Watch the Conan Exiles GDC presentation with Joel Bylos

Conan Exiles has performed brilliantly for Funcom since it went into Early Access and at GDC they revealed their future plans for the game.

Funcom managed to recoup the costs of development in less than a week of sales when it hit Early Access. This has given them the confidence to state they will invest a further 5 to 10 million into future development.

A whole host of new features are planned including siege warfare, mounts, a settlement system, The Purge, sorcery, and the Highland Biome.  These will be released as larger game updates with smaller patches in between.

It all sounds rather good but there’s still some way to go until the game is in a fully releasable state.

• Siege Warfare: Players can attack each other’s settlements with powerful war machines, such as siege towers or trebuchets, and fling rotting corpses over the walls of their enemies to spread pestilence in their streets.
• The Purge: Hordes of NPC warriors will sweep down into the Exiles Lands and attack player settlements. Players must ready their defenses against this brutal attack, but can also go on the offensive and capture new thralls and strong gear.
• Mounts: You will be able to enjoy mounted combat on horses and capturing camels, rhinos or even elephants to be used for pack animals or crushing your opponents walls. Mounted combat will also make its way to Conan Exiles.
• Sorcery: Embrace the dark corruption of magic to summon demons or raise the undead to create an army of skeletons. Magic in the world of Conan is more than shooting fireballs out of your hands: it’s dark, terrible, and twisted.
• Settlement System: Create a living city, where you command your thralls to guard, patrol, craft, gather or trade based on your own schedules. Build roads, set up schedules for your thralls, and breathe life into your settlement.
• Highland Biome: An all new area expanding the existing map into the highlands, with new creatures, armors, religions and a temperature system. Explore vast forests and scale tall mountains in this rugged, weather-beaten part of Hyboria.