Getting Started Guide

First off, thanks for being here and welcome. We created this guide because being a new player can be quite overwhelming. If you know he vanilla game, we have a *lot* of mods which change it a lot. If you're new to the game, there's even more to learn. Our advice is pace yourself - it can take a long time to master all the mods, so just play and you'll discover things as you go along.

The Technical Side

Steam

Conan Exiles is a steam game and supports mods (made by the community, mods change how the game works). We use a lot of mods, but we have them in a steam collection here so you can get them all in one go. Make sure you have plenty of disk space, for the game and our mod set you'll need about 100 GB or so.

Mods

We use mods for new maps, changes to game functionality, player customisation, clothing, building, quests, magic systems, currency, professions and more. The Hyborean Slavers experience is very different from the vanilla game. We encourage you to take your time, everything from the vanilla game works fine and just ease into using the mods in your own time and to the level that feels fun. To learn the game and all the mods is a long and complex journey, but you don't have to do that to start having fun.

Restarts and Mod Updates

When one of our mods updates, a couple of things happen:

Steam will automatically update your game if you start / restart steam

The server will update next time it is restarted

What this means is that after the update happens, players with the updated mod will not be able to connect, and will get a "Mod Mismatch" until the server is restarted. We try to restart the server promptly when this happens, but also giving players who are in the middle of play plenty of time to finish off what they are doing. We usually give a warning period in minutes roughly equivalent to the number of connected players and rounded up to the nearest five minutes.
If you were connected, Steam will not update after you quit. The procedure to update is:

Stop Conan from Steam (it doesn't always do this when you quit the game)

Use the Workshop button to go into the mod workshop

Use the menu near the top to "Browse Subscribed Items"

Use the menu on the right half way down to "Order by date updated"

Now the updated mods should be at the top of your list

Click into the mod and hit the unsubscribe button

Then hit Subscribe and you should see a download bar at the bottom of steam as it updates

When they're all done, you're good to connect.

Server restarts take about seven minutes and we always do both servers at the same time (so you don't get mod mismatch errors doing server transfers)

Discord

Please join the discord server for lots more information, what's going on now and event announcements.

Connecting

You can use the server list to find the servers (make sure "Modded Servers" is ticked in the top right), or use the direct connect information in the discord. If you are reconnecting just use the Connect button, rather than launch and the game won't need to restart after getting the modlist from the server.
If you have transferred between servers and connect to the wrong one, the transfer system will bounce you over to the correct server.

Our Servers

Unlike the single player game we have two servers that are linked, and they run different maps. The older server (usually referred to as EL) runs the normal map, Exiled Lands. The newer server is usually known SW - it runs the Savage Wilds map, and in our local server lore is The Lost Colonies, which was discovered a few years after the Exiled Lands.

Global chat is shared between both servers, if you see a player talking in Global Chat and they have a little "world" icon next to their name, it means they are logged onto the other server from the one you're playing on.

Server Transfer stones are next to the ships at each hub.
Both maps have been extended with mods and by the admin team. Mods that add new things to the map are known as content mods (they add more content), ones that just extend the map are... "map mods". Our content and map mods include:

Age of Calamitous

EEWA: Endgame Extended Weapon Arsenal

Caverns of Set (a big dungeon)

Lands of Tel'Navar (the map mod for the city and surrounding area)

Content mods add new weapons, items, armor, monsters, magic systems, their own currencies and crafting. They are great, but make the game much more complex. OK, this is the environment you've arrived in, let's have a look at you.

The Basics

When you press tab, you get your inv (Inventory Screen). Across the top are different tabs, the first three are the most important:

Inventory

Knowledge

Attributes

Inventory is what you're carrying, of course, but also a lot of other things. There are two places you can carry things, your hotbar (at the bottom) and your backpack (on the left). Things in the hotbar you can use, by pressing the corresponding number key, so the first is 1, the second is 2 and so on. You can drag things between the hotbar and your backpack.

Twin hotbar mod

Your hotbar can hold 16 items, but only 8 can be used at a time, the other 8 sit above the main slots with tiny icons, you can switch items into the main slot (or spare slot) for each hotbar position by pressing shift and the number, so:

Hit 1 to use the item in hotbar slot 1

Hit Shift-1 to switch the secondary item into hotbar slot 1, and the current item into the secondary item slot.

This mods allows you to have twice as many things ready to use without having to go into your inv.

Your backpack

Your backpack holds your items, if there's more than one in a box, there's a number to say how many. These are known as stacks (e.g. a stack of 100 stone). Above your backpack is a weight symbol and a bar with a % at the end. This is your encumbrance bar, it's what % of your total carry weight your stuff is. If your encumbrance goes over 100% you will only be able to walk slowly and some benches won't work.
When you've made some boxes or chests you can move things from your backpack into those to save weight.

The Starter Room

The start room is where you first arrive, read the rules and come information and decide whether you want to arrive as a free person or a slave. We've tried to make this as quick and simple as possible. You don't need to fill out a consent sheet to start playing, but you do need to before doing any ERP and if you decide to play on the server regularly. Consent sheets can be done in-game with Shift-R on indiscord in the #consent-sheets channel.

The Hub and Market

Once you're out of the starter room, you'll arrive at the player hub. On the Exiled Lands server, this is the city of Stormbreak, on the Lost Colonies (SW) server, it's the town of Shikt. These places have fast travel, quest NPCs and markets to buy different kinds of items. Stormbreak is a larger and more complicated area, so there are also "Town Guide" NPCs that will teleport you around places of interest.

Getting Money

Next to where you arrive at each hub, there is a cashier - they will pay you a daily allowance of 80 Pippi Gold (the main server currency). they also pay a daily bonus of 20 gold if you come back three hours later, and a weekly bonus of 100 gold if you claim five days gold in any week. As your gold starts to rise, tax is automatically deducted so we don't have older players dominating the economy. You can find NPCs with intro and daily quests around the hubs.

Clans

One of the first things to do is to create a clan, even if it's a solo clan. This is because of a quirk of the game. If you build with no clan and later join one, you will lose access to your previous build and chests / benches. If you make a solo clan, all is fine.

Intro Quests

New slaves will arrive in a cell with a fellow slave to talk to, and will quickly get out. After the first day, they have the option of talking to a corrupt guard and taking the quest to escape and become a runaway slave. Be aware though, that this path usually leads to less RP and no slave auction - runaway slaves are hunted and can be owned by anyone who catches them.
New players arriving in Stormbreak (free or slave) have the options to talk to an NPC called Granny Emma and will be sent on an intro quest chain around the city.

Character Customisation

You can change your characters appearance and clothing, like an illusion. This gives you a lot of freedom to choose how you look. Anything you know how to make, you can appear to be wearing. There's a few mods that control your appearance, with different buttons or hotkeys:

Tot! Custom

Use Shift-B to open the menu for Tot!Custom. This will let you configure your character and dress in anything you know how to make (that you have the feats for). There's a guide to Tot!Custom in the discord.

The Early Game

OK, you're in. What next. First of all check out the chat command /kit

Level Kit

There are various kits, but under level 10 you can use the level boost kit, which will jump you up to level 30, boosting your attributes and feat points so you can skip the very early grind to level 30. We have 300 levels, so there's plenty more grind. This is optional, and you can skip it if you prefer.

Hunting

The quickest way to level up is hunting, and the jungle areas are very good for this at levels 30-60, the monsters aren't too bad and they give good XP. Above this sort of level, head hunting becomes the fastest way to gain XP.

Bounties

At levels 40,50 and 60 there are three feats called Bounties. These let you hand in the heads of different types of bosses for XP and rewards. There are bounty boards at Stormbreak, Port Resolute and Sepermeru in the Exiled Lands and Shikt in the Lost Colonies. The #guides channel in the discord has maps of where to find bosses of different types.

Getting started

LFRP Button

One primary way to find roleplay and other players is to using the "Looking for RP" button on your map. It's at the top right and you can describe yourself and what you're looking for. When LFRP is switchedon, other players will see you no the map as a yellow dot with your name and that description. You can also announce yourself OOC in teh Global Chat.

Slaves - how do I find an owner?

Slaves default start is as a public slave, they are meant to wander and serve anyone who tells them to - community property. After a few days or weeks, they are auctioned off in one of the weekly auctions and become owned slaves. So, offer your services, try out different other players and see who you gel with, and good luck for your day on the auction block.

Slavers - how do I find a slave?

You can find any public slaves and use or train them, you can also hunt for runaway slaves. You can also then train them and send them to auction and get the proceeds. And, of course you can buy / sell slaves at auction.

Ranks

Ranks are like tags that your character has, one will always show before your name in chat, and there are hidden ones that NPCs use (e.g. so they can recognise you as slave or free). There are daily quests for some of the profession, but any player is able to use them. if you've beenplaying a particular role for some time, you can get a custom tag for your role.

Fast Travel

We have a number of fast travel systems...

Warps

The chat command /list warps will show you which warps are available and you can use them with the same command. Two to remember are:

/warp hub (the player hub)

/warp market (the clan market)

Most other fast travel types are available in the player hubs.

Portal Room / Tunnels

In the exiled lands, there's a tunnel network with fast travel around the map, it can be access from the Portal Building in the square at Storkbreak or from Port Resolute.

Waypoints

Waypoints are glowing round stones on the ground, and they differe on the two servers. In the Lost Colonies, anyone can use them. You can use the waypoint network to return to any waypoint you've discovered, but you do need to find them by exploring first. In the Exiled Lands, the waypoints are reserved for high level magic users (needs the EEWA Ancient Knowledge feat, a quest at level 200).

Caravans

Caravans have NPCs to talk to, again, these differ between the two servers. On the Lost Colonies, the caravan is built in from the Savage Wilds mod, it takes Bronze Coins to travel (there's a /kit to get them) and you have to have discovered the caravan destinations.
In the Exiled Lands, the caravan does not need payment and runs between common roleplay locations. On both servers, it's a woman standing in front of a caravan that you need to talk to.

Bases

Construction Hammer

The construction hammer
When it comes to making yourself somewhere to live, you need to craft a construction hammer from that handcrafting panel. Putting this on your hotbar and using it will put you into build mode.

Left click to build the current piece and add it to your building

Right click to switch from build to delete mode. Right click again to switch back. When you delete something you get the mats back

Middle click on a piece to make that piece your current build piece - super handy for speed building

Press F for the menu of things you can build, there should also be a search bar.

What you can build is limited by which feats or recipes you know - as you learn more you can build more.

Building Advice

Don't build in dungeons or quest areas

Build out of sight of other player bases

Try to make it look good, if you're new to building there are builders you can hire, or you can get a public slave with the skills to do it for you :)

Aim to build in an area with decent resources near it, ideally at least wood, stone and ironstone

Stick to the build piece limits show in the discord

You can have bases on both servers, but most people either have one base or a main base and a smaller outpost on the other server.

Crafting

Handcrafting

The first way to make things is available right off the bat. Directly from your inv. The right hand panel is a list of recipes - click ne and it'll show you the ingredients for it. If you have them in your inv, you can make it. If you have them in nearby storage you can use the little red button underneath to summon the materials (mats) into your inventory.

Benches

For making more complex things, you need crafting benches. These can be improved by putting tamed thralls in them (some thralls add their own recipes). When you use /kit you can get the feats for "Beyond Stations T1" - Beyond Stations is a mod that combines the huge amount of possible benches into a sensible number. You'll want to build all of these - you can make full sized of miniture table top versions:

Alchemist Station

Blacksmith Station

Smelter Station

Cooking Station

Armorer Station

Artisan Station

Carpenter Station

Tannery Stations

All the stations above take thralls and have a lot of recipes. the ones below are simpler and don't take Thralls:

Smoker

Fluid Press

Grinder

Planter

Compost Heap

Fish Trap

Shellfish Trap

Preservation Box

Campfire

Thrall Breaking

When we say the benches "take thralls", this means that cpatured NPCs can be made to work at the bench, which will make it faster, reduce the materials needed to make things and for some of them, add new recipes. There are different types of bench thralls (aka crafting thralls) and the mods add some more:

Level 1 to 3 thralls increase speed, usually.

Named thralls can affect the stats of things that they craft, increased damage, armor penetration, durability or armor.

Named thralls from mods, especially TW and RE can also make rare items

Feats and Crafting

Feats are in your knowledge tab and provide you (mainly) with more recipes to use in benches. You can get more feat points by gaining level, or about level 50 or so (and once you have the feat for it!), using fragments of power to gain feat points. Fragments of Power are quite a common drop from bosses, so you shouldn't be short of feat points once you hit that point.

Magic and Religion

Magic and relgion all have a big set of large benches for each individual type, but you can buy the recipes in the market for the Beyond Benches Religion and Magic benches - these combine all of those benches into a single bench and are highly recommended.

Gardening

Yes, you can chill an do a bit of gardening. Manyplants can be dried into seeds and grown in planters, so you can build a big stock of plants that are used in crafting. There are a couple of gardening systems from different mods.
Gardening is particularly useful for magic and potion making.

Magic

Vanilla Magic

Vanilla Sorcery can be started by killing sorcerers and following the map they drop in the Exiled Lands, in the Colonies, check the Lost Colonies Map on WorldAnvil to see where the starter areas are for Vanilla Sorcery and Golem Crafting.

AoC Magic

Age of Calamitous (a big content mod) can be started by going to the Admin Office in the square at Stormbreak and talking to the AoC NPC there. On the Colonies, our own set of AoC magic quests can be started by going through the mysterious portal at the hub warp point.

EEWA Magic

EEWA quests and magic can be started by talking the EEWA NPC in the same admin office in Stormbreak, or by finding the Perilous Valley entrance. In the Lost Colonies, there's an NPC in Shikt that will transport you to the Perilous Island to get started with it. All the EEWA content is available on both servers.

Slavery

Slavery is a core part of the cultures of Stormbreak, the Exiled Lands and the Lost Colonies. There are a few different types of slaves and a range of different styles of slavery and slave ownership.

Public Slaves

Public slaves are newly arrived and can be used, trained or temporarily adopted by any free players. For public slaves, the emphasis is on roleplay and meeting potential owners before their auction. The are free to PVE and explore / build when not in service, but when they are sold, their clans and buildings will merge into their owners.

Auctions

Slave auctions are held every week, usually on a Saturday, Public Slaves can ask to be auctioned by responding in #auctions on the the discord.

Owned Slaves

Slaves that are owned are the property of their owners. Owners have a lot of leeway in how the slaves live (subject to their ooc consent), some are kept close and tightly supervised, others are much more lax. If an owned slave doesn't see their owner for a fortnight they have the option to retunr to auction as an abandoned slave. Kidnapping of slaves is only by ooc consent and setup with the kidnapper, slave and owner - check the rules for details.

Penal Slaves

Penal slaves are free players that have beenusing the crime system and been caught. They have the same status as Public Slaves for the duration of their sentence, but do not go to auction and become free again once their sentence is up.

Endgame

Once you've got to level 300, and you have everything you've been striving for, what's left to do. Well, we have a mod designed to fix exactly this- EEWA, Endgame Extended Weapon Arsenal. And it has a number of different things. Press F twice quickly to get the EEWA radial menu and go into the menus from there.

Ascension

Ascensions give you new powers permanently, some quite powerful, but also reset you back to level 1 and increase the damage you take from mobs. The more ascensions you have, the more damage you take. They're a bit like a new game plus effect. With our settings, you will keep all of your feats when you ascend, take 8% more damage on your first ascension. They are also known as constellations and are:

Crom: Increased base attributes by 10% as attribute bonuses, 350 additional bonus armor, 10 Bonus Vitality

Jhebbal Sag: Bonuses depending on armor type, Accuracy for Light, Strength for Medium and Vitality for Heavy Armor, Bonus 25% damage against non-humanoid, non-undead creaturesYour pet followers receive 50% bonus true damage versus NPCs and gains extra health regen

Set: 20% reduced mana costs on all abilities,Immune to cripple debuffs, Apply crippling poison to enemies with your non-knockout weapons

Yog: A Witch Effigy follows you around, automatically burning and damging nearby enemies who attack with physical weaponry, Witch Effigy's damage dealt is based on 25% of your Survival stat, killing human enemies will replenish food

Derketo: 5% increased movement speed bonus, bonus 30% damage to Undead and applies Specter Coating to them, Massive Endurance boost, +30 Grit

Ymir: Immune to weather negative temperature effects, you regenerate 2% health every 5 seconds, killing non-human enemies will replenish water

Mitra: Increased healing efficiency, healing to allies increased by 50%, replenish 50% more mana every second, immune to Corruption

Ranked Points

There are additional levels similar to vanilla levels and RP similar to XP. Rewards are special effects and the menu is available from the very bottom right of your inv screen.

Traits

Traits are permanent buffs you get for different types of actions (e.g. ranged damage, damage taken while in heavy armor, etc.)

Gems

EEWA gems provide various bonuses and are levelled up with "augment points" which you get for doing various things, including conquering outposts.

Get out there!
So, there you have it, we hope you have fun, from starting out right up to level 300 and beyond. We have a massive amount of things to do and a wide range of rp and we hope you enjoy your time on Hyborean Slavers!

your admin team.