Hey everyone!

We're rolling out a quick hotfix for the PC to take care of some issues that popped up after the post-Halloween patch. Please not that this patch contains no updates to the Purge system. That is planned to come out in a future patch.

The dev kit will release at the same time as this patch so mod creators can update their mods right away.

• Fixed an issue with thrall recipes not being visible when the user reenters any crafting station
  
• Fixed an issue that prevented the user from scrolling up and down within any crafting station when using a controller
  
• Fixed a Quick Loot functionality issue for loot bags, where loot bags weren’t quick loot-able, even by their owner

Good morning, you handsome cat pajamas! Welcome back to the Conan Exiles community newsletters. It’s been a while since we last spoke, as we’ve been a bit busy over here in the Funcom Oslo office. We wanted to give you guys a quick status update on Conan Exiles as well as tell you a little bit about some of the goings on from the past few weeks.

We’ll be recapping the Halloween event, talking about some bug fixes, and tell you how you can help us decide what to work on next.

Here goes!

In our ongoing efforts to keep the community informed about issues we’re working on, we’ve set up a public Trello board. This will list and track critical issues that are brought up by the community. The board will list issues for all platforms and if there’s no mention of a specific issue it means it’s happening on all platforms. If you want to read the full primer about the Trello board can find it on our forums.

We’re trying to avoid letting the board get too flooded with bugs and issues, so you won’t see everything that’s currently under active development. If a specific bug is not on the list it might still be on our radar, but it hasn’t come up as frequently in community discussions compared to the others.

As you can see, we have internal fixed for several community critical bugs already, like Starmetal Shells not cracking properly and players getting trapped inside rhino meshes. Please remember to upvote bugs you think we should be tackling next.

We hope this Trello board will help keep you updated on the goings on at the studio and the status of community reported issues.

Our first ever Halloween event in Conan Exiles didn’t exactly go as planned. We went into it with the understanding that it wouldn’t necessarily be for everyone, but we hoped that players would still be able to find something to enjoy in the week-long event. Unfortunately, there were several issues that affected players in different ways and made the game hard to enjoy.

Certain things weren’t working as intended, the muted color palette and dark light made things difficult to see, and some players also reported eyestrain and headaches due to the blue and purple lighting. Un-patching the Halloween content also took longer than we would have liked, especially on consoles, and we would like to once again acknowledge and apologize for the frustrations this has caused.

We've gotten a lot of feedback from the community during and after the event, both positive and negative, and we’re taking valuable lessons away from how we implemented and executed this event. Things will be different if we do other events in the future. All three platforms have now been patched and we will continue to our regularly scheduled patches and hotfixes.

The bi-weekly Friday streams are still going strong. If you missed the previous one you can find it, as always, on our YouTube channel or just watch the video below. We enlisted the help from master Conan Exiles architect Sven P to give us his best tips and tricks for building epic structures in Conan Exiles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0PQ8yMRZkQ

That's it for this week!

Sincerely,

Funcom

Dear exiles,

We have released a new patch for the PC version of Conan Exiles and removed the Halloween content from the game. We know the Night of Lost Souls event hasn’t been everyone’s cup of tea and we’re taking several lessons away from the feedback we’ve gotten this past week.

Thank you to everyone for voicing your opinions and for offering tips on future events. We take it all to heart.

The dev kit will not be available at the release of this patch, but we’re working on getting it released. Shouldn’t take more than a day or two and mods shouldn’t be super incompatible without it.

This patch contains a number of updates to the Event Log so it will log more information related to pets, thralls and items. We’ve also fixed several bugs related to player corpses and we believe we’ve also managed to fix the well bug.

• Event Log changes (see below for more details)
  
• Halloween event has ended. The Potion of Lost Souls and any resources harvested during the event will remain in player inventory until consumed or decayed.
  
• Wells should now be re-filling as intended
  
• Fixed an issue where having several of buff/debuff icons on screen would cause a lot of lag

Exploit Fixes

• Fixed an exploit where players could manipulate and duplicate thrall inventories

Event Log changes

• Dismantled placeables will now show up as intended in the Event Log
  
• Items dropping from destroyed placeables will now be listed in the Event Log when they’ve decayed
  
• Update to the “Days Passed” slider in the Event Log to be more inconsistent
  
• Event log entries can now stack and be displayed in one row instead of multiple.
  
• Database maintenance: Remove Event Log entries older than 3 weeks
  
• Companion names should now be displayed properly in the Event Log when they are hungry, starving or returning home
  
• Made companion cause of death more consistent in the Event Log (Please note: The Event Log does not support custom companion names):
  
• – Player and Clan name will be displayed when a follower is killed by another player
  
• – NPC name will be displayed when a follower is killed by an NPC
  
• – Starvation/fall damage/noxious damage will be displayed when a follower dies by these
  
• The Event Log should now display item names as intended
  
• Dragging an item from a Crafting Station and dropping it on a stack of said items in the inventory should now create an entry in the Event Log

Bug Fixes

• Wells should now be re-filling as intended
  
• Fixed a bug where traps could be returned to player inventory after exploding
  
• Fixed a bug where corpses would disappear if a player died underwater.
  
• Fixed an issue where an Avatar’s timer wouldn’t update correct on Dedicated Servers
  
• Fixed a bug where accessing a vault would cause lag and hitching
  
• Fixed a bug that allowed players to loot XX_Unarmed items from Thralls
  
• Fixed a bug where unconscious NPCs would disappear if they fall or slide away from a space where they were released from their bindings (like a cliff)
  
• Fixed an issue where having several of buff/debuff icons on screen would cause a lot of lag
  
• The Degenerate should no longer spawn two corpses when killed
  
• Removed guards on letting following companions teleport to you. Pets should now follow you more reliably into your compounds
  
• Fixed a bug where attempting to move a pet or thrall would have them turn invisible if the player moved too far away from their original placement.
  
• Fix a visual bug causing the blood spatter background of certain Feat filter icons to disappear
  
• Fixed a possible leak in SQLite DB handling due to missing ‘virtual’ keyword on ~QueryResultBase
  
• Explosive Arrows should no longer do damage to buildings on PvE servers.

Environment Changes

• Removed the ability to reach a unplayable area in the Black Keep
  
• Fixed a collision issues with the barriers in the Midnight Grove
  
• Fixed an issue where the curse wall spline had many points that had inverted rotation, causing issues with not being able to build in random places. Also removed a duplicate of the curse wall spline that existed right on top of the original one.
  
• Removed the ability to reach a unplayable area in Bin-Yakin’s Seal cave ceiling

Quality of Life Changes

• Added a “Clear” button to the Server Browser, to more easily remove entries in Server Name and Maximum Ping filters
  
• The Crafting Station UI will now display the name of the crafting station instead of “Crafting Station”
  
• Increased the number of corpses a player could generate from 3 to 10. This should improve corpses disappearing upon player death

Localization Changes

• Various localization fixes on DLC items

Hey everyone,

Today, we're rolling out a hotfix to take care of the most reported issues with the Halloween update released yesterday. We want to thank our community for reporting these issues to us and for staying patient and positive as we fixed them.

In this hotfix we're tweaking the game so it will be easier for players to see in the eternal twilight, while also balancing the loot drops from the Halloween meteors. The T2 doors are also getting fixed.

If it's still too dark for you you can also tweak the following server settings (in game or in an .ini file) to the following values. This will make it less dark:

• DayCycleSpeedScale=9.000000
• DayTimeSpeedScale=0.10000
• NightTimeSpeedScale=10.000000
• DawnDuskSpeedScale=5.000000

If you do not wish to participate in the Halloween event, there will be a build available on our Testlive branch without the Halloween content, but otherwise identical to the current live version.

If you switch branches and play single-player, you might want to **take a backup copy of your game.db file** to avoid potentially losing your save data.

Server admins might also want to back up their server's game.db file for people to be able to continue with their characters on your server, just in case.

How to find and copy your game.db

• Open Steam and go to your library
• Right click on Conan Exiles and choose Properties
• Find and select the tab marked "Local Files" and click the "Browse Local Files" button. A Windows Explorer folder should now pop up
• Go to ConanSandbox --> Saved to find your game.db file
• Make a copy of it in an easily accessible place on your computer
• Once you've patched to the Testlive branch, simply drop the game.db file you copied before into the Saved folder, replacing what's already there, and you can continue playing as you normally would

• Fixed T2 doors so you cannot walk through them
• Removed Star Metal Picks, Skeleton Keys and other types of über loot from meteors
• Meteor fragments that have been harvested or disappeared won't leave a particle trail behind
• Changed speed of day on official servers so it will not get as dark during the Halloween event
• Added auto exposure to compensate for the darkness and make things a bit brighter

An equivalent patch is also being made for consoles, but we're looking into fixing the spammy meteors first.

Today we are kicking off our Halloween event, which will run throughout the game during the next week. Welcome, exiles, to the Night of Lost Souls!

The sky will darken as perpetual dusk falls upon the landscape, casting it in black shadows and blue light, tearing at the boundaries which separate the world of the living from the realms of the dead. The clouds will part. A new face will appear upon the moon’s surface. It is the face of death, keeping watch over whatever might stir on the ground below.

During the Night of Lost Souls, stones will fall from the sky in multitudes, striking the earth in a flurry of colored smoke and debris. Adventurous exiles can break open these stones with whatever tool they have available. Inside, they will find a plethora of crafting ingredients, both rare and common, doled out at random by the spirits lingering inside the stones, anything from Plant Fiber and Meat to Explosive Glands, Arrows and Steelfire. It all depends on the spirit’s goodwill.

Inside the fallen stones you will also discover the Potion of Lost Souls, a special brew only available on this hallowed night. Imbibing the Potion will grant you certain benefits at random. Drink one and see what happens, but don’t drink too many or your body will suffer the consequences. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

After a week, the Night of Lost Souls will pass and the sun will once again rise on the Exiled Lands. The restless spirits will be calm, yet their gifts will remain with those who received them.

• The Conan Exiles Halloween Event is now live and will run until the 6th of November
  
• Added new music, sound effects, Main Menu graphics and changed the lighting to make things more spooky
  
• Torches now burn with a purple light
  
• The moon's face is now different
  
• Meteors will fall from the skies, containing different kinds of loot and goodies
  
• The Potion of Lost Souls can be harvested from meteors. Imbibing them will grant you a number of buffs and effects

The devkit will be made available shortly after this patch goes live, no later than an hour after patch time.


New Content

The Conan Exiles Halloween Event is now live and will run until the 6th of November

• Added new music and sound effects
  
• Added new Main menu graphics
  
• Changed the lighting to a perpetual, gloomy twilight
  
• Torches now burn with a purple light
  
• The moon's face is now different
  
• Meteors will fall from the skies, containing different kinds of loot and goodies
  
• The Potion of Lost Souls can be harvested from meteors. Imbibing them will grant you a number of buffs and effects
  
• Opening doors will cause bats to fly out

Bug fixes

• Fixed an issue where the message "Pet/Thrall is no longer following you" would pop up randomly, even if you didn't have pets following you
  
• Companion hunger should no longer reset to maximum value in a single-player game after restarting the game
  
• Fixed a bug that let you equip armor on pets
  
• Fixed a bug where an Animal Pen would not be able to craft Pets after clearing the queue while a Pet was being tamed.
  
• Fixed a bug where a new character's gender could not be selected

QoL updates

• Event Log will now log damage, death and destruction events made by pets, thralls and non-persistent NPCs
  
• Added GUI/filter options for event logging
  
• Toned down the damage caused by explosive arrows as they were a bit too powerful
  
• Disabled file handling caching in FGenericAsyncReadFileHandle for editor builds. This is needed by the mod devkit as it mounts pak files while still being an editor build

Good evening my fellow beings of light and shadow, and welcome back to the Conan Exiles community newsletter. It is a period of civil war. Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire. No, wait. That’s Star Wars.

We’ll be doing a quick recap of the last week before venturing into a Halloween competition, news about the Decay Timer, an update on Thrall/Pet behavior and some information about LOD range.

Here we go!


We rolled out hotfixes for PC, PS4 and Xbox last week and we’re currently investigating issues that popped up in the aftermath of the hotfixes. There’s been reports of increased lag on all platforms, which could potentially be tied to the new Event Log. The Event Log filtering wasn’t working correctly, but this has been fixed internally now and will be patched. The UI is also getting an update and once it’s been patched in you will be able to filter and choose proximity for logging events. We were able to find a couple of new bugs and issues thanks to the new Event Log, so while it needs some additional updates the basics are working as intended.

Another reported issue is the matter of thrall and pet hunger resetting for certain companions when a server restarts. It’s not happening consistently across the board, as we also see players reporting that the system is working as intended and abandoned companions are dying. This makes replicating and fixing the issue a bit trickier, but we have several leads that we’re following up on so we can fix it.

Disappearing corpses are also being looked into by a coder from the Vanguard team, as we still see player reporting this as an issue. We rolled out an update previously that reduced the number of corpses per player to three, to avoid certain performance issues and potential exploits. We’re going to increase this limit to 10 and have QA test what impact this will have on performance.

Finally, we’re investigating the delay when opening and closing doors in the console versions, which popped up after the latest patch.

Since it’s October and Halloween season is upon us, we decided it was time for you, our amazing community, to show your creative talents, Halloween style, with a pumpkin carving contest! Each participant will get a free DLC key of their choice, and the grand prize winner will receive a 21*18 inch canvas print of this amazing Conan Exiles artwork made by our amazing concept artist.



The competition starts today and will run for the next two weeks, plenty of time to get a pumpkin carved. Here’s some inspiration to get you started.

Rules for the Pumpkin Carving Contest are as follows:

• Must be Conan Exiles themed or related.
• Keep it clean - no offensive words or images, please.

• Entries will be accepted from October 23th, 2018 through November 6th, 2018 at 23:59 (11:59 pm) CEST
• To enter, your entry must be submitted to through email (http://mailto:contest@funcom.com), with subject line “Conan Exiles Pumpkin Carving Contest"
• Make sure to include a picture of your pumpkin as an attachment.
• Be creative!
• Only one entry per person per email.

We’re going to be increasing the standard decay timer on our official servers! Currently it will take your settlement 6 days to reach a state of abandonment. At this stage anyone can walk up to it, hit a button and demolish your abandoned building. The structure will demolish itself automatically if you wait an additional day. After 7 days in total it will be gone.

We're bumping this up to 8 days, with 7 days until abandonment and then a final, 8th day for automatic demolition. This gives you a little more time to refresh your settlements.

This change has already been made on most servers, but you need to log in and refresh your buildings for the extra time to be added. It won’t happen automatically just because we change the settings.

We wanted to give a quick comment/update on new thrall and pet behavior. This was rolled out in the first part of Update 34, in early October. You may have noticed that the “Move” command for thralls and pets has been changed to “Move and Guard” instead. After you plonk them down on a new spot, that area will be designated as home.

When your thralls or pets follow you, and you tell them to stop, they will teleport back to their home if you leave them there for about 10 minutes. This also happens if they get stuck anywhere when they’re following you. So, if you’re out exploring, and your favorite thrall or pet seems to disappear when following you, it might just be that they got stuck and went back home. If they’re dead, it will show up in the Event Log.

If you want you can use this feature as a way to scout certain areas, by taking thralls and pets with you and setting them to guard in a new location. If they get attacked you will find who did it and when in the event log.

There was a longer discussion thread recently on the forums where a player was asking why the game world appears static whenever NPCs and creatures are outside a certain range of the players. To answer this query, we enlisted the help of lead gameplay programmer Scooper, who you may have seen on the forums and in our streams.

Conan Exiles has a very big world with everything running on one server. The world has around 6000+ NPCs roaming the world, not counting player thralls and pets. Actually, probably even more by now.

The simple fact is that running NPC behavior on all these NPCs at all times in such a big world is not something current hardware can handle with UE4. It only gets worse when you add in players and their dynamic content, such as buildings, placeables, thralls and pets.

We have, however, done a lot of trickery to counter this. The performance we have today is leaps improved from the early days. We are also constantly working on improving this and have more optimization coming in future patches.

The “static world” is part of a system we call the AI LOD (Level of Detail) system. This turns down the amount of CPU resources an actor (Placeable, building or NPC) receives based on their proximity to a player. Outside of a certain range they go into a suspended mode where they are not given any CPU cycles, and basically go into a sleeping mode.

We do this because there is, in most cases, no point in having the actor run at full speed without a player nearby. And we have “catch up” methods in place where they are needed to make sure they account for the suspended time.

Let’s take crafting stations, as an example. A crafting station needs to tick and update the progress of whatever is being crafted in real time when a player is standing nearby, so you can see the progress bar move if you are inspecting it, or see the fire in your furnace turn off the moment the crafting is done.

If a player can’t even see the crafting station, it can do this much slower or even not at all. When a player returns to the area and wakes it up, it catches up on X minutes of work. When you inspect it you will see the same results as if you had been standing there for those same X minutes (The reality is slightly different, we run a few ticks of crafting here and there even if the player is not around).

If you’re an admin and you want to have some “fun”, and see what happens when nothing is suspended, all logic running at full speed and all NPCs freely roam the server, you can try using the admin command “ForceAILOD 0”.

PLEASE BE CAREFUL WITH THIS AND TRY IT AT YOUR OWN RISK!

You can turn it back on with ForceAILOD –1, but it’s very possible that you will not be able to do so. Be prepared to restart your server. This shouldn’t influence anything on the server per se, but you should take a backup of the server’s database file as well.

Tldr; NPCs remaining fully awake when players aren’t nearby is not worth no one being able to play.
However as mentioned, there are still more performance improvements to be made and coming your way.

It is stream week once again and we’ll be live on Twitch and Mixer this Friday at 5pm CEST. We’re going to talk about the upcoming Night of Lost Souls Halloween event and demo some of the spooky content that you’ll experience once the specters descend on the Exiled Lands.

We’ll also be doing another Community Spotlight, so get those screenshots and builds shared with us so we can show them off during the stream! There will also be key giveaways, as is tradition. We can’t wait to see you there.

Sincerely,

Funcom

Hey everyone! It's time for another PC hotfix!

This update will take care of some pets and thrall issues that needed addressing. These changes will make it to PS4 and Xbox at a later date.

• Fixed an issue with pets decaying in animal pens
  
• Fixed an issue with food disappearing from Pet and Thrall inventories upon first server restart
  
• Fixed an issue with Thralls and Pets reacting to players receiving environmental damage
  
• Fixed an issue with items in the inventory of an Archer Thrall disappearing when Thrall started shooting
  
• Thrall icons are no longer placeholders
  
• Fixed an issue with players being able to teleport items from one container to another across any distance

Good morning you precious little creatures of the night. Welcome back to the Conan Exiles community newsletter! We hope you’re doing well and that the week so far hasn’t been too much of a struggle. We’re all about that positivity over here, after all!

This week we’re going to quickly recap our latest dev stream, talk extensively about the new specialist arrows, and give you some more details on the upcoming Conan Exiles Halloween event, the night of Lost Souls.

Last week we rolled out the remainder of the Pets Update for PS4 and the full Pets Update for Xbox One. We also rolled out a hotfix for PC to patch out a nasty exploit related to pet names. Our coders have also been working on some inventory optimizations, building optimizations, and further development on the Event Log, the fully revamped version of which we’ll be rolling out very soon.

We are aware that the thrall icons have gone missing, but please know that we’re working on a fix. We are also trying to track down a bug in the Greater Wheel of Pain that’s causing it to not finish the thrall conversion process. Any information you can provide on this topic will be of help.

Last week was our regular Conan Exiles stream week and we decided to give the community a look into how we design and create the various dungeons you can find and explore. Our senior designer, Alex, sat down with Jens Erik to chew the fat and talk design. We also took some questions from the community during the stream.

If you head to our forums you can find a full recap of the stream or you can check out the full archived version of the stream below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saRWAsd1Qws

Remember that all of our previous dev streams are archived on the Funcom YouTube channel and we’ve even put them in a handy playlist in case you want to watch all of them in succession.

This is super exciting for us to able to share. We’ve been planning out the first ever Conan Exiles Halloween event and now we’re finally ready to reveal our plans.

On Halloween, the Night of Lost Souls will descend on the Exiled Lands. The sky will darken as perpetual dusk falls upon the landscape, casting it in black shadows and blue light, tearing at the boundaries which separate the world of the living from the realms of the dead. The clouds will part. A new face will appear upon the moon’s surface. It is the face of death, keeping watch over whatever might stir on the ground below.

During the Night of Lost Souls, stones will fall from the sky in multitudes, striking the earth in a flurry of colored smoke and debris. Adventurous exiles break open these stones with whatever tool they have available. Inside, they will find a plethora of crafting ingredients, both rare and common, doled out at random by the spirits lingering inside the stones, anything from Plant Fiber and Meat to Explosive Glands, Arrows and Steelfire. It all depends on the spirit’s goodwill.



Inside the fallen stones you will also discover the Potion of Lost Souls, a special brew only available on this hallowed night. Imbibing the Potion will grant you certain benefits at random. Drink one and see what happens, but don’t drink too many or your body will suffer the consequences. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

After the Night of Lost Souls has passed, the sun will once again rise on the Exiled Lands. The restless spirits will once again be calm, yet their gifts will remain with those who received them.

We rolled out a bunch of new arrows alongside the Pets Update and we’ve gotten a lot of feedback about them in the time since. Some of you think they’re cool, some of you were baffled by them. Lead designer Oscar took the time to write down the intended use and design that went into each arrow type and how they interact with each other.

Fire Arrows:
We originally envisioned Fire Arrows as a utilitarian type of arrow that would provide a bit of light while flying and enable fire interactions with the environment, but alas those elements were not implemented until this latest revision of “special arrows”. Now that that role is encompassed by Light Arrows and Explosive Arrows, we are turning fire arrows into enhanced iron arrows - really just a cosmetic change - which should remove any confusion about implied gameplay that was never there.

Explosive Arrows:
Explosive Arrows will detonate gas fields (including those created by Gas arrows or Gas Orbs) and oil fields (made by Tar Arrows and Oil Arrows). Fire Arrows won’t because they are only “fire” in name but not in function. The cost of explosive arrows is very high because it has to match their very high level of power. While it’s true the main function of explosives is PvP, it is not the only function. They do not have to be cost effective in every situation as long as they are in some situations.

Light Arrows:
Light Arrows are meant to act as a way to illuminate environments at a distance. They are not really damage tools. Perhaps this function is too niche, but we thought it would be a cool touch to add them and expand a little on the concept of “Alchemy is easy going Sorcery” (Science!). We considered other niche options too, like i.e. Whistling Arrows for signaling or Flare Arrows, but we feel that Light Arrows are a good start. Not every element of the game must have a competitive or purely functional purpose and having toys/roleplay elements is also an important aspect of a sandbox environment. We will reduce the crafting cost of Light Arrows to better reflect their impact on gameplay.

Snake Arrows:
Snake Arrows are an example of an arrow type that is too good for their cost. Not only were they basically free to make (which we addressed recently), but also due to the limited range of damage that arrow progression encompasses, they do equivalent damage to arrows that are much higher in the progression. Most of the archery damage comes from the bow and attributes/perks, not from the arrows themselves. We are looking at what we’ll do with Snake Arrows, but it’s likely that they will become mostly poison delivery tools and lose most of their physical damage potential. Bringing poison to a fight dramatically alters the fight’s dynamics and we feel Snake Arrows create that scenario without requiring any sort of sacrifice.

Blunted Arrows:
We are looking into the issues the community has reported regarding Blunted Arrows. There was a bit of a technical hurdle we needed to bridge in order to fix those. The intention is that they act as ranged truncheons, letting you knock enemies out from afar.

Cost, Weight and Realism
We hear your feedback about the worth versus the cost of special arrows, but we are being cautious about tweaking those values. Special arrows are extremely powerful compared with other aspects of gameplay of equivalent cost. This is something we will tweak over time as we obtain more data about the player dynamics around these items.

The weight of special arrows is going to be reduced across the board. We want special arrows to be special and not something players spam instead of normal arrows, so certain elements are desirable there: i.e. limited stack sizes, high cost/power and weight. We see how we might have pushed this concept in too many ways at the same time, so we are going to reduce their weight.

On the topic of realism, we do want to create a sense of pseudo-realism in the game (because we feel it enhances the experience by making it easier to understand and relate to). Likewise, we are constantly striving to both deliver the evocative scenarios in Howard’s work and to honor them and show them to you in all their glory. We love the setting and we’d like more people to be exposed to it and appreciate the richness in it. Many aspects of the game’s design have been shaped by this way of thinking, including elements of cultural diversity, background lore and the connections to other authors of the time, concepts of the recurring rise and fall of ancient civilizations and even down to tropes and popular culture references from the stories, characters and movies. The reality of game design is that quite a few of aspects of the game must be gamified to be any fun. It’s always a fine line to tread for us, but ultimately gameplay intentions and the overall gameplay experience will dominate discussions around realism.

If you’ve been keeping up with our forums you may have noticed that we now have a Purge primer up and running. In this thread we’re breaking down how the Purge works, server settings, Purge difficulty and some known issues.

You can find the full rundown by clicking this link.

Sincerely,

Funcom

Good morning, you fluffy little interweb puppies! Welcome back to the community newsletter.

This week we’ll be taking a brief dive into Update 34 (Pets, Midnight Grove, Jhebbal Sag), commenting on mod compatibility, talking about our newest DLC (The Savage Frontier), and discuss what’s going to happen in our next livestream.

Let’s get to it:


As you may have noticed, we’ve released the 34th update to Conan Exiles. This completely free update rolled out the Pets system, the Midnight Grove dungeon, the Jhebbal Sag religion, off-hand weapon combos and the new specialist arrows. We've written extensively about what you can find in this update, but if you haven’t been keeping up with our newsletters you can click on this link to learn more.

https://youtu.be/YSCXHXpgMpc

The first chunk of content (new dungeon, religion, off-hand weapons combos and new arrows) were rolled out last week, with pet rearing activated yesterday. After the first rollout we had a couple of bugs and crashes to fix, which were then included when the pets system was activated fully. Thank you to our great community for reporting these issues to us.

At the time of this writing the full update is available on PC, with rollout on consoles planned for later this week.


We’re on sale this week in Steam’s Midweek Madness promotion. Right now, you can get Conan Exiles on PC for 50% off. With the recently released free Pets Update there’s never been a better time to jump into the game. Maybe buy a copy for a friend so you can play together?


One of the things that came up after Update 34 was the question of mod compatibility. Depending on the nature of code changes done in our patches, players and server admins who use mods may experience compatibility issues when trying to play the game immediately after a new patch. These can be anything from not getting access to their chosen server to placeables disappearing and the game crashing on start-up.

To fix these compatibility issues we have to release a new dev kit so the mod creators can update their mods. We try to have a new dev kit ready as quickly as we can after rolling out a patch and we are usually able to release it no later than 24 hours after the patch came out. With the latest patch we were able to have a dev kit ready when the patch was fresh, causing little downtime for modded servers and players.

Since we cannot always guarantee that existing mods will be compatible with a new version of the game, we are recommending that you disable mods when you encounter an issue right after a patch has gone out. That way you can confirm that an issue is caused by an incompatible mod or if it’s a bug that we have to patch.


We know that there is currently a problem with building pieces disappearing from player structures in online play. At the moment, we’re working on creating reproduction cases, but it’s been difficult. This is why we’ve been updating the in-game Event Log. It will assist both us and the community with more information on what happens in a server.

We can more easily dig information out of the server database and you, the players, will have access to more information in-game as well. This will help us build a repro case for the disappearing building pieces.


In addition to the Pets Update we also rolled out our next paid DLC: The Savage Frontier Pack. It comes with all new content inspired by the savage boundaries of civilization, where the ferocious and ruthless Pictish raiders use brutal beasts to do their bidding. At the time of this writing it is available on PC, with a rollout on Xbox and PS4 planned for next week.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlkQOlmVr7w

We’ve done a few out of the ordinary things with this DLC pack. In Robert E. Howard’s original Conan stories, the Picts are a conflation of the historical Picts and the indigenous peoples of the Americas. The Pictish Wilderness is the last remnant of the great uncivilized West that remains after the Hyborian invasion.

Picts are a primitive, tribal culture living in leather tents and thatched huts. Not really the type to build huge stone fortresses. As such, we decided to make building pieces inspired by Aquilonia's frontier, where inhabitants build to repel the savage raiders.



Since they’re a practical race they also don’t make a lot of decorations beyond warpaint and the odd shrunken head, which is why we didn’t include the usual set of placeables. Instead we had our creature designer whip up some cool looking pet skins, so you have a unique looking pet at your side.



For the outfits the art team incorporated a lot of fur, bone and feathers into the look and feel of the clothes. These Picts clothe themselves in the animals they slay. In making these clothes the art team significantly improved how they make and render fur and feather textures, letting them catch and reflect light in a more realistic manner.




It is stream week once again so come Friday you can catch us on our Twitch and Mixer channels for another developer stream. This week we'll once again be exploring the Midnight Grove, but from a different perspective than before. Senior Designer Alexander will be joining us to discuss the design of the dungeon, its monsters and how we approach dungeon design as a whole.

So, join us: Friday afternoon at 5pm CEST (11am EDT, 8am PDT) for our deep dive into dungeon design.

Sincerely,

Funcom