Funcom showcased today over an hour of gameplay of its upcoming open world survival game Conan Exiles. 

The video, narrated by Creative Director Joel Bylos and Community Manager Jens Erik Vaaler, focuses on building a settlement, but also shows some really spiffy features on top of it.

First of all, settlements can be built on mountain sides, which is very cool. We also get to see different tiers of building components, with different difficulties to craft and different degrees of resilience. Towards the end, we see this in action as the developers attempt to blow the settlement up, but the explosive jars don't manage to completely destroy high tier walls but completely demolish low tier ones.

As a bonus, we get to see the sandstorm, which is rather spectacular, and it's one of the mechanics that require you to build a settlement to begin with. Being caught in the open during a sandstorm can be a definitely unpleasant experience.

We also get an interesting explanation on how you can defend from the giant avatars of the gods that were showcased in the latest trailer. First of all, even getting to summon one takes an enormous amount of time and resources, and you need to have progressed through the whole crafting tree. Then you need to manage to capture a high priest of that religion, and bend his will into becoming your thrall.

Even after the summoner managed to do all that, summoning an avatar isn't an "I win" button. The summoning completely destroys your altar, which is quite the loss, but that's not all. When you start the summoning everyone gets a notification, and a shaft of light comes from the heavens indicating your position to the whole world. If you get killed during the summoning, it fizzles.

On top of that, even after the ceremony, when the avatar is out wreaking havoc in the world, the summoner is completely vulnerable to attack, and killing him immediately kills the avatar as well.

If you want to see plenty more gameplay, you can also check out two more hours, that were showcased in two long videos here and here.

Conan Exiles will enter Early Access on Steam on January 31st and Xbox One Preview in the spring. A PS4 version has been deemed "possible" but it's not confirmed at this point in time.