Hey everyone!

We're doing our final Early Access dev stream on Friday at 5pm CEST / 11am EDT / 8am PDT on our Twitch and Mixer channels.

Joel and Jens Erik will be recapping the past 15 months of Early Access and talking about everything that's been added or changed about the game. They'll also be streaming the PS4 version of Conan Exiles and giving away both regular and collector's editions of the game!

Join us on Friday for our final Early Access livestream!

We have a new version out on the Testlive branch. Please update your build to make sure you have it on the right version! Version: #95136/17701

• Fix for thralls falling through building floors. Please report asap if you can reproduce this now
  
• With the latest Testlive versions we cannot reproduce the problem with disappearing buildings when the decay system is off. We are, however, adding further logging capabilities to detect if this happens. The logging will be active on Testlive servers and we will provide instructions for how private server admins can also turn this on. Please report asap if you can reproduce this now
  
• Fixed a server crash related to display racks.
  
• Fixed a problem with not being able to use unarmed attacks or kicks, along with unarmed fist items showing up in inventories.
  
• Max elevation at which you can place buildings is now 600 meters across the map. This fixes some building exploits in the volcano area (and should not impact players unless they are reenacting “Jack and the beanstalk” story)
  
• Fixed some water and sand rendering artifacts
  
• Added support for force-checking .pak files after a major game update
  
• Player thralls now follow same rules as buildings for taking damage from players. Both PvE and PvE-Conflict servers will have invincible thralls.

If you're unsure how to log into TestLive,you can see the instructions here.

Update: We've added more information about the different server types!

Good evening my beautiful snow angels!

At the time of writing this it is officially only 6 more sleeps left until the full release of Conan Exiles! We've been working hard to make the game the best it can be and we can't wait for everyone to see what Conan Exiles is like once we leave Early Access. It's been one hell of a ride and we want to say thank you to everyone for sticking with us throughout this adventure.

Since we're so close to launch this newsletter will be shorter than the others, but will also hopefully give you a quick overview of what's going to happen on launch day and shortly after launch!

At launch we'll be rolling out a Day 1 patch to add more bug and crash fixes, content updates and optimizations to client and server performance. And, of course, opening the Swamp and the Volcano up to players. The version of the game you're currently playing on either Early Access and Game Preview is not the final version of the game! There's more coming.

We launch the game at 13:00 CEST (1pm) / 7am EDT / 4am PDT on May 8th. We'll take down our official servers at 18:00 CEST (6pm) / 12pm EDT / 9am PDT on May 7th to wipe their databases, patch them to the live build, and restructure them as needed. We are wiping the databases to let everyone start off on an equal footing and to clear out any old data that might be causing compatibility issues.

There will be 225 official servers at launch, spread across multiple regions. We've been working a lot on infrastructure and scale-ability since Early Access launch and we have back-up servers that we can roll out if need be. Three types of servers will be available to players, with the following rule sets:

• PvP: On these servers, player vs player combat is possible all times, but building damage will be limited to prime time (5pm - 11pm local server time). Players can fight each other as much as they want, but raiding and damaging buildings will be limited.
  
• PvE: Only creatures and NPCs can harm players on PvE servers. Thralls will not attack players and players cannot attack and kill thralls.
  
• PvE Conflict: On a PvE Conflict server you can only damage other players during prime time (5pm – 11pm local server time). Building damage is turned off at all times. These servers will at first only be available on PC. We may roll them out later for PS4 and Xbox One post-launch, depending on their popularity.

PvE servers will have 1x harvesting, xp gain and crafting times. PvP Servers will have 2x harvesting. The Purge will be active on all server types, but only between 6pm and 10pm (local server time).

We won't touch private servers, but if you are a private server admin we do recommend wiping the databases just to be safe. Of course, we understand that it's not ideal for players to lose their progress, but since we've revamped where NPCs spawn, where resources can be found, and changed parts of the landscape, it makes sense to start everyone off with the same possibilities at full launch.

Finally, we're updating and expanding the technical manual and improved the F.A.Q. on our forums.

We've been cranking out Testlive updates at an almost daily rate in order to get some additional testing on crash fixes, Purge settings, weapon damage numbers and player corpse bugs, to name a few. These might get rolled over to the live PC version before launch or folded into build we roll out at launch.

The Testlive branch and servers will still be around after launch. We'll be using Testlive to test upcoming patches and updates, as we've done during Early Access.

As always, huge thanks to all the players for helping us out with additional testing, bug reports, feedback and suggestions. We appreciate everything you've done for us, and with us, and we truly couldn't have gotten this far without your help. You're all awesome people!

Joel and Jens Erik are doing their final Early Access dev stream on Friday. They'll be summing up the past 15 months of Early Access and talking about everything that's been added or changed about the game. We'll also be streaming the PS4 version of Conan Exiles and giving away both regular and collector's editions of the game!

Join us on https://www.twitch.tv/funcom or https://mixer.com/funcom at 5pm CEST / 11am ET / 8am PT for our final Early Access dev stream.

On May 8th all of Funcom's community managers will be getting together for a special launch stream, along with anyone else from the dev team who wants to join in! We'll be announcing the details of this stream a little closer to launch.

As we're in the absolute final stretch we're going to start doing some more giveaways over on our Facebook and Twitter pages! Keep your eyes peeled, because you can win a Limited Collector's Edition for your platform of choice.

That's it, really! We're in the final stretch and Conan Exiles leaves Early Access on May 8th! We're going to continue supporting the game after launch with patches and updates, as previously mentioned. This is our baby, after all.

In Conan Exiles, we're giving players the opportunity to experience the world of Conan the Barbarian and learn to survive, build and dominate their way to victory. But what would happen if Conan himself, during the prime of his youth, was transported to our world?

We took that concept and ran with it, placing Conan into three real-world scenarios. Under our watchful eye he battles an intelligent vacuum cleaner, tries to assemble furniture, and has a close encounter with a demon bird.

How will your journey through Conan's world be like? Find out on May 8th, when Conan Exiles releases on PC, PS4 and Xbox One.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QfxChtnyOI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hn2jTpJwDg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irBw9bukAVk

Make sure to update your game! Version: 95029/17679

• Fixed balance issues related to stacking of reaper and scorpion poison
  
• Fixed a crash related to modified damage from players and NPCs
  
• Placeables should take same amount of damage as building pieces from players and NPCs
  
• PurgeNPCBuildingDamageMultiplier server setting now uses per purge difficulty rather than server max purge value to calculate damage modifers. Previously a difficulty 1 purge could use the damage modifier for a purge difficulty 5 (20x instead of 5x) if max purge level was set to 5 on the server. Lower difficulty purges now deal less damage to buildings.
  
• The server setting PurgeNPCBuildingDamageMultiplier can now be modified by server admins
  
• New default values for “PurgeNPCBuildingDamageMultiplier = (5.0, 5.0, 10.0, 15.0, 20.0, 25.0)” where the 1st number and 6th number correspond to a difficulty 1 and 6 purge, respectively
  
• Fixed a problem with DB backups resulting in too few backups being stored.

Please remember, when reporting bugs here, to make sure you’re on the Testlive branch in Steam. Go to your Steam Library, right click on Conan Exiles > Properties > Betas > Select Testlive in the drop down menu.

Recently we introduced new vertical and diagonal support building pieces to the game. We have discovered that the way they were implemented made them overpowered and made it possible to exploit using the building system. We will be reducing the amount of support these pieces provide in the next patch. This means that structures built using these pieces might lose some support and some parts might break. We are very sorry for the inconvenience, but in order to avoid exploits this is a change we have to make.

• Vertical and diagonal support building pieces should now work correctly (Previous fix was missing a data change)
  
• Fixing another issue where pillars and other socketless connection building pieces could fail to give proper stability. Please report any issues you still encounter with missing building pieces.
  
• New fix for “no owner” displayed on building and placeables. Please report any issues you still encounter with this.
  
• NPCs should now respawn after their former selves have been converted into a thrall
  
• New Funcom logo video at startup
  
• On singleplayer if you chain-crash 5 times while loading into the game then on 6th try you will be teleported to the desert
  
• Fixed a crash related to accessing the purge on game shutdown
  
• Fixed a crash in the purge system for new players who don’t do anything to register any purge events
  
• Purge NPCs now do correct amount of damage to placeables (previously too low)
  
• Players now do correct amount of damage to placeables (previously too high)
  
• Purge NPC damage modifier now based on strength of purge instead of purge max difficulty setting
  
• Exploit fix: Fixed a visual and stats issue when selecting multiple weapons at the same time
  
• Jaguars should no longer defy gravity
  
• Admin teleport while a player is in character creation should no longer block character creation from finishing
  
• Added a potential fix from Epic for “device lost” crashes
  
• Reduced the max amount of death map markers to 3, to match the amount of max corpses you can have active at the same time
  
• Fixed an issue that would make players invisible during attacks or rolls when they were on buildings
  
• Fixed a server crash related to loading of clan logs
  
• Fixed a crash related to double-cliking items in slots
  
• Fixed a crash related to removing items from slots
  
• Fixed a crash related to RCON

Not sure how to access TestLive? Click here for the instructions!

Recently we introduced new vertical and diagonal support building pieces to the game. We have discovered that the way they were implemented made them overpowered and made it possible to exploit using the building system. We will be removing the extra support these pieces provide in the next patch.This means that structures built using these pieces might lose some support and some parts might break. We are very sorry for the inconvenience, but in order to avoid exploits this is a change we have to make.

Other notes:

• Fixed another issue where pillars and other socketless connection building pieces could fail to give proper stability
  
• Fixed a crash in the purge system for new players who don’t do anything to register any purge events
  
• Reduced the max amount of death map markers to 3, to match the amount of max corpses you can have active at the same time
  
• Fixed an issue that would make players invisible during attacks or rolls when they were on buildings.

We have a new build out on the live branch (94750/17645)! This build updates both server and client and includes the server hotfix from Friday related to performance.

• Removed log spam caused by particle effects that no longer run on the server

• Additional fix for "no owner" displayed on building and placeables. Please report any issues you still encounter
  
• Fixed a crash related to decay system
  
• Fixed a bug related to entering incorrect password for joining a password protected server and getting stuck afterwards if using a gamepad

In case you missed it, today's Dev Stream featured the new Volcano biome, a look at the Purge system, the unboxing of the Collector's Edition, and the usual Joel & Jens shenanigans. Watch the recording below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjYYKx7TX0g

Disclaimer: You may notice that this patch is a little less stable than the previous one. We want to deploy it now, however, to get as much testing as possible. We do have a pretty good amount of fixes and changes with this patch though, such as thralls regenerating health.

Ceiling Tiles
With the help of the Testlive community we found out that there was a problem with certain types of ceiling pieces: Whenever you upgrade from a sandstone ceiling it will get a different collision box which will cause any placeable on top to lose its connection and be considered a floating placeable.

This is now fixed so that they have a unified collision on all tiers. With this fix going live now, anything placed on top of sandstone ceiling tier 1 tiles will have been lost. If you have lowered your placeable far enough into the ceiling, it should be fine. To add, all ceilings and wedge/triangle ceilings have this unified collision as well. We apologize for any inconvenience, but this fix ensures floating placeables will no longer be an issue.


This patch contains a sizable update to the Purge, changing around which activities grant Purge points, how fast you accumulate these points, and how dangerous the Purge is. We’ve also fixed Purge NPCs spawning beneath and inside buildings.

The purge is currently set to activate between 18:00 and 22:00 on your server’s clock.

Purge creators now do a lot more damage to buildings. As an example, a Frost Giant does 67 points of damage to a player, but will do 30x to 40x that against a building. Up against a 100k T3 structure, a single Frost Giant will need some time to destroy everything, but a 10k T1 structure will be knocked down in around 10 seconds.

The Purge now has 6 difficulty settings:

• 1,2 are used around the southern river (can be resisted with T1 buildings)
  
• 3,4 are used in the center of the map and the swamp (can be resisted with T2 buildings)
  
• 5,6 are used in highlands, frozen areas and volcano (you should have T3 buildings to resist them)

There’s also a new server commands for controlling the Purge:

• “PurgeNPCBuildingDamageMultiplier” is a Purge damage modifier per difficulty level. The default setting for this will be 5x on levels 1 and 2, 20x on levels 3 and 4, and 30x on level 5 and 6. Currently you can not override these values from ini file due to an engine limitation on arrays in ini files but we are looking into a fix.

Secondly, we’ve created a damage modifier for player weapons. This is to prevent regular weapons like swords, spears and arrows from doing too much damage against a building when wielded by players. From now on you’ll have a hard time breaking into someone’s base with a normal sword. The consequence of this is that orbs, explosive jars and trebuchets will be more important for sieging and raiding again.

• The new server setting “PlayerBuildingDamageMultiplier” modifies in % the amount of damage a player does against a building. The default setting will be 0.01%.

Purge iteration 2

• Changed which activities grant purge points
  
• Changed the rate at which you accumulate purge points from 60 minutes to 15 minutes
  
• Passive players will get a purge at least 1/week while very active players can get purged once per day
  
• The purge is now better at analyzing the player base and finding spawn areas
  
• Purge NPCs can now correctly detect and attack placeables (e.g. wooden barricades)
  
• Purges should no longer spawn inside buildings
  
• Purge NPCs now do considerably more damage to buildings and higher tier Purges can be very dangerous to sandstone T1 bases. You should be careful with rushing too fast to the North...

Friendly Tip:
Server admins should add the following to their ini files to avoid unconscious players dying from thirst or hunger after being offline for extended periods of time:
PlayerOfflineThirstMultiplier=0
PlayerOfflineHungerMultiplier=0


Optimization

• Sanitized replication ranges and AI LOD for some crafting stations and corpses
  
• Optimized stamina & health regeneration code
  
• Weather system tickrate optimizations
  
• Optimized basebpcombat blueprint
  
• Fixed logspam due to land claim
  
• Fixed game items being kept alive indefinitely (reducing memory usage)
  
• Optimized populations in certain areas

AI

• Both thralls and NPCs can now regenerate health over time
  
• Archer NPCs now switch to melee weapons if pressed into melee
  
• Thralls on PvE servers should no longer attack players from other clans on sight
  
• Thralls have realized the futility of chasing the sandstorm if their owner takes damage

Bugfixing

• Fixed cinematic intro text cut-off in several languages
  
• Fixed a potential crash in character creation
  
• Fixed a problem whereby players on private servers would not be able to equip items or attack with DropEquipmentOnDeath=False
  
• Server admins can now ban players again
  
• Fixed a bug with Steam achievements
  
• Fixed punch in air after placing last building piece, explosive jar, thrall etc
  
• Owner tag should no longer disappear from placeables
  
• Sandstone foundations sometimes failed to place in the world due to landclaim. This has now been fixed.
  
• Fixed not being able to harvest corpses with ritual tools
  
• RCON system should now work correctly
  
• Encumberance icon should no longer disappear sometimes
  
• Your character should no longer punch the air when placing down the last item in a stack
  
• Fixed missing spawnable camera in Cursed Wall cinematics
  
• Player should now be able to correctly save text on the Wall Sign
  
• Tweaked global corpse limit per player to avoid clogging up server data
  
• Fixed a problem with characters falling through ground
  
• If you fall under the map you will now be correctly teleported away to a safe location
  
• Fixed lifetime of corpses after reloading
  
• Attacking while holding block key now correctly breaks block
  
• Fixed a server crash related to summoning players
  
• Fixed a crash related to deleting a clan with online members
  
• Fixed a crash in the sky/time of day simulation
  
• Fixed a bug where you could duplicate NPCs by knocking them out
  
• Fixed a crash in the building system
  
• Resource nodes should no longer spawn in a player's base after patching to a new version
  
• Fixed a crash issue related to loading in unconscious bodies
  
• Servers should no longer crash when trying to generate a new player corpse
  
• Fixed player spawning under the ground in local play
  
• Fixed a server crash related to building
  
• PvE servers should now be listed under the PvE filter again, as intended.
  
• The "inventory is full" message should no longer trigger

Improvements

• Added new purge default settings for singleplayer
  
• Outdoor world bosses now have significantly more hit points
  
• Outdoor world bosses drop keys 50% instead of 100% of the time
  
• Gaseous orbs are now enabled again and do finite amounts of damage (instead of % damage)
  
• Player thralls have been buffed with respect to both hit points and damage output
  
• Player character and human NPCs can now be damaged inside protection domes
  
• Kicking now pushes you back if you are blocking with a shield
  
• Removed the “Always Attack Towards Target” gameplay setting, as this setting is inactive

• Resources will disappear after one hit in an area near the swamp. So if you're harvesting near there, you'll only get one hit in. There is also rubberbanding in that area, so just be aware. This only occurs in this small area though.
  
• Some servers appear to have low performance currently. We're investigating at this moment.