There are many different types of perks and status effects that you can find listed in the description for weapons in Conan Exiles, but few of them have obvious explanations. You’re often left to wonder about exactly how they work, which isn’t great if you’re trying to make a build to optimize damage, defense, or any other play style to your preference. On this page, we’ll show you exactly how all of the known weapon perks and status effects work such as Bleed, Gouging, Sunder, Cripple, Executioner, Plundering, Diseased, Paper Cut, Armor Negation, Power Draw, and many more. We’ll also give you some tips about how they can be used to your advantage in different combat situations.

List of Weapon Perks in Conan Exiles¶

You may know them as perks, or you might have seen them referred to as status effects, but regardless of whichever word or phrase you’re most familiar with they’re all essentially the same thing: aspects of a weapon that make them unique based on what they’re capable of doing in specific combat scenarios. To keep things consistent and as simple as possible on this page, we’ll refer to them as perks here.

There are currently 24 known perks available for weapons, and some are more common than others. You’re more likely to find perks on legendary weapons than you are on common weapons, but even among legendary weapons, there are some perks that are much rarer than others. For example, Bleed is one of the most common perks, and it provides a simple damage over time debuff to enemies when you hit them. There is a caveat, though, which is that you need to keep hitting the enemy frequently if you want to stack the bleed to its maximum capacity of 20.

The bleed perk is one of the easiest to understand just by seeing its name. However, there are others that aren’t as obvious such as the Diseased perk. This one also inflicts damage over time, but it works in a different way by reducing the target’s health by 0.5% every 10 seconds. In addition, whenever you hit a target with a weapon that has the Diseased perk, it will remove their sated and hydrated buffs and limit their capacity to regenerate stamina for as long as the debuff persists. In addition to all of this, the Diseased perk differs from Bleed in that the damage it inflicts can be mitigated by the type of armor worn by the target, while the Bleed debuff ignores armor.

These are the kinds of details that you wouldn’t necessarily be aware of if you just saw the Diseased perk present on a specific weapon. It’s important to know how these perks work so that you can be properly prepared for the toughest of fights, including in PvP environments. With that said, you can see the table below for a quick overview of each perk and its effects.

Acidic¶

The Acidic perk inflicts a small amount of damage over time to enemies while also negating their armor. Although the DoT debuff isn’t as powerful as Bleed, it has the advantage of being applicable to undead enemies, and it can negate armor values where relevant. It’s not the best against regular living creatures for this reason.

Armor Negation¶

This perk is listed whenever a weapon has 100% armor penetration, meaning it can cut through the total armor value of any target, rendering it useless. This makes it an ideal perk for fighting against humanoid enemies, or any others that tend to have a lot of armor, but it’s wasted on anything without armor such as regular wild creatures.

Bleed¶

The regular Bleed debuff is one of the most powerful for inflicting damage over time since it can attain a maximum damage of 27 per second once fully stacked up to 20 times. You can increase the stacking of the bleed effect with each hit from a weapon that has the perk. The only major downside to this perk is that it doesn’t work against undead enemies or any others that don’t have blood.

Cold Insulated¶

This is a useful perk that you’ll often find on shields and some armor pieces. It’s only present when the item provides the most amount of cold resistance possible (5 visible bars), so you won’t see it on an item that only has 3 bars of cold resistance, for example.

Corrupted¶

The Corrupted perk will allow your weapon to inflict the Corruption debuff on enemies. This will reduce their maximum health and stamina by up to 50%, and make it more difficult for them to regenerate it during a fight.

Cripple¶

The Cripple debuff will be applied whenever you land a hit with a weapon that has the perk. This will slow the target by 30% for 2 seconds, but it can be stacked up to 5 times to increase the duration by an additional 2 seconds for each hit.

Demonic¶

The Demonic perk isn’t really a perk at all, since it gives the wielder of the weapon the Corruption debuff. This is usually present on a weapon that would otherwise be overpowered, such as the Heartpiercer bow which has infinite ammo while it lasts.

Diseased¶

The Diseased perk will allow you to inflict the debuff of the same name, which as we’ve already discussed will reduce the target’s health by 0.5% every 10 seconds for as long as it lasts, while also removing any sated and hydrated buffs from the target. It also limits stamina regeneration, making it more difficult for enemies to maintain frequent attacks. The main downside to this perk is that the damage it inflicts recognizes armor value, making it less effective against armored opponents.

Durable¶

The Durable perk is present on any item that has significantly more durability than its counterparts. You’ll often find this on shields that have 15,000 durability, such as Ymir’s Targe, compared with the usual 7,500 durability for its class.

Executioner¶

The Executioner perk is ideal for any fight against enemies with large health pools since it will allow you to inflict massive damage that will almost always one-shot the enemy once they reach 10% health or less, thereby reducing the chance of you dying at the last stage of the battle. It’s one of the most useful perks to have for PvP battles.

Gouging¶

The Gouging perk is similar to the Bleed effect in that it applies a base damage over time debuff to the target. However, it functions in a different way because it applies just 1 damage every second for 20 seconds. It can be stacked up to 20 times, however, which means you can reach 20 damage per second in longer fights. It’s important to remember that Gouging can be combined with any other damage over time debuff, so you can inflict massive amounts of damage with a weapon that has both Bleed and Gouging, such as the War Sickles.

Heat Insulated¶

The Heat Insulated perk will be present on any item that provides the maximum amount of heat resistance that can be gained from a single item. You’ll see this represented on the item as 5 filled bars.

Nightvision¶

The Nightvision perk does exactly what you might expect: it allows you to see in the dark. This means that even in the darkest of conditions such as underwater at night or inside a cave, you’ll be able to see everything as if it was lit by the sun.

Paper Cut¶

The Paper Cut perk is another form of damage over time debuff, but this one works by inflicting 2 damage per second every 8 seconds. It can’t be stacked which means it’s more difficult to maintain than Bleed or Gouging, but if you keep attacking frequently it’s a handy perk to have in any fight.

Plundering¶

The Plundering perk is one of the rarest on this list, but if you can find a weapon that has it (such as Mitra’s Justice or Set’s Tongue), it will allow you to remove almost any buff that is currently present on your target. In addition, it can cure most poisons and alcohol-related debuffs whenever you equip it.

Power Draw¶

The Power Draw perk is a simple one that is present on any ranged weapon which has its damage based on strength rather than agility. It serves only as an indicator of this for now.

Reach¶

The Reach perk is another that is present only as a signifier for weapons that have superior reach than most others, such as spears, scythes, and pikes. It goes without saying that this can be an advantage in almost any fight, but especially against enemies who wield weapons with greater reach themselves.

Reactive Bleed¶

The Reactive Bleed perk is another rare one that can be found mostly on shields or armor. It will apply a damage-over-time effect to any enemy that hits you when you’re wielding the shield or armor piece that has the perk.

Regeneration¶

The Regeneration perk isn’t the most useful for combat. As you might have guessed, it allows the wielder to slowly regenerate health over time, but not by a great amount. However, it may be useful in some situations where even the smallest amount of health recovery is necessary for survival, and it does serve as a useful way to regenerate health outside of combat without using potions.

Shieldsmash¶

The Shieldsmash perk is present on any weapon that has the ability to completely negate the defenses of a shield. This means that even when an enemy is holding their shield up in a defensive stance, your weapon will smash through it and still damage them. It’s for this reason that many PvP veterans always carry a weapon that is capable of smashing through shields if there happens to be someone silly enough to use one in that environment.

Sunder¶

The Sunder perk is one of the best to have on a weapon when you’re fighting opponents that have a lot of armor. This is because it provides a 10% buff to armor penetration with each hit, which can stack up to five times bringing it to 50% armor penetration. If you combine this with a weapon that already has a good amount of base armor penetration, such as Quake or Ranissan, you can inflict far more damage to armored opponents than you’d otherwise be able to without the Sunder perk. You’ll find that Sunder is most common on axes and maces, but it can also be found on some dagger-like weapons such as Rip and Tear.

Throwing¶

The presence of the Throwing perk on any weapon serves only as an indicator that the weapon can be thrown. It doesn’t mean that the weapon is primarily a throwing weapon, so you’re more likely to inflict more damage by using it as a melee weapon. Most weapons that are primarily used as off-hand throwing weapons will have the term “Throwing” stated explicitly in their name, rather than as a perk.

Water Breathing¶

This is another perk that functions only to signify a specific utility for a weapon. It’s fairly self-explanatory in that you can expect to be able to breathe underwater indefinitely while a weapon with this perk is drawn. For this reason, it’s more useful to have on a weapon that you can use while exploring underwater, rather than as a primary weapon for combat. It’ll certainly save you from using an excessive amount of potions and elixirs that provide the same effect!

Wanderlust¶

The Wanderlust perk is most commonly found on armor, but the effect is the same regardless of the item: it increases the speed at which you can climb and swim by roughly 10%, although the effect will vary depending on whether you’re wearing light, medium, or heavy armor. It’s also dependent on the level of encumbrance that you have at any given time based on what’s in your inventory. The best way to use an item with this perk is when you’re traveling light with the intention of exploring as your primary goal.

More Conan Exiles Guides¶

If you’re looking for more Conan Exiles guides, including one that provides our recommended legendary weapons for each main weapon category, be sure to check the links below.

• Best Legendary Weapons in Conan Exiles
• Best Armor Sets in Conan Exiles
• How the Purge Works in Age of War
• Where to Find Legendary Chests in Conan Exiles