Good morning, cheeky balloon animals!

We hope everyone's been enjoying the new combat system, which we rolled out on PC Testlive last week. The feedback we have gotten so far has been incredibly helpful with helping us find issues to fix and things to tweak. Please keep the feedback and comments coming. New builds will be rolled out to Testlive with additional fixes.

In the future we'll also talk about some of the bugs and issues you've reported to us from the Testlive build and how we're fixing them. A lot of it has been improved already. From the current Testlive build to the latest internal development build there are around 300 changes.

There were some freezes on the Testlive servers over the weekend, due a recursive item reference which has now been found and fixed and will be patched to Testlive later today. We also noticed players having trouble finding the servers in the browser. This was fixed and rolled out to Testlive on Tuesday.

Finally, we want to speak to the Xbox audience. We wanted to let you know that we haven't forgotten you and that we will patch the Xbox version of Conan Exiles. As soon as certification ends, which should be soon, we will be able to roll out the Update 32 parity patch on Xbox One.


Every Friday, the development team meets up to highlight and talk about what they've been working on recently: New content and features, bugs that have been fixed, and things to come down the pipeline. To not make this newsletter overly long we're only sticking to the highlights. Even if something isn't explicitly mentioned things are still being worked on "behind the scenes", and we'll mention these when they're relevant.


The mighty Vanguard are our forward troops in the fight against the bugs and exploits. They also help smooth out gameplay systems and mechanics in need of some extra love and attention. This past week there's been a big update to the Feats interface, grouping a lot of blueprints together and organizing them based on theme and content. We think this will make navigating the Feats window much easier for players, letting you understand everything at a glance.



We're hooking up a post-character creation in-game cinematic to replace the temporary one that's currently in the game. This will offer up more details in the game's story, you'll get to see more of Conan, and we've even made a facial rig to give your player character facial expressions in the in-game cinematic.

Finally, the moaning sound that would sometimes play when drinking water has been removed. No more sexy sounds, but we're leaving the door open for our Audio team to create and add some cool buff sounds.


The Terraformers are working on creating new content while also rebalancing existing content. Following up on the armor and weapons revamps we talked about two weeks ago we had some questions from players asking how this will affect NPC drops. Weapons and armors will still drop as loot from NPCs, and we've now also added cultural armors as drops from NPCs belonging to that culture. Meaning you might get Stygian armor from Stygians, Nordheimer armor from Nordheimers, etc.

Speaking of NPCs, populations across the entire game are still being tweaked as part of the content revamp. You'll be able to experience this very soon on Testlive. If you've been playing around with the Testlive build you have already seen some of the effects this has had on NPC and resource placements. You might also have run into the world bosses: bigger, more dangerous versions of regular enemies that stick to certain areas in the map. There are more of them coming, but what they are remains to be seen.



In terms of thralls we've also begun working on a new type of thralls that will work as item carriers for players. You'll find them in camps, just like regular thralls. Once broken they'll have a much greater inventory space than other thralls, based on their tier level, letting you take a lot of extra stuff with you for when you go out on expeditions! This was another reason to have mounts and we have found an alternative by implementing carrier thralls.

Thralls is a natural part of the game already, so we wanted to expand the system further. We felt that carrier thralls made sense as a way of increasing players' carrying capacity.


Ostrich Run[funcom.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com]

The Monster Hunters have been doing a lot of quality of life work on creatures and monsters. Forward movement's been improved, attack boxes have been adjusted and animations have been polished to look better.

We've also re-implemented additive animations on creatures. That's what you see in the video above. They were removed when the new AI came in a while back and needed to be re-implemented alongside animations for when animals would turn in place. It resulted in creature animations being a bit stuttery, but now that we have the Monster Hunters team we're able to re-implement it and smooth it out, so things look better. All animals have additive animations now except the very small ones (rabbits, baby animals, cobras, etc). The new system is improved from before. It allows us to have different additive turning based on the creature's movement speed.


It is a streaming week again and so we'll be running another developer stream on Friday. Joel won't be joining us, so lead designer Oscar will be taking his place. We'll talk about farming, show some new combat improvements, and bring in someone from the Monster Hunters team to talk about the creature revamp they've been doing.

The time and place, as always, are www.twitch.tv/funcom at 5pm CET. We hope you'll join us!

Sincerely,

Funcom

Hey all!

We've released the newest combat on our TestLive Servers. If you'd like to check it out and leave us feedback, please go here:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/440900/discussions/7/1692662484243639100/

We read all feedback posted there so please be sure to comment on that thread. Please refrain from posting bugs currently on live. If you're unsure how to switch to TestLive, you can read the instructions here:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/440900/discussions/7/133257324787028868/

Thanks and have fun!

Good evening little dogs of the intertube. We're back with another community newsletter, recapping the last week of development on Conan Exiles.

On Friday we released a blog post[www.conanexiles.com] with a list of what you can expect from Conan Exiles at launch. We've been following the community's reactions and while we might not be able to respond to everything we are reading your feedback. We have a vision of what Conan Exiles should be, which might differ from your vision of what Conan Exiles should be, and our job as a developer is to merge the two into a coherent whole. Game development is normally a closed process, but because we opted for Early Access we also had to make sure that the community had a voice. The new combat system is a direct consequence of this interaction that fits in with the Conan vision.

Coming up in the beginning of March we'll be running compatibility tests to check the game against several different types of hardware configurations to see how the game performs. The purpose of the test is to identify performance bottlenecks and compatibility issues, e.g. problems running the game with a specific type of CPU, GPU or OS version.

As part of optimizing for console we have introduced several tweaks and fixes that improve performance on PS4 and Xbox One. The good news is that several of these optimizations also apply to PC, and are especially useful on lower-end PC configurations.We will be testing these fixes on a wider range of PC hardware configurations than we have access to internally as part of these tests.

We're still ironing out the kinks in the new combat system. Our goal is still to have it out on Testlive very soon for testing. The current plan is to keep the new combat system on Testlive for a few weeks to get extensive testing and feedback before rolling it out to Live. That way we can also get large scale testing and stress testing of the combat system before launch.

 
Every Friday, the development team meets up to highlight and talk about what they've been working on recently: New content and features, bugs that have been fixed, and things to come down the pipeline. To not make this newsletter overly long we're only sticking to the highlights. Even if something isn't explicitly mentioned things are still being worked on "behind the scenes", and we'll mention these when they're relevant.

 
It's been a while since we've heard from the guys over on the technical side of Conan Exiles, so we figured it would be good to check in and see what they've been up to. While the Vanguard works directly on game features, Tech and Tools work on backend features. The Tools subteam are the guys in charge of making sure everything we use to make the game works as intended. They build and maintain our internal tools for source control, build system and version making, crash report gathering and handling and smoke tests. Sometimes they also help create systems that are implemented into the game, like the voice chat system.

The engine subteam focuses on a wide array of things needed for the game to run properly, such as dedicated server support, client and server optimizations, engine level bug and crash fixes, and a host of other technical stuff going on under the hood. The game's sand tech, where you'll leave trails in the desert sand as you walk, comes from the engine subteam. The optimization tests we mentioned earlier are also within the realm of the tech team.

This past week the Tech team has been battling it out with engine optimizations and various certification issues that have popped up when we're submitting builds to Sony and Microsoft. Definitely valuable work now that we're moving ever close to leaving Early Access.

The Monster Hunters team was introduced last week as the team in charge of revamping monster and creature NPCs for the new combat system. They've been prototyping monster attacks, primarily testing new setups for Shalebacks, crocodiles and hyenas for now, in addition to experimenting with hyper armor. Hyper armor means the creature can't be staggered when it performs certain attacks, putting an aggressive player in greater danger when engaging a monster.

Our end goal with the creature revamp is making them feel smarter and more dangerous to players. The old combat system was more like an MMORPG than an action game, where a creature would stand in front of you and attack. Under the new paradigm we plan to make creature attacks more varied, with better anticipation time and "tells" so you'll know what comes next. 

In addition to being the combat team The Berserkers are also the guys in charge of movement and animation for the human characters in the game. Since we want to support using tools in the first-person viewpoint we have been revamping the first-person perspective animations to make it all look better.

Based on community feedback from the combat stream the Berserkers have been making some improvements to camera behavior when locked onto a target. We had a lot of players ask us not to have your character in center frame when locking on, as this would obscure your target. We've listened to your feedback and moved the camera up higher and slightly to the side. This way your target will always be visible to you when fighting. The camera will also move dynamically depending on where you are in relation to your enemy.

Finally, there's been some changes to the way stun-locking works in the game. All heavy attacks will give you hyper armor, preventing you from being stun-locked. This will not only help when facing a crowd of enemies, but also means you can more reliably land hits. Then again, that goes for your opponent as well.

Over in the art department we've had a character art workshop for our 3D modellers. This is so we'll have more people to help us with our character assets and art pipeline in the future. Currently there's three people creating every piece of clothing, every human model and every monster and creature you see in the game. Thanks to this workshop we've been able to diversify and have more people available if need be. 

In terms of new clothing and outfits the Derkheto priest(ess) outfit is coming together nicely in the concepting stage. Derkheto is a death/sex goddess, but designing her followers' clothes is proving trickier than you might think. You'll get to see it soon and we think you're going to like it.

The Vanguard team is working on translation and UI fixes, making sure the game manages to display all the 11 languages it's being translated into. Some languages have been breaking the user interface in various exciting ways. This obviously can't happen in a finished game, which is why we're fixing it.

One of our coders has been doing some fixes to the temperature system, digging through it to work out some of the kinks. Bugs frequently encountered by the community have been fixed and the system should be more reliable than before.

If you caught up with our blog on Friday, you'd see that we're adding a fast travel/teleportation feature. We always talked about doing teleportation as part of the sorcery system, and since mounts aren't making it into the game for launch, we wanted to create a way for players to cut down on on-foot travel time. The Map Room, which is a placeable you can build, is our solution. By building a Map Room in your base you can travel to special obelisks you've discovered in the Exiled Lands. To build it you'll need to find the recipe out in the Exiled Lands and when you teleport or get close to the obelisks you will gain corruption, cutting down on your max health and stamina.



Finally, we've been conducting some memory tests on our Testlive servers with the help of diligent members of our community. They answered the call we put out on Twitter, jumping into the servers to play, build, fight and give us some very valuable data. Thanks everyone, we really couldn't have done it without you! 

The testing was to check out some recent memory leaks, seeing what triggers them. We've run three tests on Testlive and gotten some leads on how to proceed with taking care of the issue. We are aware of the way our live-servers are performing and have collected databases to examine them for data on how our players are playing the game. It gives us a lot of important and useful information in terms of bottlenecks and fixes we need to do. We'll also do spot checks on official servers, so you may have been playing with a Funcom developer without even knowing it! This way we'll be able to improve performance on both PC and console.

Community Manager Jens Erik will be at the Norwegian Game Awards in Trondheim on Friday. We're sponsoring the event and giving away a Best Game Concept award, so if you're at the event feel free to come around to have a chat.

There won't be a Conan Exiles stream this week, but mark your calendars for March 2nd when we'll be streaming again.

Sincerely,

Funcom

Welcome back everyone!

We have some very exciting news this week! You may have already caught the announcement on Monday, but in case you didn't, we've revealed the release date for Conan Exiles: May 8th, on PC, Xbox One and PS4! Click here to read the full announcement[www.conanexiles.com]. You can find the trailer below:

https://youtu.be/KZTCaCk_QVU

Friday was Joel's last dev stream before the Christmas break, as he's traveled to Australia to spend some time with his family. He's not completely off the hook, though, as he will be doing some writing work while he's over there.

You can see the full stream over on our YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1nryIglnLE

Finally, here's something you might not be aware of: If you combine the word count of all the item descriptions in Conan Exiles you would have a text about the length of the first Lord of the Rings novel.


Since releasing Update 31 we've been hard at work on Update 32[www.conanexiles.com], which we released on Wednesday. This update adds the weapon, tool and armor modification system, new dynamic weather, two new armor sets (Zamorian and Aquilonian), new thrall capturing tools, new weapons, new building pieces (ladders, folks!!), and the long-awaited sickle. It lets you harvest a metric butt-tonne of Plant Fiber!

Within two hours of the patch rolling out we started getting reports from players saying their vaults and altars had disappeared, much like when we did the server wipes and item purges before update 31. This, obviously, wasn't intended. We did a bit of sleuthing and found that the item purge script had made its way into the build we rolled out for Update 32, causing altars and vaults to go poof. We don't know why this happened, but we're working on figuring it out so it doesn't happen again.

All our patches go through testing before they go live. The item purge is set to activate when it finds the "Official" tag in the server setup. Our test server, however, is not tagged as an official server, so the script didn't activate on our test server.

Fortunately we were able to catch this quickly and implemented a rollback on the official servers to try to restore people's progress. Please remember to report server issues, bugs and feedback to us on social media, our Steam forums or on our subreddit.

Update 32 will be the last content update we release before Christmas. If need be there will be hotfixes to take care of whatever issues may linger after we patch. We want to leave you with a stable and fun game for the Christmas break, after all. The next content update will be released once we're in 2018.


The Xbox version of Conan Exiles was on sale this weekend for 50% off! This was in anticipation of the game's price change[blog.conanexiles.com] when we opened up for retail pre-orders. We hope you were able to secure a digital copy of the game when it was on sale. If you've already purchased Conan Exiles during the Game Preview period you won't have to pay for it again once when the full version has been released.

For Xbox we're looking at getting a hotfix/bug fixing patch out before Christmas to take care of some of the issues we mentioned last week, like avatar tokens not being craftable.


Every Friday, the development team meets up to talk about what they've been working on recently: New content and features, bugs that have been fixed, and things to come down the pipeline. To not make this newsletter overly long we're only sticking to the highlights. Even if something isn't explicitly mentioned things are still being worked on "behind the scenes", and we'll mention these when they're relevant.


The Vanguard are at the forefront when it comes to fixing bugs and creating improvements to things like UI and gameplay systems. They've been revamping the game's user interface, creating a new clan screen and Attributes screen, and making sure that Update 32 is stable and working properly. You've already seen the new Attributes screen in our developer streams, and we'll show you the full new UI once that's ready to be revealed.

Two of our Vanguard coders have been helping out with implementing the new combat system, while another have been working on a double jump mechanic for players who unlock that perk.


We've had a graphical issue in our game for a while now where light would glow through hair when you were standing near a light source. It doesn't look great. TL;DR from our character artist is that the Unreal Engine shader coding and Z-buffer would "brainfart", giving the hair an unnatural glow.

Thankfully, it has now been fixed!




Everything needs more material and texture work to get it working 100% correctly, but this is a huge step in the right direction and will work as an intermediate fix.


In addition to working on combat the Berserkers team are also improving animations and character movement. On the combat revamp side, they've been focusing especially hard on hit confirmation, ways to let the player know they've managed to hit their target (or been hit themselves). They've also been finishing up their work on target locking, because we want players to actually hit what they want to hit rather than flailing about like a crazy person.

Over on the animation side we've finally gotten our new motion capture room set up in the basement! All the combat animations have been motion captured and work is moving steadily forward. We can't wait to show you what we've been working on.


Two of our designers from the Terraformers team have started prototyping and testing ways we can improve how the game loads and streams in assets. If the experimentation works we should be able to save on memory when the game is running, creating a much smoother gaming experience for everyone.


On the technical side of things work has been progressing on adding voice chat to the Xbox One version. They've gotten it working on our development builds, but we'll need to put it through its paces before we can roll it out. We're able to hear each other, at least.

Secondly, they've been testing setups for dedicated servers on PlayStation 4. They've almost gotten it to work, which means they're able to connect to it, but haven't gotten to run around and really test the server yet.


Since launch we've been getting a lot of questions from console players with regards to nudity. When we first launched in Xbox Game Preview the idea was to release a nudity patch that players in certain territories could download for free to unlock the full nudity option. Other players would be limited to partial nudity.

Said nudity patch has been unavailable since launch due to a last-minute issue with the Xbox Store. All territories have therefore been limited to partial nudity. Microsoft was investigating a solution to the issue and have come up with something that will allow us to roll out full nudity on consoles where the game's rating allows for it.

Full nudity will be made available on consoles on launch day, May 8th. We'll have more information on how players will be able to access the full nudity option on launch day.

Our external QA partner, Testronic, are running a stress test on Conan Exiles this weekend to collect data and find more bugs for us. We wish them good fortune out in the Exiled Lands and hope they don't run into too many hungry hyenas.

Sincerely,

Funcom

Hey everyone, it's Tuesday! Welcome back to the community newsletter.  

Finally, we've reached December: that time of the year when everything both speeds up and slows down as we prepare for, and then celebrate, the Holidays. Remember to get your Christmas shopping in before all those Turbo Man dolls are sold out. 


As mentioned last week we're working on the next update for Conan Exiles: what to include in terms of bugs and fixes, new weapons, new armor tipes, new items, etc. The much-requested Sickle (for harvesting Plant Fiber) will make it into this update, in addition to plenty of other goodies. We'll have more to show in the next developer stream this Friday. 

In the long term we're planning for the remaining months of Early Access. We're reviewing the various features to look at what we'll be able to implement, what needs to be scaled down and what, unfortunately, might need to be cut before full launch. We'll be able to do a lot in four months, but we won't be able to do everything. 


We patched Xbox with a quick little hotfix on Friday to fix a bug where foundations would disappear. You should also no longer get a "Purchase cancelled" error message when you try to rent a server. As for other Xbox specific bugs, we are working on making avatar tokens craftable again, and we're also trying to get a handle on the so called "Animation exploit" that have been causing desync issues.  

As you may have seen yesterday we announced that we're taking pre-orders for the retail version of Conan Exiles starting next week. That involves increasing the price of the game. You can find the full breakdown on why we're doing this on our dev blog[blog.conanexiles.com]. 

In order to make sure that everyone gets a fair chance to get into the Game Preview before we increase the price we're running a special 50% discount sale on the Xbox One version of Conan Exiles from Friday December 8th to Sunday December 10th. If you're still on the fence you can get in at a very low price. The discount will be 50% off the game's current price, so you'll be able to get it at about $17.50. Anyone who buys Game Preview access receives full access to the game. 


Every Friday, the development team meets up to highlight and talk about what they've been working on recently: New content and features, bugs that have been fixed, and things to come down the pipeline. To not make this newsletter overly long we're only sticking to the highlights. Even if something isn't explicitly mentioned things are still being worked on "behind the scenes", and we'll mention these when they're relevant. 


The Berserkers team has been focusing on core fixes for the new combat and movement system. Primarily, there's a lot of work being done on creating Root Motion functionality that aids the combat system.  

Typically, in game animation, a character's collision box (or capsule or other shape) is moved through a particular scene by a controller (thumbstick or WASD), and data from this collision box is used to play the animation. The game registers a forward input, the collision box moves forward, and the system knows to play a running or walking animation. But this doesn't work for all situations. 

In combat, for example, an attack animation might move the player character mesh forward, causing them to step outside the collision box. The character then loses collision. Once the animation is done, the character then snaps back to where the animation started, where the collision box is "waiting" for the animation to play out. Since the character has lost collision it can pass through level geometry and other characters, which makes for a very terrible game experience. 

That's where Root Motion comes in! Root Motion essentially "locks" the collision box to the character mesh as the animation plays out, causing it to "follow" the mesh forward and give the character proper collision. You can probably tell why nailing proper Root Motion and animation is incredibly important to make a decent combat system, especially one where you're supposed to be able to cancel and interrupt animations.  


The art team has been supporting the various other development teams with whatever assets and textures they might need for their own projects, in addition to further filling out the item lists with new weapons, outfits, tools and decorative items.  

All these new items also need inventory icons so you know at a glance what something will look like when you're navigating your inventory. The same goes for things like achievements and trophies, which we're planning on implementing before full launch.  


The tools team has been working on further improving the crash reporter we told you about two weeks ago[blog.conanexiles.com]. It's been working great for us so far, giving us easily parseable data and information that's then filtered and given to the tech team so they can get started on crash and stability fixes, but it could always use some improvements here and there. 

Over on the tech side of things we're testing dedicated servers on the PlayStation 4 version (launching in Q2, 2018 along with the PC and Xbox). We want all the different versions of Conan Exiles to have the same content and features, and that includes server functionality for players. More information on that as things progress. 

Finally, progress on adding voice chat to Xbox is moving forward. We don't have an exact ETA for when we might roll it out (additional testing is required), but it is something we will have in the game before full launch. We are aware that many of you want text chat in Conan Exiles on Xbox One, and it is something we are considering adding once the higher priority items on our to-do lists are taken care of. 


The previously mentioned price increase will not affect the price of the PC Early Access version of Conan Exiles. This is because the PC version will have a more limited retail presence and will have a different price tag at launch. 

We're doing another stream this Friday where we'll be talking more about The Riddle of Steel system, showing off some new outfits for the first time, and diving into the next content update. It will start a little earlier than usual because we're having a studio wide Christmas dinner at our usual streaming time. We'll give you all the details in the announcement tomorrow. 

Sincerely, 

Funcom

Dear exiles,

Today we've announced that we're doing a price change on the Xbox One Game Preview version of Conan Exiles. This is because we're opening up retail pre-orders for Conan Exiles next week, and the Game Preview price needs to match the in-store price of the game.

PC players will not see a price increase on Steam Early Access. This will stay at the same $29.99 we've had since the start of Early Access.

Please read this blog post for more information: https://blog.conanexiles.com/en/important-message-xbox-one-players-retail-pre-orders-pricing-change-sale

Sincerely,
The Conan Exiles team

Welcome back! Hope you had a good weekend!

Winter has come at last over here in Norway, and it's been snowing off and on for the past couple of weeks. Hopefully global warming hasn't screwed us over too much and we'll get a white Christmas this year.

We'll be celebrating barbarian style, of course: eating with our hands and making a mess so we can know the rich juices of red meat and stinging wine on our palates.


We hotfixed PC last week to take care of some issues that remained after Update 31 was released. You should now be able to harvest crystals and have building pieces attach to your foundations again. Foundations are still known to disappear from time to time, but this is due to a bug that might occur if you log off away from your base. We believe we have a fix for this already, it just needs additional testing.

Now that update 31 is out we've started looking at what to patch during the time leading up to Christmas. We want the game to be at a satisfying level of stability and polish during the Christmas break, after all. As always, we will keep you informed of how we move forward.


The next PC/Xbox parity patch is going through and we want roll it out this week. This patch will bring all the PC changes to the Xbox, which includes repair kits, new building pieces and thrall inventories. Once that (and eventual hotfixes) are out of the way we'll start looking at the next patch for Xbox.

We also did some quick server-side maintenance on the official Xbox One servers on Friday, which seems to have greatly improved server stability. This does not mean we are done with our work to improve upon client and server stability, both on PC and on Xbox. Please let us know if things aren't working for you and provide us with as much information as you can.


Every Friday, the development team meets up to highlight and talk about what they've been working on recently: New content and features, bugs that have been fixed, and things to come down the pipeline. In this newsletter wee're sticking to the highlights. Things are still being worked on "behind the scenes", and we'll mention these when they're relevant.


We have an update from the Vanguard team this week! It's been a while. Since the last time we heard from the Vanguard they have gained a new addition to the team: Paul, who's joining Funcom as a junior gameplay programmer.

Paul's been working on improving the way swimming works in the game. Currently, you sink immediately when you enter any body of water. Under the new system you'll automatically remain on the surface until you press crouch, which will cause you to sink into the depths. You hold down space to surface again, and you'll stay on the surface again once your head breaks water. The new method is more in line with conventions on how swimming in games is often done. The problem we are solving is that you can't reliably keep your head above water without constantly jumping out of the water like a dolphin. Making diving look better is next on the list.

Two more of our Vanguard coders have been giving the chat system some love, smoothing out bugs and issues. Once we roll out these changes you should be able to scroll properly using the up and down keys, and the text will format correctly to fit long usernames.

Basically, it used to look like this:



Once we're done it'll look more like this:



The colors are based on the channel you're broadcasting to and aren't just randomly assigned anymore.

Over on the bug side of things some extensive work has been done on the bed and bedroll bugs. We've patched in fixes for bedrolls for PC (coming soon to Xbox) to make them more consistent when respawning, and there's a similar fix coming to beds as well. Beds will get an additional check when you're placing them to prevent you from putting somewhere you'd invalidate the spawn point. Please note that this is still something that needs extensive testing and it won't be rolled out immediately.

Finally, Vanguard has been helping out in with the backend implementation of war paint, which is coming down the line. You'll find more information about that from the Terraformers section.


We did a Q&A heavy stream on Friday with lead designer Oscar Lopez Lacalle joining Joel Bylos and myself on the stream. Oscar is the head of the Berserkers team, in charge of revamping the combat system. On the Friday afternoon stream Oscar talked a lot of about the changes that are coming to combat and how this will impact the game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQ92px8OJc8

If you'd rather read a quick summary of the stream, you'll find a write-up over on the Steam Community Hub.


I promised another look at the volcano and another look you shall receive. After that, some juicy bits about war paint!



Let's talk about war paint. You learn about war paint through the Feats window, like most other crafting recipes. You craft war paint using Papyrus, which creates a special pattern you then apply to your character.

There are two kinds of war paint. One is purely visual, with 7 different kinds of cultural styles and patterns you can apply. The other gives you a +3 bonus to one of your attributes. When we revamp the attributes system to include perks, war paint can be used to give you those extra stat points you'll need to unlock a particular perk or give you an edge in PvP. You can only have one pattern on at a time, so remember to choose wisely.

Cultural style war paint will last about a week in real time, but stat boosting war paint will fade after an hour. So, it could be a good idea to pack extra patterns. War paint will also be fully moddable by mod makers.


Aaaand that's it for this week! Tune in next week for another update from the Exiled Lands. Maybe some more goodies from the art team? Maybe I'll finally find a decent way to wrap up these newsletters? Only time will tell.

Sincerely,

Funcom

Hey all! I've written the highlights and important notes that were made in the Q&A stream. I realize there are some people who may not have the time to watch it (live or later) or may be hearing-impaired and are unable to watch since the video doesn't have subtitles. I'd like to do this for future Conan Exile streams. Otherwise, feel free to see it all here.

We answer all kinds of questions from chat though so please do watch it live when possible! Stream was hosted by community manager Jens Erik Vaaler, creative director Joel Bylos, and special guest Lead Designer Oscar Lopez Lacalle.

• Display racks are coming! You can place weapons and shields onto displays placed on the wall. The display can also be used as storage, but will always display the weapon/shield placed in the first slot.
  
• Weapon mod kit: You can modify weapons and armor using certain kits. These include decreasing weight, increasing durability, increasing damage, and so on!
  
• More information on warpaints coming in the community letter soon.
  
• Once we're done with the polish phase, mounts will be the next big thing on the list. Then sorcery, and so on. We're currently fixing bugs and tweaking features in the game.
  
• The sickle is on the developer branch. It specializes in harvesting plant fiber from bushes.
  
• You won't be able to run with a torch. But Joel mentioned you will be running, "with a lighted object on your body".
  
• Harvesting tools will have different tiers: Steel Sickle, Hardened Sickle, and Star Metal Sickle.
  
• More traps are coming in.
  
• We would like to add in a spyglass, but due to technical limitations (dynamic space loading) we are unable to right now.
  
• Chat system changes are also coming in that are currently in the development build.
  
• Weapon masters have come in for mocap references. There are people in the Oslo office who participate in martial arts! But we look at all sorts of fighting styles.
  
• Blunt arrows for knocking out thralls from afar are planned.
  
• Crops and farming is on the "would like to do" list.
  
• Snow and rain inside your house will be fixed along with the new weather system.
  
• Knocking out friends isn't high on the priority list.
  
• Camels can be spawned if you're an admin.
  
• A storyline is being written that includes Conan himself.
  
• The "cry for help" implementation will cause AI to call for others when you spot them. Not when you hit them.

• You will have a light attack button and heavy attack button which will involve combo chains.
  
• These will look different and have different shapes and timings as well as apply status effects to them.
  
• Mix and match light/heavy attacks
  
• Every weapon has its own chain. Even weapons of the same type will have different chains.
  
• Animation updates will be a part of the combat system.
  
• Comboskipping is possible, but may not be a smart strategy in some instances.
  
• Bows are included in this animation change. An accuracy component is being added so you'll have more control of where the arrow goes.
  
• Body part targeting will also be implemented.
  
• Kicking and bare hand combat is planned.
  
• Core mechanics should be completed by the end of the year internally. Internal testing and tweaking will then need to be completed. So currently this new combat is set for Q1, 2018.
  
• Two handed swords are on the list to complete. Whips will not be in the game before launch.
  
• No plans to make you run with weapons. But there are plans to make jumping attacks and dodging attacks (dodging forward). If you're chasing someone, you can stun or cripple them to stop them from running.

REMEMBER THAT THIS IS A STREAM SUMMARY, NOT PATCH NOTES

Hey everyone!

Just a quick note from us that the double XP event week has ended and the Normal PvP and PvE servers will be turned back to the regular harvesting and XP modifier.

On a completely unrelated note, if you missed our livestream on Friday you can now catch it on our YouTube channel. It has a lot of information on our combat revamps from the guy in charge of the whole thing: lead designer Oscar Lopez Lacalle. Enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQ92px8OJc8