Does eating an exotic feast meal, made up of spiced haunch, cooked eggs and dried berries, while drinking some nice highlands wine sound tempting to you?
Needing food and water at regular intervals can be somewhat of a hassle in both real life and survival games. But just as in real life, where eating and drinking can be a source of great pleasure and fulfillment, eating and drinking has been made much more interesting, helpful and fun in Conan Exiles with the Frozen North expansion update.
You can now make a host of great dishes, made from all types of food, and also brew great wine or alcohol beverages.
Good food and drink = Powerful buffs
You in the mood for some steak and eggs, roasted mushrooms, spiced soup and savory jerky? And how does washing it down with cactus wine, mead, shroom bear or phykos rum sound?
All the different types of food and drinks you can now make in Conan Exiles are not just fancy names and pretty icons, but many of them do way more than just quench your thirst or fill your stomach.
Going to take on the mighty frost giants in the Temple of Frost? Better bring some firewater to drink and desert chili to eat. They will heat you up nicely and reduce the effects of the freezing cold.
Making a raid on a powerful enemy clan? It can be a good idea to bring some demon blood-sausages or exotic meat feast. They provide either a strong heal over time or big instant healing effect.
Gathering salt and brimstone in the smoldering hot Shattered Springs area? Take some darfari bug soup and ale with you to help keep cool under the burning sun.
The joy of cooking and brewing
The process of making all sorts of food and beverages is quite involved and requires much more than just learning the feats for cooking and brewing. To create the best dishes and drinks you need a whole kitchen, where you can put your stove, fluid press, dryer, grinder and fermentation barrel.
You can also build beehives to get honey and fish traps and shellfish traps to catch all sorts of fish, crabs and crayfish.
Here are a couple of examples for some of the more complex things you can make:
To make mead you first have to harvest new plants for leavening agent plus hops and then combine them with purified water (which can you can make at the stove) in the fermentation barrel to get ale. Then you get honey from your beehives, add more leavening agent and purified water and you have some mead!
To make exotic feast you need to gather shaleback eggs from their nests and berries from bushes before you cook eggs at the stove and dry berries at the dryer. Then you go hunting for some exotic flesh (from rhinos and elephants for example) and combine it with spice (made from seeds or plant fiber in the grinder) to make spiced haunch. Put cooked eggs, dried berries and spiced haunch together and you have exotic feast.
The process of making berry juice or oil was bugged when the Frozen North launched (it needed way too many berries for example), but the system has been fixed and it should be much easier to make wine now.
Find recipes in the world
Once you have all your crafting stations and access to resources, you will need to get your hands on as many recipes as possible. The stove and brewing feats will teach you quite a few, but some of the best recipes in the game can be found in books around the world.
You can find many specialist cooking recipes in NPC villages, like with the Darfari in the south or the Forgotten Tribe of Cimmerians in the north. Other recipes can be found in ancient ruins or other abandoned places. Keep and eye out for these books as they may contain the recipes for your new favorite meal in Conan Exiles!
There are recipe books like this for beverages as well, which teach you to make drinks like absinthe and resinwine. Keep exploring the world and you will be expanding your recipe list as you play.
You should expect more tweaks to the resources needed for cooking and brewing in future updates and the overall importance of eating and drinking in the game might be increased. You can also expect many new types of food and drink soon, like honeyglaced roast, honey jerky, ice tea and more.
