MeinMMO editor Dariusz looked at the big Enhanced Update of Conan Exiles before release and has spent 15 hours surviving in the Exiled Lands. How the UE5 update of the survival game went for him, he summarizes here.
Conan Exiles is among the best survival games. However, I have never played it, although I like playing survival games. When it came out, I was heavily grinding in ARK: Survival Evolved and my hunger for more games in the genre was fully satisfied. Years later, I considered catching up and secured it as a PS Plus game, but ultimately never played it. Somehow, I found the game “too ugly”. I thought it hadn’t aged well.
When Funcom announced the UE5 upgrade, I was immediately excited by the trailer. And when the opportunity arose shortly after to play the update before release, I spent more hours of my weekend building bases in the Exiled Lands than originally planned.
Not only nice but also substantial
As I took my first steps in the Exiled Lands, I naturally drew on my experiences from various survival games. I diligently collected stones and branches along the way, ate some insects, and looked for a suitable campsite.
I trudged to a river because unlimited water access is always a good start. Near the bank, I then built my first house. To do this, I smashed some stones with a pickaxe, felled trees with my axe, and diligently plucked fibers from numerous plants.
Before long, I had to deal with which attributes to skill first. Learning the first “blueprints” was also on the agenda so I could craft various items, workbenches, etc. I crafted about 2 daggers from stones for quick melee attacks with bleeding damage.
With my daggers, I soon took down the first animal that crossed my path. A few minutes later, the first human followed. And thus began my gameplay loop: I farmed resources, fought against humans or animals, learned new blueprints, expanded my base including workbenches, and explored the map. At some point, I also discovered how to capture humans and turn them into my thralls.
In my mind, I was already picturing what my base would eventually look like and what weapons, armors, and other items I wanted to craft. Then it hit me:
Conan Exiles has captivated me.
I played an 8-year-old survival game, feeling like I was playing a game that had just been released – but with the countless improvements, fixes, and quality-of-life changes the game has received over the years.
Conan Exiles felt not only “new” because I had never played it before. It felt new because it was “modern”.
A strong example of how new games should be
The great feature of Conan Exiles Enhanced is obviously the big graphical upgrade that came with the switch to Unreal Engine 5 – and it really suits the game.
Whether it’s the sand in the desert, the player characters and NPCs, the water, the plants, or the sky – the game simply looks significantly better now. But not only that, it looks really good. Nevertheless, the survival hit has remained true to its graphic style. It just became prettier.
I also want to commend the performance, as Conan Exiles achieves something many new Unreal Engine 5 games fail at brutally: The game runs really well, with solid and above all stable FPS.
Even at the highest settings at 1440p, my aging gaming PC still achieved about 80-90 FPS without DLSS. At lower and medium settings, I comfortably reached triple digits.
Interested people can take a look at my specs here:
Dariusz’ Gaming Rig:
- Mainboard: Gigabyte X570 GAMING X CPU:
- AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 8-Core Processor, 3593 MHz, 8 Core(s), 16 logical processor(s)
- GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070
I was really scared that the UE5 update would come with a terrible performance, as was the case at the release of ARK: Survival Ascended. But I bow to Funcom, as the Norwegian studio leads by example for upcoming games and delivers.
The perfect moment to catch up on a survival icon
If I learned one thing from playing the Enhanced Edition, it’s that now is the perfect time to catch up on Conan Exiles. If you like survival games and the setting of the game appeals to you, I truly recommend taking a look at the game. It looks modern, plays well, and is overall polished. However, if you’re not fond of survival games or bloody battles rather scare you, Conan Exiles may be less suitable for you. It is basically the opposite of a cozy game.
My test ended yesterday, but I plan to spend a lot of time in survival games this summer that I have missed so far. Conan Exiles is now on that list, and I will buy it again on Steam. If you want to get an impression of the graphical changes, you can check out 21 comparison images on MeinMMO: Conan Exiles is becoming a completely new game on Steam – 21 images show what UE5 brings to the table
Your opinion is important to us!
Do you like the article? Then let us know!