Conan Exiles Farming Guide - Conan Fanatics (2024)

You may not have suspected Conan Exiles to be a farming simulator, and you’d be right. The farming aspects of the game are minimal compared to its other mechanics, but that doesn’t mean they are any less important. A basic understanding of plants, fish, honey, compost, and other agricultural endeavors may give you the small step to progress further into the Exiled Lands.

Conan Exiles Farming goes a long way in making a base feel like home. Not only that but whiling the time away, growing resources at your base is a pleasant escape. Returning to an empty castle in the sand is no way to spend your time as an Exile. Instead, consider filling your base with flowers, bees, fish, and animals. It’ll add more stations to manage, but the reward outweighs the commitment.

TL:DR: Old Farmer Conan

While Conan Exiles tends to focus on the killing side of human nature, there will be opportunities to get your hands dirty in other ways. The main farming station is the planter, which allows you to grow seeds you harvest in the wild.

Most plants drop seeds, but not often. Planters do not produce more seeds, meaning that seeds in your inventory are more of a bonus for new plants than a way to permanently maintain that resource.

To grow the seed in your planter, you’ll need compost, which is made at the compost heap. You won’t need to water your planter, but if you have trouble growing seeds in it, you may have the wrong compost. Some plants (lotuses) require potent compost to grow.

You should consider other Conan Exiles farming endeavors: honey, fish, and farm animals. While none of these agricultural endeavors are required, they do make life in the exiled lands a little easier.

My Experience with Farming in Conan Exiles

If you’ve seen me carelessly charging into a losing battle, jumping off a cliff into oblivion, or banging on a block of black ice keep with a stone hatchet on your server before, it may not be obvious that base management is my favorite part of the game.

Survival games are the perfect mix of difficulty and combat that make base building the most rewarding in my eyes.

When there are consequences to my actions, I pay close attention to keeping my resources up, and my coffers stocked. The entire point of farming is resource generation, and as such was at the top of my list of mechanics to master.

I’ve used every farming item and station in the game and love carving out a spot for my agricultural endeavors in just about every base I’ve built. I do hope that someday, Funcom will update and expand the farming system in Conan Exiles, but for now, it serves its purpose just fine.

The Basics

There are two crafting stations in Conan Exiles, those with specific recipes in their crafting inventory and those that do not. These stations use ingredients to produce but may require fuel and your own knowledge of what to put into their inventory. Farming stations all fall in this second category.

Farming in Conan Exiles involves the compost heap, planters, beehives, fish traps, and the animal pen. All of these agricultural stations will produce resources for your operation, some will need fuel, and some will not. None of them have explicit instructions for using them, but lucky for you, this will be a complete farming guide!

How to Make Compost

We’ll need to start at the end because compost is both an end and a beginning. You may not have all the ingredients you need to make compost yet, but it makes sense to go ahead and lay out a composting station first.

You’ll need to be level 18 to learn the peasant feat, which seems like many levels to learn a feat with that kind of name. Despite the name, this is a valuable feat and a required expense if you’d like to be a farmer. The peasant feat will teach you the compost heap and the crude planter.

To construct your compost heap, you’ll need 20 shaped wood. You can craft shaped wood at the carpenter’s bench, and I would suggest crafting enough for several compost heaps while you’re there. There are no upgrades to the compost heap, so go nuts! I like at least five compost heaps for an entire farming base operation.

Once you’ve placed your heaps, hopefully away from your bedroom window, open their inventory to add five plant fiber, ten dung or five plant fiber, two putrid meat, and four bonemeal to make one compost. You’ll want to make at least one compost for each heap.

You’ll be making one compost for each heap to generate grubs. If you leave at least one compost in each, the heap will begin passively developing grubs, which are perfect for supplying your fish and shellfish traps. Feel free to craft all of the compost in one heap and then move one compost item to your other heaps.

If you need to craft potent compost for growing lotus seeds, the recipe is two compost, two blood, two raw ash or ten dung, two raw ash, and two compost. Potent compost is challenging to make until you have a steady source of raw ash, which comes along much later in the game.

Compost heaps are very useful in decaying items quickly. This is great for the obvious things like turning meat into putrid meat but is also very useful for the less obvious things like hatching eggs. Just be careful; when the eggs are hatched, the baby animal will also “decay” quickly.

Planters and You

Crude planters, planters, and improved planters are used to grow plants from seeds. Once you learn the peasant feat at level 18, you’ll be able to make a crude planter for your base. There are upgraded versions of this planter, so you may not want to place more than a couple of them.

The only functional difference between the planters is their inventory space and durability, which is not all that important. All three grow seeds at the same pace, and all three can grow the same plants. Other information on the internet is outdated in this regard, so I tested it myself.

This means that the only reason you would ever need to upgrade your crude planters is that you like how the planter and upgraded planter look. I’m not downplaying this reason; I’d recommend you consider planters primarily for decoration anyway. When the seeds grow in your planter, they display the current plant in the planter, making this crafting station one of the most attractive and customizable ones available.

While you don’t need to water these seeds to get your planter to work, you will need to supply it with compost. It will be one seed and one compost to grow each plant, but this recipe produces varying quantities of the plant. For instance, one desert berry bush seed combined with one compost makes 50 desert berries. That’s a productive seed!

You’ll find seeds by harvesting plants in the wild. You can find them with your hands, but a scythe will collect considerably more seeds from the plant when they drop. The better your scythe, the more seeds you will collect. Seeds are a rare by-product, so it’s nice to have a good scythe when you finally find some.

Planters do not create more seeds; unfortunately, they are more of a bonus resource than a self-contained resource generator. They will extend your resources but cannot create more for you once the seeds run out. You’ll just have to head back out and collect some more seeds!

Animal Pens and How They Tie in

Compost is the critical ingredient in this operation, and the easiest way to get masses of compost is to raise animals on your farm. While putrid meat can be an easy solution, dung is the more efficient material for making compost. You’ll need to build an animal pen to start generating your own dung.

Animal pens are used for growing baby animals into tame combat companions, base defense, or farm animals. First, you’ll need to build the pen. At level 13, head to your feats tab to learn the apprentice tamer feat. This feat will teach you many practical recipes, including the animal pen.

An animal pen takes basic building materials: 300 stone, 400 wood, and 20 twines. Be aware that this building takes up considerable space either in your base or close by. You may want to clear a large zone before putting it on your action wheel to place.

Once your animal pen is ready, you’ll need to decide what type of animals to farm. Most animals produce dung, but many can create other valuable items. Fill an animal pen with something easy to grab, like shalebacks, to have a dung factory in no time. Dung is used in producing compost.

To grow the baby animal into its adult form, just feed it; then leave enough food in the pen for your adult animal, and they will start producing their species’ specific product.

Honey: Bees, Bees, Bees

There’s another way to raise animals on your Conan Farm, but you’ll need a separate set-up for them. Keeping bees is one of the easiest and most lucrative endeavors in Conan Exiles, just like it is in real life.

You will need to be level 33 to learn the Apiary feat, which will teach you how to make a beehive. The beehive only requires 50 wood and ten twines. I would recommend making as many hives as you have room for.

Once your hives are built, they will start passively producing honey! This is one of the very few stations in the game that passively creates resources, and everyone should be taking advantage of it. You can add worker bees and queen bees to speed up the process. The beehive consumes these bees for varied amounts of honey.

With a worker bee, you are 90% likely to get one honey for the trade, but you have an 8% chance to get two honey and a 2% chance to get three honey. A queen bee is more valuable, with a 90% chance of producing ten honey, an 8% chance of producing 15 honey, and a 2% chance of producing 20 honey.

You’ll find worker bees and queen bees while collecting plants. They are relatively rare, but using a scythe will net more bees per hit than your hands. The higher-quality the scythe, the more bees you’ll wind up with.

Honey is primarily used in cooking and fermenting. Use honey to make food with much higher sated buffs (healing per second) than its simpler version. Use it in your fermentation barrel to make drinks with unique buffs. Honey is an easy-to-farm way of making higher-quality food and drinks.

You’ll also need your honey to feed bears. Baby bears and adult bears love honey in Conan Exiles, so if you’re considering having some bear companions, you’ll want to set up a beehive operation.

Fish Traps and Why You Need Them

Fish traps may very well be the first farm station you set up at your base; they are beneficial in the early game for your own food and in the later game for pressing oil. You’ll need a body of water to set up fish and shellfish traps, but it can be surprisingly shallow.

You’ll need to be level 17 to learn the Fisher feat, which will teach you both the fish trap and the shellfish trap. Each fish trap or shellfish trap takes ten shaped wood and ten twines. If you want, you can make some shellfish traps, but I’d recommend spending the resources on fish traps for now.

You can catch three types of fish in a standard fish trap: the unappetizing fish, the savory fish, and the exotic fish. Similarly, the shellfish trap produces three types of shellfish: the unappetizing shellfish, the savory shellfish, and the exotic shellfish. They are listed here in order of value.

Fish traps no longer passively produce fish, though you may still find information online suggesting otherwise. You’ll need to supply them with bugs. There are four types of bugs, from easy to find to rare: the handful of bugs, worker bees, grubs, and queen bee. The better the bugs (rarer), the higher your chances for better fish.

You’ll find these bugs while harvesting plants. While crafting and using a scythe does not mean you will find bugs more often, it does mean when you find them, you will collect more per hit. Chopping up plants is not the only way to stock your traps and will only be supplementary. Grubs produced at your compost heap will be the main source of bugs for your fish traps.

Use fish to survive until you’re meat rich; then, they’ll become a valuable source of food for your thralls. While thralls thrive on gruel, any thralls you’re looking to make into archers should be eating cooked fish.

Once you have a press up and running, fish will turn into your main source of fuel. Putting fish in your press results in oil, which you can use to fuel your furnaces. The better the fish, the more oil you’ll pull out of the press.

Bloom Where You Are Planted

Sure, we didn’t choose to be nailed to a cross and left to die in the desert. There was no way to know that our list of crimes would dump us here in the vast and hostile Exiled Lands, but we should make the most of it while we’re here. Setting up a farming operation with compost heaps, planters, beehives, and more is an excellent way to unwind after a long day of killing.

On top of that, extending your resources via these stations is a great way to get ahead of the competition. Building your farm is easy enough, but knowing how to get the most out of it for your playstyle will be challenging.

You may have a small garden as a solo player or a massive barnyard as a clan. Farming is the same as anything else in Conan Exiles. Only do it if it sparks joy because someone or something is on their way to smash it all to oblivion.

Conan Exiles Farming FAQ

Recommended Reads:

• Conan Exiles Silver Dust Guide
• Conan Exiles Taming Guide
• Conan Exiles Warpaint Guide
• Conan Exiles Co-Op Guide
• Conan Exiles Spice Guide
• Conan Exiles Raw Ash Guide