Conan Unconquered Beginner’s Guide: Soldiers, Artifacts, Resources & More

Conan Unconquered, the newest game from RTS veterans Petroglyph, is a lot of fun to play, especially with a friend. It is, however, also quite challenging, so to help out new players I thought I’d put together this wee little Conan Unconquered beginner’s guide.

Find the choke points
As you start a map in Conan Unconquered, you only have your HQ and a few resource spots around you. The temptation is to start walling yourself up at once. However, this is an impulse you should resist. Walls are quite expensive and can be a real sink on your economy. Scout ahead a bit and find the narrow passes and choke points around your base. Expand out to those and brick them up.This will give you cheaper and more easily defendable positions.

Expand intelligently
Keep an eye on the minimap. Once a new wave is announced, you should be able to see where they are being spawned on the map. Moreover, if you mouse over the icon, you can see what enemies you will be facing. This will determine the direction in which you build your first walls. Generally, the first waves will come from one direction at a time, so you’ll get one wave from the east, one from the north and so on. As your economy is limited in the beginning, this is a good way to put your resources where they are needed rather than try to build up everything at once.

Get an army early
Soldiers are expensive in Conan Unconquered, though getting a few of them early on will give you an edge later on. This is because veterancy make a big difference in how effective they are. It also takes a long time to earn so, therefore, it’s a good thing to start early in order to have some well-trained soldiers once things grow more challenging.

Avoid overextending yourself
In most RTS games, advancing along the tech tree is among the most important things you can do. While it is still important in Conan, upkeep does have a tendency to explode really fast and sometimes it’s simply better to stay at a lower tier of units and buildings and opt for quantity instead. For instance, hovels generate lower income than their upgrade, but they don’t have any upkeep. If you start upgrading your hovels too quickly without enough wood, you will soon find yourself in a deficit that can be really hard to get out of. Same goes for soldiers, walls, and towers. Keep it simple and upgrade when you are sure your economy can handle it.

Find artifacts, like a boss
Giant creatures, demons and all sorts of baddies are littering the wilderness in Unconquered and they are not just there for show. Defeating these boss creatures will grant you access to powerful artifacts, such as an amulet of Mitra which can heal nearby units. The bosses don’t heal between waves, so going out there to do damage early is recommended, even if you can’t bring them down yet.

Your heroes are powerful
Both Conan and Valeria are formidable fighters who are easily capable of taking out whole squads of enemies on their own. Don’t be afraid of sending them to where the fighting is the thickest as they can pretty much hold a flank all by themselves — at least in the early to mid-game. The skill they gain as they rank up is also very powerful and worth acquiring early. That said, they’re not invincible so get them back to healing well when their health starts to tick down.

Move your defenses
The enemy hordes will not attack you from all sides at once until the late game. You can use this fact to your advantage by shifting your defenders to where the enemies are coming. At the start of each wave, you should see where they are coming from on the minimap. Move archers and soldiers to the walls, which are likely to be targeted. This way you can expand outwardly faster without the need for manning all the walls at once.

Don’t forget to protect your center
Some enemies, such as Giant Spiders and Bat-Demons, will ignore terrain and/or walls. As such, you can find yourself with all your soldiers out on the walls with nothing to defend your weaker resource structures. Keeping some soldiers around in the middle is a good way to mitigate this problem.

Divide and conquer
Conan Unconquered is undoubtedly most fun when together with friends. This also lets you divide the labor of building and defending your base. All resources are shared between the players so there is no point bickering about that, either. Before you start building, it is a good idea to decide who takes care of what resource to avoid overspending on things. For instance, one player can take care of the wood and food while the other takes care of the gold and so on.

Additionally, there are a lot of resources and treasures to find on the map if you explore and take out creep nests. In the late game, it will be difficult to find time to go out and do this so make sure you try and cover as much ground as possible in the beginning. Striking out in opposite directions to explore and then teaming up to take out bosses and big nests is highly recommended.

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