Keyrock

Decided to make a voyage through the highlands, into the frozen north, and toward the volcano: M... Maybe I shouldn't be here... Shhhhh... I never did make it to the volcano. The trip ended very poorly for me. I wound up getting into a fight with a skeleton soldier. I had fought skellies before, but this one was way tougher than the ones I faced earlier. He's not what killed me, though. I wound up dying to cold exposure. I need different gear to go into the deep frozen north. My Hykarian Raider Armor gives some cold resistance and it's fine for the outskirts of the snow area, but it's not enough when you get deeper. Even with having the 20 vitality diminished temp effects perk I still froze to death. Meanwhile, back home I have completed the base fortress and have begun construction of my tower. My throne room will naturally be at the top, because I am totally not a megalomaniac.

There are mods for that. Speaking of mods, I wound up installing the Lev 140 mod. The reason I chose that one over the many other level cap extension mods is that the Lev 140 mod preserves the leveling curve of the vanilla game. a lot of the other mods get wacky past lev 60 (the vanilla lev cap), but this mod scales the xp needed and stat and feat points gained at the same curve as lev 1-60 in vanilla (meaning it takes a metric ****ton of XP to get to the really high levs).

Yes, there is a story and a main quest but there's very little (read: almost zero) guidance. You wake up crucified in a desert literally naked (if you have full nudity on) except for a bracelet on your wrist. Conan comes along, frees you, then wanders off. There are people you can talk to, messages you can find, and mysterious stones with runes on them that will speak to you, giving you exposition and filling in parts of the puzzle of what you should be trying to do. The game never clobbers you over the head with this, though. There's no giant arrow telling you which way to go, no exclamation points on your map showing quest givers, at least not on normal difficulty (maybe on easy the game has some guidance?). When someone tells you about some place, it doesn't magically appear on your map, they may give you a vague direction like "north" or a description of the surrounding landscape, finding the place is up to you. There is story and lore in the game, but the game does very little (read: nearly nothing) to make sure you find said story and lore. Conan Exiles is sort of what Bethesda wanted Fallout 76 to be... and horribly failed at.

According to steam I'm at 137 hours in Conan Exiles. I played it for at least 15 hours on PS4 prior, so I'm over 150 hours and counting. I recently hit Lev 44 so my Stygian Setite Priestess is pretty dang strong now. The level cap is 60 but I might use a mod that pushes the cap out to 100. I need to make sure the scaling is proper. If I'm going to become a goddess, it should take a good long while to get there. There are also mods that push the cap out to 140 and 300, I don't think I need to go quite that far. 100 should be enough.

Shady is a veritable saint.

My Death Star Fortress is starting to come together: I intended to have it come to a smooth point, but the limitations of how far out I could build from the cliff wall and not being able to flip corner ramp pieces upside down forced me to alter the design a bit. From above: On the side closer you can see the vertical elevator that is the main means of entry. On the far side is a placeholder horizontal elevator that will connect to a future structure. I may need to move it a bit since I doubt I'll be able to build that far out, but we'll see. The bottom floor immediately after stepping off the elevator: All the floors in my fortress are double height. Here I'm standing on what will be the top covered floor: The area above will be an open rooftop terrace with a tower and likely some awnings for shade. Once I finish the main building, before I begin on the tower, I'll likely set building aside for a while and go on an adventuring/exploration run. Between my Flawless Hykarian Raider Armor, Flawless Heater Shield, and Flawless Cimmerian Steel War Axe, I'm armed and armored to the teeth and ready for action. As an aside, the building pieces are from the Treasures of Turan DLC, the one DLC I purchased for the game. I got it because they're the most opulent looking building pieces. I'm living oil sheik style, except in my kingdom men & women have equal rights. And by equal rights, I mean the right to do as I command. My national motto is "Work Hard. Orgy Harder."

Yeah, Conan Exiles looks downright breathtaking at times. The game has some spectacular lighting effects on ultra settings. I've learned a lot about building while making my new fortress jutting out of the cliff. I wasn't able to have it protrude out of the cliff as far as I initially planned. Building pieces have an amount of structural integrity and they lose a percentage the further you get away from landmasses and foundations, especially when building horizontally over empty space. You can compensate a bit with pillars, but there's a limit to how far you can stretch that. I'm also disappointed that it seems you can't flip the ramp corner block upsidedown and I've found no mod that allows me to do that. I wanted to make the fortress come to a sloping sharp corner, but since I couldn't flip the ramp corner piece around to make it fit I had to go for a different effect that still looks cool, but wasn't my initial plan. I'll throw up another picture soon as it's looking much closer to a completed building... the base part, anyway. I plan to put a tower on the roof of it and I might get crazy with making it tall, assuming the game allows me to do it. And yes

Head Builder Frae Steelgrip - "Taskmaster Rada. This is an unexpected pleasure. We are honored by your presence." Taskmaster Rada - "You may dispense with the pleasantries, builder. I am here to put you back on schedule." Steelgrip - "I assure you, Taskmaster Rada, my men are working as fast as they can." Rada - "Perhaps I can find new ways to motivate them." Steelgrip - "I tell you that this fortress will be operational as planned." Rada - "The Mistress does not share your optimistic appraisal of the situation." Steelgrip - "But she asks the impossible. I need more men." Rada - "Then perhaps you can tell her when she arrives." Steelgrip - *gasp* "The Mistress is coming here?" Rada - "That is correct, builder, and she is most displeased with your apparent lack of progress." Steelgrip - "We shall double our efforts." Rada - "I hope so, builder, for your sake. The Mistress is not as forgiving as I am."

Co-signed.

For whatever reason, I didn't hate Firewine Ruins... as much. Neshkel Mines scarred me for life. Neshkel Mines is the reason I never completely replayed BG1 (whereas I replayed BG2 once, NWN 3 or 4 times, Hordes of the Underdark more times than I can count, and NWN 2 twice). Everytime I tried playing BG1 again I would get as far as Neshkel Mines, exit game, scroll down menu to "Uninstall Baldur's Gate 1", click. Same thing with the swamp in The Witcher 1. I love TW1, but I can't go through that swamp again. I won't do that to myself.

It's been so long, was there a Shadowkeeper type utility for the NWN2 series of games? I used to use those utilities all the time to give myself enough exp to insta-level to lev 3, then later I would subtract the same amount of exp to make things fair, just because I despise low level D& D with the fiery passion of a thousand suns. Before I found Shadowkeeper, the beginning of BG1 was the most frustrating experience. Having to save scum again and again until my chars got strong enough that they didn't sometimes get 1-shot by friggin kobolds... or whatever the mooks at the beginning of BG1 were? Was it kobolds? Oh God, I just remembered Neshkel mines... *shudders*

My new building site. I may eventually build multiple structures jutting out of the cliffs between the giant statues and connect them with what they call in the game "horizontal elevators", which are basically hanging cable cars or aerial tramways. I'm going to begin constructing the first structure roughly where I put the green circle: You can see a few basic sandstone foundation pieces I constructed (and will later destroy) just to help me climb up and down to a lower platform: Here they are from the top: Here's the view from the top of the cliff out of which I will build the first structure. I'm standing next to a temporary crafting area I'm starting to build:

I think I found the spot for my next base in Conan Exiles. It's on the boundary of 2 biomes, nicely centrally located, and there's all manner of resources all around. The area is a bit dangerous with tigers on one side and wolves on the other (surprisingly, the wolves are the more dangerous enemies), but nothing I can't handle so long as I'm careful. It's a really badass looking spot. I'll post a picture once I begin construction, assuming I do wind up building here. This is going to take a long time to build, given I'm going to use tier 3 building materials, which require multiple steps of refinement, but it will be worth it.

Named thralls are tier 4.

I am also playing on lewd settings Here's my throne room from the edge of the raised area where my throne sits: You can see the entire floor is covered with hide rugs and pillows (I keep adding more pillows periodically, my goal is to eventually have piles of pillows everywhere), there are benches and you can see a keg. There are 4 kegs total in my throne room, I'll probably add more in the future (can't be running out when debauchery is going on). There are also 2 beds up on the raised area where my throne is. And yes, that's me on the stairs in the buff. I usually run around my base naked and when I'm farming in relatively safe areas, because I can carry more that way. From a RP perspective, no one is allowed to wear anything more than a loincloth and jewelry in my throne room, that includes visitors, be they diplomats, warchiefs, whatever. Several reasons for this: 1) My base is in the jungle and it's hot as hell. 2) Debauchery may break out at any given moment, less clothing to strip off 3) If someone tries to send disguised assassins to try to kill me, good luck smuggling weapons in when all you're allowed to wear is 2 triangle shaped pieces of cloth.

Where were you the day Brook Lopez went FULL BEAST MODE?

It's a survival game, so you have to eat, drink, heat/cold affect you, and all that stuff. The nice thing is that the game is EXTREMELY customizable, so you can tweak how fast you get hungry and thirsty and a whole host of other factors and probably completely eliminate them too. @HoonDing Are Aria and Eris sisters? I ask because they have identical faces, except for eye color, hair color, and hair style.

@IndiraLightfoot You can tweak difficulty settings on the fly, no need to start over. The deity choice is permanent, but you can learn other religions, provided you can find the teacher.

All these clan reveals so far are cool, but no Malkavians no care.

I've killed that thing on the island in your picture... by heroically climbing up on a rock outcropping where it couldn't reach me and putting nearly 100 snake arrows into it (my man has a TON of HP). Some more exploring. I went on quite the trek into unexplored areas of the map, almost died several times, but somehow I made it through alive. My armor choice was not the greatest in the jungle and desert regions, but when I reached this area, I was really glad I was wearing it:

There is a lot the game doesn't tell you but I won't give you any tips or hints unless you specifically ask. I also am playing solo on what is basically normal difficulty. The 2 changes I made was disabling The Purge and disabling dropping loot on death. So, I'm basically playing this like a single-player RPG, rather than a multi-player survival game. I like that the game gives you tons of options on tweaking the difficulty, if you so desire. I didn't change anything about enemy damage or HP, so bosses are really tough, since they were designed with a party of several players in mind... Or they would be if I didn't have snake arrows.

Pelicans won the Zion sweepstakes.

More exploring: A Set temple. If anyone is here they should welcome me with open arms: Well, this place doesn't look ominous at all. I'm sure there are no gigantic spider or other beasts looking to horribly murder me in there: Just as I thought, not scary at all. There's zero chance there's anything to harm me down there...

I just found yet another benefit of being a Setite in Conan Exiles. In addition to the ridiculously OP snake arrows and the sweet Setite garb, followers of Set can also make antidote potions. Previously, I had mainly used these potions to counter the poisoning I got from being bit by a snake or spider, or being stung by a scorpion, and it works wonderfully for that. But the Set Antidote removes ALL kinds of poisoning. Recently, I acquired the feat to brew and distill my own alcohol (My wild parties and orgies just got even better. Join Team Keyrock today. Membership has its privileges!). Consuming alcohol, especially in large amounts, confers some pretty dang strong buffs on the imbiber. Unfortunately, drinking a lot of alcohol also gives you alcohol poisoning, which super sucks. Remember how I wrote that Set Antidote removes ALL kinds of poisoning? That's right, it removes alcohol poisoning, and food poisoning, for that matter. Now I can get all the excellent buffs from getting super drunk with none of the drawbacks. The blasphemers would have you believe that The Serpent God is evil. Pfft, they just don't know Father Set the way I do. Glory to The Old Serpent!