If you're a fan of Conan Exiles, or you’re looking for a survival game to keep you busy for a while, you're in for a treat, because the Age of Sorcery update is coming to a close with the latest update on March 14th, and from the looks of it, it’s going to be an exciting conclusion. Funcom allowed us into a preview of chapter 3 which showed off a lot of the new features, such as the inclusion of golem crafting., a new battle pass and store items, new housing options, a Journey system, and some difficult new content.
For those that may not remember much about Conan Exiles, the game fully released back in 2018, and it's come a long way since then. It's a survival game set in the world of Conan the Barbarian, where you play as an exiled warrior trying to survive in a harsh, unforgiving world. You have to gather resources, build shelter, and fend off dangerous creatures and other players who might want to do you harm.
Since its release, Conan Exiles has seen several updates, including new areas to explore, new enemies to fight, and new items to craft, which included the Age of Sorcery update back in September of 2022. The Age of Sorcery update brought Sorcery to the game, and now, we're getting the final chapter to that storyline. If you’re familiar with Conan Exiles you probably will also be familiar with Mek-kamoses, who has been working alongside you in Age of Sorcery to find out what Kurak is up to. With chapter 3, players will instantly notice a difference in the world, as the exiled lands have been plunged into darkness by an eclipse, and if you don't stop Kurak and his cadre of evil sorcerers, the world as you know it will be no more.
In order to stop him, you’ll need to open a portal to the boss dungeon. During the guided play session, the entirety of the dungeon was show, and it was not to be taken lightly. If you complete this harrowing experience, you will be tasked with defeating dangerous spiders, malevolent zombies, and soulless golems. In some cases, you'll be fighting in complete darkness unless you've brought yourself a torch, and if that wasn't enough, you must do this all before the eclipse completes, which means you're on a time crunch, and can't twiddle your thumbs at all. Funcom even threw in a mini-maze in one of the battle phases, just to keep things interesting, and they suggest that, while you can solo the encounter, it is a much better idea to do it with friends.
The update also features the inclusion of golem crafting, which will allow players to craft powerful golems that can help them in battle. Golems are unique among the thralls that you command. Not only can you build the kind of golem you want, but you can equip them with the weapon of your choice and they’ll be able to harvest for you. Golems also come with a few pitfalls. For example, they have extremely high health and are difficult to kill, but you can’t heal them as you can with other thralls. Luckily you can harvest a defeated golem and get back some of your materials that you can then use to build your next golem.
The team also showed off a few new battle pass and store items that bring a host of new cosmetic items to the game, including new skins for weapons and armor. The team has dug into the lore of the franchise and added Turanian weapons, and some of the coolest looking ones that they showed were the blood crystal weapons. Additionally, new housing options have been added, allowing players to customize their homes with new decorations and structures from the Turanian culture as well.
Probably one of the largest pieces of the update that should not be understated is the Journey system. One thing survival games often hate doing is providing you with specific quests. Hand holding isn’t really something that survival players want either. The Journey system kind of circumvents that, by giving players optional objectives that they can choose to follow, or ignore completely. The journey system is basically a checklist of in game systems. For example, as a new player, you may not be entirely sure about all the features the game has to offer, so the Journey system will list tasks like armoring, blacksmithing, alchemy, archery, and you can go through each of those activities, and complete their checklists for some rewards. The Journey system isn’t just for new players either, with chapter 3, all players will have access to the system, and it will start everyone with zero activities achieved, so veteran players can go through the checklist to reap the same rewards, which could be cosmetic items, materials, and more.
If it’s been a minute since you’ve jumped into Conan Exiles chapter 3 might be the update to bring you back. The Journey system brings some quality of life features for new and returning players to get back into all the systems they may have missed, and there’s a lot of difficult content that’s going to provide just enough challenge to keep you busy for a while. So, grab your torch, team up with some friends, and prepare yourself to save the exiled lands from darkness on March 14th, 2023.
