Conan Exiles Combat Guide

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Emily Parker

Emily, or Zoe if you’re on her discord, is a Conan Exiles guide contributor and long-term fan. She’s been raiding bases since its release, mixing in some Rust, Archeage, Apex Legends, Hearthstone, Don’t Starve, and Horizon Zero Dawn. Video games have been a core aspect of her life since she was a child with an N64. When she needs a break, she’ll switch genres and start a new kind of adventure, though survival games have always been a favorite.

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It’s hard to imagine a survival game without combat. There is a reason it’s the backbone of most survival titles. Combat adds the type of spontaneity and variety a game about resource management needs to stay entertaining.

A survival game without great combat is in danger of feeling tedious prematurely and losing players’ interests well before they get their money’s worth out of the game. It’s hard to imagine suffering through the genre’s mechanics without the challenge and reward of combat.

Conan Exiles tries very hard in the combat department. It’s no single-player RPG, but the combat is relatively deep for a multiplayer game. Conan Exiles combat is always rewarding in a survival game; I mean, you get to keep their stuff. Sometimes, however, it can feel unfair.

Conan Exiles does a good job of ensuring you always feel like you have a shot while simultaneously rewarding players who have devoted a lot of time to their level and gear. Don’t get me wrong, a fully leveled and well-geared player will chop a new Exile right in half, but the new Exile barely has anything to lose.

TL:DR: Hack and Slash

Combat in Conan Exiles is a combination of real-time action and RPG elements. Your character will string together light and heavy attacks in sequences, either all of one attack or a combination of the two types of attack.

These combos are determined by the weapon you have equipped, and some weapon types can even apply helpful debuffs to your opponent. Combine these intricacies with your character’s attribute tree to reveal the larger picture of your combat style in the game.

Both weapons and armor depend on your attribute tree and perks to function at their fullest potential. Attributes and the associated perks can be learned with AP, which is awarded at each new level. Your opponents may steal your fancy armor and brand-new sword, but they cannot take your AP points.

Speaking of stealing, there are two types of combat you’ll be concerned with in Conan Exiles, PvP, and PvE. PvP will prove the more challenging of the two. You can choose a PvE server and concentrate on NPC combat, or you can join a PvP server and worry about both. While there is a targeting system in Conan Exiles, it will not help you land a hit against a skilled player, and they will take all your stuff from your corpse once you hit the dust.

My Experience with Combat in Conan Exiles

Everyone that plays Conan Exiles gets a taste of combat right out of the gate. I remember when I first started playing. I never expected there to be much to the combat system. Most survival games of the time used pretty basic concepts, with little difference between weapon choices and minimal strategy to worry about.

If there was a strategy to consider, it was a product of how variable the games can be, not something the developers intentionally implement into their combat system.

I made whatever weapons I thought looked cool and matched them with whatever armor I could afford. I was shocked when I witnessed my first PvP battle and saw opponents trading out weapons and moving very differently from each other due to their armor choices. This experience and the combat of Conan Exiles were part of what grabbed me.

I decided to devote much more time researching weapons and armor and finding strategies that worked well for my play style. With the introduction of mounts, the battlefield changed for those of us still playing on PvP servers, and it was time to learn everything about combat again.

Combat: The Basics

Conan Exiles combat can be boiled down to stringing moves together in a way that inflicts the most damage while keeping you safe from attacks from your opponent. Combat is real-time, though it is affected by RPG elements like your own personal and equipment stats. While you can target your opponent to keep track of their health and status more efficiently, the targeting system won’t help you land a hit.

Swinging weapons, blocking attacks, and dodging (along with other non-combat activities like sprinting and climbing) all drain your stamina pool. An empty stamina pool will slow your character to a crawl and make it difficult to continue fighting. You won’t even be able to sprint away, as that also takes stamina.

Weapons and armor come with their own moves and fighting with different weapons or armor changes how you fight. They also have varying effects on your stamina pool and encumbrance. If you run out of stamina in a fight with another player, you might as well have run out of health, and while encumbrance might sound like a trivial issue, you’ll find you could use the points elsewhere if you could only find a lighter set of armor.

PvP Vs. PvE

You can face two major types of enemies in Conan Exiles, computer-controlled NPCs in PvE and other players in PvP. You can also choose only to face NPCs if you join a PvE-only server, which I highly recommend for your first game. It is a matter of opinion, but many of the game’s features really shine in PvP play, and it’s worth giving one of these servers a shot once you understand the game’s basic mechanics.

There are many nuances to PvP fighting, but the most important one for beginners to remember is that there is nothing more important in a fight against another player than your damage output and ability to land hits without leaving yourself wide open. Weapons with good range and high damage are excellent additions to your PvP arsenal.

The second thing to focus on is your survivability, health, and armor. While it’s essential to be able to have some longevity in a fight, your damage output comes first because the sooner you can take someone out, the less you need a high health bar.

Combat Style

There is a combination of things that determine your combat style in Conan Exiles, besides just your own personal flair. Your character’s attributes will combine with the weapon and armor you choose to paint a broader picture of how you’ll fight other players.

In addition, your thrall or animal follower will only add to your prowess on the battlefield and viability as a dungeon crawler. You must consider all of these variables when sizing up an opponent or making decisions about your own build.

Attributes

Every single attribute in Conan Exiles has an effect on combat. At each level, your character will gain attribute points you can spend on whichever is most important to you. You’ll only ever have 60 natural attribute points total, so you’ll never be able to fill out the tree completely. This means you’ll have to make tough decisions about spending your points.

The game rewards players for dedicating points to a specific attribute with a feature called perks. Your character will receive a bonus perk related to the attribute at 5, 10, 15, and 20 points spent in that attribute. These perks add to the strategy of your build. Some of these perks are so valuable they’ll keep your points hostage when you may have the stats from other attributes instead.

What’s essential about attribute points is to ensure that attribute is relevant to your build before you dump all your points into it. Because attributes have non-combat functions, it can be easy to mismatch your combat build and non-combat build.

Another critical aspect of attribute points is that they are one of the few things in the game that cannot be taken away from you. On particularly heated servers, it may make sense to focus on leveling your character and collecting your AP points before you bother trying to build or acquire anything too valuable.

You can always reset your attribute points with a yellow lotus potion. Some players even reset between dungeon runs and run with a completely different build, depending on their needs.

Status Effects or Debuffs

While there are status effects in Conan Exiles that are caused by the environment, many of them are caused by combat, and to be successful against advanced opponents, you’ll need to be familiar with how they affect the fight. Status effects can be deadly. They can stack until they are applying vast amounts of damage over time (that bypasses armor) or slow your character down for so long that they cannot escape until they die.

NPCs can apply status effects, but they are introduced to you slowly. The first NPC you will likely have trouble with due to the debuff they apply is the hyena. Hyenas apply cripple, which will slow you down. It may not slow you down enough to keep you from killing or running from one hyena, but a pack of them stacking cripple will make escaping difficult.

The good news is that you can apply your own status effects, or weapon debuffs, to your enemies. You can apply debuffs that cause high-armored opponents to bleed out or debuffs that keep faster PvP opponents from getting away. These will all be determined by your weapon and whether you are a practicing sorcerer.

Weapons

Your choice of weapon will have the most impact on how you fight other players and NPCs. You can either craft or find the weapons you use in Conan Exiles, but all weapons lose durability as they are used and will need to be repaired or tossed.

Weapon types determine your move-set and the types of debuff that you will likely apply. Each weapon is different (and sometimes the debuffs they apply are different), but if they are of the same type, they will have the same moves.

The characteristic weapons do share is the choice between light and heavy attacks. Light attacks are actions that perform quickly and leave little room for your opponent to take a free hit. They also do the least damage and usually have the least reach.

Heavy attacks do the most damage, have the longest reach, and usually apply the most debuffs through combos. However, they leave your character wide open for counter-attacks. They also drain the most stamina. Get comfortable with the timing of full light and heavy combinations from your weapon of choice, and then try mixing and matching moves from the light and heavy combo buttons.

Armor

Armor types will affect your ability to move well and how much you can carry. Armor’s primary purpose is to protect your character from physical damage, but be aware that there are ways to inflict damage that bypass armor. Armor can also be either found or crafted but will wear out with use. You can repair the armor you craft or find with ingredients of its own quality.

There are three armor types: light, medium, and heavy. The heavier the armor, the more damage it will stop from normal attacks, but the more it weighs, the less mobile your character will be.

The choice you’ll need to make here is whether you’d rather avoid damage altogether by dodging most of it completely and having plenty of strength left to carry around treasures or if you’d rather rely on heavy armor to mitigate most of it for you and leave some of the treasures back in the dungeon.

It may sound like a simple decision: wouldn’t you rather just dodge all the damage coming your way? In an ideal world, you would, but most of the dungeons you’ll be crawling aren’t ideal. It’s tough to keep dodging when you’re stuck between a grave, ten skeletons, and a cave wall.

Thralls

The game changes drastically when you’re ready to capture your first thrall or raise your first animal companion. While this may be a more advanced concept in other games, it’s a core part of Conan Exiles’s combat from almost the beginning.

If anything, a companion is an overpowered addition early on. Not only can they easily have multiple times your health and armor in a short span of time, but they have encumbrance-free inventory space to take advantage of.

You’ll need to choose to build a wheel of pain to capture human NPCs and turn them into thralls or an animal pen to raise animal companions. You’ll only need to be level 15 to build a lesser wheel of pain, learn the recipe for a truncheon to knock out your chosen NPC, and the recipe for bindings to drag them back to camp to place in your wheel. You’ll be looking for a fighter, archer, or entertainer NPC for a combat companion.

Animal Followers

You can learn the animal pen at level 13, and creating an animal companion is easier when compared to a thrall. All you’ll need to do is find a baby animal. All baby animals, besides foals, will grow into combat companions.

Followers level up and have attribute points just like your character. Pay close attention to your follower’s attributes, even at this early stage in the game. Followers have two numbers on their attribute page, the number of points they start with and that attribute’s growth percentage.

While the number they start with under that attribute is essential, a high growth percentage will mean they are much more likely to grow this stat as they level. You can even feed them food that increases this growth percentage.

First Steps

I highly suggest you craft one of each type of stone weapon available to you when you first set out in Conan Exiles. They are cheap recipes compared to the time you can waste using a weapon that doesn’t fit your playstyle. There is no way to describe each type’s reach, speed, or combos that can beat just by trying them out yourself. There is a reason so many weapon types are available so early in the game. Funcom wants you to try all of them out!

Additionally, build your wheel of pain and/or animal pen as quickly as possible. Followers approximately double your combat power and inventory space. You could reasonably create a tier 1 thrall or raise a beginner animal companion without a stitch of armor or anything more than a truncheon and come out ahead immediately.

Weapon Types and Characteristics

Weapon types do more than affect stats and appearance in Conan Exiles; they determine how your character will fight, and I’m not just talking about combos here. Each type has its own set of light and heavy combos, and each type may have a typical debuff that it applies on certain moves.

I say “may have” because some weapon types do not apply debuffs, and I say “typical debuff” because there are some exceptions for individual weapons. More valuable weapons can even come with additional debuffs.

One-handed weapons can be paired with a shield, bindings, torch, or a throwing weapon, but you cannot dual-wield two one-handed weapons. Two-handed weapons require both hands and force your off-hand slot to remain empty. Bows require both hands and ammo to operate.

Weapon damage is affected by attributes, specifically either strength or agility. Your attribute tree should match your weapon choice. There is no sense in wielding a weapon that scales with strength if you’ve decided to dump all your points into agility and vice versa. This will be your first consideration regarding your overall combat build.

Here is a helpful list of weapon types, the stat they use, and their typical debuffs:

One-Handed

One-Handed Swords generally have no debuff. They are agility-based weapons that attack directly with medium range. They are good for tight spaces and avoiding friendly fire.

One-Handed Maces apply sunder, which will lower your opponent’s armor. They are strength-based weapons with a shield bash bonus. The shield bash bonus will prevent you from staggering when you swing and hit another NPC’s or player’s shield.

One-Handed Axes apply both cripple and bleed. Cripple slows your opponent down, and bleed does damage over time that avoids armor. One-handed axes are strength-based weapons and excellent PvP choices.

One-Handed Spears apply cripple. Cripple slows your opponent down. If you complete a heavy combo sequence, your character will throw the one-handed spear on the last move. While their regular attacks already have incredible reach, they are even more versatile. One-handed spears are agility-based weapons.

Two-Handed

Daggers are considered two-handed weapons in Conan Exiles and are the best at stacking bleed. They have terrible range, but at the rate they can stack bleed on your opponent, this keeps them from being an overpowered choice. They are great secondary weapons for equipping when you can close the gap. Daggers are agility-based weapons.

Two-Handed Axes do not apply a debuff. Instead, they set themselves apart by being the only two-handed weapon that can block. Two-handed axes are strength-based weapons.

Two-Handed Katanas do not apply a debuff. They are rare but can charge attacks. Katanas are agility-based weapons.

Two-Handed Maces apply sunder. Sunder lowers your opponent’s armor. They are slow but inflict a lot of damage if your timing is practiced. Two-handed maces are predictably strength-based weapons.

Two-Handed Spears do not apply a debuff but have the longest reach of any hand-held weapons in the game. Two-handed spears are strength-based weapons.

Two-Handed Swords apply cripple, which slows your opponent down. If you make it through their heavy attack combo, their last attack will perform a knockback. Two-handed swords are great at controlling the battlefield (for a two-handed weapon). They are strength-based weapons.

Ranged

Bows can apply whatever debuff your ammunition dictates. They are agility-based weapons with the greatest range in-game. Their damage is low, and they are best used in conjunction with a melee weapon.

There are no true rangers in Conan Exiles, but everyone carries a bow for free, low-risk ranged damage and to apply healing and debuffs at a distance.

Armor Types and Characteristics

Armor comes in 3 different types: light, medium, and heavy. It is an easy mistake to assume type signifies quality, but this is incorrect. The game leads you to believe that heavier armor is more valuable. While working through the recipes on your armorer’s bench requires a higher level and more mats to make heavier armor.

Additionally, the stats on heavier armor appear much more beneficial to the player. The missing piece of the puzzle is how this armor will affect your movement and encumbrance limits.

Armor in Conan Exiles works on diminishing returns. At low armor levels, the armor blocks more damage for your investment. To block more and more damage, your armor investment will climb exponentially instead of linearly. This concept is slightly easier to visualize with an example.

How Armor Actually Works: Diminishing Returns

At only 500 armor, your character will be blocking 50% of damage coming their way. If the relationship was linear, instead of diminishing, it would stand to reason that 750 armor would block 75% of the damage taken.

Instead, you’ll need 1500 armor to block 75% of the damage taken. This is important to consider when choosing your end-game set. A couple of hundred armor points once you’re past, say, 2000, has minimal effect on the amount of damage blocked compared to when your total was around 500.

Instead, you’ll likely focus on the bonuses and benefits different armor provides. If your decision is between a piece that adds vitality and a piece with a couple hundred more armor points, but your armor total will be in the thousands, it will be easy to choose the piece with attributes.

Adversely, if your armor total is lower, the addition of a couple of hundred points of armor will drastically change how much damage will be blocked.

Here is a convenient list of the types of armor and their bonuses:

Light Armor

Light armor has the highest stamina regeneration, but your character will be the most affected by being over-encumbered while wearing it. Your dodge will be the fastest, and you can reserve your stamina for more dodging and sprinting.

Medium Armor

Players may still dodge while wearing medium armor and have decent stamina regeneration. They will be slightly more encumbered while wearing medium armor because it’s heavier, but they will be less affected by becoming over-encumbered.

Heavy Armor

You will give up your ability to dodge by wearing heavy armor, but its armor rating will be so much higher than the other two you’ll be able to take a few extra hits. You will need to focus on your encumbrance; it’s possible to put on so much heavy armor that you’re over-encumbered before you have anything more than tools in your bag. The good news is that being over-encumbered has the least effect on a player wearing heavy armor.

Attribute Breakdown

Now that you have a base of knowledge to build on when choosing your armor and weapons, you’ll need to know how to combine them with your character build to be as effective in combat as possible.

There are six total attributes:

Strength

Strength is predominantly intended to increase your character’s damage with strength-based weapons, with minor bonuses towards heavier armor (encumbrance boost).

Strength improves the damage of strength-based weapons by 5% per point spent. It will also help you with agility-based weapons, though not very significantly, by adding .5% damage per point spent. Strength has no effect on your concussive damage but does contribute to your encumbrance by adding three carry weights per point to your total strength.

Agility

Agility is predominantly intended to increase your character’s damage with agility-based weapons and make them more nimble.

Agility improves the damage of agility-based weapons by 5% per point spent. Same as strength, it will return the favor to strength-based weapons at .5% a point. Adding points to agility will also increase how quickly your character recovers after a dodge. In addition, each point of agility will add one stamina per point.

Vitality

Vitality is predominantly intended for increasing your character’s health pool.

Vitality adds 8% to your base health per point. This is a percentage system instead of points to give it a cumulative effect.

Authority

Authority is predominantly intended for increasing the damage output of your followers and the concussive damage you deal.

Authority adds 4% follower damage per point and 6% concussive damage per point. Not only will this attribute help your thralls perform better, but it will also increase your ability to capture them.

Grit

Grit is predominantly used to increase your stamina pool and the effectiveness of your armor.

Grit adds three stamina to your stamina pool per point. Grit also adds eight armor to your base armor per point.

Expertise

Expertise is predominantly used to increase the amount that you can carry.

Expertise adds 15 max carry weight per point. This is great for items in your pack but applies to heavy weapons and armor.

Attribute Perks

You will be awarded a perk at 5, 10, 15, and 20 attribute points committed in one attribute. Many of these are combat bonuses, and having them unlocked can drastically change your character’s viability in certain fights. Perks serve as one more reason to commit to an attribute and ensure your armor, weapon, and playstyle conform to the build.

When choosing a weapon, it’s essential that you like the perks you’ll end up with throughout its attribute tree, whether that’s strength or agility. Strength is for harder-hitting exiles, while agility is best for our more mobile friends. However, you will have choices between perks at certain AP levels, giving you some measure of customization even inside a single attribute’s path.

Sorcery?!

With their new update, Funcom has put it all on the line, introducing dark and dangerous sorcery to the Exiled Lands. They could have gone the easy route with spells that simply raise attributes or do some focused damage. Instead, they introduced a relatively fleshed-out system full of powerful and practical spells. We’re proud of them.

Many spells you’ll learn if you venture into the sorcery tome are quality-of-life improvements and hacks, but others will give you the edge in combat. You’ll need to understand how the system works to understand it more fully.

First Steps: Combat Sorcerer

Learning sorcery is the same as learning any other feat not already located on your feat tree: you must find it out in the world. Kill sorcerers for clues about the tome’s location, and once you’ve found it, construct your Thaumaturgy Bench and the Arcane Staff.

The Arcane Staff will allow you to cast your spells, and upgrading your Tome of Kurak at the Thaumaturgy Bench will allow you to learn more spells. This is a very brief rundown of a complicated process, so don’t be afraid to visit our Conan Exiles Sorcery Guide to learn more about the dark arts.

The Arcane Staff is equipped like a weapon or a tool but cannot be used for traditional combat. It leaves you wide open to attack and must be used strategically, or you’re better off not pulling it out. Your first several spells have little to do with combat, but as you progress as a sorceress, you’ll be blinding, webbing, and pulling down lightning from the heavens to smite your enemies.

The trade-off for this power is corruption. Each spell applies corruption to your character, a dangerous status effect that can easily overpower an unprepared Exile. Corruption reduces a player’s stamina and health by up to 50%, leaving them wide open to other damage and death. Fortunately, with the new implementation of sorcery, Funcom has introduced corrupted stat perks, leveling the playing field for dabbling in high corruption levels.

Corrupted Attributes

Corrupting your stats permanently affects your health and stamina but gives your character access to the most potent combat perks in the game. Your attribute page will detail the types of perks you’ll have access to once you convert to the dark side.

It does not, however, do a great job of explaining how much more powerful these bonuses are than standard perks. There is a reason corrupting yourself makes you physically weaker: it unlocks the most powerful perks in the game.

If you’re considering the effort to level your sorcery past the first couple of ranks, it’s worth at least trying out corrupted perks. Make sure to have the ingredients for the yellow lotus potion on hand if you don’t like what you’ve turned your character into.

Ranged Combat

Before you get carried away with your new favorite melee weapon, don’t forget to craft and practice with a bow. Very few players adventure the Exiled Lands without one. Some dungeons cannot even be completed without one. They are helpful additions to PvP combat but even more necessary for PvE challenges.

Line-of-Sighting: How to Pull NPCs Like a Pro

Bows help pull NPCs gracefully, and some free damage before the fight starts. Splitting packs of NPCs can only be done at range. If you’d rather not fight the entire camp at once, try pulling off as few as you can at a time with a bow first. Some of these NPCs may have ranged attacks as well.

To successfully drag them out of the camp, simply duck behind a large formation or building. A tree even works in a pinch. This is called “line-of-sighting,” and forces ranged mobs to run out of their spawn zone to get a clear shot at you.

PvP Utility

While it would be difficult to win a PvP fight with only a bow, it would be uncommon not to use one. Bows can be used while mounted, but they can also knock down a significant portion of your opponent’s health when the terrain is to your advantage. They will also help you finish off a fleeing opponent, and trust me when I say most players flee when it’s clear they are losing.

If your opponent realizes you don’t have a bow equipped or have not practiced enough to become a decent shot, they may extend the ranged portion of the fight until you have no chance of winning with your melee prowess alone.

The most important feature of your bow will be the ammunition you make for it. Arrows have a surprisingly wide range of uses in Conan Exiles. Most arrow upgrades simply lend them more damage, but the game has a huge variety of arrows to choose from.

They can be an environmental strategy, like the smoke arrow, which clouds the battlefield. There are acid and poison arrows to stack a debuff on your opponent before they even reach you. There are also healing arrows, believe it or not, to keep your thrall or clan members alive. There are even concussive arrows for knocking out dangerous NPCs at a distance so that you can drag them back to your base and turn them into thralls.

Thrall and Animal Follower Combat

The intricacies of combat with a thrall or animal companion are less about real-time strategy during a fight and more about your choice of companion, their equipment, and how you level them.

Sure, there are moments in a PvE fight where you’ll want to step back and let your companion take some damage or times when you jump through hoops to keep them from falling into an acid pit. Still, these are pretty self-explanatory compared to how complicated their RPG elements can be.

Armor and vitality are essential for PvE combat with your follower, but only damage matters in a PvP fight. For this reason, companions tend to be ranked based on their damage alone because these companions are viable in either scenario.

Of course, if companions die, it is a permanent consequence, so you may not typically be traveling with your most valuable companions. Ease of procurement can easily outweigh a couple of damage points, depending on your needs.

Combat Animal Followers

Animal Companions are easier to understand and procure but can never be as powerful as the most powerful thrall with good equipment. As a general rule, animal followers come in two types: a standard version and a greater variant. Every baby animal is the same, but what you feed it in the animal pen can give it a better chance of becoming the greater variant, and this variant is well worth your time.

After that, what you feed it while it levels will increase its chance of leveling certain stats. Each animal prefers different food and has different base stats. For PvP combat, you’ll be focused on looking for an animal with good base strength, good strength leveling chance, and feeding it food to level its strength.

Combat Thralls

Thralls come in four tiers and must be knocked out with concussive damage to capture. High-level tiers will be nearly impossible for you to knock out, but their stats are worth the effort. You must choose how to level a thrall, the same as you would an animal follower, but the good news is that their food preferences are the same across the board.

Next, you will need to decide how to gear them. They will be a ranged companion if you supply them with only a bow. If you want a melee companion, choose a thrall with good default strength and strength growth percentage, and then feed them gruel. If you want an archer companion, choose a thrall with good default agility and agility growth percentage, and then feed them cooked fish.

Mounted Combat

The introduction of mounted combat has shaken Conan Exiles to its core. You will hear some players complain that it’s broken combat completely. In some ways, they are correct, and in some ways, they should just get better. If you are interested in combat on a PvP server, there is no way around mounted combat. A mount is convenient for PvE combat, but for PvP combat, you will be taken advantage of without one.

Several weapons can be used on horseback, including spears, one-handed weapons, and bows. Only one weapon can be used on horseback: the lance. Any of these weapons can be used effectively in PvE combat, but you’ll need the reach of a lance and spear to best an experienced PvP player.

Same as a fight on your own two feet mounted combat relies heavily on stamina preservation. The first player to run out of stamina on their horse will likely be the first one dead. You will be knocked from your horse if you take any damage with no stamina left. However, you can be knocked off earlier if your opponent’s weapons have significant knockback properties.

Mounted Combat Best Practices

The favorite strategy for mounted combat is to start with the lance until your opponent is knocked, then finish them off with a spear. Timing on the lance is more critical than any other weapon, and it can be difficult to recover if you accidentally miss a hit. This is because the lance is used in a charged couched position.

If you miss the release on your lance, you won’t have time to reset it on that pass. The lance does glancing damage, but direct hits are well rewarded. Depending on their saddle, it may only take a few direct lance hits to unseat your opponent.

Once your enemy is on the ground, pull your spear out to finish the job. It’s widely agreed that arrows and big melee hitters are players’ best defense if they find themselves on the ground first. Using a spear will give you the most range, hopefully keeping you mostly out of harm’s length. You can continue using the lance, but they will be far more mobile on the ground, and you are less likely to land a decent hit.

Saddlemaker’s Table

Another important consideration will be how to gear your horse for combat. The only difference between horses is their coloring, so don’t let someone trick you in that regard. The real difference in their performance comes in whatever equipment you can afford to make them. Choose whatever you like in a PvE world, but speed and maneuverability matter most in mounted PvP combat.

Pick a Fight You Can Win

The most important aspect of combat in Conan Exiles is not to bite off more than you can chew. Even a few mistakes on your attribute page or a weapon that is subpar quality for your level won’t spell disaster if you’ve been reasonable about your choice of opponent.

All of these nuances of combat are important, but in a game like Conan Exiles, where the environment is out to get you, and there is no fair fight, your ability to judge the battlefield before you charge in is the most important.

Once you get decent at sizing up your opponents, whether they are NPCs or other players, the second most important contribution you can make to your combat prowess is skill, and skill comes with practice. Contrary to the paragraph before this one, this will require you to get in over your head, hopefully strategically.

If you’ve planned to do something risky, it will hurt less if you die doing it. Run out into the desert with trash gear and murder on your mind, and see if you don’t wind up with a few new moves in your arsenal by the time you return.

FAQ – Conan Exiles Combat

Recommended Reads:

• Is Conan Exiles Cross Platform?
• Conan Exiles Black Keep Guide
• Conan Exiles Elevator Guide
• Conan Exiles Characters Guide
• Conan Exiles Drawbridge Guide
• Conan Exiles Leavening Guide