How to host your own Conan Exiles server

Wander the Exiled Lands of Hyboria as a barbarian with your friends and fight off enemies and other dangers in Funcom’s survival game Conan Exiles. In mul­ti­play­er mode you get to face off against other players or col­lab­o­rate with them as part of a group. To get going, you can either use one of the servers provided by the developer or the community, or you could set up your own Conan Exiles dedicated server. We explain how you can create a server and what you need to get started step by step.

Since 2017, Conan Exiles has enticed players worldwide. The survival game set among the fictional universe of Conan the Barbarian is a popular mul­ti­play­er game. You can compete against dozens other players or fight threats together with friends. When choosing a public server to play together, you won’t have any influence on the other players.

If, on the other hand, you create your own server, you can play Conan Exiles in the way that suits you and select your preferred players. With your own server, you also get to define details such as the craft, the avatars or the rules when fighting other players. This makes for a whole lot more fun when playing.

Conan Exiles is a large-scale game with sig­nif­i­cant demands on a server. However, you won’t require a special graphics server. The server doesn’t represent the gaming en­vi­ron­ment, but functions purely on a command line level.

The minimum system re­quire­ments for a Conan Exiles server are:

• 3.0 GHz CPU
• 8 GB RAM
• 35 GB hard disk space
• Windows 7 or higher

However, these are only the essential re­quire­ments. If you wish to play together with many people on a server, you should plan for ad­di­tion­al capacity.

It’s advisable to choose a server location that matches those of all players where possible. For example, if you and your friends live in the USA, you should select a data center based in the country. As a result, the con­nec­tion to the server is shorter and therefore faster and the gaming ex­pe­ri­ence is no­tice­ably enhanced.

The man­u­fac­tur­er of the game rec­om­mends using the Intel Core 2 Duo 6850 as the lowest possible hardware con­fig­u­ra­tion. Its 3.0 GHz CPU is suf­fi­cient for 10 players. If more people are playing on the same server, you will need to increase the processor per­for­mance. According to the man­u­fac­tur­er, you should plan at least 4.0 GHz for 70 or more players.

When it comes to RAM, the Conan Exiles server is less demanding. 8 GB is suf­fi­cient for a small group. For more players, 12 GB RAM should suffice.

In terms of storage space, Conan Exiles is con­sis­tent. No matter how many players there are on the server, you are well-served with 35 GB. The memory space is mainly used for the game’s large map and its numerous graphics. You may wish to extend the memory if you have installed many mods. It’s best to use fast solid-state drive tech­nol­o­gy (SSD) when selecting storage. In principle, tra­di­tion­al HDD disks aren’t a problem, but with a server with SSD storage you can improve the per­for­mance slightly.

In theory, anyone can set up an ad­di­tion­al computer at home and configure it as a server. However, this is only rec­om­mend­ed to a limited extent. While the hardware re­quire­ments are not an issue, the bandwidth could be a problem. In a pro­fes­sion­al data center enough bandwidth is available (IONOS, for example, guar­an­tees 400 Mbit/s) so that all players benefit from a good gaming ex­pe­ri­ence.

Assigning an IP address is another dif­fi­cul­ty with a home server. Many Internet providers regularly assign their users a new address, which in­ter­rupts the con­nec­tion to the Conan Exiles server. This won’t happen with a server from IONOS.

With IONOS you can select from a range of different server variants. Each has a different advantage:

• Dedicated server: dedicated hardware
• Cloud server: shared server structure
• vServer: virtual server

Each server option has its ad­van­tages. With a dedicated server, you rent your own hardware in the data center. This offers excellent per­for­mance, and you gain full control but will need to manage some of the tasks yourself. A dedicated server is rec­om­mend­ed for server pro­fes­sion­als.

With a cloud server and the vServer you rent virtual resources. You won’t receive a fixed device because the server is ac­ces­si­ble only to you. Instead, the load is dis­trib­uted across different hardware. For most users, the dif­fer­ence between the two virtual options comes down to pricing. While you pay a monthly fixed sum for a vServer, the cloud server bills by the minute. You can add or cancel ca­pac­i­ties at any time and only pay for what you use.

The demands on a Conan Exiles server grow as the number of players increases. Here are three example scenarios and their ap­pro­pri­ate IONOS solutions.

Once you’ve selected a server package to suit your needs, you can install the Conan Exiles server. First, you need to establish a con­nec­tion to the server.

You’ll find a download link for the remote desktop con­nec­tion in the server settings. As a Windows user, you just need to run the file. The software required comes pre-installed on the operating system. The program will then ask for a password. This can be found in the server details above the download link. A prompt will ask you to agree to a cer­tifi­cate and then establish the con­nec­tion. Because you’re using a Windows server, it can be operated in the same manner as you’re used to on a Windows desktop computer.

The SteamCMD program helps to create servers for games that are offered on the Steam gaming platform. Conan Exiles can be purchased here. Log on to your server, open the browser and download the program from the official Steam download site. Create a new folder for SteamCMD and extract the contents.

In theory, you can now launch and control SteamCMD via the Windows command line. It is easier, however, if you create a Batch file (.bat). To do this, open any text editor and write the following lines in the file:

The first line specifies that no new batch file is created to collect all log data. The next line launches SteamCMD and au­to­mat­i­cal­ly creates a new folder for the files on your Conan Exiles server. You can define the path for this yourself.

You can save the file in .txt format and select a name of your choice. Set Windows Explorer so that file ex­ten­sions are also displayed (you can do this via the “View” tab) and then replace .txt with .bat. Now right-click on the file and launch it as an ad­min­is­tra­tor. All the files you need for a Conan Exiles server will now be down­loaded. You will then find the “Co­nanSand­boxServ­er.exe” file in the folder. A double click on it launches the server.

Before you can play with others on your Conan Exiles server, you should adjust a few settings.

There are two ways to adjust the settings for the server:

1. Typically, changes are made to the different con­fig­u­ra­tion files. It makes sense to become familiar with these to gain full control over your Conan Exiles server and un­der­stand its pos­si­bil­i­ties.
2. The developer of the game now offers a software that lets you adjust the settings using a graphical interface.

In the following, we explain both methods in detail.

Settings for a Conan Exiles server are made across various files. First, go to the “Start­Serv­er.bat” batch file. You should find it in the same folder as the exe file for starting the server. Right-click on the file and choose Edit. The following code should already be in the file:

You can use the code to run the file to start the server and view all oc­cur­rences. You should add the following pa­ra­me­ters to the file:

Now, you can make further changes. To do this, click through to “\Co­nanSand­box\Saved\Config\Win­dowsServ­er” in the server folder. (You may have to start the server once for the folder to be created.) Here, you’ll find the con­fig­u­ra­tion file “Ser­ver­Set­tings.ini”. If you open this with a text editor, you can view various settings. Feel free to fa­mil­iar­ize yourself with the in­for­ma­tion. Most of the entries are self-ex­plana­to­ry. Under “Ad­min­Pass­word” you should set a secure password you use to identify yourself as an ad­min­is­tra­tor. Create it in the file if it hasn’t been added yet.

The “Engines.ini” file is an important one. Insert two pa­ra­me­ters below the item “[On­li­ne­Sub­sys­tem]”:

Upon first accessing it, the in­for­ma­tion below “Server Settings” should be of par­tic­u­lar interest to you. From here, you define the name of the server and enter passwords for fellow players and for yourself as the ad­min­is­tra­tor. In this area, you can also adjust the maximum number of players on the server. You might be in­ter­est­ed in the backup option. To do this, specify a location on the server where you want to store your game world.

To start the server, click on the big button on the bottom right. If you are launching the server for the first time, the software will install a few more files. The server is then available online.