Conan Exiles Devs Detail Future Plans And Reveal Contents Of Next Update

Conan Exiles went into Early Access on Steam back in January, boasting shiny trailers and an array of impressive dongs. Creative director Joel Bylos recently spoke to the press on the subject of what's next for the MMORPG, a game he describes as Funcom's "last ditch effort" to avoid bankruptcy.

It seems as though it's done its job on that front, with Bylos stating that the team was humbled at the news the game made one million dollars within the first hour of its release and ultimately recouped development costs in less than a week.

Going forward, Funcom is hoping to "work with fans to make the game better" through Early Access and plans to release the game on the Xbox One Game Preview program in the third quarter of 2017. Funcom is aiming for Conan Exiles to be out of Early Access within one year. Funcom is also planning for patches, fixes, and small content additions to ideally be released every Thursday, turning quality of life improvements around in one to two weeks. Larger, more significant content updates will also be released periodically.

The first group of larger updates will include mounts that players can find and tame out in the game's open world. We're told players will be able to steal them from others, or fight creatures and drag them back to their city to be housed in the taming area. Larger and more powerful mounts will require multiple players to capture. Another impending update will add a dye crafting system that can be used to change characters' color schemes.

Siege warfare will be added in an update coming "soonish," allowing players to craft siege weapons, wall-scaling towers, and even Trojan horses to take down enemy cities. Two siege weapons were detailed, include a trebuchet and a "corpse locker," the latter allows players to collect dead bodies, leave them to rot, then launch them at enemies to spread disease.

When sorcery is added, players will be able to experiment with necromancy by "utilizing corruption" and sacrificing base stats to gain new sorcery powers. A highland biome and new cave dungeon will get players out of the desert to defeat puzzles and combat trials, as well as discover new creatures, factions, recipes, resources, and building types.

The Purge is an end-game mechanic in which NPC armies will gather at the edges of the map. Players must build up defenses in their cities, or trick the purge armies into attacking others' cities. Purge armies will also include powerful special NPCs based on characters from the Conan fiction that players will want to capture and make use of in their own cities.

It sounds like there's lots more to come for Conan Exiles, with a $5-10 million investment planned for this year. The full launch of the completed Conan Exiles is currently slated for PC, PS4, and Xbox One within the first quarter of 2018.

In other Conan Exiles news, 320,000 copies were sold within one week. Here's an explanation from Funcom on why the game features nudity alongside its violence. And here's our explicit video of the character creation process.

This story has been updated and corrected.