Conan Exiles Hits Early Access

Funcom’s survival game with RPG elements, Conan Exiles, is now available on Steam Early Access, as is customary for survival games. Becoming the roaming barbarian will set you back $29.99 for the game’s Standard edition, or $59.99 for the aptly named Barbarian edition that awards you with a bunch of digital and physical goods.

When getting into an Early Access game, the biggest concern is said game getting stuck in some development limbo for years, with little to no progress. So far, Funcom’s been pretty transparent. There’s already a post on their developer blog describing what’s in store for Conan Exiles. In short, they’re planning to add trebuchets, a dyeing system, more animations and miscelaneous improvements. First, the launch trailer:

Followed by an excerpt from the blog:

The trebuchet

Want the ability to lay siege to the stronghold of your enemies and bombard them from a great distance by firing heavy boulders, explosive ammunition or even rotting corpses? The powerful trebuchet will let you bring down your enemy’s defenses before storming their keep, or force them out from hiding as their well-crafted walls come crashing down.

The trebuchet is a complex siege weapon though, and it will be both costly to make and cumbersome to transport. Once you have set it up you must guard it well, or a rapid counterattack from the enemy may destroy your valuable war machine before you even get to fire a single shot.

Dyeing system

We are working on an all new system to dye your clothes and armor. You will be able to gather color pigments from many resources and craft them into dyes. Each piece of cloth or armor is able to hold several different colors, so you can choose to color the individual parts of each piece differently. Being able to dye clothes like this will be especially useful for clans, as they can for example choose a set of clan colors which makes it easier to separate friend from foe in the heat of battle.

[…]

Ongoing fixes and improvements:

• Adding new features and content
• Improving the artificial intelligence for creatures and NPCs
• Fixing general bugs and glitches
• Adjusting floating assets, such as resources or foliage
• Balancing the crafting and progression system
• Introducing more types of thralls
• Introducing more types of craftable items
• Introducing more types of creatures
• Introducing more lore and story elements
• Introducing more placeables such as traps