Conan Exiles Dev Talks Age of War Chapter 3 Additions, Promises Support for as Long as There Are Players

wccftech.com:

Over five and a half years after launch, Funcom's survival game Conan Exiles is still going strong. The game quickly became Funcom's fastest-selling title, having sold 1.5 million copies by July 2018, and the continued support of the player base has translated into a steady stream of new content and features.

Following the release of the Isle of Siptah expansion in 2021, Funcom switched to a different model where free updates (the so-called Ages) were released for free to all players alongside optional Battle Passes for cosmetic items. After last year's Age of Sorcery, 2023 is all about the Age of War, which is now about to enter its third Chapter.

Earlier this week, we joined a couple of press colleagues for a remote tour of the upcoming Conan Exiles content update scheduled to go live on December 14.

Despite the Age of War theme, the developers have also expanded the game's base creation system with the introduction of Taverns. After rescuing a certain non-player character (NPC) from a Purge, she'll let the players know she's a lot better as a barkeeper than a fighter.

If you do choose to build a Tavern and place her behind the counter, NPC patrons will begin to arrive, populating the locale. The interesting tidbit here is that these NPCs are all hirable for a sum of money, providing a decidedly more humane way for players to gain hirelings compared to the game's usual method of finding them in the open world, knocking them flat, and tying them to the wheel of pain until they break. When Age of War Chapter 3 first launches, the Tavern will attract firefighters and dancers, though a future update will also add crafters to the mix.

In the long term, the idea is also to build on the long-standing narrative staple that Taverns