Pick ten Conan Exiles server admins and you'll get ten different opinions on what the "right" settings are. That's fine – there's no objectively correct ServerSettings.ini. There's only the one that fits how your group actually wants to play. A raid-focused PvP clan server and a relaxed PvE building community need wildly different knobs turned, and the defaults don't suit either of them particularly well.
What follows is what I'd run if it were my server, broken down by the four main flavours of Conan community I see on LOW.MS: straight PvP, pure PvE, PvE-Conflict, and roleplay. Treat them as starting points, not gospel.
Where the settings actually live
Conan Exiles keeps its server config in ServerSettings.ini. On a LOW.MS box you've got two ways to edit it:
- Configuration Files in the LOW.MS Control Panel – a structured editor that knows the key names and won't let you typo yourself into a broken server. This is what I'd use 90% of the time.
- File Manager – raw access to the .ini if you want to paste in a whole block at once or diff it against a backup.
Most of these keys can also be flipped through the in-game admin panel once you're connected with the admin password, but I'd rather have the source of truth in the file so a restart doesn't lose anything.
If you want the full key reference, there's a sibling article at Conan Exiles Server Configuration Guide that lists everything. This post is opinionated – I'm picking the handful of keys that actually change how the server feels and ignoring the long tail.
The handful of keys that actually matter
Out of the dozens of options in ServerSettings.ini, these are the ones I reach for first. Everything else is a rounding error by comparison.
HarvestAmountMultiplier– resources per swing. The single biggest pacing dial.PlayerXPRateMultiplier,PlayerXPKillMultiplier,PlayerXPHarvestMultiplier– how fast players level. Split so you can reward combat or gathering specifically.CraftingCostMultiplier– how many ingredients recipes eat.ItemSpoilRateScale– how fast food and perishables rot.ResourceRespawnSpeedMultiplier– how quickly nodes come back.PVPEnabled,PlayerDamageMultiplier,PlayerDamageTakenMultiplier,BuildingDamageMultiplier– the combat and raid dials.RestrictPVPBuildingDamageTime,PVPBuildingDamageTimeStart,PVPBuildingDamageTimeEnd– raid windows.EnablePurge,PurgeLevel– the AI siege event.PurgeLevelruns from 1 to 6, not 0 to 6, and 6 is genuinely dangerous.ThrallConversionMultiplier– this one's counterintuitive. Lower is faster.0.5is half the vanilla conversion time,2.0is double. Worth tattooing on your arm.DayTimeSpeedScale/NightTimeSpeedScalevsDayCycleSpeedScale– two ways to bend the clock. Pick one approach per server, don't stack them (more on this in the RP section).BuildingDecayEnabled– automatic cleanup of abandoned bases.
All defaults are 1.0 unless noted.
PvP servers
The eternal tension on a PvP server is that you need resources to be scarce enough that raiding has a point, but abundant enough that a freshly-raided clan can rebuild inside a single session. Get this wrong and people stop logging in – either because they're bored of farming or because they can't recover from a loss.
Here's what I'd run:
[ServerSettings]
; Progression
HarvestAmountMultiplier=2.0
PlayerXPRateMultiplier=2.5
PlayerXPKillMultiplier=2.0
PlayerXPHarvestMultiplier=2.0
CraftingCostMultiplier=0.75
ItemSpoilRateScale=0.5
ResourceRespawnSpeedMultiplier=2.0
; Combat
PVPEnabled=True
PlayerDamageMultiplier=1.0
PlayerDamageTakenMultiplier=1.0
NPCDamageMultiplier=1.2
NPCDamageTakenMultiplier=0.8
; Raid windows
RestrictPVPBuildingDamageTime=True
PVPBuildingDamageTimeStart=18:00
PVPBuildingDamageTimeEnd=23:00
BuildingDamageMultiplier=1.0
; Purge
EnablePurge=True
PurgeLevel=6
; Thralls and decay
ThrallConversionMultiplier=0.7
BuildingDecayEnabled=True
; Night speeds up so raid prep doesn't eat your evening
NightTimeSpeedScale=2.0
A few notes on the reasoning. 2x harvest with cheaper crafting means a rebuild after a raid is a session-long project, not a week-long one. I keep player damage multipliers at 1.0 because anything else turns duels into coin flips – if you're good, you should win; double damage just means the first hit wins. PurgeLevel=6 is in range (1–6) and keeps a PvE threat looming over even the toughest clans. The 18:00–23:00 raid window is the one I see work best in UK/EU primetime; shift it to suit your community's timezone.
The one I see people get wrong most often is ThrallConversionMultiplier. 0.7 here means conversion is faster than default, which is what you want on a PvP server where thralls get killed and replaced constantly.
PvE servers
PvE servers live or die on how much the builders enjoy themselves. If your community is here for the architecture, the exploration, and the dungeon runs, the worst thing you can do is make them grind stone for two hours before they can lay a foundation.
This is the preset I'd hand to most new Conan server owners:
[ServerSettings]
; Generous progression
HarvestAmountMultiplier=3.0
PlayerXPRateMultiplier=3.0
PlayerXPKillMultiplier=2.0
PlayerXPHarvestMultiplier=3.0
CraftingCostMultiplier=0.5
ItemSpoilRateScale=0.3
ResourceRespawnSpeedMultiplier=2.0
; Combat tilted in players' favour
PVPEnabled=False
PlayerDamageMultiplier=1.5
NPCDamageMultiplier=0.8
NPCDamageTakenMultiplier=1.0
; Gentler purge
EnablePurge=True
PurgeLevel=4
; Faster thralls, keep decay on
ThrallConversionMultiplier=0.3
BuildingDecayEnabled=True
3x harvest with crafting costs halved sounds extreme on paper, but in practice it just removes the "gather 800 stone" phase from every single build project. Players still need to plan, still need to explore for the exotic resources, and still need to fight through dungeons – they just don't have to do it with a sore wrist.
PurgeLevel=4 is my favourite setting on a PvE server. It's genuinely dangerous enough that you need to build with defence in mind, but it won't annihilate a solo player's starter base the way level 6 can. If your community is full of veterans, bump it to 5.
I leave BuildingDecayEnabled=True even on relaxed PvE. Conan's decay timers are generous and the alternative – letting the map fill up with abandoned half-built pyramids – destroys server performance and kills exploration. Any active player's base is safe.
PvE-Conflict
PvE-Conflict is the mode for groups who want the adrenaline of player combat without the heartbreak of logging in to find their base reduced to rubble. The trick is that Conan doesn't have a literal "PvE-Conflict" switch – you build it out of the PvP settings with building damage turned off.
The recipe is:
PVPEnabled=Trueso players can actually fightBuildingDamageMultiplier=0.0so no player can ever damage a player-built structure- A raid window that's really just a "PvP hours" window, since no buildings are at risk anyway
I'd start with the PvP preset above and change these lines:
PVPEnabled=True
BuildingDamageMultiplier=0.0
RestrictPVPBuildingDamageTime=True
PVPBuildingDamageTimeStart=18:00
PVPBuildingDamageTimeEnd=22:00
PurgeLevel=5
Harvest, XP and crafting can sit between the PvP and PvE values – somewhere around 2.5x harvest, 2.5x XP, 0.75x crafting cost works well. Players still fight each other for sport, loot and territory, and the purge (at level 5) becomes the only thing that can actually hurt their base. That's the part I love about this mode: it reframes the purge from "annoying interruption" to "the only real external threat", and players start taking base defence seriously again.
The only thing to watch out for is drama around corpse looting. Some communities ban it informally, others embrace it. Decide early and put it in your server rules, because Conan gives you no toggle for "PvP but no looting".
Roleplay
RP servers are the trickiest to tune because what RP groups want out of a server has almost nothing to do with what the vanilla game is balanced around. Long evenings, slow days, tough combat so encounters feel weighty, and enough thralls to populate a settlement without an AI meltdown.
Rather than dump another identical code block, here's what I'd actually change from default and why.
Slow the clock down, but pick one method. This is the single biggest mistake I see in RP configs – people set DayCycleSpeedScale=0.3 and fiddle with DayTimeSpeedScale and NightTimeSpeedScale at the same time, and then wonder why their days and nights don't match what they expected. Pick one:
- Master approach: just set
DayCycleSpeedScale=0.4. Days and nights both run at 40% speed, ratio is preserved. Simplest and least likely to break. - Split approach: leave
DayCycleSpeedScale=1.0and useDayTimeSpeedScale=0.4withNightTimeSpeedScale=0.8to get long roleplay-friendly days and shorter nights.
Don't do both.
Make combat meaningful, not easy. I actually push both PlayerDamageMultiplier and PlayerDamageTakenMultiplier to 1.5 on RP servers. Fights resolve quickly in both directions, so an encounter feels genuinely risky instead of devolving into a ten-minute HP grind. This works because RP players tend to avoid random fights – so when combat does happen, you want it to matter.
Thralls slower, not faster. This is the opposite of the PvP/PvE choice. ThrallConversionMultiplier=1.8 means conversion takes nearly twice as long, which fits the RP pace and stops settlements ballooning with fifty thralls by week two. If you want more active thralls in scenes, lean on the follower logic Conan already gives you – don't rush the breaking of them.
Progression at 1.5x. Not because RP players like grinding, but because RP groups tend to stay on the same world for months. Hitting max level in a week and then having nothing to pursue is a well-known killer of long-running RP servers. Slower XP keeps the ladder meaningful.
Keep decay on, raise the timer out of character. I won't put exact numbers here because decay timers are a per-community negotiation – but the answer is never to turn decay off entirely. The database grows forever and six months in you'll be wondering why the server hitches every autosave.
Purges are the Conan secret sauce
If you only change one thing from vanilla, change PurgeLevel. It's the feature that most separates Conan from every other survival game, and it's criminally under-tuned by default on most community servers.
The range is 1–6. Here's how I'd think about it:
- 1–2: basically ambient. Don't bother.
- 3: decent PvE challenge for solo players and small clans.
- 4: my default PvE recommendation. Genuinely scary, rarely catastrophic.
- 5: PvE-Conflict and veteran PvE. You will lose walls.
- 6: max. PvP servers and masochists. Expect siege weapons, elephants, the lot.
EnablePurge=True is worth it even on pure-building servers – it gives walls and traps a reason to exist. If you've got a hardcore group, PVPBlitzServer=True is also worth looking at, though it changes several things at once so read up on it first.
Applying the settings
The actual workflow is straightforward:
- Open the LOW.MS Control Panel and pick your Conan Exiles server.
- Open Configuration Files and find
ServerSettings.ini. - Paste in (or edit to match) the preset you want. Save.
- Restart the server from Service Settings.
A quick heads-up: some settings are also cached in the database, so if you're editing a live world and a value doesn't appear to take, a full restart (not just a stop/start of the game process) usually sorts it. And if you're running mods that touch server settings – some of the admin and RP mods absolutely do – they can silently override your .ini values. Worth checking the mod page before you spend an hour debugging.
A few things I'd avoid regardless of preset
Some settings get recommended around the community that I'd push back on.
Don't disable building decay. I said this in the PvE section but it's worth repeating. Even on a beloved community server, decay isn't your enemy – the database is. Generous decay timers are fine. No decay is a time bomb.
Don't crank player damage past 2.0. Fights become coin flips and the first swing wins. This is fun for about one evening and then everyone hates it.
Don't run HarvestAmountMultiplier at 10+. Yes, people do this. No, the game isn't designed for it. Inventories fill up in one swing, you spend the session managing stacks rather than playing, and the economy of thrall/crafting requirements stops mattering at all.
Don't assume the admin panel settings are saved. Changes made in the in-game admin UI are written to the .ini, but not always immediately – if you change something in-game and then force-kill the server process, the change can vanish. Always do a clean restart after admin panel changes.
None of this is the One True Config – it's just the setup I'd run for each of the four main flavours of Conan server I actually see people running. Your group's tolerance for grind, their timezone, whether they lean builder or fighter, all of it matters more than any specific multiplier. Start with whichever preset above sounds closest to what you're after, run it for a couple of sessions, and then tune based on what people actually complain about over voice chat. That's the only feedback loop that matters.
If you haven't spun up a server yet, you can see current Conan Exiles hosting plans on the Conan Exiles page, and there's a getting started walkthrough that covers the first-boot basics. And if something weird is happening on an existing server, troubleshooting is the first place I'd point you.