At PAX East, the developers of Funcom shared more information about the future of the barbarian MMO Conan Exiles, including details on mounts, trading, and new slaves.
Conan Exiles focuses on survival in a harsh desert world where everything and everyone wants to kill you. Even your own penis won’t be safe from the castration-happy barbarian players! It’s high time for civilization to spread across the wasteland.
Conan Exiles Trading instead of War
Civilization arises through agriculture and trade, and at least the latter is to be introduced in the form of a “trading slave.” This servant will be loaded with various goods to sell or trade. In a thought experiment, the developers also talked about minting your own coins if you are a particularly strong barbarian lord.
If you’d rather transport your goods through the wasteland yourself, you can use the announced mounts. Not only can you ride these animals, but they can also be used as pack animals. A cart for even more storage space is also planned.
Mounts – Riding the Donkey through the Desert
This would bring Conan Exiles closer to the trade and economy-focused online RPG Black Desert Online, where you also get a donkey early on and hitch it to a cart full of goods to sell for good money in distant markets.
Also cool: The developers are considering allowing players to build platforms with further structures on large animals like rhinos. This would enable cool war beasts from whose backs archers can shoot at the enemy.
More Comfort Features in the Wasteland
In addition to trade goods and mounts, Funcom also wants to introduce a feature that allows players to find interesting places and like-minded players. However, they don’t want to simply solve this with a waypoint on the map, but with a kind of compass (a stone on a string) that points to the respective target but does not indicate where or how far it is. In the barbarian world, there is no place for too much convenience!
Therefore, special chat systems (voice and text) will only be available once they feel “right.” However, what there will be much more of is: Unique weapons and mystical creatures from the Conan lore that can be defeated with weapons. Sneaky players will soon also be able to set traps, including decoys that distract from the real traps.
Players Should Not Be Able to Do Everything
The current level cap will be raised, but not so high that players can learn all recipes. Players should not be able to do everything and will have to specialize instead. However, specific recipes will be combined to provide more possibilities.
More options are also planned for slaves. The popular dancer slaves will soon be joined by musicians and singers, also in various cultural styles. The developers are also considering allowing server admins to temporarily take control of NPCs to use them in role-playing situations.
Also interesting: Conan Exiles – How Naked Barbarians Saved Funcom
