Conan Exiles rebuilt its attributes in 3.0 and a lot of guides never caught up. There are six now, each capped at 20, each handing out a perk at 10 and again at 20. You do not get enough points to max more than two and change.
Strength, Agility, Vitality, Authority, Grit, Expertise. The last two are the ones people skip and then wonder why they cannot carry anything or swing more than four times.
The corruption trade
Sorcery costs corruption. Corruption permanently eats into your maximum health and stamina until you cleanse it at a dancer or a bedroll.
Here is the part that makes it a build decision rather than a penalty: corrupting an attribute deliberately converts its perks into stronger, darker versions. A fully corrupted Strength line hits considerably harder than the clean one. You are trading a smaller health bar for a bigger number.
Two coherent ways to play this. Stay clean, keep your full health pool, use dancers to strip corruption after any sorcery. Or lean in, corrupt Strength or Authority on purpose, and accept a permanently reduced pool in exchange for the upgraded perks.
The incoherent way is the common one: dabbling in sorcery, carrying twenty percent corruption you never cleanse, and getting the downside of both.
Attributes, and what they actually gate
| Attribute | Take it to 20 if |
|---|---|
| Strength | You swing greatswords, hammers or axes. Heavy attacks scale here. |
| Agility | You use daggers, bows or spears, and want the dodge to matter. |
| Vitality | You are playing PvP or fighting the Purge. Flat survivability. |
| Authority | Your thralls do the fighting. This is a real build, not a support stat. |
| Grit | Stamina. Underrated in melee, essential in PvP. |
| Expertise | Carry weight and encumbrance. Boring, and you will take some anyway. |
Authority deserves its own note. A fully invested Authority build with a good thrall is stronger than most weapon builds, because your follower has more health than you do and does not run out of stamina.
Thralls are the real progression
You capture NPCs by beating them down with a truncheon, binding them, dragging them home, and breaking them on the Wheel of Pain.
Fighters and archers follow you and fight. That is the obvious use. The genuinely valuable ones are the named T4 crafters, because they unlock recipes and improve the stats of everything made at their station. A T4 armorer produces armour with better values than the same recipe made by anyone else. A T4 blacksmith does the same for weapons.
Chasing a specific named crafter is the most efficient thing you can do with a mid-game afternoon. Chasing a slightly better fighter thrall is not, because Authority investment matters more than the thrall's base tier.
Feed them the right food and their stat growth on level-up skews toward it. Most people never learn this and level thralls with whatever is in the box.
Armour weight decides your playstyle
Light armour keeps your stamina and dodge. Heavy armour eats both and gives you armour value.
The 3.0 rework made armour weight matter more than the individual pieces, so mixing to hit a weight threshold is usually better than wearing a matched set for its bonus. Medium is where most PvE builds land.
The Purge will find your base
Your Purge meter fills as you play, and when it triggers, waves attack wherever you built. This is the mechanic that punishes beautiful, indefensible bases.
Build a killbox or build somewhere hard to reach. Thralls placed on the walls do most of the work, and Authority again pays for itself.
Turn the Purge off in single-player settings if you would rather build than defend. There is no shame in it and the game does not meaningfully suffer.
For the early hours and where to settle first, the Conan Exiles beginner's guide covers it.
