Like Fallout’s SPECIAL acronym for attributes, you’ve got your SAVAGES in Conan Exiles: Strength, Agility, Vitality, Accuracy, Grit, Encumbrance, and Survival. These are the seven attributes you can allocate points to when you level up in Conan Exiles and your experience in the game can vary significantly depending on how wisely you spend those points.
The system, as it stands, is definitely a work in progress. It’s Early Access, after all. We expect there is likely to be some significant iteration on these attributes and other systems over time, but for now, we’d like to shed some light on how the individual attributes affect your character and how to best invest your points.
STRENGTH
Strength is one of two DPS attributes (the other being Accuracy) and it governs your damage with melee weapons. Some weapons, like the Ancient Khopesh, don’t appear to scale with Strength, though we’re unsure at this time if this is a bug or working as intended. Putting points into Strength is a good idea for any character right now, but you don’t want to dump too many points into it, or prioritize it early game. Through my own experiments, I’ve found that there are heavy diminishing returns on Strength after putting in 25 points. The amount of attacks it would take to kill the same enemy dropped up until 25 points and then there was no appreciable difference between 25 and 50 points spent, while the costs for putting points into the stat increased considerably beyond this level.
Additionally, since the returns on Strength don’t make a huge impact overall right now, it’s best to start pumping this stat a bit later on in your progression.
AGILITY
Agility is a very straightforward attribute. The points you have in agility are added to your armor score. 10 points in Agility = +10 armor. I consider this to be a dump stat once you’ve reached your goals in other areas, but since I don’t have a solid grasp on how armor works in Conan Exiles just yet, Agility may play a more important role later on. That said, like every other attribute, the point cost past 25 or so goes up so much that I can’t see myself ever spending more than 10-15 points in this attribute.
VITALITY
Vitality is arguably the most important attribute in Conan Exiles. Currently, you gain 12 points of HP per point spent in Vitality, which means that it only takes around 17 points to flat out double your base health pool. I plan on dumping a full 25 points into Vitality, giving me 500 HP (base health is 200). Spend your points here early and often.
ACCURACY
This attribute is identical to Strength, but for ranged weapons. Ranged weapons are a terrible investment in Conan Exiles right now, so I would completely skip Accuracy for the moment.
GRIT
The second most important attribute in Conan Exiles is Grit. Points in Grit increase your stamina pool and stamina is only second to health in importance, though it can easily be argued to be equally important. Stamina will win you fights. If you can keep going, but your opponent can’t, you’re quite likely to win. It’s also critical for being able to keep up the chase or even run away from combat. In short: don’t neglect Grit. 25 points in Grit is easy to justify.
ENCUMBRANCE
Encumbrance is a sort of case by case attribute to consider. If you’re your clan’s main builder, you’re going to get a lot more out of this, since you’re spending most of your time harvesting and carrying materials around, but it’s also important for combat focused characters. Encumbrance determines your carry weight, but carry weight doesn’t have a binary effect on your character in Conan Exiles; it’s not simply a matter of can you carry more or not.
As your encumbrance level rises, it impacts the performance of your character. For example, actions will deplete additional stamina. You’re going to have to kind of feel this one out for yourself as a result. Once you’ve got all your gear and weapons on and have an idea for how much stuff you typically carry around, you’ll want to pump enough points into this attribute to reliably keep you in the green (no impact on performance) as much as possible. Play this one by ear.
SURVIVAL
Points in Survival determine the tick rate for your hunger and thirst meters. The returns on points here are fairly significant, but I still don’t consider this to be a priority stat at all. If you pump this attribute significantly, you definitely won’t need to eat or drink as often, but there’s an abundance of food sources in Conan Exiles and water is not often far away, so I really just don’t see the need to put points in here. Skip it.
My SAVAGES Build:
- S: 25
- A: TBD
- V: 25
- A: 0
- G: 25
- E: 10-15
- S: 0
Do you have any tips for spending your SAVAGES points? Share ‘em with us in the comments below!
