Eight Years Later, Conan Exiles Gets a Massive Free Unreal Engine 5 Overhaul

Funcom has officially announced Conan Exiles Enhanced, a major free upgrade that brings the long running survival game from Unreal Engine 4 to Unreal Engine 5. The update will launch on May 5, 2026, marking the game’s 8th anniversary and positioning the release as both a technical refresh and a major quality upgrade for one of Funcom’s most successful titles. The official Conan Exiles Enhanced announcement trailer gives players a first look at the visual overhaul, merged world structure, and new systems arriving with the update.

Developed in collaboration with Inflexion Games, the studio behind Nightingale, Conan Exiles Enhanced is designed to modernize the entire experience while keeping the brutal survival identity that has carried the game for 8 years. Funcom confirmed that the upgrade targets smooth 60 plus FPS gameplay across Low, Medium, High, and Ultra settings on most PCs, while also bringing support for Steam Deck. Despite the visual improvements, the client size has been dramatically reduced from 120GB to 40GB, making the game significantly easier to install and manage for players with limited storage space.

The Unreal Engine 5 transition introduces a more advanced rendering foundation, with improved lighting, geometry detail, shadows, and terrain presentation. The goal is not simply to make Conan Exiles look sharper, but to make its deserts, ruins, dungeons, camps, storms, and hostile landscapes feel more atmospheric and technically modern. For a survival game built around exploration, base building, and environmental danger, this kind of visual and performance update could have a meaningful impact on how the world feels moment to moment.

One of the largest gameplay changes is the merging of the Exiled Lands and Isle of Siptah into one continuous experience. Players will be able to travel between both regions using the same character through teleportation, without needing to choose one map at the start of a run. Multiplayer servers can also support both maps at the same time, which significantly expands the playable world for server communities. However, Isle of Siptah will still require ownership of the DLC.

Conan Exiles Enhanced also includes a revamped user interface with cleaner menus and improved navigation. Crafting and building have been improved as well, with crafting stations now able to pull ingredients from nearby storage and follower inventories. This removes one of the more repetitive inventory management pain points from the original experience, reducing the need to constantly carry materials manually between containers, workstations, and followers.

Character management is also receiving an important update. Players will now be able to maintain and switch between multiple single player characters per account, while the original version was more limited in how it handled single player saves. Character customization has also been expanded, including an enhanced endowment slider, continuing one of the more infamous and recognizable parts of Conan Exiles character creation.

Mod support is another key part of the transition. Funcom confirmed that several popular Conan Exiles mods will be compatible at launch, and the Mod Development Kit has been refreshed for the new version. Some mods may still require updates from their creators, which is expected during a major engine migration, but the studio appears to be prioritizing the modding community as part of the Enhanced rollout.

The platform situation is more complicated. Conan Exiles Enhanced will debut on PC through Steam, and there are currently no confirmed plans for a console release. Funcom says it is considering bringing the update to Epic Games Store, Microsoft Store, Xbox, and PlayStation later, but at launch, Steam is the only platform receiving the Unreal Engine 5 upgrade.

Players on Epic Games Store and Microsoft Store will remain on the Unreal Engine 4 version by default, which Funcom is now calling Conan Exiles Legacy. This Legacy version will continue to exist, but it comes with major limitations on PC. It will not receive future major updates, it will not have access to official servers, and the Bazaar will be disabled. Crom Coins will no longer be valid in the PC Legacy version once Conan Exiles Enhanced launches, so Funcom recommends that players who plan to remain on Legacy spend any remaining Crom Coins before May 5.

Steam players can also choose to remain on Conan Exiles Legacy through the Funcom Launcher or Steam version options, but official server players need to act carefully. On May 4 at 15:00 UTC, all official PC servers will be brought down and migrated to Unreal Engine 5. Any character still on an official server at that time will be permanently updated to the Enhanced version, with no way to revert back to Legacy. Players who want to keep a character in the Legacy version must use the Server Transfer Tool before the deadline.

Save migration depends heavily on where players are located. Exiled Lands players on official or private servers should have a much smoother transition, with characters, bases, followers, and inventory carrying forward into the Unreal Engine 5 version. Isle of Siptah players face a more difficult process because the island has been physically merged into the Exiled Lands structure, requiring a coordinate change. As a result, Isle of Siptah bases cannot be preserved during the migration.

Funcom recommends that Isle of Siptah players dismantle their bases before the transition and store materials in follower inventories. After the update, characters will be moved to a spawn point in the Exiled Lands, where players can then travel back to the Isle of Siptah and rebuild. This is one of the most important details for long term players, especially those with large bases, clan structures, or heavily decorated settlements on Isle of Siptah.

The upgrade is also a celebration of Conan Exiles’ long service life. Funcom highlighted that the game has reached 15 million players and has received 45 major updates across 8 years of support. The current game includes 69 square kilometers of land across 13 biomes and 23 dungeons, along with 24 unique building sets, 1,075 building pieces, 1,731 armor pieces, 1,350 weapons, 1,128 decorations, and 7 religions and avatars. For a survival game that originally launched into a very different PC market, those numbers show how much content has accumulated over time.

From a strategic perspective, Conan Exiles Enhanced is also an important move for Funcom. It refreshes the studio’s most successful game at a time when the survival genre remains highly competitive and technically demanding. With Dune Awakening facing its own live service and retention challenges, keeping Conan Exiles active, modernized, and easier to return to gives Funcom a more stable foundation across its survival portfolio.

The biggest question now is whether the Unreal Engine 5 upgrade can deliver the right balance between visual ambition and stability. Engine migrations can be risky, especially for games with years of content, player built structures, mod support, private servers, and complex save data. However, if Funcom manages the transition smoothly, Conan Exiles Enhanced could become one of the more meaningful survival game upgrades of 2026.

For returning players, the update offers a strong reason to revisit the Exiled Lands. For new players, it may become the best entry point the game has ever had. Eight years after launch, Conan Exiles is not just getting a visual refresh. It is getting a structural rebuild that touches world design, performance, storage size, crafting, user interface, character management, modding, and server infrastructure.

Will Conan Exiles Enhanced bring you back to the Exiled Lands, or are the Legacy limitations and Isle of Siptah base migration too much of a risk for long time players?