Later this month -- January 31st to be exact -- Funcom will open the floodgates to an entirely new virtual Conan World with its open-world survival game Conan Exiles, which is set to enter Early Access on PC, and head to Xbox One Game Preview sometime later in the spring (it is also coming to PS4, but currently not in any type of early access form).
Today, Funcom released a new video where Joel Bylos, Creative Director at Funcom and Lead Designer Oscar Lopez Lacalle provide a unique glimpse into the building, crafting, and many different ways players can destroy their enemies' settlements in Conan Exiles.
The first thing shown off is the game's "free form" building system that allows you to craft villages, fortresses, and even cities. According to Funcom, it wanted to give players freedom when building, so it has created a building system that is not only relatively easy to use, but is flexible. One example illustrating this is your ability to build a house, town, or city on all the way up or around a mountainside.
You can decorate your structures with a variety of decorations that you would expect in such a home building feature: including tables, beds, rugs, etc. Additionally, you craft some cooler decorations such as wall-mounts from some of the most dangerous and powerful creatures in the world, as well as a giant horn that can be used to let everyone know enemies are coming or to just tell your friend to open up the gate.
Creating a home -- no matter the scale -- is an "important aspect of the game," because it is your home base. You will store your goods, weapons, and supplies here., which means, you will also need to be prepared to defend it. You can also invite friends over or your clan to discuss your warplans.
Another major system in the game -- especially to the crafting part of the game -- is the thrall system. In the world you can go out and capture artisan thralls who you then can enslave to work for you and expand your crafting options. For example, if you capture a certain type of forger and place him at the correct forge, you can unlock additional weapon crafting options exclusive to that said forgers background. You can also enslave the bandits of the exiled lands to do your bidding by breaking them on the grueling Wheel of Pain.
As you would expect, if defending your base is important, so is attacking your enemies' bases. Depending on the tier of your enemies' structure your weapons may be ineffective, in this case, you may want to craft some explosives as they are effective against all tiers of buildings.
Weapons, explosives, and traditional tactics not getting it done? Well, you can also summon giant avatars of the gods that can wreak havoc and destruction on any structure in their path. According to Funcom, they highlight the fact that Conan Exiles is anything but an empty sandbox, but rather a place where players players will discover remnants of ancient civilizations and dilapidated ruins of vast, forgotten cities that they must build on top of and in between of. Avatar's serve as "the ultimate expression of your religious fervor in the game," and require not only for you to build an altar to them in your home base, but require a lot of time, resources, and investment in order to be summonable. However, you will eventually come across enemies' that have access to one, so it's important to build your city in a strategic location that has natural defenses that at least will make any avatar thrown your way less effective.
Joel Bylos, Creative Director at Funcom accompanied the video with the following statement:
“They say that home is where your heart is, but in ‘Conan Exiles’ home is where you keep the hearts of your enemies. Building is a big part of ‘Conan Exiles’ and you will need to build smart and build strong in order to defend yourself from the environment, cannibals, monsters, and of course enemy players. We are working hard to make sure players have powerful tools to build and defend their kingdoms.”