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The world of Conan Exiles is filled with treasures of every make and description. Glimmering jewels, suspiciously useful animal bile, enough gold and silver to fill a mansion, and dangerous legendary weaponry capable of slaying even the mightiest foes. With so many useful components and loots to obtain, it can be easy to overlook the simple stones we harvest in our daily grinds.
Obsidian, the volcanic rock found in only a few sparse locations around the map should never be overlooked. Despite its mundane appearance, it can be used to craft tools and weaponry that rival even legendary items. Obsidian weapons have taken their place near the top of the meta on PVP servers for quite some time due to their ease of access and superior stats, which makes them just as viable for your PvE encounters.
In this guide, we’ll be going over how to obtain obsidian and how to craft it into composite obsidian, the base metal used in the crafting of many endgame weapons.
Where to Obtain Obsidian
Getting obsidian can be tricky, as it often involves mining obsidian nodes which can be placed in some hostile biomes.
Exiled Lands
In the exiled lands, obsidian nodes can be found within the volcano. The nodes will be a blackish blue and will stand out from the regular stones around them. Mining these nodes will give you gold ore, raw ash, crystal, and obsidian. Typically people will mine the obsidian for those first two components alone as they’re incredibly useful in their own right as ingredients for the alchemical base and bestial memory potions, so mining obsidian is a useful way to spend your time.
Of course, the trouble isn’t in the mining itself; it’s the additional hazards along the way. Make sure to wear your finest armor and to bring some good weapons; the volcano will be filled with hostile creatures and NPCs. Demon rock noses and Votaries of Skelos will be dotted throughout the volcano, and most of the humans will attack you on sight.
The other thing to look out for is, of course, the lava. Touching it even for a moment will inflict extreme damage to the player, continuing to do so until you step off the lava. Avoiding it is easier said than done, though, as the obsidian you need can be placed alongside lava flows and on islands of stone surrounded by lava where a poorly placed jump can put you in a position to burn to death if you’re not careful. Bring plenty of aloe potions; you’ll need them.
If the wildlife and lava flows don’t kill you, there is, of course, the ambient temperature to consider. The volcano is extremely hot, and mitigating that heat will prevent you from dying from heatstroke. There are two merchants, one at the southern entrance to the volcano and one at the eastern entrance, that will sell you cooling items, but I’d highly recommend you gather some ice on the way into the volcano as it is surrounded by snowy biomes and consuming ice is most effective.
Alternatively, you can bring several waterskins as drinking water will also lower your temperature. The second vitality perk will also give you some resistance to extreme temperatures, while the third will give you some slight regeneration to help you recover from any slips and falls. With proper heat-resistant gear, cooling drinks, and vitality perks, you should have no trouble surviving the heat as you mine.
Siptah
In Siptah, the task of obtaining obsidian is much, much easier. Simply head to the Isle of Dusk near E6, and you’ll find obsidian nodes scattered around along lava flows. They’re not exclusive to that region, so explore and find as many as you can.
While you won’t have to contend with extreme temperatures, there will still be the usual hostile wildlife, including many dangerous sandbeasts that can be difficult to outrun. As always, when leaving your base for any reason, stock up on potions and put on your best gear; even a simple trip for stone can spell your end if you’re not careful.
Additionally, while not an efficient source of obsidian, grey ones will drop obsidian when killed, and their weapons can be dismantled on a dismantling bench to yield a small amount of obsidian. It’s not a lot, but ultimately you don’t need all that much obsidian to make composite obsidian, and if you’re killing grey ones anyways and don’t find yourself wanting to go mining, it can save you a bit of time.
Crafting Composite Obsidian
Now we can get into the real meat and potatoes. Obsidian by itself is a completely inert and useless rock, but using it to create composite obsidian is what unlocks its true potential.
Composite obsidian involves combining raw obsidian with steel bars at a one-to-one ratio, which seems simple enough. Composite obsidian is unique, however, in that it is not smelted in any player furnace or crafting bench and is instead crafted in a special forge, found in different places depending on what map you’re on.
To complicate things further, obsidian weapons and tools cannot be crafted without first unlocking the feat that grants you these recipes, and this itself is only obtained from a stone tablet in the heart of a dungeon.
Obtaining the Recipe
Firstly, head to the heart of the volcano at G14. There you’ll find a monument named The Well of Skelos, which will have a bottomless pit at its core with an ominous glowing light emitting from it. Summon your courage and jump in because that’s where you need to be.
Inside the Well of Skelos is an endgame dungeon that I won’t spoil here, but be warned, you’ll have to deal with every problem you had outside the well, such as heat and lava, but now you’ll also have lizardmen and snakes to contend with. The boss for this dungeon is located in the large structure in the distance with purple flames adorning it.
Simply run behind the boss and interact with the stone behind the throne to unlock obsidian tools and weapons. You do not need to kill the boss to unlock this.
In Siptah, obtaining the recipe is considerably more tedious, as it can only be found as a random drop in the final boss chest located within vaults. The chance of getting any specific recipe from a vault chest is quite low, so I’d recommend obtaining the recipe from an exiled lands server and then transferring it to a Siptah server if possible. It doesn’t seem like it, but it will save you an immense amount of time.
Finding a Forge
The crafting location for composite obsidian will, of course, vary depending on the map. In the Exiled Lands, the dungeon where obsidian is unlocked in the first place is where you’ll need to go to craft the composite obsidian.
The location is known as the Volcanic Forge; it’s the giant lava-filled structure right in front of you if you leave the entrance of the well and follow the path forward into the dungeon. It will have giant streams of flame flowing into and out of it, so it’s quite hard to miss. It will be guarded by many hostile creatures, so be sure to kill them before interacting with it.
Once the coast is clear, approach the furnace to place your obsidian and steel bars inside and begin crafting. Each bar will take roughly 10 seconds to craft, so if you’re crafting a lot, be sure to bring extra food and ice. If you’re on a multiplayer server that allows PVP, remember that you’re vulnerable during the crafting process, and your obsidian, steel, and composite obsidian can be stolen, so stay vigilant while it crafts.
In Siptah, you’ll need to head to the Forge of the First Men at F6. Like the obsidian before it, this is considerably easier to reach than the volcanic forge on exiled lands, and there are three here that you can interact with. Of course, with ease of access comes the increased risk of being attacked by players while crafting, so always be sure to keep your wits about you when processing large amounts of ore.
Uses for Composite Obsidian
Once you have the bars themselves, you can relax as the hard part is over, and you can head home to do your crafting in safety since all obsidian tools and weapons can be made at a regular blacksmith’s bench. You’ll be glad you put in the time and sweat as well since the things you can craft with composite obsidian are well worth the trouble.
Obsidian tools have the same gathering power as legendary black blood tools, but while black blood tools can only be repaired with legendary weapon repair kits, obsidian tools can be repaired with master repair kits that require far fewer resources to produce. This alone makes obsidian tools some of the best to use for frequent farming, especially if you’re not using oils of bounty.
Obsidian weapons, as mentioned earlier, have incredibly high stats for weapons you can craft at home and, with the right blacksmith, can outperform legendary weapons by a large margin. Obsidian hammers, in particular, are better than almost everything else you can obtain and are worth farming on their own; nearly everyone that uses hammers in PVP will find the time to craft a few.
Coveted Grey One weapons will also require composite obsidian to craft and have even higher damage potential than regular obsidian weapons.
Finally, the accursed weapons unlocked at the warmaker’s dungeon also require composite obsidian to craft, so whether you’re mass-producing regular weapons or crafting something a bit rarer, you’ll find these greenish metal bars on your shopping list sooner or later.
Frequently Asked Questions
Question: If I’m already using star metal and legendary weapons, is farming composite obsidian worth it?
Answer: Yes. Composite obsidian weapons have better stats than most legendary weapons, especially when crafted by a high-tier blacksmith thrall. If you’re only doing PvE, the difference in strength may not be game-changing, but in PvP, where every point counts, it can make a huge difference.
Question: Are obsidian tools better than star metal? When should I be using them?
Answer: Obsidian tools gather more resources per swing than star metal and can be easily maintained with master repair kits. If you’re using oils of bounty, I would recommend not using obsidian tools as the effectiveness of those oils is determined by the base durability of the tool they’re applied to, but for all other uses, they’re a cheap alternative to black blood tools.
Question: I hate mining obsidian directly; is it viable to farm obsidian from the grey ones instead?
Answer: You only need one obsidian for every steel bar when crafting composite obsidian, so the resource that will slow your production the most is typically your steel. If you’re not crafting large quantities of composite obsidian, you can get by with the obsidian dropped by grey ones in combat just fine, but you may still want to take the time for at least one proper farming trip if you’re looking to produce anything in bulk.
The Obsidian Wrap Up
Obsidian and composite obsidian can be a pain to get. You’ll find yourself melting, falling into lava, being eaten by lizards and pvpers alike (though the difference there is negligible). If you’re willing to put in the time, however, the rewards justify themselves a thousand times over, with better farming and combat stats than almost anything else you’ll find. It will be the perfect reward to a harrowing journey into the heart of a volcano… provided you don’t fall in, of course.
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