Conan Exiles is an open-world survival game currently in Early Access. It features plenty of exploration, crafting, angry twelve-year-olds that want to steal all of your stuff, cannibalistic gods that you can summon to feast upon the flesh of your enemies, and that sort of standard survival game stuff. Naturally, it also features a wide array of bugs and assorted performance issues, some of which were so severe that I couldn't even play the game until a week ago!

Thankfully, it does appear that Funcom is being quite consistent with the patching process. They fixed most of 'my' performance issues with a patch last week, and already they have released another update focused around performance, bugfixing, and gameplay balance. You can find all of the details over at Steam, but if you're just interested in the 'short version', here's all of the performance and balance changes:

Performance and Tech fixes:

• Fixes to loading screens

• Server performance fixes

• NPCs should be less jittery when rotating

• Fix for connecting to servers via the Steam server browser and when using Steamconnect

• Buildings should now load in much faster

• Placeables placed on foundations and ceiling tiles are now saved correctly

• Several improvements to how rocks behave when they are harvested

Balance and Gameplay Fixes:

• Some skill requirements have been simplified or removed. For example, it is now possible to learn Journeyman Craftsman as soon as you hit level 10. Due to the impact of this change all players have gotten a free skill respec.

• Ansel now respects collision, preventing people from moving through walls and other structures

• Non Admins are restricted to 2 meters of movement when using Ansel 

• Balance pass on Bows:

- Simple Bow range has been increased

- Hyrkanian Bow range has been dramatically increased

- Crossbow range has been reduced but they now shoot much faster

• We have done an overhaul on what monsters can damage which tier of buildings. If you haven’t upgraded from sandstone you might want to think about doing that.

• Increased crafting XP across the board with greater increases for crafting more complex (higher tier) items

• Inverted Wooden Roof Wedge and Stonebrick Frame now require Journeyman Craftsman instead of Master Craftsman

• Black rocks in the starting desert are now harvestable

• Higher grade tools now yields greater amounts of secondary resources (Bark/branches)

• Resetting your Knowledge Points no longer causes you to lose your selected religion

• Removed Corruption sources from starting area caves

• Removed the Regen component from Purified Meat. This perk is reserved to Mitra's Ambrosia and Healing Potions. Purified Meat is still an extremely good food source

• Player corpses can only be harvested for religious purposes once every 30 minutes

• Balance pass on the amount of materials requires for basic chemistry potions

• Armor drops removed from chests

• Emus now give less XP

If you're currently wondering whether Conan Exiles is worth your time and attention, you can find my detailed thoughts by heading over here. Long story short, "unless you're a die-hard fan of survival games I would not recommend buying Conan Exiles right now. A couple of months down the line I could easily see it turn into something magnificent, and I fully intent to return once that happens, but right now it offers the exact same gameplay as most other survival games, but with all of the bugs that come with an Early Access launch. There really is plenty of potential here, but for now we're going to have to wait and see if the developers manage to do something with it."