‘Conan Exiles’ Expands To Xbox One And Adds The Frozen North For Free On August 16

The first major free expansion to Conan Exiles with a new landmass is coming in just a little less than two weeks, Funcom announced Thursday. The open-world survival game will also be inviting Xbox One players to explore the Exiled Lands of Hyborea at the same time as the game releases to the Game Preview Program.

The Frozen North expansion will release to all Conan Exiles Steam owners for free on Wednesday, August 16. The game will be released to the Xbox One Game Preview program on the same day and include all the same content and the expansion.

A price for the Xbox One release of Conan Exiles has not been announced yet. The game is listed for $29.99 on Steam and around the same price should be expected for the console release.

The Frozen Lands expansion is a welcome addition as it increases the playable area of the game by 70 percent. It also offers a stark contrast to the current desert landscape with a mix of snow-blasted mountains, wooded forests, frozen lakes, and fields of grass.

There is more to the expansion than just new landscape, though. The new areas are filled with new animals like wolves and mammoth, new NPCs like the Nordheimer settlements, and a forgotten clan. There are also dangerous new enemies such as Wights, who will rise from the ground in the gloomier areas, and massive Frost Giants in the mountains.

New dungeons are included with the Conan Exiles Frozen North expansion too. This includes the Temple of Frost in the mountains, guarded by the Frost Giants. Additionally, there is the Black Keep filled with traps and a new boss called Tyroth, the Deathbringer.

A significant new Conan Exiles gameplay element will also be added with the Frozen North expansion. Players will need to take the temperature of the region they are in into account. The desert will require lightweight armor to stay cool while heavy fur-lined armor will be necessary in the north.

The temperature gameplay elements extend to building and crafting as well. Funcom is adding more than 300 new items to Conan Exiles from resources to armor and weapons to crafting stations as well as structures. Insulated Wood is used to protect against the cold at the Tier 2 building level. Meanwhile, Black Ice Reinforced Stone does the same at Tier 3.

Other new crafting items include fish traps to place in water and beehives to collect honey. The honey can be used to make mead, which will help protect against the cold but could make your character drunk if too much is consumed.

Finally, an all-new Hyborian god for your character to worship is being added. Ymir, the Lord of Storm and War, can be summoned to crush enemies and their bases.

“This expansion update does not just mean more content and more features,” says creative director Joel Bylos. “The team has also worked extremely hard to make sure this release brings with it significant improvements to core aspects of the game such as combat, artificial intelligence, and more. These improvements, in addition to the twenty-eight updates we have already introduced to the game over its six months in PC Early Access, mean this version of Conan Exiles is bigger, and even more importantly, better than ever before.”

[Featured Image by Funcom]