Customization is an extremely important thing for me when it comes to playing video games as it helps keep me interested and invested in my characters. Quite frankly, I’ve found myself quitting games after some time if I feel like I can’t get things done that I want to do or if it feels like my characters are not well-rounded enough. In cases such as Don’t Starve Together, which is a great Survival Craft game, I ended up modding the game to suit my interests and needs.
In many cases when I mod a Survival Craft game it’s to add MMO-like elements to the game such as skill up trees as I’m a player who feels like he always needs to be working towards a goal or else I get quite bored easily. Even with games like Starbound and Minecraft, I’ve found myself turning to mods to keep the games feeling fresh and fulfilling.
Now, as I’m not done with my first public playthrough of Conan Exiles on Twitch, I’ve decided to stay away from all mods to ensure that I have a proper understanding of how to play the game as it was intended, but I can’t wait to mod it because I’m sure it’s a game with a tremendous mod community that can liven the game for veteran players.
So, why do I bring up mods? Well, it’s for two reasons. The first is the fact that I feel like Conan Exiles already has a good amount of versatility which I would want in most Survival Craft games and the main one is the available Attribute tree.
With all that being said, let’s get started on chatting about Attributes, how to get them and which ones I would recommend depending on the tasks you want to complete.
HOW DO YOU GET ATTRIBUTE POINTS IN CONAN EXILES?
Attribute points are directly correlated to a player’s level, meaning that you’re going to want to do your best to get to level 60 as possible to get the most out of your character.
For each level that a player gets in Conan Exiles, a player will gain a single Attribute point to place into one of the categories.
CAN YOU FILL OUT ALL OF YOUR ATTRIBUTE BARS IN CONAN EXILES?
Unfortunately, you will not be able to fill out all of your attribute bars, even at level 60. Now, although I don’t think this is a big deal, being that you can change your Attributes at any point of the game, players can use mods to circumvent this.
The reality is that no matter what game mode you are playing on there will be a way to change your Attributes. On the easiest game mode players will be able to change their Attributes at any point without any resources, however, on the normal to harder difficulties players will need to spend some extra resources.
HOW DO YOU CHANGE YOUR ATTRIBUTES IN CONAN EXILES?
Depending on what game mode you are on changing your Attributes will work differently. If you are on the easiest game mode you will simply need to head to your Attribute Tab and click Reset Attributes. This can happen at any point, even if you are in combat, making the whole mechanic a bit cheesy. I would still recommend that you are in a completely safe space when doing this as changing your Attributes can leave you extremely vulnerable, especially if you had extra health before you reset your Attributes.
Now, if you are on the normal or higher difficulty of Conan Exiles you will need either a Potion of Bestial Memory or a Yellow Lotus Potion.
Potion of Bestial Memories will reset only your Attributes while Yellow Lotus Potions will reset both your Attributes and Knowledge.
You can craft Potions of Bestial Memories using an Alchemist’s Bench, Improved Alchemist’s Bench, Trade Alchemist’s Bench or a Precision Alchemist’s Bench and you will need the following ingredients:
1 Water-filled Glass Flask
3 Yellow Lotus Blossom
10 Raw Ash
3 Blood
You can craft Yellow Lotus Potions in the Alchemist’s Bench, Improved Alchemist’s Bench, Trade Alchemist’s Bench, or the Precision Alchemist’s Bench and you will need the following ingredients:
10 Yellow Lotus Blossom
Realistically both of these recipes are pretty cheap, meaning that you should stockpile on these, though I would have more Potion of Bestial Memories than Yellow Lotus Potions. To me, being able to change your Attributes at any point is so much more appealing especially because I’m way too lazy to actually put all of my Knowledge points back where they were before. As we’re talking about Attributes right now, I won’t go too into depth with the Knowledge and will cover everything you need to know in a future article.
SHOULD YOU FILL OUT FULL BARS OF ATTRIBUTES IN CONAN EXILES?
Honestly, this is going to depend on your preferences and play styles. Filling out a full line of an Attribute will give you the most passives for that Attribute, however, not all passives are going to be useful for a player, so I would personally recommend to mess around and see which one works best for you.
I personally found three Attributes that I absolutely love in combination with each other, but I still rotate between my Attributes based on the tasks that I’m completing.
WHAT PERKS DO THE ATTRIBUTES GIVE YOU PASSIVELY IN CONAN EXILES?
There are currently 5 Attributes players can put their points into, each requiring a 20 Attribute Points or AP. Each passive requires 5 AP placed inside of the Attribute Skill Tree in order to trigger. At 10 and 20 AP you will get to make a choice between two different passives, allowing for even more customization.
The 5 Attributes players can choose from include: Strength, Agility, Vitality, Authority, Grit and Expertise. That being said, there are also Corrupted variants of all of these, though I’ll be covering these in another section.
STRENGTH
The Strength Attribute has to do with the amount of damage players will deal with strength Weapons, which tend to be Melee Weapons. Strength will also provide players with a bit more carrying weight, though it is not much.
In my opinion, Strength is by far the most important Attribute to have maxed out, even if you’re someone who is simply farming or resource-gathering.
The following is the defined breakdown of the traits:
For each point in Strength players will receive a 5% damage increase to all melee weapons, though this will not affect concussive damage.
Players will receive 0.5% extra damage with any agility-based weapon per point, meaning ranged Weapons.
Players will gain 3 Carrying Weight per point in Strength.
TIER 5 PERK
With 5 AP in Strength players will gain Heavy which allows players to deal 10% more damage with both Heavy and Special Attacks.
TIER 10 PERK OPTIONS
With 10 AP in Strength players will either get to choose Combo Master or Second Skin as their Perks.
Combo Master will allow players to deal an extra 20% damage when they use their combo finisher. I personally use this as I tend to like to be a glass cannon and personally have the mantra, if you kill them before they hit you it’s better.
Second Skin will provide players with the ability to wear heavier armour without wasting as much inventory space as all armour is going to weigh 25% less. I personally don’t like this perk and would recommend that you find other ways of dealing with Armour, unless you are playing on a multiplayer server where you are acting as the tank for your team. There are also many other ways a player can reduce the weight of their Armour.
TIER 15 PERK
With 15 AP in Strength players will unlock Berserker which allows players to deal 25% more damage when they are under 50% health. Players will also gain 100 Armour. By far, this is the best perk and why I initially took Strength in the first place.
Having the added Armour is extremely useful and not only that 25% more damage is a high amount of damage.
I personally use this to my strength and will make sure I don’t heal back to full while in the middle of a fight so I can always get that extra 25% more damage.
Now, this is a lot easier to manage when you have a Thrall or when you have a group of friends to play with as it will give you the opportunity to move away from the enemies in order to use a quick potion that gives you a bit of health.
TIER 20 PERK OPTIONS
At 20 AP players will have the option to choose between Blood-man Berserker and Crushing Swings.
Blood-mad Berserker will provide you with the ability to not be staggered or knocked down when your health is below 25%. Players will also have an additional 10% of damage and will also gain another 50 Armour. I personally prefer this perk as, again, I like to focus on damage since I’m more of a bruiser than anything when playing Conan Exiles.
Crushing Swings will make your heavy attacks stagger for 25% longer and will no longer rebound off shields. Admittedly, this is a pretty great perk, but I would again recommend it for someone who is tanking rather than someone who is playing as a solo player as you can get your Thrall to engage and then attack an enemy from behind instead.
This truly comes down to play style.
AGILITY
Agility governs all the damage that you deal with agility based weapons, mostly being bows and ranged weapons. Players will also be able to dodge better and will gain a bit of stamina.
The full breakdown of the perks you get from Agility are as follows:
For each AP in Agility players will gain 5% Agility-based damage.
Each point will also provide players with a faster time to act after a dodge, meaning that they will have an easier time recuperating after trying to get away from an enemy.
Players will gain 0.5% Strength per point in Agility.
Players will gain 1 Stamina per point in Agility.
I personally don’t like playing with Agility Weapons while I’m in solo play, but I feel like as soon as I get an opportunity to play with others I will probably be a ranged player as I typically am.
TIER 5 PERK
With 5 AP in Agility players will gain Backstab which increases the damage players deal when they attack enemies from behind by 15%. This doesn’t seem to matter what kind of Weapon you use, though it’s obviously better with an Agility Weapon.
TIER 10 PERK OPTIONS
When players get 10AP in Agility they will be able to choose between Dead Shot and Precision Strike.
Dead Shot will allow Arrows and Thrown Weapons to travel twice as fast and deal 15% damage to enemies that are in the distance. While this tends to be an alright perk I actually would choose the other.
You see Precision Strike will deal 10% additional Armour Penetration when you are wearing a Light or Medium Load, which will typically be the case when you are using an Agility Weapon. Now, the main reason I don’t actually like Agility Weapons is that they tend to be weaker and take more time in order to actually have some damage output, so in my opinion this tends to be the better method of dealing damage as it will ensure that stronger foes take more damage than with Dead Shot and leaves the weaker ones to simply be killed by the base damage from the Weapon.
Ultimately, the choice is yours, but Precision Strike definitely has more use while Dead Shot is more “versatile.”
TIER 15 PERK
At 15 AP in Agility players will consume less stamina when they are Jogging, Sprinting, Jumping, Swimming or Climbing. Players will also move faster. This perk is called Quickfooted.
TIER 20 PERK OPTIONS
At 20 AP in Agility players will have the option between Extended Leap and Rolling Thrust.
Extended Leap allows players to jump twice while they are in the air and I’ll be honest, I’m not really sure how useful this really is. Before I fully write it off, I’m going to keep play testing with it, because in all recommended moments… well, I haven’t needed it.
Rolling Thrust will allow players to deal 25% increased penetration after they dodge and it will also cost less stamina. This is obviously better for close ranged Weapons.
Truthfully this is my least favourite tier, but I always take Rolling Thrust if I’m doing a combo of Agility and Strength, however, if I was going main as Agility it’s going to be down to preference.
VITALITY
Vitality determines how much health and Health Regeneration a player has, though the regeneration simply has to do with how much health the player has in the first place and is not directly affected by the Vitality Attribute.
For each point of Vitality players will gain 10% base health, meaning 20 health per point.
Personally, I would always start with Vitality, but I would work towards dropping it so you can get a different Attribute later on.
TIER 5 PERK
With 5 AP in Vitality players will gain Fierce Vitality which is one of the nicest passives to ever have as it will provide you with 0.5% of your health back per second. This will help an early game players tremendously as it will ensure that you do not need to use as many resources and will make it so you can run away while in battle and get some health and come back.
Personally I love this when I’m learning a new boss and have my Thrall with me to tank. I essentially will Sunder the boss until it is at 5 stacks and then will run away for a bit to heal until I fully understand what is happening and can stay in to deal the most damage.
TIER 10 PERK OPTIONS
With 10 AP in Vitality players can choose between Resurgence and Fast Healer.
Resurgence will provide players with a one time health boost when a player has dropped under 50% of their health and then will be on cooldown until the player reaches full health again. Now, I like Resurgence for the early game content as I want to make sure that I am alive as much as possible, however, by the time I got to mid game I really wanted to stay around 25-50% of my health at all times so I could deal the most damage with my other passives, so I got rid of this. I would strongly recommend using Resurgence when you’re new to Conan and switching over or getting rid of Vitality altogether once you get comfortable.
Fast Healer makes it so you gain 50% increased healing from any source such as food, potions, and bandages though any passives will not be affected.
TIER 15 PERK
With 15 AP in Vitality players will gain Robust which increases a player’s maximum health by 100.
TIER 20 PERK OPTIONS
With 20 AP in Vitality players will get to choose between Last Stand and Glutton for Punishment.
Last Stand will make it so when a player’s health drops below 50% it will remove all negative effects and the players will gain 95% damage mitigation for a short amount of time.
Glutton for Punishment is typically what I choose as it will make it so a player regenerates the last instance of damage over a 15 second span of time. Essentially this means that players will get 20% of the damage they took every 3 seconds. I personally choose Glutton for Punishment so I can weave in and out or recuperate my health after taking fall damage as I like to be able to freely run around the world with ease.
AUTHORITY
Authority governs anything to do with your followers and is quite frankly one of the best for players who want to heavily rely on their Thralls to deal damage and get things done.
Players will also be able to get Thralls a lot easier if they level up Authority, so I would strongly recommend using this as an alternative Attribute when you are about to do anything with Thralls or more specifically when you are trying to capture them.
For every point in Authority your follower will gain 4% more damage.
Players will also receive 6% concussive damage per point in Authority.
TIER 5 PERK
With 5 AP in Authority players will gain Irritate which makes active followers goad enemies, essentially making it so that the enemy tries attacking your Thrall before they attack you.
TIER 10 PERK OPTIONS
At 10 AP in Authority players will have the option to choose between Commanding Presence and Healthy Diet.
Commanding Presence will make it so your active follower is inspired by your battle and has their health restored anytime you damage an enemy. I personally prefer this because it is in my control whether or not my Thrall is being healed, though this will need a strong Weapon as it is only about 5% of the damage that you deal.
Healthy Diet makes a follower heal when they are not engaged in combat by 10 health per second, but this takes a while to kick in as it will take 10 seconds for them to disengage. In my opinion, this is very risky as you never know whether or not a mob will continue to chase or attack your Thrall even after you’ve told them to stop fighting. That’s why I personally would choose Commanding Presence.
TIER 15 PERK
At 15 AP in Authority players will get Attentive Care which will raise your active follower’s health received by 50% from any source.
TIER 20 PERK OPTIONS
At 20 AP players can choose between Well-Trained and War Party.
With Well-Trained active followers will have a bonus 20 to every single attribute.
With War Party players will be able to have two normal combatants active or 4 zombie combatants, though any of your own stats will no longer influence your follower’s damage output. This means all the damage you would have gotten from Authority are removed.
The choice is yours which one you want to choose and to be honest I haven’t play tested this enough to figure out which one for me is better. I would say at the moment I’d go with Well-Trained over War Party because my Thrall rarely ever dies and we can pretty much duo everything, but this isn’t always the case especially if players are using Thralls in PVP.
GRIT
Grit has to do with a player’s Stamina as well as a player’s Armour, making survivability a lot better. To me, Grit is very important as I’m very dumb with my Stamina and I’ll be honest, since I tend to not wear armour and run around in the buff, it’s my only source of Armour for the most part.
Players will receive 3 Stamina for each point in Grit.
Players will also receive 8 Armour for each point in Grit.
TIER 5 PERK
With 5 AP in Grit players will gain Tenacity which raises a player’s Armour by 40 and their Stamina by another 20.
TIER 10 PERK OPTIONS
With 10 AP in Grit players will get to choose between Endurance and Stout.
Endurance makes it so a player’s Stamina regenerates 25% faster. I personally always choose this so I can do the most damage as often as possible
Stout makes it so a player’s Armour goes up by 1/5 of the player’s current Stamina. I would strongly recommend this for someone who is not very good at kiting hits or is noticing that they are dying too often. This amount of Armour is nothing to scoff at and can be really game-changing.
TIER 15 PERK
At 15 AP in Grit players will get Defensive Posture which makes incoming damage 15% less while a player is attacking or blocking.
TIER 20 PERK OPTIONS
With 20 AP in Grit players will get to choose between Shield Master and Steel Thewed.
Shield Master will make it so a player can block any attacks that were unblockable earlier, though this would cost more Stamina than usual. This is honestly really good for players who are learning boss mechanics and aren’t the best at dodging or for players who are playing as the main tank on their team in a big group of players.
Steel Thewed will make it so a player cannot take more than 25% of their maximum health in one hit. I personally really like this one, especially if I’m going to go for Corrupted Attributes, which I will cover later in this post. I personally also like this one combined with Glutton for Punishment.
EXPERTISE
Expertise has to do with how much weight a player can hold in their inventory without getting encumbered.
For each point of Expertise players will gain 15 max carrying weight.
I have to admit, I really like the perks from Expertise, but I tend to use my AP in other places so I don’t tend to have much Expertise in general. The only time I admittedly use Expertise is when I’m off stream and I’m simply farming resources by myself, but otherwise if I’m streaming I tend to be doing more combat focussed tasks such as clearing Dungeons or locating World Bosses.
TIER 5 PERK
With 5 AP in Expertise players will gain Survivalist which will make player’s lose half the durability on their tools per hit and will reduce the amount of hunger and thirst they experience by 50%, although the tooltip says 33%.
TIER 10 PERK OPTIONS
With 10 AP in Expertise players will have the choice between Efficient Harvest and Careful Harvest.
Efficient Harvest makes it so that the final hit on a resource will provide you with twice as many resources, which can be useful in early game, however, I feel like it’s the worse choice.
Careful Harvest will provide you with a 2x chance to gather rare resources when you are harvesting. I strongly recommend this one for mid-to-late game as the harder resources tend to be much more scarce and you will need more and more of them.
TIER 15 PERK
At 15 AP in Expertise players will gain Hard Worker which makes players able to harvest nodes twice as fast.
TIER 20 PERK OPTIONS
I personally love the perks you get at 20 AP in Expertise as they are either Beast of Burden or Structural Integrity. The choice you make will highly depend on what difficulty you are playing on and whether you are playing in PVE or PVP.
With Beast of Burden players will be able to dodge and move at full speed when they are over-encumbered. Honestly, this is brilliant as it will make it so you can still fight and there’s really no penalty for being Encumbered. I would honestly take Expertise at all times because of this perk and truthfully would drop Vitality for Expertise at anytime.
Now, with Structural Integrity players will make all structures 25% more stable. This is by far the best for someone who is… well obviously building! I personally don’t choose it as I’m learning how to build without it and since I’m on a single player server it tends to not be an issue, but for PVP you’re going to want it.
WHAT ARE CORRUPTED ATTRIBUTES?
Corrupted Attributes are essentially a way for players to get alternate versions of their Attributes, however these will come with a penalty.
Players should be very familiar with Corruption, especially if they are in the mid-game, well when a players is under Heavy Corruption (at least 40% Corruption or more) players will be able to use a piece of Soul Essence to corrupt one of their perks.
For each perk that they replace they will get a 2.5% permanent debuff of Corruption that cannot be cleansed up to a maximum of 50%. So, this means that a players can potentially Corrupt 3 lines of Attributes and still only be impacted up to 50% by Corruption, so you may want to go big or go home.
Now, choosing to Corrupt your Attributes is not a necessity, however, it’s important to note that many of these are actually a lot more powerful.
At the moment there are only Corrupted versions of Strength, Vitality and Authority so your choice on whether or not to Corrupt will heavily be based on if you are using these Attributes
The following are the alternates to the Attributes you would have from each.
CORRUPTED STRENGTH
TIER 5 PERK
Your tier 5 Strength perk will be replaced with Scourge which deals additional damage that scales with your Corrupted Strength being 1% per point in Corrupted Strength.
TIER 10 PERK
Your tier 10 Strength perk will be replaced with Mule Kick which knocks back enemies further and will knock them down.
TIER 15 PERK
Your tier 15 Strength perk will be replaced with Wrack which makes your strikes numb opponents and reduce their damage potential. This reduces the enemy’s damage by 20% for 4 seconds.
TIER 20 PERK
Your tier 20 Strength perk will give you Desecrate which has a chance to cause a blast of corruption that vents from the earth and knocks down enemies while damaging them.
This has a 5% to hit and will deal 50 extra damage, which is added to your normal damage and will be able to be modified by other damage buffs. Desecrate has a very short cooldown being 1.5 seconds.
CORRUPTED VITALITY
TIER 5 PERK
Your tier 5 Vitality perk will be replaced with Grotesque Excrescence which makes your passive health regeneration scale on your Corrupted Vitality. You will get +0.2 heal regeneration per point in Corrupted Vitality.
TIER 10 PERK
Your tier 10 Vitality perk will be replaced by Twisted Flesh which will make it so you have a +0.5% chance to deflect damage per point in Corrupted Vitality.
TIER 15 PERK
Your tier 15 Vitality perk will be replaced with Petrified which makes you immune to bleed, poison, disease and sunder effects. This is by far the most powerful Corrupted perk in the game, in my opinion as it also makes it so you cannot be Alcohol Poisoned, Food Poisoned and are immune to Noxious Gas.
This, by far, is the one reason I cannot imagine taking Vitality off my Attribute bar.
TIER 20 PERK
Your tier 20 Vitality perk will be replaced with Tainted Vessel which makes it so when you take damage you expel corruption that deals damage in your surrounding area and has the potential to corrupt enemies.
Tainted Vessel deals 30 damage and this damage is added to your normal damage, meaning that it can be affected by other damage buffs.
Tainted Vessel has a 1.5 second cooldown.
CORRUPTED AUTHORITY
TIER 5 PERK
Your tier 5 Authority perk will be replaced by Frenzy which makes it so when you deal damage your follower will enter a Frenzied state, meaning that they will deal 3% increased damage for each point in Corrupted Authority.
Frenzy lasts for 10 seconds after the player deals damage. The most amazing part of Frenzy is that it can be used with War Party, so it’s going to be up to you if you want to take this all the way to tier 20 or not because you can potentially deal more damage with it not all the way.
TIER 10 PERK
Your tier 10 Authority perk will be replaced with Flesh Bond which will make it so any damage you take gets spread across you and your Followers. Only 33% of the damage you take will be placed on you and the rest will be transferred to all your followers. Note that any damage reduction you have will not affect how much damage your Followers take and they will take the full amount of damage.
Admittedly, this one is a very risky perk to have if you’re not careful about taking damage.
TIER 15 PERK
Your tier 15 Authority perk is going to be replaced by Devour which makes it so any damage your followers deal heals you. The healing is equal to 2% of the raw damage that is inflected by your followers before any perks. It should be noted that Damage reduction and Debuffs are taken into account.
TIER 20 PERK
Your tier 20 Authority perk is going to be replaced with Demon-Lord which makes it so when you deal damage there is a chance for an uncontrolled demonic entity to appear and attack your foes for a short period of time.
The chance to summon the demonic entity is 7% and there are a few different demonic entities. The chance to summon a common demon is 80% and the chance to summon an elite demon is 20%.
Demonic entities last for 22.5 seconds and you are able to have multiple Demonic Entities on the map at the same time, being the main reason you wouldn’t care about having War Party anymore.
