The religion system in Conan Exiles provides a way for players to expand their access to unique armor, weapons, feast and food consumables, recipes, and other items. You can also work towards summoning a powerful deity to aid you in battle as you increase your knowledge of a specific religion. This involves building an altar that can be upgraded by producing items that are unique to each religion, and that require special resources which can only be harvested using specific religious tools. On this page, we’ll cover everything you need to know about how to get started with the religions in Conan Exiles, including how to join the religions of Mitra, Set, Yog, Ymir, Derketo, Zath, Jhebbal Sag, and Crom. We’ll also cover how to build and upgrade religious altars, and how to summon avatars by crafting Manifestations of Zeal, and we’ll detail a few key items that make each religion worth investing in based on your play style.

What Are the Religions in Conan Exiles?¶

There are technically eight major religions in Conan Exiles. These are Mitra, Set, Yog, Ymir, Derketo, Zath, Crom, and Jhebbal Sag. However, only the first seven of these can be chosen as a religion as you’re creating your character from the beginning of the game. The Jhebbal Sag religion can only be joined once you’ve entered The Exiled Lands, where you’ll need to find the religious teacher known as the Child of Jhebbal Sag, and then follow the instructions.

It’s also important to note that the religion of Crom doesn’t really function as a religion at all. Although you can choose Crom as your deity from the beginning of the game, they won’t ever interfere with your path, and they don’t ask to be worshipped in any way. You can consider the option of Crom as the kind of atheistic choice if you don’t want to get involved with religions in Conan Exiles. The only other reason why you might want to join the Crom religion is if you want to eventually be part of every religion in the game. This is because you can join all the other religions while playing, but Crom can only be joined during character creation.

Can You Join More Than One Religion?¶

With that said, there’s every reason to want to get involved with the religions in Conan Exiles, primarily because they can give you access to unique recipes, items, and powerful allies. There’s no restriction on the number of religions that you can be a part of at any given time in Conan Exiles, so if you really want to learn everything there is to know about them, you can start off by choosing the religion that seems most useful to you in the early game. We offer our own thoughts on which this might be depending on your play style later on.

How to Join a Religion in Conan Exiles¶

There are multiple different ways to join religions in Conan Exiles, but the easiest is to choose your preferred religion when you’re creating your character. It’s important to note that this won’t exclude you from all of the other religions in the game, it just means that it’ll be the first one you have access to. You can still join any and all other religions at different points in the game, but it will require a bit more work to do so. We cover each method below.

Spend Knowledge Points to Learn a Religion¶

Aside from choosing a specific religion at the beginning of the game when you’re creating your character, the easiest method is to use knowledge points in the Feats menu. This is the same place where you can learn recipes for all sorts of gear and building templates. In this case, it will cost 50 knowledge points per religion, so it’s a rather expensive method when you consider the alternatives.

Obtain Relics from Named Priests¶

The option of learning a religion using knowledge points can be handy, but it quickly becomes expensive. Thankfully, there are other ways to learn religions without having to spend anything but time and effort. One of these methods involves finding named priests from a specific religion, killing them, and then looting the religious relics that they drop. Upon using the relic, you’ll automatically learn the associated religion in the Feats menu.

Speak to Religious Trainers¶

The easiest way to learn a religion without having to find any of its associated relics is by speaking with a specific religious trainer. These can be difficult to find, but if you speak with them you’ll have the option to learn their religion for free. You can see the locations for all seven of the major religion trainers in the table below. Note that we haven’t included one for the Crom religion due to the reasons stated above.

How Religious Altars Work in Conan Exiles¶

One of the most important aspects of any religion in Conan Exiles is their associated altar. These are structures that you can build in your base which give you the ability to gain more knowledge about a specific religion. This comes in the form of learning new recipes for consumables, armor, weapons, and more. All of the religions have their own altar design (excluding Crom for obvious reasons), and you can usually build them using a substantial amount of basic materials such as stone and wood. Once you’ve built a religious altar, you can think about upgrading it.

How to Upgrade Religious Altars in Conan Exiles¶

There’s more than one way to upgrade a religious altar in Conan Exiles, but the main method is by harvesting resources from humanoids. To do this, you’ll first need to craft a special tool associated with the religion, which you can find the recipe for when you interact with the religious altar. You need to use this tool to harvest humanoid corpses for the specific resources that you need, such as a Human Heart for the Set religion. If you try harvesting them with a regular tool, you won’t get the relevant resources.

Every religion has a specific type of ritualistic tool that can be used to harvest particular resources from humanoids. You’ll need to craft this tool from the religious altar that you build, and it usually comes in the form of a basic weapon. Although the particular tools and resources differ between religions, the principle remains the same: you need to use the religious tool to harvest those resources, then bring them back to the altar to craft tokens that can be used to upgrade them. We’ve listed each tool and the associated harvestable resource for each religion in the table below.

Craft Manifestations of Zeal¶

The resources that you acquire with the religion-specific harvesting tool can be used to craft special tokens called Manifestations of Zeal. These tokens cannot be removed from the religious altar, and you’ll lose them if you destroy that specific altar, so it’s important to place your altar somewhere that you want to keep it from the beginning. As you craft more tokens to upgrade your religious altar, you’ll gain access to new types of armor, weapons, and other items associated with the religion.

Another thing to note about upgrading your religious altar is that once it reaches level three, a bright light will shine into the sky from it. This light can be seen from a great distance, so it will make the position of your altar a point of interest for other players on PvP servers. At the same time, you’ll be able to see the location of the altar with its own icon on the map once you upgrade it to level three.

How to Use Religious Avatars in Conan Exiles¶

All of the major religions in Conan Exiles provide the option for you to summon an avatar of their deity, with the exception of the Crom religion for reasons we’ve already covered above. The avatars are powerful allies that you can summon to help you in battle. They’re most useful when used to defend your own base against attackers, or when you’re besieging an enemy base, but they can be summoned in almost any situation if the need arises.

Build and Upgrade a Tier 3 Altar¶

The first thing you need to do in the process of summoning an avatar is build an altar for a particular religion, then upgrade it to level three using the methods described above. You need a total of 500 Manifestations of Zeal to summon an avatar, and even more to upgrade your altar to begin with, so you can expect to farm a lot of humanoids before you reach the point where you can summon an avatar.

Find an Archpriest Thrall for Your Altar¶

The next thing you need to do is find an Archpriest thrall for your avatar. These are special priests which can spawn in any of the locations where regular priests from a specific religion are found. If you don’t see an Archpriest at the location when you first visit it, you need to kill the regular priests and then wait for them to respawn. Eventually, you should get an Archpriest to spawn. This can be a long and cumbersome process, but it’s the only way to get an Archpriest at this time.

Be sure to check our interactive map and database for the locations of specific Archpriests, such as the Set Archpriest and the Mitra Archpriest.

Craft Avatar Tokens¶

Once you have an Archpriest, you can enthrall them to your religious altar after breaking them in using a Wheel of Pain. You’ll now have the option to produce new types of special tokens that relate to avatars, such as the True Name of Mitra or Mitra’s Protection. You’ll see that each of these costs 500 Manifestations of Zeal to produce. The tokens with True Name in the title will summon an enormous avatar that can destroy bases in seconds, while those with Protection in the name are intended to create defensive shields around your base.

After you choose to produce an avatar token, it will take an hour to craft. At the end of the crafting process, the altar will disappear and the token can be found in a small bag that is left behind where the altar once stood. You can then loot the avatar token and keep it in your inventory, only to be used when you need to summon the power of the gods. However, it’s important to note that the token will eventually expire from your inventory. We weren’t able to confirm the precise duration for each token, but it ranges between six to eight hours.

The time that you have to make use of a religious avatar after summoning it is usually limited to one minute, so you need to be ready to make the most of it. Avatars are perfect for inflicting massive damage on enemy bases, but they won’t be able to fit inside dungeons, so you can’t always use them against bosses. The avatars can take damage, but most enemies won’t be able to inflict enough to kill the avatar before it expires.

Are Religious Avatars Worth Summoning?¶

Although the avatars are visually impressive, they’re arguably not worth the time and effort it takes to summon them. This is because you only have one minute to make use of them, and the amount of damage they can inflict is severely limited by their movement speed. Not only do they walk incredibly slowly, but their attack animations are also cumbersome, taking a good five to seven seconds to execute just one attack. With that said, they can still be useful to smash through base defenses or even completely destroy a base, so in our view, it’s worth reserving them specifically for this use and sticking to conventional combat for anything else.

Best Religions in Conan Exiles¶

As we’ve already mentioned, it’s possible to join all of the religions in Conan Exiles eventually, so you don’t need to limit yourself to just one. Still, it can take a long time to learn and produce everything related to a specific religion, so you may want to focus on just one or two initially. With that in mind, we’ll give you our recommendations for the most useful religions based on the key items they offer.

It should go without saying that the Crom religion is entirely useless to invest in from the beginning of the game. If you choose this religion, all you’re doing is making it more difficult for you to learn a religion that is actually useful early on. For the other religions, the best way to think of their usefulness is to consider how you might benefit from using the items that can be produced at their altars. The avatars don’t really come into play here, since they all essentially do the same thing in the form of providing massive amounts of damage for a short duration.

Ymir Religion Buffs¶

The Ymir religion arguably provides the worst perks, limited to a decent feast that provides the warming buff. This is genuinely useful in colder areas, but when you consider that you can get the warming buff from other items in the game, it’s hardly worth investing in a religion to get this perk from one additional source. The only exception would apply to those who prefer the aesthetics of the Ymir religion, and who may wish to build their main base in a constantly cold climate.

Derketo Religion Buffs¶

The Derketo religion provides a useful item in the form of the Elixir of Freedom, which allows you to instantly remove the cripple debuff. This will become incredibly useful when fighting certain bosses or large enemies that inflict the cripple debuff often, so it’s worth working towards getting at least one Derketo altar at some point. Other than this handy elixir, there’s nothing special about the Derketo religion that would encourage you to invest in it early on.

Mitra Religion Buffs¶

One of the most useful items that the Mitra religion provides is the Ambrosia consumable. This will heal you for a relatively small amount when consumed, but they’re incredibly easy to craft using the resources that you acquire from humanoids after harvesting them with the religious tool. However, the best thing about the Mitra religion is arguably the feast consumable, which not only restores some of your health but also fully replenishes your stamina bar which can be a lifesaver in a tough fight.

Yog Religion Buffs¶

The Yog religion offers one of the more powerful consumables in the form of Purified Flesh. This will heal you for the same amount of health that the Mitra Ambrosia consumable does, but it’ll also restore your hunger and thirst bar at the same time. It’s a great all-rounder if you need to restore most of your vitals in one click.

Jhebbal Sag Religion Buffs¶

The Jhebbal Sag religion is the only one that you can’t join from the beginning of the game. Instead, you need to find the Child of Jhebbal Sag NPC and speak with them to begin a brief quest line that ends in a boss fight. After defeating the boss, you can finally join the religion. Although more difficult to join, the Jhebbal Sag religion provides one of the best feast consumables in the game, which heals you for far more than almost any other healing food or potion.

Aside from the useful feast consumable, you can also craft the Night-Eye Potion using the Jhebbal Sag altar, which allows you to see in the dark. This is especially handy while exploring dungeons or when traveling in the dark at night. Finally, the Hunter’s Potion is the other noteworthy consumable for this religion, which considerably improves your overall accuracy with ranged weapons, making it perfect for anyone who primarily uses an archer build.

Set Religion Buffs¶

The Set religion is a contender for the best religion to invest in early on because it allows you to craft more useful consumables overall. The most important of these is the Set Antidote which cures almost all poisons, including alcohol poisoning. This is crucial because some of the most powerful potions also make you drunk, which diminishes their usefulness. However, offsetting the consumption of alcohol-based potions with the Set Antidote allows you to retain the stat bonuses from them without succumbing to alcohol poisoning.

The other powerful consumable that you can craft using the Set Religion is the Snake Arrow. These arrows inflict poison damage over time to your enemies, but they also prevent them from healing or climbing while the effect lasts. The combined effects of these debuffs significantly weaken enemies to the point where they can be easily kited, and they won’t be able to reach you from a high place while they can’t climb.

Zath Religion Buffs¶

The Zath religion was added to the game later than the others, and it comes with one distinct difference in that you’ll be worshipping a spider deity rather than a humanoid deity. If that’s your thing, then you might want to opt for this sooner rather than later. However, unfortunately, the Zath religion doesn’t offer much in the way of useful buffs. The most notable item is the Globe of Yezud, which releases a deadly spider once thrown. You can carry multiple Globes of Yezud, so you can spawn numerous spiders to fight alongside you, but they don’t last long.

Aside from the Globe of Yezud throwable item, there’s nothing particularly special about the consumables from the Zath religion, so we hope to see this developed more, alongside some of the others, in a future update. Ultimately, you should choose the religion that provides the best consumable buffs for your play style, and if none of them appeal to you much, just go with whatever suits your aesthetic tastes more. Each religion comes with its own set of armor and weapons, but these are often so similar in power that choosing between them will be determined more by the way they look, rather than how they function.

More Conan Exiles Guides¶

If you’re looking for more Conan Exiles guides, be sure to check the links below.

• How the Purge Works in Chapter 2
• Tips for Surviving the Purge - Best Bases - Conan Exiles
• How to Obtain Thralls
• Obelisk Locations