Conan Exiles Oil Guide

Latest posts by Emily Parker (see all)

Some things in life are very difficult to do without. They have advanced humankind from survival to comfort and now there’s no going back. Oil is not just one of these items, it’s one of these items for several reasons.

We use oil to make foods tastier, to fuel fire, and to make equipment more efficient. While it’s not directly required for us to make it from one day to the next, it is such a helpful item that it’s hard to imagine going without.

You’ll find oil is used much the same in Conan Exiles as it’s used in real life. Conan Exiles Oil can be used for fuel, cooking, and applying to equipment. You won’t need it in the early days, and you actually would never need it at all if you so choose, but when you’re able to start processing oil it will make your operation so much smoother.

TL:DR: Oil Me Up

You need a fluid press to craft oil for most of the game. You’ll find pressing seeds for oil is the easiest in the beginning, but will eventually move on to pressing fish for oil once you have a fish farm established.

It’s 10 unappetizing fish for one oil, five savory fish for one oil, or one exotic fish for one oil. Setting up a compost heap to passively supply grubs is the best bet for a successful fish farm.

Once you’re able to capture a T3 or T4 alchemist, they will add the most efficient recipe for making oil in Conan Exiles to their work workbench. Once the high-tier alchemist is stationed you can make 5 oil from one ichor and one bark at the alchemist’s bench.

Use oil to fuel any equipment that normally takes wood; it will burn over 4 times longer. It can also be used to craft reinforcement and damage kits and is an ingredient for hardened leather.

How to Craft a Fluid Press

fish traps

Fluid presses are the undersung heroes in Conan Exiles. You can put all sorts of gross things in them and end up with some really useful ingredients. You’ll be using the fluid press to craft oil for most of your level-span as an Exile.

You can learn how to craft a fluid press at level 28 by learning the fluid press feat. The fluid press requires 50 shaped wood, 10 twine, and 10 iron bar.

The ingredients are simple, but you’ll need some other crafting stations to make them. Shaped wood is made from regular wood on the carpenter’s bench and iron bar is made from iron ore on the furnace. The furnace will require fuel as well. You can use wood in a pinch, but coal and oil (when you have it!) work much better.

How to Craft Oil: Fluid Press

In between pressing legs and head and arms, try putting some orange phykos, seeds, or some fish in your fluid press to create oil. The fluid press does not require fuel and will be able to craft the oil with just the required ingredients and some time.

Seeds are the first ingredient you will have access to. Any type of seed will do, but there is no reason not to just use regular, easy to come by, seeds. It will take 15 seeds to make one oil in a fluid press.

Next up are fish. If you’ve got some fish traps set up and are pulling plenty in, you can press varying amounts of each type of fish for oil. It will take 10 unappetizing fish to make one oil, 5 savory fish to make one oil, and one exotic fish to make one oil in a fluid press.

How to Craft Oil: Alchemist’s Bench

OIl Alchemist's Bench

Once you’ve progressed further into the game, there is a much easier way to make oil. You can craft oil with bark and ichor at your alchemist’s bench, but there’s a catch. You’ll need at least a T3 alchemist stationed at the bench to unlock the recipe for oil. Of course, a T4 or named alchemist will work great as well.

This is a far more efficient way to make oil. One bark and one ichor will make 5 oil with this recipe. If you’re working on a black ice fortress, bulk weapon oils, or endgame armor, crafting oil at the alchemist’s bench is the most economical way to go.

Using Oil for Fuel

Oil is the highest tier fuel (short of the difficult to obtain molten heart) in Conan and is used predominantly once you have a steady production. One item of oil burns unaided for 48 seconds, while an item of wood will only go for 10. Coal is close at 35 seconds, and dry wood is a tie at 48 seconds.

If you add a thrall to a station you will also increase the efficiency of burning oil there. They do not extend the life of the oil, but rather increase the crafting speed so less oil will need to be used.

For example on a smelter, a T1 blacksmith thrall will increase your crafting speed by 50%, a T2 blacksmith thrall will increase your crafting speed by 100%, a T3 blacksmith thrall will increase your crafting speed by 150%, and a T4 blacksmith thrall will increase your crafting speed by 200%.

You’ll be using a quarter of the oil you used to use on that station if you capture and employ a good thrall.

The only crafting stations that require fuel that oil cannot be used on are the tannery and the dryer. You’ll need bark for these.

Using Oil for Equipment

Oil is used as an ingredient in many tools, weapons, and equipment in Conan Exiles. It can be the main component in tools and gear or required earlier in the process to make one of their ingredients.

One of the bulk uses of oil is to make hardened leather. If you’ve already made an armor set, you know how much leather is required to complete all the pieces. You’ll need quite a bit of oil to turn your thick leather into hardened leather and hardened leather is required for several different epic sets of armor.

Oil is also used to make damage kits and reinforcement kits, and also to make weapon oils (if you have Siptah expansion) with varying beneficial effects. On a wide-open PVP server, you’ll be burning through quite a bit of oil just to keep your weapons kitted.

Best Early Game Ingredient for Oil Production: Seeds

OIl Seeds

Seeds are a great entry-level ingredient for oil production. Any player can collect large quantities of seeds from any environment with their bare hands. Seeds will drop along with fiber from the native bushes in the biome. I do suggest crafting a sickle, which will increase your seed intake per node.

This will make seed collection for oil much more efficient. You’ll likely need to shed all the extra fiber in your inventory, or quickly convert it to twine so it can be hauled back with all your seeds.

Hold on to the bugs you harvest will out farming seeds, these are useful for catching the next resource you can press on the fluid press to make oil: fish.

Best Mid-Game Ingredient for Oil Production: Fish

Having a fish farm may be your first agricultural venture in Conan Exiles. Fish traps are fairly easy to construct themselves. All they take to craft are 10 shaped wood and 10 twine and can be learned under the fisher feat as early as level 17. Unfortunately, though, they will not produce fish passively.

You must load them with bugs to “craft” the fish in the trap. The better the bug (or the harder to find it is), the higher quality fish you can produce, and the more oil you will be able to process in the long run.

If you’re already farming seeds to make oil, you can take the bugs from harvesting those plants and use them in your traps, but this is not the most efficient way to run a fish farm. Instead, it’s ideal to also start a composting operation in addition to your fish farm.

With even one item of compost in a compost heap, it will passively generate grubs that you can use to generate fish in your traps. You can cruise through sporadically and pull hundreds of grubs from your heaps to stock the traps with, without supplying them with anything after they craft the first compost.

Grubs produce better fish than standard bugs and, as a result, produce more oil for your time.

Best Late-Game Oil Production: T3+ Alchemist Thrall Required

Conan Exiles Oil

If you’re ready to make piles and piles of oil, you’ve got a bit of a longer task list than finding items for the fluid press. First, you’ll want to start by finding and breaking a T3 or T4 alchemist thrall to station at your alchemist’s bench. This is the only way to learn the recipe to turn ichor and bark into oil.

Thrall distribution in Conan is randomized and brutal. Even if the spot is meant to specifically spawn an alchemist thrall, and there happens to be one there, it is still a low chance it will be a T3 or T4 tier alchemist. For this reason, it’s best to go where the most thralls spawn to have the best luck at finding one.

This is always the Black Galleon in southern I7. It’s a dangerous area, with a high probability of accidental pulls. It’s best to gear up and level up (level 30+ at least) before hitting the Black Galleon in search of an alchemist.

If you are a lower level, and intent on scoring a high-tier alchemist, there is a great spot not far from the southern river. A small cave called Sinner’s Refuge in northeast G4 has at least one named thrall spawned every rotation.

You’ll find all sorts of useful occupations on your hunt for an alchemist to help in your early Conan Exiles adventure. It’s a low-level area and a great resource while you’re building your empire.

Best Late-Game Ingredient for Oil Production: Bark and Ichor

Alright, so you’ve secured your T3+ alchemist thrall and they’ve added the oil recipe to the alchemist’s bench. Now all you need to do is harvest bark and ichor to start mass-producing some oil.

Bark is easiest enough to get in small quantities, all you need is a pick or pickaxe and a tree. The trick is finding groves of dead trees because they yield more bark per swing than a standard tree. You’ll find a huge swath of dead trees in between Swagger Rock and the Black Galleon in H7.

When you hit them with the pick you’ll also pull dry wood. You can toss it.. or you can take it back to base and use it as your fuel for a while. It burns the same amount of time as oil!

The highlands come in as a close second for farming bark. As a higher-level area, the trees already produce more bark, and their density makes a bark run in the area very productive.

Ichor is best found on spiders and spiders love caves. You must process their corpses with a pick or pickaxe to receive ichor. Try the Skittering Cave in eastern E5 for as many spiders as you care to deal with.

Ichor can also drop from snakes, corrupted rocknoses, scorpions (great source), komodos, and salamanders. If you’re going to farm ichor specifically, I don’t see any reason not to just hit a cave of spiders.

Now You’re Big Oil

Conan Exiles Oil

No matter how you choose to stockpile your black gold in Conan Exiles, you’ll be happy you did. It’s a fine resource for fuel, a necessity for good armor, and its added benefit late game for weapon kits makes oil relevant for your entire exiled experience.

You can press something as simple and easy to find as seeds to make your first batches of oil, but starting a fish farm will start filling your chests up with oil more quickly.

If you need a bulk supply of oil, there’s nothing more productive than making it at an alchemist’s bench. This is the more complicated of the three but yields enough oil to keep your operation in epic armor.

Maybe it’s best not to use the oil you squeezed from a fish to craft your new outfit, but we’ve all got to do what we’ve got to do out here in the Exiled Lands.

Oil FAQs

Question: How Do You Get Oil in Conan?

Answer: Oil can be crafted on the fluid press, or with a T3 or T4 alchemist, on the alchemist’s bench.

Question: What is the Best Way to Make Oil in Conan Exiles?

Answer: The most efficient way to make oil is actually on the alchemist bench, but because it requires a T3 or T4 alchemist stationed at the bench to learn the recipe, farming fish and using the fluid press is the most efficient way to get oil that’s accessible to everyone.

Question: Do All Fish Make Oil in the Fluid Press?

Answer: Yes, but it takes 10 unappetizing fish and 5 savory fish to make one oil. The ratio for exotic fish is one to one.

Question: What is the Best Use for Oil?

Answer: Oil is the most efficient fuel in the game: put it in your kiln or oven. Dry wood burns for the same amount of time but requires more steps to make (and is more difficult to collect). You will also need oil for hardened leather and end-game armor, so keep production going even if you don’t need the fuel.

Question: What’s the Easiest Way to Farm Oil in Conan Exiles?

Answer: Build a compost head and craft at least one compost in it. Let it passively fill with grubs and collect a 50 stack to put in a fish trap. Press all the fish in the fluid press for a nice stack of oil.

Question: How Do You Get Oil in Conan?

Answer: Oil can be crafted on the fluid press, or with a T3 or T4 alchemist, on the alchemist’s bench.

Question: What is the Best Way to Make Oil in Conan Exiles?

Answer: The most efficient way to make oil is actually on the alchemist bench, but because it requires a T3 or T4 alchemist stationed at the bench to learn the recipe, farming fish and using the fluid press is the most efficient way to get oil that’s accessible to everyone.

Question: Do All Fish Make Oil in the Fluid Press?

Answer: Yes, but it takes 10 unappetizing fish and 5 savory fish to make one oil. The ratio for exotic fish is one to one.

Question: What is the Best Use for Oil?

Answer: Oil is the most efficient fuel in the game: put it in your kiln or oven. Dry wood burns for the same amount of time but requires more steps to make (and is more difficult to collect). You will also need oil for hardened leather and end-game armor, so keep production going even if you don’t need the fuel.

Question: What’s the Easiest Way to Farm Oil in Conan Exiles?

Answer: Build a compost head and craft at least one compost in it. Let it passively fill with grubs and collect a 50 stack to put in a fish trap. Press all the fish in the fluid press for a nice stack of oil.

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