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I love the introduction of crafting to gaming. As a male-dominated, often toxic hobby, it pleases me that many of the most demanding games involve little artsy crafting stations, running around the forest collecting nice materials, and tirelessly committing to resource management.
It’s cute that some folk think these games wouldn’t appeal to women (or are downright rude about it) when they’ve been painting their armor different colors to match their horse this whole time.
Conan Exiles is no exception. If someone tells you it’s much more than a home-maker sim, they’re confused about what they’re playing. This game has significant combat issues and scarcely a story in sight, but it has beautiful base-building mechanics and an in-depth Conan Exiles crafting system.
While those of us with more than half a brain cell know that gender hardly matters in what draws you into a video game, there is certainly an irony in games like these and what their typical players think about them. Go sew together a nice top to match your armor dress at your cute armor bench.
TL:DR: Crafty Exile
Buildings, weapons, armor, tools, food, and everything else you use in Conan Exiles will need to be crafted. Your gear’s quality will determine your game progress, and each system builds on the last.
To craft items in Conan Exiles, you will need an in-hand recipe, a crafting station recipe, or a station to process the item. You can learn most of these recipes by leveling and spending feat points and acquire the rest by finding them out in the world or stationing a high-level thrall at the station.
Once you have access to the recipe or you’ve built the station to make the item, you’ll need to load the materials for that item into the station’s inventory.
Some stations require fuel to operate, so ensure you’ve also loaded those items into your station’s inventory. After that, all you have to do is press the craft button to begin crafting your item. Crafting items is not difficult, but knowing what you need to craft and how to use the stations can take some patience.
You cannot learn every feat recipe in the game initially, so choose your leveling path wisely. Eventually, you will be able to learn every feat, but it takes considerable effort.
My Experience with Crafting
Everyone that plays Conan Exiles will quickly accrue experience with crafting. Your progress is completely dependent on making your own items.
I’ve managed to learn most feats and find many of the recipes in the game, so I like to think I have a solid understanding of crafting mechanics and what to prioritize. I tend to be the armorer for my clan. Similar to the Fab 5, I want all my friends to look their best.
I am a hard-headed gamer, and I admit that I missed some really obvious crafting mechanics for several play-throughs. For instance, it was an embarrassingly long time until I learned about gruel, which makes the early game survival and feeding thralls remarkably easier.
I should have read a crafting guide instead of making all my mistakes head-on. The fortunate thing about Conan Exiles is that there are always alternate routes to accomplish your mission. I was just choosing the wrong alternatives for a frustrating amount of time.
The Basics of Crafting
If you don’t enjoy crafting, consider playing a different game. Crafting is not an optional venture in Conan Exiles but a core gameplay mechanic.
Most of the items you’ll use throughout your adventure must be crafted, which means crafting will always be at the back of your mind. The first crafting inventory available to you will be in handcrafting or inventory crafting.
You will have to make several basic items to progress any further on your adventure, including a weapon, hatchet, and pick. The list of items you’ll be making for yourself will slowly grow until you have an entire empire of things you’ve cobbled together yourself.
To access most of these items, you’ll need to invest feat points to learn their recipe. Your character earns more feat points by leveling up, so you’ll have plenty to spend as you make your way through the desert.
Keep in mind, however, that you won’t be able to learn every feat by leveling, so you should choose your path wisely. Eventually, you will be able to learn every feat, but it’s a relatively difficult process. You will also find recipes out in the world, available at crafting stations and by stationing high-tier thralls.
To make your first items, you’ll need to collect their ingredients list and have those items in your inventory. For example, the stone hatchet requires 5 branches and 5 stones. Look on the ground and use your action button to pick up these materials.
Go somewhere safe to craft the item; whenever you’re using your inventory to craft an item, your character will slow as if they’re encumbered. Be careful to choose the “craft one” button and not the “craft all” button. This can be a frustrating mistake.
Crafting Stations
The best method to thoroughly cover crafting in Conan Exiles is to go station by station. Where you craft the item is the easiest way to categorize it, with some minor exceptions. Crafting stations must be built themselves and then placed somewhere out in the world.
Once they are placed, open up their inventory to view their own set of recipes. If no recipes are listed, you must know what goes into the station on your own. Fear not! I’ll be covering the basics of these stations in this guide.
One fun thing to note about crafting stations is that not only are they decorations on their own, but decorations can be added to them. Try putting bowls, plates, cups, and more on their surface to customize your base.
Hand Crafting
Hand-crafting, in-hand crafting, or inventory crafting all refer to the same mechanic in Conan Exiles. Some items will be crafted in your inventory crafting menu without the aid of a station. For instance, your very first items will be crafted in your in-hand menu, so it will be the first type of crafting to familiarize yourself with.
Additionally, items that are helpful on the go will remain in your in-hand crafting menu. This allows you to set up small camps in convenient places with bedrolls, campfires, and small buildings.
Most of the crafting stations themselves will be crafted in your inventory crafting menu. As you learn feats, your inventory crafting menu will become massive. You may never use this feature anywhere else, but you can search through your inventory crafting menu in the upper right-hand corner of the inventory screen.
Cooking
Cooking stations are some of the first you’ll master, and they are slightly different than the other stations in your crafting menu. Cooking stations require fuel and have a combination of recipe lists and do-it-yourself mechanics.
The Campfire
The campfire and the large campfire make a small set of moderately intuitive recipes that you will have to learn yourself. They require fuel, such as wood, to operate. They will craft your raw item into a cooked item while the fuel burns.
Try game meat and fish on a campfire to turn them into an item that won’t give you food poisoning but will fill you more and heal more health when full.
One of the benefits of a small campfire is that it can be easily hidden from prowling enemies. NPCs will not go out of their patrol path, but another player can spot a large campfire from a mile away. Use small campfires as you traverse the wilds to make sure no one gets a jump on you at night.
One recipe that may not be obvious yet is one of the campfires most important is the recipe for gruel. Just put five plant fiber and one seed in your campfire and then light it to produce gruel. Another weird recipe that you might find helpful is that you can put five blood in the campfire to make blood sausage.
The Stove
The stove can cook all the same items as a campfire, with the addition of specific recipes. In addition to combatting your hunger meter, food is the most efficient way to heal in Conan Exiles.
It may not seem obvious why you would need to build a stove when you’ve been doing just fine keeping yourself alive with a campfire, but more complicated recipes will produce food that quickly heals your health bar with its sated buff.
Many of the stove’s recipes need to be found out in the world or are only available with a high-level cook thrall stationed there, but the basics are learned through feats. You’ll have access to some fun recipes as soon as you build and open the stove’s inventory.
Raw Materials – No Recipes
Crafting stations that turn raw materials into helpful products are some of the more difficult to learn. They don’t have recipes to follow in their inventory but instead require either a try-it-all method or some research. These are the stations that require fuel, though some will operate without.
The Furnace
The furnace will be your most used station and will keep you constantly on the lookout for fuel. To operate the furnace, first stock it with wood, coal, or oil. Wood is pretty easy to find, but coal and oil are a little more difficult to come by. This, of course, means they burn longer.
The first item you’ll be able to make in your furnace is brick. Simply load in some stone and some fuel and press the crafting button. Check out our tutorial on how to make a brick here!
The most important ingredient for your furnace (for a very long time) will be ironstone. Use ironstone to craft iron bars, which can be used to upgrade everything from your weapons to your tools. You’ll also be able to turn crystal into glass, ironstone, steelfire into steel, and even goldstone into gold bars.
The Tannery
The tannery may be the first station you build and use because life is painful in the Exiled Lands when you are wearing pants made of plants. Wouldn’t it be better to wear some hide? Well, you can’t! You have to use a tannery to process hide into leather, and then you can take it to your armorer’s bench to make some pants.
The tannery requires bark as fuel to operate. Bark can be collected by using a pick or pickaxe on trees. Add any hide you’ve found along with as much bark as you have the patience to collect to your tannery and press the crafting button. The tannery will turn your hide into leather while producing tar as a by-product.
Your leather will need to be hauled to the appropriate station to turn it into anything else.
The Dryer
The dryer will be the first station on the list that can really ruin your day. It does not discriminate on what you supply it and can turn valuable components into basic ones. The dryer also requires bark for fuel and does not have any recipes available in its inventory. You’ll need to know what you’re doing to use the dryer efficiently.
The first thing you might use the dryer for is to dry your meats and fish. This will extend their decay timer and save more of your food supplies from rot. Eventually, you’ll own a preservation box (a refrigerator) and may no longer have any use for this function of the dryer. Did you know the dryer can also take plants and turn them into seeds?
The dryer’s main use will be to dry out some wood. You may dry out wood to turn it into a more efficient fuel source or because a recipe calls for it. When you dry wood, you’ll also end up with resin. Resin can be used in a couple of recipes but is mostly used to make insulated wood and stone consolidate.
Drying one piece of wood creates 2 dry wood and one resin, which you’ll use to create insulated wood which takes 2 resin and one dry wood.
If this whole process seems redundant, it’s because it is. It mimics how wood is dried for building in real life by pulling resin and then applying it to the outside. It also means you’ll end up with extra dry wood, which can be used as fuel.
The Grinder
The grinder is another operation that can get you into trouble if you don’t know the outcome of what you’re adding to its inventory. There are no recipes to help steer you through using the grinder effectively, so make sure you know what the outcome will be before you grind up a new item.
The grinder does not require fuel. Just place the item you want to grind in its inventory and press the craft button.
Many items can be added to the grinder to make bonemeal, most notably bones. Bonemeal is a big deal for composting and is used in both compost and essence of rot.
Any ten stacks of plants or ten stacks of seeds you put in the grinder will yield one spice, which is used for cooking. It is far more efficient to use plants to make spice and grow your seeds into more plants, but this can be tedious for some players. Lastly, stones put in the grinder will yield salt, which is also used for cooking.
The Fluid Press
The fluid press is the last machine that you’ll need to exercise caution when using. It will press a long list of items, often yielding a less valuable ingredient. Once something is pressed, you can’t get it back. The fluid press does not have recipes to guide you, but it also does not require fuel.
You can make blood, bone, and ichor by pressing monster parts in the fluid press. These base ingredients are used in other stations. The most sought-after of the three is ichor, which is an ingredient in alchemical base. You’ll be using an alchemical base to make all sorts of advanced potions at the alchemist’s table.
You’ll use the fluid press most often to turn fish into oil. You can also turn seeds into oil, but unless you are unable to farm fish, this is a much more inefficient way to produce oil. Oil is the most efficient fuel in the game and is great for keeping a wall of furnaces running.
The Firebowl Cauldron
The firebowl cauldron takes mostly raw resources and combines them to make helpful components that are necessary at other stations. You won’t find a recipe list in this crafting station, but you also won’t need to supply it with fuel.
The firebowl cauldron turns out some of the most valuable ingredients in the game. Try adding resin and plant fiber if you need stone consolidant for building. If it’s time to make some alchemical base, you’ll need ichor, gold dust, silver dust, and resin.
Realistically though, the first ingredient you’ll need the firebowl cauldron for is steelfire. Once iron just isn’t making the cut anymore, it’s time to look into crafting steel weapons and tools.
The first step is building a firebowl cauldron and adding brimstone and tar to its inventory. Press craft, and you’ll wind up with a component called steelfire. This can be combined with iron bars in the furnace to make steel bars.
Refined Products – Recipes Included
While many of these stations accept raw materials, their included recipes show how advanced your Conan Exiles crafting can get as you advance through them. You’ll be using these stations to either make more refined ingredients or complete the project.
The Tanner’s Table
In the early game, the tanner’s table is a bit more of a convenience item than a necessary one, but it will eventually become necessary for high-level armor. There are recipes in the inventory of the tanner’s table to get you started, but it can be difficult to understand what to use the station for until you play for a while and can put it into context.
To start, the tanner’s table is able to take twine crafting out of your inventory, which is helpful when you have a bulk order. It will also be the only way to process vines into either plant fiber or twine, depending on your needs.
Additionally, you can add things like pelts and skins to the tanner’s table to get even more hide from your kills. The same is true for gossamer from spiders for more silk. Eventually, you will need the tanner’s table to make advanced armor components.
Use some alchemical base (made at the alchemist’s bench) at the tanner’s table to make hardened leather, layered silk, and layered fur.
The Carpenter’s Bench
The carpenter’s bench is where woodworkers go to hone their craft. You’ll first use the carpenter’s bench to make your animal pen and stables. After that, it will become your base of operations for all your archery needs.
Both bows and arrows are crafted on the carpenter’s bench. Lastly, you’ll need to load materials into this station to create fish and shellfish traps.
What will keep you coming back for more is the recipe for shaped wood on the carpenter’s bench. Most T2+ stations and buildings require shaped wood to craft.
The Blacksmith’s Bench
The blacksmith’s bench is best placed right next to your furnace. Here you’ll make any weapons and tools that are more advanced than our first basic round of stone and branch items. The blacksmith’s bench does have recipes to guide you through the process, and you can spend a lot of feat points becoming an advanced blacksmith.
If you are playing with friends, blacksmithing may be one area that one person specializes in so that the other players can specialize in armor or building. You may learn all the feats eventually, but it is a lengthy process.
Craft weapons and tools at the blacksmith’s bench. You’ll also frequent the blacksmith’s bench to craft iron and steel reinforcements needed to build advanced structures and crafting stations.
The Armorer’s Bench
The armorer’s bench works in tandem with the tannery to craft armor from hides, silk, fur, and metal. You will need to turn hide into leather at the tannery before it will be usable for all but a couple of things at the armorer’s bench. The better your hide, the better the leather will be.
The armorer’s bench does have recipes to assist in your crafting ventures. One particular item to note is the paddings. Most armor recipes require armor paddings, and you’ll need to take them into account when you go fetch ingredients.
Crafting decent armor is one of the very first steps to focus on in Conan Exiles, so you will likely become familiar with this station before any of the others.
The Alchemist’s Table
If you were thinking about putting off building an alchemist’s bench, let me be the first to say that I felt the same way when I first started playing, and it was a mistake. Potions and wraps are not just for end-game content in Conan Exiles.
Your plant fiber wraps will do in a pinch, but the aloe potions you can make at this bench are a gamechanger when it comes to tough fights. You’ll find the recipe for them in the bench’s menu after you build it.
You can certainly go down a long, dark tunnel when it comes to making specialized potions at the alchemist’s table, but even if you don’t, you’ll be using it to crank out mountains of aloe potions. Potions are the most effective emergency healer in Conan Exiles. Place your alchemist’s bench next to your planters and grinder to save on run time.
The Tinker’s Bench
Now we’re venturing into the benches that aren’t absolutely vital to your success in the Exiled Lands, but they are incredibly helpful. First up is the tinker’s bench, where you can make items that upgrade, repair, and specialize your weapons, tools, and armor.
In the beginning, you’ll only be repairing your armor and weapons, but it won’t take long until you’re upgrading and specializing them.
You won’t want to avoid the tinker’s bench when you start finding unique weapons and armor that you can’t craft yourself. Not only do repair kits save on resources for items you can craft, but they can keep a piece of gear going that you otherwise would not have access to.
I, personally, don’t have the patience of a tinker, but that probably means I’m missing out. These items can give you the edge in an otherwise deadly situation.
The Casting Table
Do you love gold? Being wealthy in Conan Exiles is usually more about your base and gear, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have a fat treasure chest worth of gold to go along with them. Craft coins to spend at NPC merchants at the casting table.
You’ll need to create the mold first, and then you can start crafting your very own gold and silver coins. You’ll also be able to cast other riches at the table, such as jewelry for you and your thralls.
You’ll also be able to make glass vials at the casting table, which are necessary for advanced recipes at the alchemist’s table or creating dyes at the dyer’s bench. One could argue that this is the most important function of the casting table, but I prefer the gold!
The Saddler’s Worktable
Bring a stack of every leather to make saddles at this station. You’re going to need it. It is incredibly frustrating to me the sheer amount of articles online that detail how to find and raise a foal to ride without ever mentioning that mounts cannot be ridden in Conan Exiles without a saddle. In fact, a saddle is arguably the most expensive and difficult part of securing a mount.
You can increase your mounts vitality by leveling them correctly, but you won’t be able to do anything with their speed or stamina unless you invest in saddle making.
The Artisan Table
We’ve finally arrived at the fun benches. I don’t think anyone would argue that an artisan table is a necessary addition to your base, but everyone has one anyway. Cobble together furniture unique to your tastes and your base at the artisan table.
Build a fortress worthy of your thralls and your clan. You can even interact with some of the furniture, and more functionality is added to every patch!
Just don’t touch my full set of Conan figurines.
The Dyer’s Bench
The magenta knight returns to lay waste to your kingdom once more.
If you’re looking to leave an impression on your next enemy, consider a dyer’s bench. Just about every color can be crafted on the bench, and then applied to specific areas of your armor until you have exactly the look you’re going for.
The bench is not all just aesthetic upgrades, with the addition of warpaint comes some additional functionality to the dyer’s bench.
Not every war paint affects stats, so make sure you’re certain you have a recipe for one that does before you spend the ingredients, unless you just like the way they look.
Crafting Thralls
No, I’m not talking about making thralls. I’m talking about the type of thrall that works a crafting station. There are two types of thralls really, the kind that follows you around and fights things, and the kind that needs to be stationed on a bench to do their job. These thralls include blacksmiths, armorers, cooks, tanners, and most other professions.
Thralls provide bonuses to their appropriate station. These can be crafting speed or item quality or both. Thralls come in tiers, and the better the thrall, the higher the bonuses.
You’ll spot these higher tiers in the wild by their superior gear, and you can confirm you’ve captured a higher tier under their character page once you pull them from the wheel.
Top-quality crafting thralls may even add helpful or valuable recipes to the bench you station them on. In fact, this is the only way to access some recipes. Additionally, the highest tier thralls (or named thralls) may come in a specialization, which may determine which station they need to man.
Learn It All: Fragments of Power
As I’ve stated before, there is no natural way to learn every feat. You will have to pick and choose as you level to make sure you learn everything you care to learn the easy way.
After that, you’ll need to collect Fragments of Power to round out your education. With Fragments of Power, or more specifically Tablets of Power, you can eventually learn every feat for your character.
It would take an entire guide to detail Fragments of Power, but the basic concept is that they are drops from the game’s most difficult bosses. You’ll find them in the Unnamed City predominantly both from the bosses and in small chests, but they can also drop from other big bosses around the world.
What’s important to remember is that using the Fragments of Power as they are is the least efficient way to gain feat points. If you can be patient and craft five into a Tablet of Power, you’ll get much more bang for your Fragments of Power in the long run.
Conan Exiles Crafting FAQs
Question: How Do You Craft in Conan Exiles?
Answer: If you are just starting out, I suggest taking a moment to familiarize yourself with your feats menu and your in-hand or inventory crafting menu. Don’t worry, the desert area you start in (the broken corridor on the map) does not have any hostile NPCs, despite how it appears.
Collect branches and stone from the ground and then learn the survival feat to turn them into useful tools. Don’t forget to snatch fiber from plants as you move into a scrubbier desert area because a bedroll will be one of your first creations.
Question: How Do You Get New Crafting Recipes in Conan Exiles?
Answer: Crafting recipes can be learned from your feat menu, found in the world, available at new stations, or available once you station a high-tier thrall at that station. If you feel like you’re missing a substantial amount of recipes, or stuck in any way, try crafting all of the stations in your inventory menu and checking out their recipe menu.
Some stations don’t have recipes to help your efforts, so you’ll either need to look up how to use them or experiment until you figure it out. If you are confused about a recipe listed online, check what level the feat is learned at. If it says 0, then that recipe is likely found out in the world.
Question: Can I Learn Every Feat in Conan Exiles?
Answer: Yes, you can, but not initially. It is important to choose how to spend your feat points wisely, because though you are able to obtain more eventually, it’s a difficult process. You’ll want to have learned everything you need to know to survive while you adventure to complete your feat tree.
Of course, if you make a mistake or want to try a new path you can always drink a yellow lotus potion and reset your feats. In this way, you can craft everything you need and then drink another yellow lotus potion to re-invest the points in your chosen path.
Question: What Kind of Thrall Goes on the Artisan Table?
Answer: A tanner is your best bet on the artisan table. Not only do they increase crafting speed, but a named T4 tanner will add the recipe “extract silk” to the artisan table. This recipe can turn fat grubs from your compost pile into valuable silk.
Question: How Do You Craft in Conan Exiles?
Answer: If you are just starting out, I suggest taking a moment to familiarize yourself with your feats menu and your in-hand or inventory crafting menu. Don’t worry, the desert area you start in (the broken corridor on the map) does not have any hostile NPCs, despite how it appears.
Collect branches and stone from the ground and then learn the survival feat to turn them into useful tools. Don’t forget to snatch fiber from plants as you move into a scrubbier desert area because a bedroll will be one of your first creations.
Question: How Do You Get New Crafting Recipes in Conan Exiles?
Answer: Crafting recipes can be learned from your feat menu, found in the world, available at new stations, or available once you station a high-tier thrall at that station. If you feel like you’re missing a substantial amount of recipes, or stuck in any way, try crafting all of the stations in your inventory menu and checking out their recipe menu.
Some stations don’t have recipes to help your efforts, so you’ll either need to look up how to use them or experiment until you figure it out. If you are confused about a recipe listed online, check what level the feat is learned at. If it says 0, then that recipe is likely found out in the world.
Question: Can I Learn Every Feat in Conan Exiles?
Answer: Yes, you can, but not initially. It is important to choose how to spend your feat points wisely, because though you are able to obtain more eventually, it’s a difficult process. You’ll want to have learned everything you need to know to survive while you adventure to complete your feat tree.
Of course, if you make a mistake or want to try a new path you can always drink a yellow lotus potion and reset your feats. In this way, you can craft everything you need and then drink another yellow lotus potion to re-invest the points in your chosen path.
Question: What Kind of Thrall Goes on the Artisan Table?
Answer: A tanner is your best bet on the artisan table. Not only do they increase crafting speed, but a named T4 tanner will add the recipe “extract silk” to the artisan table. This recipe can turn fat grubs from your compost pile into valuable silk.
Crafting Up a Storm
Before you know it, you’re going to be running a monstrous operation. You’ll have a task list a mile long before you even get to head out of your base door. You would think crafting station thralls would help the matter, but there are some things you just have to do yourself.
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