The attribute system in Conan Exiles allows you to increase the power of your character by investing in six main attributes: Strength, Agility, Vitality, Authority, Grit, and Expertise. As you invest points in each of these attributes, you’ll have the opportunity to acquire perks associated with them which will improve your combat prowess. These are good enough to get you through the toughest parts of the game, but if you want to become truly overpowered at the expense of losing 50% of your health and stamina, you’ll need to invest in corrupted perks. As of the Age of War update, you can only invest in corrupted perks from the Strength, Vitality, and Authority attributes. On this page, we’ll show you how to gain corruption so that you can invest in corrupted perks, where to find the necessary soul essences that you need for the task, and we’ll also explain how each of the corrupted perks work.

What Are Corrupted Attributes and Perks?¶

The basic concept of a corrupted perk is that they provide some of the most powerful buffs and that you can get from attributes in Conan Exiles. They function in much the same way as regular attribute perks in that you can gain access to new corrupted perks as you invest in a specific attribute. The main differences are that you can’t choose between different corrupted attributes since they’re fixed for each relevant attribute, and you can only invest in them as far as you’ve already put points into a specific attribute.

For example, if you want to invest in corrupted perks for the Strength attribute, you’ll need to spend regular attribute points in that category first. After you’ve spent at least five points, you can access your first corrupted perk so long as you meet the required conditions. There are two main things that you need to get if you want to invest in corrupted perks: a heavy amount of corruption, and a plentiful supply of Soul Essence. The former is the base requirement before you can invest at all, and the soul essences act as the equivalent of attribute points.

It’s important to note that once you invest in corrupted perks to the point where they replace regular perks, the effects of the regular perk will be replaced by those of the corrupted perk.

Can You Remove Corrupted Perks?¶

You may be wondering whether you can remove the level of corruption that you gain after investing in corrupted perks. The short answer is no, but it’s a bit more complicated than that.

The most important thing to understand here is that you need to have at least a 40% corruption level before you can begin to invest in corrupted perks. This level of corruption is initially temporary, but each time that you invest a corruption point in an attribute you’ll gain 2.5% permanent corruption. This means that even if you only want to access two corrupted perks from a specific attribute, such as Strength, you’ll acquire 25% permanent corruption in the process.

This may seem extreme, but the good news is that the amount of corruption that you can permanently acquire is limited to 50%, so you’ll only ever lose a total of half your health and stamina, even if you invest in all the corrupted perks for Strength, Vitality, and Authority. If you combine all these corrupted perks from each of the attribute trees, you can become incredibly powerful in ways that mitigate the loss of health and stamina, depending on your playstyle.

If you grow tired of having corruption and you want to remove it completely, you’ll need to reset all your attribute points. It’s important to keep in mind that upon doing this, you’ll lose access to all of their associated corrupted perks in the process. This isn’t necessarily a big deal if you’re sure that you don’t want them anymore, but if you plan to invest in them again in the future, you’ll need at least 60 soul essences to max them out again.

Which Attributes Can Be Corrupted?¶

As briefly mentioned above, there are only three attributes that can be corrupted as of the Age of War update:

• Strength
• Vitality
• Authority

There are currently no plans for introducing corrupted perks for other attributes such as Agility, Grit, and Expertise. This may be a good thing for anyone who plays a lot of PvP in Conan Exiles since a player can already become massively overpowered if they know how to utilize corrupted perks to their advantage in combat.

How to Gain Corruption¶

So, you’ve decided that you want to try using corrupted perks, but you’re not sure where to start. Well, the first thing you need to do is gain a sufficient amount of corruption (at least 40%), which can be done in three different ways.

Equip Corrupted Items¶

One of the easiest methods for gaining corruption is by equipping items that provide it by default. The Heartpiercer bow is a great example of this, which will instantly give you 50% corruption when equipped. Even if you unequip the bow after this, you won’t be able to get rid of the corruption without using a Cleansing Brew first.

Explore Corrupted Areas¶

Another easy way to gain corruption is by visiting and remaining in corrupted areas for a long period. One of the first corrupted areas that you’re likely to encounter in your playthrough is The Unnamed City, on the western part of the map. Not all of this area is corrupted, but as you get closer to the citadel in the center you’ll begin to acquire corruption. All you need to do is stay in this area for long enough to get at least 40% corruption, at which point you can begin investing in corrupted perks. You’ll gain corruption in most corrupted areas at a rate of one point every five seconds.

Consume a Corrupting Brew¶

If you have the resources required (Purified Water, Demon Blood, and Yellow Lotus Blossom) you can craft a Corrupting Brew which will give you roughly 1% corruption for each brew that you consume. This is a more expensive and time-consuming method, so it’s not necessarily the best, but it will allow you to gain a more precise level of corruption from the safety of your base if you prefer to do it that way.

How to Get Soul Essences Using the Sacrificial Stone¶

Once you’ve gained a sufficient amount of corruption, the next thing you’ll need is a soul essence. These items can sometimes be looted from the corpses of demonic creatures, but the most reliable method to get them is by crafting. The first thing you need for this is a Sacrificial Stone, which you can build anywhere in your base using 600 Stone, 100 Iron Bar, and 1 Torch.

The process of crafting soul essences using the sacrificial stone can be cumbersome, primarily due to the fact that you need to have a sacrificial victim in the form of a thrall. You can put these on the sacrificial stone in the same way that you put thralls on a Wheel of Pain: knock them out, drag them to the crafting station using a binding, and place them in it.

With the thrall placed in the sacrificial stone, you can begin extracting their soul essence by performing the Soul Drain ritual, which you’ll need a Glass Flask for. It’ll take some time to produce each essence, so you may want to have multiple sacrificial stones working on thralls at the same time. Remember that you need a total of 20 soul essences to gain all four corrupted perks from a specific attribute tree, so multiple thralls will be required to speed things up.

If you want to learn more about how to get thralls, see our How to Obtain Thralls page. Note that you don’t need to break the thralls in using a Wheel of Pain first; they can be placed directly in the sacrificial stone after capturing them.

All Attribute Perks for Strength, Vitality, and Authority¶

The tables below detail all of the corrupted perks associated with the Strength, Vitality, and Authority attributes. We’ve also included some tips for how they can be used effectively in combat.

Strength Corrupted Attribute Perks¶

The corrupted perks for the strength attribute do what you might expect by improving your base damage output in general. However, they also provide some unique effects in the form of a more powerful knockback / knockdown with Mule Kick, which can be particularly useful in PvP if you encounter a player near a cliff edge. You will also reduce the damage of your opponents slightly with the Wrack perk. Although it doesn’t state how much this will be reduced officially, we think it’s about 10% based on our testing.

The final corrupted perk from the strength tree is Desecrate. This one can be incredibly useful when fighting multiple opponents, especially due to the knockdown effect. However, since it’s not guaranteed to occur with each hit, there’s an element of random chance involved that you may not want to rely on in the toughest of fights.

Vitality Corrupted Attribute Perks¶

The corrupted perks for the Vitality attribute are perfect to invest in if you want to counter some of the negative influence of having a permanent 50% corruption. This is because although you’ll be stuck with 50% of your maximum potential health and stamina, you can gain a decent passive health regeneration buff with the Grotesque Excrescence perk. At the same time, you’ll have a chance to deflect damage that will increase with each corrupted point invested into Vitality with the Twisted Flesh perk, and you’ll be completely immune to all bleeds, poisons, diseases, and sunder effects. Given that all of these come in the form of some of the most damaging debuffs in the game, it’s difficult to overstate the value of the Petrified perk.

The last corrupted perk for the Vitality tree in the form of Tainted Vessel is actually among the least useful when compared with the others, but it still provides a useful buff to your overall damage output if you’re in a sticky spot. The main issue is that it only becomes relevant after you’ve taken a hit, something that you want to avoid as much as possible when you have reduced health due to 50% corruption.

Authority Corrupted Attribute Perks¶

The Authority corrupted perks are focused on making the most of your thrall allies in combat. For this reason, they’re not as useful in PvP, but they can be great for anyone who enjoys roaming in PvE with a group of followers. The first of these, Frenzy, does exactly what it implies: increases the damage of your followers by 3% for each corrupted Authority attribute. This means that your followers can gain an extra +60% damage if you’ve fully invested in corrupted Authority attributes, making them much more deadly.

Flesh Bond is particularly good if you have a lot of tanky followers by your side. This will allow them to take a portion of the damage inflicted on you, which again is ideal when your maximum health pool is reduced by 50% due to corruption. The more followers you have at any given time, the more evenly the shared damage will be distributed, so you can reduce the damage that you receive even more in this way. If you combine this with the Devour perk at the same time, you’ll gain additional healing whenever your followers inflict damage to an enemy.

All three of the above corrupted perks for Authority can be extremely powerful if you have enough decent followers with you. However, the final perk in this tree, Demon Lord, can actually sabotage you more than it helps. This is because the demon that is summoned has the potential to attack anything on the battlefield, including yourself, so once all enemies in the area are dead, you’ll need to kill it to prevent it from attacking you or your followers. We don’t recommend investing in the Demon Lord perk for this reason, at least not unless you enjoy a bit of chaos in your battles.

More Conan Exiles Guides¶

If you’re looking for more Conan Exiles guides, including how to obtain some of the best fighter thralls to make the most of the corrupted Authority perks, be sure to check the links below.

• How to Obtain Thralls - Conan Exiles
• Best Fighter Thralls Conan Exiles (Age of War Chapter 2)
• All Legendary World Boss Locations
• All Weapon Perks and Status Effects