Funcom shipped Conan Exiles Enhanced (UE5) on May 5 2026, and it's the default for new and existing servers from that point forward. But the old UE4 build hasn't gone anywhere – it's still on Steam under a beta branch called Conan Exiles Legacy, and you can keep your server pinned to it indefinitely if you'd rather sit out the engine swap. This is the short guide to doing exactly that.
If you're not sure whether Legacy is the right call, the Enhanced update guide covers what changed in Enhanced and might help you decide. The two big reasons people are choosing Legacy in the first launch weeks: a heavy mod stack that hasn't been recompiled for UE5 yet, and an established Isle of Siptah world that wouldn't survive the merged-map migration intact.
What Legacy actually is
Legacy is the same UE4 build of Conan Exiles you've been running, kept available on Steam as a separately-versioned beta branch. Funcom committed to keeping it on Steam indefinitely. A few things worth knowing about the trade-offs before you pin to it:
- No new content updates. Legacy gets critical bug fixes from Funcom but no new chapters, items, or features. The active development line is Enhanced.
- No Bazaar. Funcom disabled the Bazaar on Legacy entirely. Crom Coins do not work on Legacy on PC – not the existing balance, not new purchases. If your players have unspent Crom Coins, they should spend them before switching, or stay on Enhanced.
- No official Funcom servers. Funcom moved every official PC server to Enhanced on the upgrade. Your private LOW.MS server is fine on either branch – this is only a concern if your group bounces between official and private servers.
- The two-map model still applies. On Legacy, Exiled Lands and Isle of Siptah are still two separate server types with their own save databases. The merged-map world is an Enhanced-only feature.
- Mods you had on UE4 keep working. This is the practical reason most people are pinning to Legacy – the entire UE4 mod catalogue still works as-is, no waiting for authors to recompile.
The server-side flip on LOW.MS
This is the bit you need us for. To pin your service to the Legacy branch:
- Open a support ticket from the LOW.MS Control Panel.
- Tell us "please pin my Conan server to the Conan Exiles Legacy branch".
- We'll handle it on our side. Under the hood it's a TCAdmin update-branch flip plus a one-off pull of the UE4 build, takes a few minutes.
If your server has already updated to Enhanced and you want to roll back to Legacy, the same ticket works. The save format isn't cross-compatible between Enhanced and Legacy though, so if your world has been on Enhanced for any length of time, the cleanest rollback is to restore from a Cloud Backup that pre-dates the Enhanced update. We'll talk you through it on the ticket.
The player-side opt-in
Every player connecting to a Legacy server needs to point their own Steam install at the same beta branch. This is on them, not us – they do it from Steam directly:
- Right-click Conan Exiles in their Steam library.
- Properties → Betas tab.
- From the dropdown, pick conan-exiles-legacy.
- Wait for Steam to download the UE4 build.
The build is several gigabytes, so factor in the download time. Once it's done, the game will launch into Legacy and they can connect to your server normally. If they forget the opt-in step and try to connect to a Legacy server with an Enhanced client, they'll get the usual "pending connection failure" with no useful error – the give-away that it's a version mismatch is that the failure is instant. The same is true in reverse.
It's worth flagging this clearly to your community before you pin the server. We see tickets every week where one or two players forget and assume the server is broken. A pinned post on your Discord saves a lot of noise.
Switching back to Enhanced later
You're not locked in. If a few months down the line your mod authors have caught up, or you decide you do want the merged-map world after all, the same ticket flow runs in reverse: ask us to flip your service back to Enhanced, we pull the UE5 build, you upgrade your players, and you're on Enhanced.
A heads-up if you do come back: a Legacy game.db is not directly readable by an Enhanced server. Funcom's database migration is one-way and runs on first boot when an existing UE4 install gets the UE5 update via Steam Update. If you've been on a fresh Legacy install with no UE4 history, the simplest path forward is to import your characters via the Server Transfer Tool to a fresh Enhanced server rather than trying to migrate the database directly. Open the ticket and we'll talk you through it.
When Legacy is the right call
Honestly, for most servers, Enhanced is the right call. The visuals are a meaningful step up, the merged map is a genuine quality-of-life win for players, and Funcom's putting all new content there going forward. The reasons to stay on Legacy are specific: a mod stack you depend on that hasn't been ported, a Siptah base you can't bear to lose, or a community that just doesn't want to deal with the launch-week churn while everyone else's mods stabilise.
If you're not sure, you can sit on Legacy for a few weeks and reassess. The branch isn't going anywhere – Funcom committed to keeping it indefinitely – and switching back to Enhanced when you're ready is straightforward.
If you've decided to pin to Legacy, open a ticket from the panel and we'll get it sorted. If you've got broader questions about the Enhanced upgrade itself, the Enhanced update guide is the parent article. And the existing getting started, server settings and troubleshooting guides apply identically on either branch – the panel and the config files don't change with the engine.