I decided to do an end run on Conan Exiles recently and collect all of the magic items for removing the bracelet and freeing (deleting permanently) my character. The first few items were collected easily enough with my character wielding a hardened steel battle-axe and running around with medium armor looted from various enemies. I hit my first big obstacle running through the northlands and trying to cross a bridge to the Black Keep, since my character died of the cold when trying to cross a bridge. I tried surviving by placing several bonfires spaced out from one another along the bridge, but that wasn’t a feasible solution. Spicy food worked much better, however, so I created a mini-camp south of the bridge where I could make soup and then rushed across, got into the keep, and eventually fought my way to the end boss. I liked the challenge of the weather conditions as it changed up the formula, and the dungeon was harder than the ones I had previously been in. I think the atmosphere of the dungeon in the Dregs felt more appropriate to the Weird Tales mythos than the keep, though.
I was feeling pretty cocky at this point and made a run for the Well of Skelos for the final artifact, and the difficulty spiked was very pronounced. The heat will kill you unless you have ice or heat-resistant equipment and the defenders hit harder than previous groups of goons. I spent a few hours just learning the pathways to the Well of Skelos and permanently losing three thralls in the process. I had to make additional runs through the Dregs and some other dungeons to restock on lost legendary weapons.
I spent a hell of a lot of time prepping for the next run. I got a T4 shieldwright thrall and had him create some redeemer armor since not even the Cimmerian steel armor sets I had collected was enough. I collected a huge amount of aloe and mass produced huge sets of healing potions at my alchemy bench. I left my remaining cannibal brutes behind and grabbed some named Cimmerian fighters as my new thralls and equipped them with the redeemer sets of armor and gave them legendary equipment and got them to level 20. To do this I had to research Black Ice locations and went through the Warmaker dungeon to collect a ton of it. This all took hours of prep. I finally slaughtered my way through the wintery north, gathered from the nearby frozen lake, ran up through the volcano while chomping ice every minute, used up most of my resources fighting and mapping the way to the final boss inside the Well of Skelos, and then got to the final boss… and then the glitches defeated me.
First time at the end boss his shadow clones attacked me and my thrall, but they weren’t all that hard and we fought them off. However, the corpse of the boss didn’t appear and I read online that this was a known glitch. So the thrall and I left the area and came back, causing the encounter to start again. This time the boss’ corpse showed and I took the final artifact with me. But now we had to fight our way back home and I was low on healing potions and ice and soup. I decided running for it was the best course of action. We ran through the defenders and jumped through the Well of Skelos portal. Instantly all the regenerated guards on the other side got aggravated and attacked, so I made a straight line to the lava flows intending to jump over a couple of them and chug some healing and ice on the other side. I look around and … another glitch… my thrall is nowhere to be found. Not wanting to leave her behind I decide to stay and fight two oncoming Cimmerians. With lava flow behind me I raise my shield and somehow another glitch happens. Instead of their attacks bouncing off the shield, both hit me with one strike each and somehow instantly kill me.
Ok, so now I’m at my base camp and naked. I pull on a backup piece of Cimmerian Steel Armor, create a pick for breaking ice, a couple of spicy soups from some meager left over ingredients, make a few quick sets of potions, and grab two artifacts… one sword to protect against cold and another legendary spear that should be “good enough”. I go through my map room, teleport in the northern reaches, kill off a couple of skeletons, go to the ice flows to break up some ice so I can survive the volcano once more so I can recover my thrall and the final artifact from my corpse. I break some ice flows and fall in a couple of times and during the second time falling into the freezing water a new glitch happens that I never saw before. My character falls immediately to the bottom of the lake and keeps getting drug back down despite my encumbrance being light. Every time I started to swim back upwards the game had my character drug back down until he drowned.
And that was it. I was done. I don’t mind spending hours trying to find my way through difficult challenges based on game design, but I can’t handle trying to fight my way through unpredictable glitches. I decided to watch the end game on someone’s YouTube posting and just call this one complete. It looks like there wasn’t much left. You bring the artifacts to a not at all difficult area of the game, get a prompt to take off your bracelet and delete your character, say yes, and watch an animation of your character walking away from the Exiled Lands. The only thing left to do is restart the game with a brand new character, choose the Exiled Lands or Isle of Siptah, and play an adult version of Minecraft and design a home.
