Conan Exiles Manifestation of Zeal: The Ultimate Guide

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Ceronesthes is our resident expert and Conan Exiles influencer here at Conan Fanatics. He is a well-known figure within the Conan Exiles community and has poured countless hours into this open-world survival adventure. Don't believe us, just check out his Youtube channel and see for yourself!

TL;DR – The Quick Summary

Manifestations of zeal are rewarded to you whenever you craft specific items inside a religious altar. Typically these items will require a component that must be obtained from the corpse of a dead human, which must be collected with special ritual tools.

These manifestations of zeal are then used for nearly everything in your religion, whether that’s upgrading your altar, crafting items, summoning god protection, or conjuring the god themselves.

The best way to obtain large quantities of zeal is to kill large amounts of easy-to-kill human enemies. In the Exiled Lands, the best places to do this are The Summoning Place, The Den, and the Black Galleon. In Siptah, your best bet is to summon the lowest level of surge possible.

How to Get Manifestations of Zeal

Once you’ve unlocked a religion, you’ll be able to craft a simple altar corresponding to that religion. The first recipes you’ll obtain will be for a harvesting tool and typically another recipe that will allow you to transform favor into zeal at a one-to-one ratio.

Favor, in this case, is a catch-all term for the various items harvested by religious tools, which will be different for every religion. Farming zeal and farming favor are essentially the same things, however, and the two phrases are used interchangeably within the community.

Note that while all of these tools will produce a different item when used, they all produce these items from the same source. It does not matter what resource you are trying to obtain. They’re all produced from harvesting a human corpse. The harvesting tools and their yield are listed below.

Set – Setite Ritual Knife harvests Human Hearts
Derketo – Derketo’s Kiss harvests Sliver of the Unfulfilled
Yog – Yog Cleaver harvests Unblemished Human Meat
Ymir – Hoar-Frost Hatchet harvests Ice
Jhebbal Sag – Blood Letter harvests Sacred Blood
Mitra – Mitraen Ankh harvests Lingering Essence
Zath – Zathite Ritual Dagger harvests Venom-purified Blood

Obtaining the favor item is only the first part. To produce zeal, you’ll need to use your item to craft something on your altar that produces zeal. For example, the Set religion allows you to craft set antidotes at the cost of one human heart.

Once queued, it will consume the human heart to produce one (soon to be four as of the 3.0 update!) set antidote and one manifestation of zeal.

Each religion has a recipe similar to this that will consume a single favor to yield you an item along with one zeal, though sometimes it will require additional items to craft. For example, Derketo’s basic recipe will produce an elixir of freedom but will require one favor along with ten handfuls of insects, so pay attention to the recipe costs.

Your basic recipes are what you will use to craft the majority of your zeal because they will give you zeal in a one-to-one ratio. It’s important to keep in mind that nearly everything you craft at a religious altar will give you some zeal, even the recipes that consume zeal, such as the hallowed religious weapons, will still return some zeal to you on completion.

These recipes do not always give you one zeal per favor consumed, however, so they should be crafted for their individual benefits, not for the sake of producing zeal on its own.

For example, the setite mask will require five human hearts to craft but will only yield two zeal. The item itself is worth crafting, however, as it is a relatively cheap alternative to sandstorm masks which would cost forty-five steel to craft, which is a hefty sum in the early game. Killing a few exiles is comparatively much cheaper.

Manifestations of zeal cannot be carried or removed from the altar they’re produced from, so if you’re planning on keeping your zeal for long periods of time, be sure to craft them somewhere convenient!

Best Places to Farm Zeal

Farming zeal means farming favor, and farming favor means killing as many humans as you possibly can. It stands to reason then that if what you need is large quantities of dead people, you’d want to farm in areas where the number of humans is high, and the humans in those areas are relatively harmless and easy to kill.

It’s worth noting that most religious harvesting tools are crafted either with sticks and bones or sticks and iron.

This is important because your tools will lose a lot of durability over time as you use them, so farming areas where the humans will drop either bones or iron will allow you to repair your tool without having to return home or bring resources with you making the entire process easier.

Additionally, you do not need to complete the harvesting animation in its entirety. The moment you’ve obtained the item, simply dodge roll to cancel the animation. This will speed up the harvesting and spare your tool some durability loss.

Exiled Lands

While you can really farm favor just about anywhere, I’d highly recommend focusing your efforts in one of a few locations.

The Black Galleon

Located in I7, this is my top choice for the exiled lands. The humans here are from the black hand faction, meaning they’re relatively easy to kill and don’t hit extremely hard. The number of people here is also incredible.

If you’re harvesting every person in the entire camp, you’ll get over a hundred favor on every trip. Additionally, the enemies and loot chests in the area will all drop iron, allowing you to repair the harvesting tool for most religions.

Just make sure to keep an eye on the floor, the black galleon is suspended on a single large stone, and you won’t be able to catch the cliff on the way down if you fall off, and it’s a long way down.

Be careful around any edges and try to lure any enemies standing close to them before you kill them. Not only will it prevent you from accidentally falling off, but their bodies also won’t fall off either, so you’ll never be cheated out of a kill.

The Summoning Place

Located in the middle of G/H5, The Summoning Place is a great second option for farming favor. In fact, if you need large quantities of favor, I’d recommend farming The Black Galleon and The Summoning Place at the same time, as once you’ve cleared one, the other will have fully respawned.

The humans here are of the Darfari faction, making them some of the least dangerous in the game. There aren’t as many humans here as in other locations, but it’s still a capital settlement, and you’ll get around fifty to sixty kills per run.

If your religious harvesting tool requires bones to repair, the loot chests in this camp frequently contain plenty of bones, making repairs easy.

The Den

Located in E8, The Den is the capital city for the Dogs of the Desert faction. Like the Black Galleon, these humans are relatively weak to kill and come in large numbers. I’d put it on par with The Summoning Place in terms of efficiency.

This camp has the unique benefit of producing bones and iron in large quantities, however, so you can farm it with ease with any religious tool without having to stop for repairs.

While not related to zeal specifically, The Den and The Black Galleon both have multiple bearer spawn points, which are an excellent source of alchemical base, so if you’re trying to kill a few birds with one stone, that’s something to consider.

These three locations are the best places to farm favor in the Exiled Lands. This is not to say that you can’t farm favor elsewhere or even that it isn’t worth it to farm favor elsewhere, only that it will be less efficient.

Farming The Dead Mounds, for example, can be a great way to get all kinds of resources while simultaneously farming favor. You just have to decide what you’re prioritizing.

The Isle of Siptah

Siptah is covered with various human settlements with a range of difficulties and densities, but thankfully when it comes to the question of farming zeal, the absolute best source is to summon the weakest possible surge at a leyshrine.

You will, of course, be marking your location on the map, and performing a surge during the maelstrom can prove tricky, but nothing beats the efficiency of summoning thralls directly to your doorstep.

At the cost of only ten hardened steel per summon, it’s practically free, and as soon as one summoning is finished, you can perform another and chain them together until you’ve reached your desired amount of zeal.

While most any surge will do just fine, I’d recommend using a Focus Altar of the Center as this surge will also include a number of animals that cannot be harvested for favor items. It won’t make the surge prohibitively difficult. It will just reduce your efficiency.

What are the Best Uses of Zeal?

Zathite Spear

Every religion will allow you to craft items that offer you some kind of utility in exchange for their requisite favor item.

Set antidotes, for example, are one of the best ways to counteract poison even well into the late game, we’ve already mentioned set masks as a cheap alternative to sandstorm masks, and globes of yezud will allow you to summon spider companions to assist you in combat.

But as far as using the zeal or favor itself and not just the basic favor conversion recipe, you still have a few options.

When it comes to weapons, the Zathite Spear is currently one of the best in slot weapons for combat. In addition to its high base stats, it also applies poison on every hit, and this poison does not need to be applied to the weapon or refreshed in any way before use.

It costs fifty zeal, thirty star metal, and four shaped wood to craft, which makes it fairly expensive. Additionally, it can only be made in a tier three altar, but for many, the benefits outweigh the risks.

The religion of Mitra will offer you the ability to craft statues of refreshment at the cost of twenty bricks and five lingering essences. This structure is, for all intents and purposes, a water well with all the functionality that entails.

You can use it for drinking, filling water flasks, and filling water skins. Compared to the cost of even a basic water well which requires three hundred tar, sixty bricks, sixty shaped wood, and forty-two iron reinforcements, the statue of refreshment is extremely cheap and just as functional.

Aside from items, zeal is, of course, used to interact with the gods directly. If you have a tier 3 or 4 priest inside your altar, you have access to two new recipes that both require five hundred zeal to craft, a ritual of protection, and the true name of your god.

The ritual of protection will summon a two-layered protective sphere around the altar that lasts for 36 hours. Any enemy god avatar that steps into the outer or inner layers will receive extreme damage and die within a few moments, so rituals of protection are the direct counter to enemy gods.

The inner bubble will also absorb arrows and thrown projectiles, including orbs. Incorporating a ritual of protection into your base design can make it considerably harder to raid, even impossible in some cases. This recipe will not consume your arch-priest and takes thirty minutes to craft.

The second recipe allows you to craft the true name of your god, sometimes referred to as a god token. This will not only consume five hundred favor but will also destroy the altar that crafts it along with the arch-priest inside, so keep that in mind when you choose to craft one.

This will take one hour to craft, and once finished, you will receive the god token in your inventory. This token only lasts for 6 hours and will be marked on the map for everyone to see, so you should only ever craft one if you intend to use it!

Using the coin is very simple, simply place it on your hot bar and press the corresponding key or interact with it from your inventory. Once activated, you’ll be rendered immobile while you perform a summoning animation that projects a column of smoke into the sky.

If you’re slain at any point during this animation or even while your avatar is alive, it will be canceled, and you’ll lose everything.

If you do manage to successfully summon the avatar of your chosen god, the trouble will be well worth it as these avatars are the ultimate destructive force in the game. Empires have been laid low, and legends have been made by these coins, treat them with care.

FAQs about Conan Exiles Manifestation of Zeal

Question: Where and how Do I Get Manifestations of Zeal?

Answer: Manifestations of zeal are produced by crafting items inside a religious altar using items you harvest from dead humans using specific ritual tools.

Question: Is there any Alternative Way to Obtain Zeal?

Answer: Technically, some religions will allow you to obtain zeal in exchange for other resources. A tier three Yog altar will allow you to craft skeletal decorations which only require stone and bones and give zeal, while the religion of Mitra will allow you to craft statues of guidance using bricks and brimstone that likewise grant zeal.
Many recipes that used to do this in the past have been changed to no longer grant zeal, so it’s unclear if this is still intended and how long it will stay this way, so use these recipes at your own discretion.

Question: I’m not much Into PVP. Will I Ever Need to Summon an Avatar or Activate Ritual Protection?

Answer: No, there’s not much of a reason to use those two recipes if you’re not engaged in PVP. Summoning an avatar can be a fun novelty, but it is an expensive novelty with no real utility.
You likely won’t need much zeal at all, so you won’t need to farm it in large quantities unless you were looking to mass produce certain religious weapons.

Zeal and You, the Final Takeaway

Manifestations of zeal are precious things. They can be used to craft decorations, refreshing sources of water, and devastating weapons of war.

Regardless of the game mode you prefer, you’ll find yourself needing zeal in one way or another and likely in large quantities, but for the average barbarian, the thought of getting your hands dirty in slaughter is a pleasant thought indeed.

With the right information, you can make sure your time spent slaughtering is time well spent, and when it comes time to call upon your chosen god in your hour of need, you’ll have plenty of zeal on hand to exchange for their help. With enough zeal, you’ll find that a wrathful avatar can be quite the friend.

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