Mounts and Mods and DLC in Conan Exiles (2024)

As I mentioned in the last post, Potshot managed to find some foals out in the wild and, as all things in the world of Conan Exiles respawn in the exact same location, a very MMORPG aspect of the game, he was able to go out and grab a selection of mounts for us.

I honestly didn’t do any of this and even the wiki is pretty vague on how you actually acquire the foals… you sneak up on them and grab them I guess… but once you have them the process of turning them into horses you can ride is somewhat similar to how you “convert” followers.

Okay, it isn’t quite like the whole follower routine, which I described elsewhere. Instead you put the foal in a stable… another structure to be built at our base… and feed it yummy treats and eventually a horse pops out.

Then a saddle must be crafted, which also requires another crafting station. We’re going to need a bigger base.

Of course, when we need a bigger base Potshot steps up and spends a few hours building something for us. He has spent considerably more time in CE than I have at this point. So now we have a nice stable as part of our base complex.

Once grown, horses are just another follower on the clan list, and we all share in our ability to control them.

Of course, as tends to happen, we pick favorites among ourselves. I renamed one of the horses Burlap, both due to his color and as a bit of a play on Phar Lap.

The horses have stats and level up like followers.

The thing about mounts is that they level up a lot easier than other followers as they gain xp by just being ridden… which I guess makes some sense. So that list of followers, the horses Potshot and I use are at the top of the level list.

Riding them is just a matter of climbing on board, at which point they automatically follow you… though climbing on board can be an issue in tight spaces, so I tend to have them follow me first, lead them out of the stable, then mount them out in the open.

You can have a normal combat follower come with you as well. They just run along behind, trying to keep up.

Control of your mount is via WASD keys, unlike your character, which uses the cursor to change direction. You can also move to a gallop by holding down the shift key.

And, as Potshot and I were discussing the other day, mounts just “feel” right. They have inertia when starting and stopping, they build up to a gallop, they turn like you are turning a sizable beast, and your cursor and your ability to look around are not slaved to where the mount is going, so you can scan the area while on the move rather than just looking straight forward as you do when on foot.

Also, mounted combat is pretty good. There is a whole lance aspect that I have yet to explore, preferring to just charge down enemies and hit them with the horse, which causes significant damage when at full gallop. You can play Deathrace 2000 with gazelles, just popping them by running them down. And even a humanoid caught in the open will get pummeled and sometimes stunned when you strike them full on.

After that I fight from horseback with a cutlass while I wait for my combat follower to catch up and finish things off.

In addition to riding, horses have inventory slots on their saddle and can carry a lot more stuff. I have an area I used to run to in order to harvest iron… we have an insatiable need for iron… and now with the mount I can get there much faster and haul back a good 1,200 units of raw iron to be refined.

So the whole mount thing has been pretty fun. It does mean that you have to find an appropriate path to ride… though like your other followers, if you dismount and climb up a cliff face, your mount will magically appear up there once you have arrived. It has enabled Potshot and I to ride farther afield and get into more trouble and lose more followers.

Fortunately mounts have a huge amount of hit points, so we have yet to lose a horse… even when mobs run right past us and attack them.

A couple of things you might have noticed in the images so far in the post. First, our UI is a little different because we tried out our first mod for the game. In this case, it was Hosav’s Custom UI Mod, which updates and lets you fiddle with the UI.

Mods for CE were a little easier than for Valheim because GPortal has a huge number of mods available for install through its server management UI. So I just added that mod to the server and restarted it. It isn’t perfect… I subscribed to the mod in Steam and have the server set to make sure I have the current version, which ends up somehow forcing me to log in, restart the client, and log in again every time I want to play.

But once in, things work just fine. Among other things the mod clarifies what the UI means somewhat, gives us a compass, and puts up a mini map with a real world clock.

It also adds in a party UI on screen so you can see the health status of followers and other players in your group. There are also options to change things up so it is pretty nifty. The only issue I have is that the little text against a light sand background is pretty tough to read. But I can change the color if I want.

The other thing you might notice, if you are into the game, is that both Potshot and I have some different armor on now. During the Funcom sale on Steam we both dipped in and bought a couple of the cosmetic DLC packs, so we… and our followers… all have different looks.

Some of them are pretty cool and I might pop for a couple more of the packs when the next sale comes up. I figure the Steam Summer Sale will have me covered on that front.

So we are geared up, mounted, and ready for adventure… something made easier by the patch to fix the issue with the April update. We can now right-click on food to eat again… though I am still unclear on splitting stacks.

And, as it turns out, the first dungeon, The Dregs, isn’t that far on horseback. So you know where we are headed next.