Conan Exiles server RAM: how much do you need?
Conan combines base building with NPCs that persist, and the thralls are the part most people leave out of their budget.
Recommendation
You need a server with at least
8GB
- Engine / Base OS:
- 6 GB
- Player Overhead:
- +1.0 GB
- Estimated Raw Usage:
- 7 GB
- Suggested cores:
- 4
- Disk to allow:
- 40 GB+
Thrall AI and building simulation dominate; both scale with what players have built.
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What uses the memory in Conan Exiles
Structures pile up much as they do in ARK, and on top of that each captured thrall is a persistent NPC the server has to keep track of. A clan with a big base and every thrall slot filled costs a good deal more than the same clan with the same footprint and no thralls. Overhaul mods lift the baseline again with extra items and NPCs.
Conan Exiles server RAM by player count
The calculator above, run for 3 common sizes. Each figure is rounded up to a plan size people actually sell.
| Players | Vanilla map | Age of Calamitous / Mods |
|---|---|---|
| 10 | 8 GB | 16 GB |
| 20 | 8 GB | 16 GB |
| 40 | 12 GB | 16 GB |
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Where people get it wrong
Using the player cap as the input. Forty slots where everyone lives in a modest base and forty slots where every clan owns a fortress are different servers, and only the fortresses need the upper end of the range.
A Windows server
Funcom ships the Conan dedicated server for Windows. It can run on Linux through Wine, but that adds overhead, and either way the operating system needs memory of its own on top of the game's. Budget for Windows, not a minimal Linux install, when you read the figures above.
The world is a database
Everything players have built, every thrall and every container's contents lives in one SQLite database, game.db in ConanSandbox/Saved. It grows for as long as the world lives, and the server reads from it constantly, so put it on fast storage. Copy it only while the server is stopped; a database copied mid-write can be unusable.
What stops the database growing for ever
Building abandonment, the decay that removes structures whose owners stop logging in, is the main thing keeping an old world's size under control. Turn it off with DisableBuildingAbandonment and everything anyone ever built stays in game.db and in memory, long after its owners have left.