter, and ignoring any of them tends to end poorly. From those rough first hours, the loop opens up: tougher enemies, ancient bosses, dark rituals that trade lifeforce for arcane power, and ruins packed with story fragments tied to the original Conan mythos.

Gathering, Crafting, and Building

Resources are scattered across the map, and turning them into something useful is half the gameplay. Stone becomes walls, hides become armor, ore becomes weapons, and eventually a humble camp turns into a fortified stronghold. Captured thralls handle production and defense, which is convenient because you will need every set of hands when the neighbors get curious.

PVP servers add a wrinkle. That kingdom you spent the weekend building is also a target.

Combat and Siege Warfare

Fighting in Conan Exiles uses a combo-driven melee system with dodging, blocking, and weapon variety that rewards practice over button mashing. Skirmishes between two players feel very different from full clan sieges, where bases get torn apart by trebuchets and explosive jars. The game also lets divine avatars stomp into the fight, which is exactly as ridiculous and satisfying as it sounds.

Lore Throughout the Map

Long-time Conan fans get the heaviest payoff here. References to the 1982 film) and the wider Robert E. Howard canon show up in NPCs, locations, and item descriptions. Newcomers get a self-contained world that explains itself; veterans get a steady drip of recognition.

Mods and Community Content

Steam Workshop integration is built in. Hundreds of mods cover everything from quality-of-life tweaks to complete overhauls, and most can be dropped onto a dedicated server with minimal fuss.

Is the DLC Required?

Funcom sells optional DLC packs, but most are cosmetic, focused on armor sets, building styles, and emotes. None gate the base experience. The one notable exception is Isle of Siptah, a paid expansion that adds an entirely new island with its own systems and progression. Worth picking up only once the base map starts to feel small.

Final Thoughts

Conan Exiles delivers a serious survival sandbox layered with decades of pulp fantasy lore. PVE players get a rich world to explore at their own pace, PVP players get one of the more aggressive base-raid loops in the genre, and everyone gets to play a barbarian in a setting that never pretends to be tasteful. Like most survival games, it shines brightest with a couple of friends along for the ride.