Conan Exiles Preservation Box Guide

Conan Exiles Preservation Box Guide

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Are your items in Conan Exiles spoiling or disappearing, and you don’t know what to do even if you think you’re storing them in appropriate conditions? This guide will help you find out why that happens and teach you how to manage a better way of keeping your items for a longer time.

Learn how to use a Preservation Box to ensure the safety of your items while you’re not using them so you won’t lose anything. Also, you’ll be learning today if there are any alternatives to keep your food preserved for longer until you know how to make a Preservation Box.

Bottom Line Up Front

Opt to follow this Conan Exiles Preservation Box Guide carefully to know more about the Preservation Box and other details surrounding it or everything wrapped up below instead:

Getting a Preservation Box

You can unlock the Preservation Box later in your gameplay at level 43 and its improved version, which holds more items at level 55.

  • Craft a Preservation Box using 2 Black Ice, 2 Insulated Wood, and 20 Hardened Steel Bars;
  • Craft an Improved Preservation Box with 4 Black Ice, 2 Insulated Wood, and 20 Star Metal Bars.

Using the Preservation Box

You can use this box as a regular container or as a fridge to keep perishable items from disappearing or spoiling. To make a Preservation Box fully functional and keep your items from decaying, put one Ice unit inside it to keep it running.

You won’t ever need to restock it with Ice again. You can get Ice from looting points of interest, up north in the snow (Exiled Lands) or nearby Vaults or Leyshrines (Isle of Siptah).

Items that Decay and that should be Placed Inside a Preservation Box

Anything (listed below) with a decay timer (except for Abyssal gear pieces) can be transferred to a Preservation Box to last for an undetermined time until it’s removed from that container:

  • Foods
  • Certain kinds of drinks
  • Some potions
  • Untamed/wild animals, eggs, and some tamed pets
  • Carcasses
  • Random crafting ingredients

What is a Preservation Box?

A Preservation Box is no more than a container used to store items with the purpose of preventing them from spoiling over time. You can compare it with a fridge or a freezer.

It looks like a metal cabinet with ice, available in two variants – the common Preservation Box, with 20 slots of capacity, and the Improved Preservation Box, with 40 slots.

Conan Exiles preservation box
Image by Wild Jester

How to Get a Preservation Box?

Unlock the Preservation Box at level 43 with 9 Knowledge points. Crafting recipe:

Conan Exiles preservation box at level 43
Image by Wild Jester

Unlock the Improved Preservation Box at level 55 with 12 Knowledge points. Crafting recipe:

Conan Exiles preservation box at level 55
Image by Wild Jester

Equip your Construction Hammer, open the Building Menu, and go to the Decorations section. You’ll find the Preservation and Improved Preservation Boxes under the Storage category.

How to Use/How does it Work?

You can choose to use your Preservation Box as a regular container (like a Large Chest, for example) to store any kind of items or as a container that will stop the decay timer from certain items that decay instead.

Conan Exiles use preservation box
Image by Wild Jester

The second choice is usually the reason why you should craft the Preservation Box (or the Improved Preservation Box for extra storage). However, this type of container doesn’t prevent your items from spoiling/decaying on its own, as it needs the help of something else to become fully functional: Ice.

Ice

Conan Exiles preservation box ice
Image by Wild Jester

Adding Ice inside a Preservation Box is necessary to ensure the preservation of your items, stopping their decay timer as long as you keep them inside the Box.

Once you remove your items or even all Ice from your Preservation Box back to your inventory, the decay timer of your perishable items will become active, and your items are prone to spoil or disappear again.

You will only need to put one unit of Ice inside each Preservation Box to keep it running. Ice has a decay timer as well, so store as much Ice as you want inside your Preservation Box to prevent it from melting.

How to Get Ice

You can get Ice by mining Ice and Black Ice nodes with a pick or a pickaxe or looting chests or NPCs that drop it randomly. If you’re playing in the Exiled Lands map, you’ll find Ice in both Ice and Black Ice nodes in the snowy environment, especially in the western area.

If you’re playing in the Isle of Siptah instead, you’ll get Ice from Black Ice nodes located in diverse parts of the map: around the Tower, near all of the Vaults entrances, near all Leyshrines (except Leyshrine of the Serpent), by New Luxur (western side), at the Ruins of X’chotl, at the Watchtower camp (Island of Threa), in the northeastern island, and at the top right of K-7 on the map grid.

Perishable Items

Any item with a timer is perishable, meaning it will decay once its timer reaches the zero-second mark. If you let your items decay while they are in your inventory or in any container that is not a Preservation Box with Ice, they will disappear or rot (depending on the item).

Here’s a list of everything (that decays) you can keep for an undetermined time inside a Preservation Box with Ice:

  • Potions
  • Food
  • Drinks
  • Creatures (tamed pets and untamed)
  • Carcasses
  • Random crafting ingredients

Potions

Most potions and elixirs don’t decay, meaning you won’t have to worry about putting them inside a Preservation Box. However, there are a few that are an exception and will, so make sure that you’ll keep them safe from disappearing if you’re not planning to use them soon. Here are the potions that have a decay timer:

  • Yellow Lotus Potion
  • Potion of Bestial Memory
  • Potion of Natural Learning
  • Potion of Midnight
  • Potion of Lost Souls
Conan Exiles preservation box potions
Image by Wild Jester

Food

There are many kinds of food in the game, and as expected, food spoils after a while. Depending on the food, it will last from several hours to just a few minutes outside of a Preservation Box.

You can try different preservation methods for some foods, like drying them using a Dryer or cooking them on any campfire or a stove, so they can either become more beneficial for you or last longer. From raw to cooked food, use the Preservation Box to store it while you don’t need to consume or use it in your crafting stations.

However, you’re not supposed to eat certain kinds of food, as they’re not for personal consumption but to be used with creatures instead. All sorts of food that you can get in Conan Exiles are listed below:

  • Raw and rotten
  • Shadespiced
  • Fodders
  • Cooked and preserved

Raw and Rotten Food

Raw fish, shellfish, and meat are at your disposal in Conan Exiles, but avoid consuming these raw unless you want to get food poisoning, cook them instead. Exceptionally, you won’t get food poisoning if you have the Petrified corrupted Vitality perk.

As expected, spoiled or rotten foods will also give you food poisoning, but you can use most of these to craft other items, so choose to store them in a Preservation Box.

Conan Exiles preservation box raw and rotten food
Image by Wild Jester

Among the unpleasant and harmful consumable items that you find during your journey, there are exceptions under this category. Not all kinds of raw foods are bad for your character – some are actually beneficial like the Desert and Highland Berries, Honey, Eggs, Fat Grubs, Handful of Insects, and the Heart of a Hero.

Conan Exiles improved preservation box
Image by Wild Jester

Shadespiced Food

Use Shadespiced food to raise creatures in an Animal Pen. Shadespiced foods are high-quality perishable items usually made with the use of one Shadebloom flower together with a certain amount of other ingredients, depending on which kind of Shadespiced food you’re aiming to cook at a Stove or an Improved Stove.

While you can raise your future pets with a wide variety of foods at an Animal Pen, Shadespiced foods are known to increase the chances of giving you a Greater version of those pets, depending on which pet you’re trying to raise. You can still try eating a Shadespiced dish, but its consumption is not recommended.

Conan Exiles preservation box shadespiced food
Image by Wild Jester

Fodders

Like Shadespiced food, Fodders were also made exclusively for your pets. However, you can also consume these but with no purpose. Fodders (Savory, Sea Salted, Tainted, Totemic, Turanian, Wartorn, Yamatai Fodder, and Sorcerous Pet Food) are used to craft the available paid pet skins you own to your current raised pets (pet skin from a DLC, Battle Pass, or Bazaar).

For example, if you own the Seekers of the Dawn DLC and you’ve just raised in the Animal Pen a Spotted Hyena, you can craft the Yamatai Fodder at an Alchemist’s Bench and keep both Hyena and Yamatai Fodder in your inventory.

Then handcraft the Tamed Spotted Hyena skin with the help of this Yamatai Fodder. If you have crafted any Fodders but are not going to use them soon, use a Preservation Box to keep them from spoiling.

Conan Exiles preservation box fodders
Image by Wild Jester

Cooked and Preserved/Food Preservation Methods

Cooked and preserved food in Conan Exiles is usually the safest to eat, but it requires a few steps before it’s ready to consume. If you wish to skip the cooking or preservation step, exploring the many points of interest from the map is always an option since the chests and enemy corpses from those have a random chance of dropping some food.

Just remember that crafting items is the most reliable way of getting what you want.

Cooked food in the game varies from the most simple to the most complex dishes, depending on your character’s knowledge and available resources.

Conan Exiles preservation box cooked and preserved food
Varied basic foods. – Image by Wild Jester

To survive and progress, you don’t have to rely all the time on all sorts of food, but going for the ones that help you temporarily boost your stats is helpful.

While you’ll only need a Campfire to cook basic food like Gruel and grilled fish or meat, a Stove or Improved Stove is essential to expand your cooking journey.

Once you unlock the Stove and learn the Specialist Cooking recipes, you’ll find yourself able to cook more exquisite foods, and some can even last longer than the basic foods, while others may last the same time.

Conan Exiles preservation box complex foods
Varied complex foods. – Image by Wild Jester

A good method of preserving food earlier in your gameplay is by using a Dryer which you can unlock at level 19 with 2 Knowledge points, and craft with 20 Shaped Wood and 10 Twine.

Use your Construction Hammer to open your Building Menu and go to the General category under the Crafting Stations section, where you’ll find the Dryer.

Add Bark inside the Dryer since it’s needed to make it functional. Try putting berries (Desert Berries and Highland Berries), some raw and cooked fish (Unappetizing Fish, Cooked Savory Shellfish, etc.), or some raw and cooked meat (Savoury Flesh, Shredded Roast, etc.) inside a Dryer to dry these foods and slow down their decay process (preservation).

Dried foods last about 2 hours, and it’s easy to make them until you can unlock a Preservation Box.

Conan Exiles preservation box dried preserved
Image by Wild Jester
Conan Exiles preservation box dryer
Image by Wild Jester

Drinks

Most drinks in Conan Exiles are as tough as whoever consumes them, but there are still a few that will spoil, and you should keep those inside your Preservation Box until you decide to use them. These are the drinks that have a decay timer:

  • Berry Juice
  • Bitter Tea
  • Desert Berry Pulp
  • Fiery-Hot Imperial Tea
  • Herbal Tea
  • Highland Berry Pulp
  • Ice Tea
  • Mulled Brew
  • Mushroom Tea
  • Spiced Tea
Conan Exiles preservation box drinks
Image by Wild Jester

Creatures

Creatures, specifically baby animals such as cubs, hatchlings, and even eggs (you can obtain these by handpicking them from the ground or purchasing from a trader NPC), can decay and disappear after some time, so you must take action before they’re gone.

Usually, you have several hours before this happens, but a small distraction can make your potential pet to be gone forever unless you keep it from decaying inside a Preservation Box like they were food (even if this sounds odd, it works)!

If you’ve already raised your pet inside an Animal Pen or at a Beehive (in the case of Shaggai Drones) but didn’t place it down on the ground yet, you can transfer it to a Preservation Box to prevent it from decaying too.

Some raised pets like the House Cat won’t decay – pretty much anything that doesn’t have a timer under its icon will not disappear or turn into something else after a while (non-perishable items).

Conan Exiles preservation box creatures
Some of the several creatures with a decay timer. – Image by Wild Jester

Carcasses

Animal carcasses will turn into Putrid Meat after they fully decay, but that will only happen after a long time (over 167 hours), so it’s easier to wait for a small piece of raw meat to rot than a whole carcass instead. Alternatively, you can place any animal carcass inside a Fluid Press to get some resources from that animal in exchange.

You can get Bones, Pelts, Blood, Crystals, and more resources, depending on the creature the carcass belonged to. There are around 40 different carcasses on Conan Exiles.

Conan Exiles preservation box carcasses
Image by Wild Jester

Random Crafting Ingredients

There are perishable items that have the single purpose of helping you obtain a variety of things.

It’s normal to forget to put these in a Preservation Box at first, so it’s crucial that you pay attention to the description of every item you pick up and see if it has a timer or not, as well as other small details that you may miss – as those details can tell a lot about the item you’ve just picked up.

About these crafting ingredients that you must keep inside a Preservation Box until you need them:

  • Some of them are items needed to obtain favor from the game gods at each religious altar to gain enough Manifestations of Zeal, and you can harvest them from human NPCs with a religious tool. The items are the Ice Shard, Human Heart, Lingering Essence, Sacred Blood, Sliver of the Unfulfilled, and Unblemished Human Meat;
  • Putrid Meat, Essence of Rot, Ghoulish Humors, and Light of Krllyand are all perishable crafting ingredients with different decay timers, used to craft a small number of things in Conan Exiles;
  • The Shaggai Queen Jelly lasts for a very long time, so you don’t have to worry if it stays for a while outside of your Preservation Box, but pay attention if it’s sitting for days somewhere and you’re not giving any use to it. This jelly is a Beehive Improvement, used to help you increase the chances of obtaining a Shaggai Warrior from a Beehive.
Conan Exiles preservation box random crafting ingredients
Image by Wild Jester

FAQs

Question: I Prefer Relying on Simple Foods and Drinks (Like Cooked Meat, Honey, and Water) as I Explore the Map Instead of Opting for the Most Complex Ones. Is it Still Worth having a Preservation Box?

Answer: Yes, it is still worth having a Preservation Box. Even if you’re a player who doesn’t invest time in opting for high-quality consumables to survive, you’re aware that you can still survive by using the most simple ones even if they may not be the best, as they will still help you going places.
During your journey, you’ll collect a wide variety of things (consumables and other items) that you may eventually need to level up your character or improve your base. Storing items ahead is convenient, but having some of those items stored for a long time can spoil them.
Replacing spoiled or missing items can be a hassle, so the Preservation Box plays an important role, no matter the rarity and quality of the items you need to store. You can keep stacks of meat, berries, and other things inside a Preservation Box and never run out of food or other items so fast anymore.
Also, if your Animal Pen is busy raising an animal, you can put other animals on “hold” in your Preservation Box so they won’t decay in the meantime, for example.

Question: Is there Anything I Can do to Avoid Wasting many Items before I Can Unlock and Craft a Preservation Box?

Answer: If you don’t have a Preservation Box yet and want to avoid losing several items that may decay before you can even use them, don’t collect too many of those if you don’t plan to use them soon.
Only get a small amount of those items for what you need at the moment, and make sure to use them all before they decay. About foods (berries, fish, meat), you can opt for alternative preservation methods (cooking or drying) to make them last longer outside of a Preservation Box.

Question: Are there any Items that Decay but can’t be Stored in a Preservation Box to Keep them from Spoiling?

Answer: There is a small group of items that will decay but can’t be stored in a Preservation Box, or even be removed from your inventory to any other kind of container – the Abyssal gear pieces (Abyssal Bow, Maul, Helm, Mail, Leggings, Gloves, Boots) – that you can craft at a Circle of Power if you’ve learned sorcery during your journey.
These Abyssal gear pieces can only be kept for longer if you equip them in your character and kill NPCs or players while having them equipped, so the decay timer will increase.
If the timer of each Abyssal item goes down to zero, it will decay and disappear from your inventory, like any other perishable item you can actually place in a Preservation Box. The Abyssal gear pieces can also be lost upon death.

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