Conan Exiles
Funcom · Survival, RPG, Open World
Overview
Conan Exiles Enhanced is an open world survival game set in the mythical lands of Hyboria, now fully upgraded to Unreal Engine 5 with stunning visuals and improved performance. SURVIVE, BUILD, and DOMINATE alone or with friends in a world brimming with adventure!
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Conan Exiles Enhanced is an Open World Survival game set in the mythical lands of Conan the Barbarian. In single-player, co-op, or persistent multiplayer, you must learn to survive the wilds of Hyboria before building your own home or even a shared city. Survive freezing cold temperatures, explore loot-filled dungeons, develop your character from scavenging survivor to mighty barbarian and powerful sorcerer, and fight to dominate your enemies in epic siege wars.
Conan Exiles Enhanced includes a free Unreal Engine 5 upgrade that offers enhanced visuals, improved performance, and a more integrated world.
After Conan himself saves your life by cutting you down from the corpse tree, you must quickly learn to survive. Weather scouring sandstorms, shield yourself from intense temperatures and hunt animals for food and resources. Explore a vast and seamless world, from the burning desert in the south to the snow-capped mountains of the north.
Forge the legacy of your clan as you fight to reclaim and dominate the Exiled Lands. Use the powerful building system to create anything from a small home to entire cities piece by piece. Wage war using swords, sorcery, bows, and siege weapons, even taking control of giant avatars of the gods to crush the homes of your enemies in epic battles.
STUNNING UNREAL 5 VISUALS
Conan Exiles Enhanced brings the entire game into Unreal Engine 5 with significantly improved visuals across environments, characters, lighting, and effects. It unifies eight years of content into a single upgraded experience, connects The Exiled Lands with the Isle of Siptah, boosts performance to target 60+ FPS on most PCs, improves Steam Deck play, adds numerous quality‑of‑life upgrades, and introduces a redesigned UI.
SURVIVE IN A SAVAGE LAND
Dress well or light a campfire to stay warm and make sure to cool yourself down in the heat. Hunt, cook, eat, and drink to stay alive. Build a shelter to weather scouring sandstorms. Be careful when exploring darkened ruins or you might become corrupted by foul sorcery.
BUILD A HOME AND A KINGDOM
Harvest resources to craft tools and weapons, then build anything from a small home to entire cities piece by piece using a powerful building system. Place traps, elevators, and defenses, then deck out your creations with furniture, crafting stations, and more.
DOMINATE THE EXILED LANDS
Carve out your piece of the Exiled Lands, taking it from other players if you must! Build siege weapons and use explosives to break down the walls of your enemy’s city. Place traps, recruit thralls, and build defenses to keep your enemies from invading you.
CORRUPT YOURSELF TO WIELD DARK SORCERY
Discover insidious sorceries and corrupt your body to wield them. Special perks are awarded to those who give up a portion of their life force. Sacrifice thralls to summon demons and the undead and bend them to your will. Conjure darkness, soar the skies on winged monstrosities, and call down lightning to strike your foes.
EXPLORE A VAST, OPEN WORLD
Journey through a massive and seamless open world, from the rolling sand dunes of the southern desert to the mysterious eastern swamp and the snow-capped mountains of the frozen north. Climb anywhere and experience full freedom of exploration.
BRUTAL, BLOODY COMBAT
Fight vicious monsters and other players using an action-oriented, combo-based combat system. Dodge, block, and learn to master the true art of combat to become the greatest fighter in the Exiled Lands. Slay using bows, daggers, swords, axes, and more.
ENSLAVE THRALLS TO DO YOUR BIDDING
Enslave the criminals of the Exiled Lands and make them join your cause and defend your territory. Put them through the grueling Wheel of Pain to break their will, then turn them into archers, fighters, crafters, entertainers, and more.
DISCOVER THE RUINS OF ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS
From the Black Keep in the north to the Dregs along the southern river, discover the ruins of ancient civilizations and solve their mysteries to gain access to their treasure. Uncover the history of the Exiled Lands you as you explore, uncover lore, and meet NPCs.
BECOME A TOWERING GOD
Alight yourself with one of four deities such as Derketo, the goddess of lust and death. Bring your sacrifices to the altar of your god then summon and take control of their huge, towering avatar. Crush enemies and entire buildings under your avatar’s feet.
PLAY TOGETHER OR ALONE
Play alone locally or fight for survival and dominance in persistent multiplayer on public servers. You can also host your own server and invite others to join you in a world where you have full control of the rules and settings. Want to play with just handful of friends? Try co-op mode!
CONTROL YOUR EXPERIENCE
When playing alone locally or on a server you are the administrator of your world, with access to a range of in-game tools. Change your progression speed, spawn monsters, turn yourself invisible, deactivate avatars, and much more. Be the dungeon master of your own server.
PLAY WITH MODS
Download Conan Exiles Enhanced mods directly from the Steam workshop to customize your game experience. You can also download the custom Conan Exiles Unreal Editor and start creating your own. Countless mods await your discovery!
From the game's Steam store page.
THE GAMEQ VERDICT9,998 reviews analyzed
What players are actually saying
1. Summary
Conan Exiles is a survival sandbox players stick with for hundreds or thousands of hours, and three quarters of the reviews recommend it. They praise the base building, a large hand-made world steeped in the Hyborian setting, and the freedom to play it your own way: solo, with friends on a private server, with custom difficulty settings and a deep mod scene. The free Enhanced update in May 2026 brought back many lapsed players with a much better-looking game, and also brought a wave of crashes, stutter, broken mods and laggy official servers in its first weeks.
Bug and jank complaints come up in more negative reviews than any other theme, and veterans say many of the same problems have been there for years: thralls falling through the map, broken quests, NPCs freezing or teleporting. Online play draws its own set of complaints. Official servers are criticised for lag and rubber-banding, and PvP players describe cheaters and exploiters going unpunished, so reviewers keep recommending solo play or a well-run private server. The paid DLC and the in-game Bazaar split players between those who see fair cosmetics and those who see a shop pushing paywalled building pieces.
2. What keeps coming up
What players praise
Base building players come back forHigh
12% of reviews talk about building, mostly in praise. Reviewers describe spending hundreds of hours designing castles, villages and fortresses, decorating them and filling them with thralls. One player called it the "best structural building system I've ever used", because the triangle, square and angle pieces snap together cleanly. The criticism is narrower: a few players find placement fiddly once a base is started, and some resent that decorative building sets come from paid packs, one pointing to rounded walls and spiral stairs (see the DLC theme below).
A big, atmospheric world rooted in Conan's settingHigh
11% of reviews mention exploration, immersion or the lore, mostly in praise. Players single out the size and variety of the Exiled Lands, the dungeons, the music and the brutal low-fantasy tone that fans of Robert E. Howard recognise. One reviewer wrote that it is "easily the best survival game on the market from an immersion standpoint". The minority view is that the map is big but thin between points of interest, with long runs between camps, respawning enemies and few towns or friendly NPCs.
Fun with friendsMedium
10% of reviews mention playing with friends, partners or a co-op group, mostly as a high point. Couples and small groups describe building shared bases and taking on dungeons and bosses together. As one put it: "If you can play on a server hosted by friends, and maybe get a nice selection of mods, you are set for a few hundred hours easy". Groups without a dedicated server run into the co-op tether, covered under frustrations.
A deep mod sceneMedium
9% of reviews mention mods, mostly as a reason to recommend the game. Long-time players credit mods and modded community servers with keeping the game alive: "The modding community for this game is what truly gives it life". Enhanced set this back for a while, since older mods had to be rebuilt for the new engine. A smaller group of veterans complained that favourite mods or overhaul packs were not yet available, or that a later patch marked freshly updated mods as outdated ("it bricked all the mods"). Positive reviews from the first weeks after the update already described the scene recovering, with one player saying "the modding community is growing back every day".
Solo play, private servers and custom settingsMedium
9% of reviews talk about playing solo, on a private or rented server, or with tuned server settings, and the advice that the game is at its best when you control the rules recurs throughout the corpus. Players praise harvest and XP sliders, difficulty presets and admin tools that let them cut the grind or make it harder; one said you can "fine tune nearly every aspect of what makes it easy or hard". Even positive reviews carry a warning about the alternative. One calls it "a great game when played in single player or a private server", then explains that lag on a public PvE server got so bad after two weeks that they had to stop.
Where players are split
The Enhanced (Unreal Engine 5) updateHigh
13% of all reviews mention the graphics or the Enhanced update, and 15% of reviews written from 4 May 2026 discuss Enhanced directly. Many returning players welcomed it: a free upgrade that looked far better, took less disk space, fixed some old bugs and let solo players carry one save between the Exiled Lands and the Isle of Siptah. One solo player called "the ability to have multiple saves on the same map and be able to go to Siptah and back" the best improvement. Another thanked the developers for not charging for it: "Big props to the Devs for making it a free update too."
Complaints arrived alongside the praise. Reviewers report crashes, stutter on hardware that ran the old version smoothly, Steam Decks that could no longer run it in launch week, oversaturated or blurry visuals, broken mods and severe lag on official servers. Some say the new engine left the old game underneath untouched: "the underlying code is the exact same buggy mess from years ago". A small group preferred the old version and switched to the Legacy build that was kept alongside it.
CombatMedium
9% of reviews mention combat, and opinion is split, with reviews calling it fun, solid or satisfying only slightly outnumbering those calling it clunky, stiff or boring. Fans like the stamina-based melee and fighting alongside thralls and mounts; one first-impressions review said "Combat's a bit chunky, but it works." Critics, a little more often newer players, find the animations stiff, hits unreliable and enemies spongy, and two negative reviews use the same words: "Combat in this game is horrible." Several veterans also dislike earlier combat reworks and weapon nerfs. On official servers, lag makes combat worse for everyone (see frustrations).
DLC packs and the in-game BazaarMedium
8% of reviews bring up the DLC, the Bazaar shop or the old battle pass. Players who defend it point out that major content updates were free and that most paid items are cosmetic: "The major content updates were free too. Only the cosmetic DLC cost money." Critics, many of them long-time players, object to the volume of packs, rotating Bazaar items sold with time pressure, and paid sets that include useful building shapes: "there are different building type pieces like spiral stair cases and rounded walls in those packs." Others were caught out by DLC recipes mixed into the knowledge tree, such as one player who tamed rhinos before finding that "the rhino saddle is DLC only".
Thralls and followersMedium
6% of reviews mention thralls or followers. Capturing, training and posting named thralls draws plenty of praise, and thralls turn up in many of the base-building and dungeon stories. The complaints are about how they behave: followers stuck in walls, falling through the map, ignoring commands, losing their stats or vanishing after an update, plus earlier nerfs that veterans resent. One player put the mixed feeling plainly: "When they work, they are great; but half the time they choose to stand there and be unresponsive."
Grind and a hands-off startLow
3% of reviews mention grind and another 3% the lack of guidance or a confusing interface. Some players like that the game leaves them to work things out: "it doesn't hold your hand through the gameplay. Learning how to survive is great." Others, more often newer players, found the knowledge tree, crafting chains and menus hard to read, with one saying "theres no clear directions or instructions on how things work". Several solo players dealt with the grind through server settings or admin mode.
What frustrates players
Bugs and jank that have lasted for yearsHigh
13% of reviews mention bugs, glitches or jank. The recurring list: NPCs and animals freezing, sliding or teleporting, followers dropping through the floor, quests and journey steps that cannot be completed (one player reported "the Trample quest for the Outrider journey is broken" for two months), items that will not place or craft, and stuck animations. Many of these complaints are about how long the bugs have been around: "there are STILL bugs from when I played 4 years ago". Plenty of reviewers who still recommend the game list bugs among its weaknesses.
Lag and rubber-banding on official serversMedium
5% of reviews mention lag, ping, rubber-banding or desync, often aimed at official servers. These complaints peaked in May 2026, the month Enhanced launched, and fell to a handful a month from July. Players described ping jumping to several hundred, servers they could not join, and combat turning into teleporting enemies: "I rubberband like crazy on EU servers the second I start hitting anything". Another reviewer said lag "makes combat literally impossible, even with less than ten people in a server". The workaround reviewers suggest is a private server: "Hosted my own server and it runs MUCH better."
Crashes, stutter and launch troubleLow
4% of reviews mention crashes, frame drops, stutter or a game that will not start. Some of this predates Enhanced (AMD card problems, crashes after long sessions), and some came with it: "it now runs at 140 fps, but stutters every ten seconds with frame drops all the way down to 32". A few players spent hours verifying files and updating drivers before they could load a single-player game. Steam Deck reports went both ways: a launch-week player said "this new update won't run on the Steamdeck anymore", while a later one wrote "they fixed the crashing issue for steamdeck".
Cheaters and exploiters on official PvP serversLow
2% of reviews mention cheaters, hackers or undermeshing, and more than half of them come from players with 500+ hours in the game. They describe fly and speed hacks, players raiding outside raid hours, bases hidden under the map mesh, and reports that need video proof and then seem to go nowhere. "Game is riddled with cheaters, meshers" is how one negative reviewer who still praised the PvE side warned PvP players off, and another wrote that "cheaters are not getting banned on official servers". Several of these players still recommend the game for PvE.
Lost thralls, bases and charactersLow
2% of reviews describe losing progress: thralls that vanished, bases deleted by a bad patch or decay, characters missing after server merges, or a solo save gone after a reinstall with no cloud backup. One veteran wrote that "all of my thralls are gone"; another said that after Enhanced "the newest patch was bugged to the point that is was just deleting bases". For players with hundreds of hours invested, these losses are often the reason for a negative review.
The co-op tetherLow
54 reviews mention the tether that keeps co-op partners close to the host unless they rent a dedicated server, and they read as complaints, including in reviews that recommend the game. Groups of three or four feel it most, since nobody can head off to gather or explore alone. For one player it was decisive: "The one and only reason I give this game a thumbs down: tethering in co-op."
Launcher, intro and start-up frictionLow
Under 1% of reviews each complain about the separate launcher, BattlEye installation problems, or an intro video that cannot be skipped without deleting files. One otherwise happy player refused a positive review until "can't skip intro without deleting files" changed.
3. The player conversation
Half the reviewers had played for about 130 hours or more when they wrote their review, and even negative reviews often open by calling it a favourite game before listing bugs, lag or shop complaints. Many positive reviews are a single line along the lines of "fun game" or "love it". The clearest dividing line is how people play: solo and private-server players are broadly content, while many of the lag, cheating and lost-progress complaints come from official-server and PvP players.
Different players raise different problems. Complaints about the Bazaar, the battle pass and cheaters come mostly from players with 500+ hours, a group that writes a much smaller share of the reviews overall. Complaints about clunky combat and a confusing start lean a little the other way, toward players under 25 hours.
Enhanced dominates the timeline. Reviews jumped from roughly 25 to 80 a week in early 2026 to 722 in the first week of May 2026. In the six months before it, the positive share ran between 77% and 84% each month; from May 2026 onward it sat between 74% and 76% each month, and the reviews from those months mix launch-week server lag and crash reports with returning players' praise for the new look. Lag complaints faded quickly after June 2026, while bug, cheater and shop complaints carried on at a steady rate.
4. What the developers could do
- Clear the backlog of long-standing bugs before adding more content. Bugs come up in more negative reviews than any other complaint, and veterans keep pointing to the same broken quests, frozen or teleporting NPCs and followers falling through the map that they saw years ago.
- Keep official server performance stable and let players move characters off unplayable servers. Lag and rubber-banding drove some returning players away after Enhanced, and one veteran could not even reach their main character to transfer it once their server's ping went past 300.
- Act faster on cheating reports on official PvP servers. PvP veterans describe fly hacks, undermeshing and off-hours raids, and say reports with video evidence rarely lead to visible bans.
- Fix thrall pathing and protect followers from vanishing. Thralls are central to the base building and dungeon runs players enjoy, and losing a named follower to a fall through the map or a patch is a recurring reason for angry reviews.
- Protect player progress with recovery tools and cloud saves. Players lost bases to a bad patch, characters in server merges and solo saves on reinstall, and these losses turn long-time fans into negative reviewers.
- Keep useful building shapes and quality-of-life features out of the paid shop, and make the hide-DLC option work. One player objects to rounded walls and spiral stairs sitting in paid packs, and several say the hide-DLC button does nothing while DLC recipes clutter the knowledge tree.
- Tune Enhanced for mid-range PCs and handhelds. Stutter, frame drops and launch crashes on machines that ran the old version well were a steady thread after the update.
- Loosen the co-op tether and smooth the first hours. Small groups without a rented server say the tether ruins co-op, and newer players ask for clearer guidance through the knowledge tree and crafting chains.
