Jump to content

So what did you do in ARK today?


Anarki
 Share

Recommended Posts

Before the update and it’s associated troubles started, I decided I was ready to tame a giga. I searched for 2 (in-game) weeks and could not find one or a titan. After doing some research, I found out that there may not be one on the map, as I play SP and they take a full 24Hrs to respawn. So I used a cheat code for the first time ever and spawned one in a safe distance away from my base, threw down my metal trap and started trying to kite it in. At this point, I feel pretty disgusted that I had to cheat, but I didn’t see any other way (tried wiping all Dinos, etc). I had SUCH a hard time kiting it. OMG. in two hits it killed my argy (who I managed to keep alive for most of the game) and killed me. Upset but determined, I take my small exploring raft and my Petra to finish the job. ON THE WAY BACK TO IT, a fricken alpha Leeds destroys me and my raft, and the nearby giga kills my Petra in the chaos.  At this point, I’ve lost my best raft and my only two flyers. My fault, but pretty traumatic anyway!
 

Spent the remaining time taming replacement dinos and trying to rebuild my raft. Then the update happened. Tried rebuilding my raft 4 times, just to have it crash and have to restart. Even used the save game cheat code, and it would still revert to a point way before the code was used anyway, so it was ineffective. 
 

logged off while praying for a quick solution. I can only play ark on the weekends so I’m pretty bummed out :(

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You don't have to cheat to get a giga in single player. I've noticed when doing a dino wipe if a giga is going to spawn it may not show up for 10-20 minutes. You can actually check to see if one is up without flying around looking at all the spawns, it's the getallstate command, use it with the code for whatever animal you want to look for. It won't tell you level or location, but it will tell you how many are up on the map at a given time. When I was farming giga hearts I had to wipe multiple times to get them to spawn in, but it worked eventually.

For myself, I did plan out my week last night and spent my time working through today's to do list. I took Heartbreaker out farming and built 2 more rex saddles. Then I brought 10 rexes and my newly bred pig up to the volcano. I actually set one battle line up last night, so this is my second line. I got a little hyped up after watching a solo Overseer video and jumped back in for a little bit yesterday. So I am a tiny bit ahead of myself.

I also did a very short metal run, I may have enough for the saddles but I need more for other things.

Honestly I'm starting to wonder about the efficacy of bringing all 50 rexes into battle. Well ok, 47 rexes. The pig was a recent choice after watching that video last night. It kind of seems like this might be massive overkill, even on alpha difficulty. It's also proving to be a major logistical issue, as even 20 rexes are taking up a massive amount of space at the volcano. A full 50 might not even be possible to get into the cave within the time limit unless I build a large platform, which I kind of don't want to do.

But I also feel like I may have wasted a significant amount of my time if I don't bring all these rexes since I'm going to the trouble of breeding, raising, leveling and equipping them. Sigh. I mean, this army is my top of the line rexes, even more powerful than the army that defeated the Alpha Dragon. Getting that last mutation took forever, too. I don't want to not use them after sinking so much time and resources into them.

On the other hand, using a full rex army means I have a disadvantage in speed. Most people use allos to keep up with the Overseer. I've struggled to get any even half decent allos on this map; currently I only have two and no female so I can't breed them even if I wanted to. So it may be worthwhile to be making up in power what I can't do with speed, so having a larger army may still work in my favor. Honestly I don't really know. There aren't that many resources for solo play around and the two main videos I watched (Syntac and Phlinger) are problematic in their own ways and not reflective of standard play. Syntac honestly shot himself in the foot by hosting his "solo" run on a server so he had to deal with the time limit in the cave. And Phlinger's dino stats in his comparable solo run indicate he was actually using boosted settings in some way.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 6/29/2020 at 9:03 PM, Cymas said:

You don't have to cheat to get a giga in single player. I've noticed when doing a dino wipe if a giga is going to spawn it may not show up for 10-20 minutes. You can actually check to see if one is up without flying around looking at all the spawns, it's the getallstate command, use it with the code for whatever animal you want to look for. It won't tell you level or location, but it will tell you how many are up on the map at a given time. When I was farming giga hearts I had to wipe multiple times to get them to spawn in, but it worked eventually.

For myself, I did plan out my week last night and spent my time working through today's to do list. I took Heartbreaker out farming and built 2 more rex saddles. Then I brought 10 rexes and my newly bred pig up to the volcano. I actually set one battle line up last night, so this is my second line. I got a little hyped up after watching a solo Overseer video and jumped back in for a little bit yesterday. So I am a tiny bit ahead of myself.

I also did a very short metal run, I may have enough for the saddles but I need more for other things.

Honestly I'm starting to wonder about the efficacy of bringing all 50 rexes into battle. Well ok, 47 rexes. The pig was a recent choice after watching that video last night. It kind of seems like this might be massive overkill, even on alpha difficulty. It's also proving to be a major logistical issue, as even 20 rexes are taking up a massive amount of space at the volcano. A full 50 might not even be possible to get into the cave within the time limit unless I build a large platform, which I kind of don't want to do.

But I also feel like I may have wasted a significant amount of my time if I don't bring all these rexes since I'm going to the trouble of breeding, raising, leveling and equipping them. Sigh. I mean, this army is my top of the line rexes, even more powerful than the army that defeated the Alpha Dragon. Getting that last mutation took forever, too. I don't want to not use them after sinking so much time and resources into them.

On the other hand, using a full rex army means I have a disadvantage in speed. Most people use allos to keep up with the Overseer. I've struggled to get any even half decent allos on this map; currently I only have two and no female so I can't breed them even if I wanted to. So it may be worthwhile to be making up in power what I can't do with speed, so having a larger army may still work in my favor. Honestly I don't really know. There aren't that many resources for solo play around and the two main videos I watched (Syntac and Phlinger) are problematic in their own ways and not reflective of standard play. Syntac honestly shot himself in the foot by hosting his "solo" run on a server so he had to deal with the time limit in the cave. And Phlinger's dino stats in his comparable solo run indicate he was actually using boosted settings in some way.

Watch his (Phlinger's) coffee time videos, he does mess with some settings, mainly taming speed and breeding/maturation intervals, but tamed dino stats per level are normal.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Today I hatched two quetzal eggs, kept both hatchlings (they're female, both have mothers weight and stam, one has mothers melee as well), raised my tek rexes and moschops to juvenile and made sure they'll have enough food to survive, tamed an oviraptor (female, mostly red, named Jewel) and placed her near my tek rexes to have a steady-ish source of eggs for kibble, hatched an ember wyvern egg, killed the hatchling because it wasn't cool enough.

Also, spent some time painting Wildfires fins and horns orange (because they turned bright yellow for some reason and it doesn't suit him at all) as well as drawing some simple ornaments on him, only for the painting to just up and disappear on its own after a bit of time.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 6/29/2020 at 8:03 PM, Cymas said:

You don't have to cheat to get a giga in single player. I've noticed when doing a dino wipe if a giga is going to spawn it may not show up for 10-20 minutes. You can actually check to see if one is up without flying around looking at all the spawns, it's the getallstate command, use it with the code for whatever animal you want to look for. It won't tell you level or location, but it will tell you how many are up on the map at a given time. When I was farming giga hearts I had to wipe multiple times to get them to spawn in, but it worked eventually.

For myself, I did plan out my week last night and spent my time working through today's to do list. I took Heartbreaker out farming and built 2 more rex saddles. Then I brought 10 rexes and my newly bred pig up to the volcano. I actually set one battle line up last night, so this is my second line. I got a little hyped up after watching a solo Overseer video and jumped back in for a little bit yesterday. So I am a tiny bit ahead of myself.

I also did a very short metal run, I may have enough for the saddles but I need more for other things.

Honestly I'm starting to wonder about the efficacy of bringing all 50 rexes into battle. Well ok, 47 rexes. The pig was a recent choice after watching that video last night. It kind of seems like this might be massive overkill, even on alpha difficulty. It's also proving to be a major logistical issue, as even 20 rexes are taking up a massive amount of space at the volcano. A full 50 might not even be possible to get into the cave within the time limit unless I build a large platform, which I kind of don't want to do.

But I also feel like I may have wasted a significant amount of my time if I don't bring all these rexes since I'm going to the trouble of breeding, raising, leveling and equipping them. Sigh. I mean, this army is my top of the line rexes, even more powerful than the army that defeated the Alpha Dragon. Getting that last mutation took forever, too. I don't want to not use them after sinking so much time and resources into them.

On the other hand, using a full rex army means I have a disadvantage in speed. Most people use allos to keep up with the Overseer. I've struggled to get any even half decent allos on this map; currently I only have two and no female so I can't breed them even if I wanted to. So it may be worthwhile to be making up in power what I can't do with speed, so having a larger army may still work in my favor. Honestly I don't really know. There aren't that many resources for solo play around and the two main videos I watched (Syntac and Phlinger) are problematic in their own ways and not reflective of standard play. Syntac honestly shot himself in the foot by hosting his "solo" run on a server so he had to deal with the time limit in the cave. And Phlinger's dino stats in his comparable solo run indicate he was actually using boosted settings in some way.

When I used the destroy wild dinos command, I travelled around all the spawn points for the next few (real, not in-game) hours. I read in another thread that a giga takes 24Hrs to spawn in after using that code, not sure if that’s true or not. That certainly made me lean towards spawning one in, that plus the fact that I couldn’t find any Gigas or titans for the entire time I’ve been on the island (I’m lvl 98 now). I guess I just figured that Dino’s spawn In the queue was “broken” somehow. I don’t like the idea of spawning things in at all, so I’ll be happy to use the getallstate command to try and find one naturally - so thanks for the code! That exactly what I want the dino for - farming giga hearts once I can get 2.

 

I am also watching Syntac’s videos of soloing the island, and that’s what got me thinking I could maybe defeat the bosses solo. I like the fact that he had the timer in the tek cave, to me it made it more challenging and realistic to what I’m going to encounter. 

Edited by Cordiste
Re-wrote the last bit about the Syntac videos
Link to comment
Share on other sites

(Posts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5)

Thought I might jump back in this thread! I typically just lurk, tried posting a few times in the past and always would forget, but this time I think it'll stick and really do me some good. Quarantine may be mostly over where I am but it's not over for me and my immunocompromised mother, not to mention the everything else going on... Sigh. Anyway, without getting into all the details, let's just say I have a lot of free time nowadays.

Some background for my journey through ARK. I started mostly in singleplayer and played that for about a year, then I grew bored and wanted something new. Played on private servers with a friend or two for a few months. Got bored of never being able to be online at the same time/the boosted rates, so I managed to drag said friend(s) to official ORP PVP. Have been stuck to that server cluster like glue ever since and what a wild ride it has been.

It was just me and two other players for a while. I'll call this tribe SS. SS, to put it bluntly, had no idea what it was doing. SS started on Ragnarok and we didn't know where the good metal, crystal, whatever-nodes were, we didn't know how to gradually build up so we put down a huge footprint with a stone base that could have been easily broken into. Thankfully, our cluster was a pretty nice one, as long as you were a good distance from the easy spawns - which, considering we were in the desert, we were - and we had tons of people offer us advice on how to build better and so forth. Because of my busy IRL schedule, it was often one of SS's tribemates that did the brunt of the work. Thanks to their dedication, even though SS was not well put together, we lasted for quite some time in that little spot before we decided to move and build a proper metal base elsewhere. 

SS moved to a metal base along the desert shores of Ragnarok. We had a good amount of turrets and plant X for a while there. Things were going well, but SS suffered from a lot of internal drama (me and the one member of SS that did most of the work disagreed a lot. I will not demonize them; they had valid reasons to disagree with my behavior, and I believe I had valid reasons to disagree with theirs. We were just very incompatible people). The third SS tribemember was family of the one I disagreed with and they didn't play much anyways, so they were not often there to defuse the tension (not that I'm even sure they'd have been able to should I have been there). Anyway, we decided that if SS was going to survive, we needed new tribemates because we needed metaphorical space from one another. Thus, we merged with another tribe--we'll call this one DN. DN consisted of myself, the original two members of SS, plus five or so active people and a handful of others that were sporadically active or inactive. DN was an end-game tribe full of players that seemed to prefer the early-game. Couple this with the fact our time zones were almost all over the place, and... progress was sporadic and often not well-focused. At least, it was difficult for me to collaborate with the others. Again, not saying this is anyone's fault, just that it also caused more drama (at least on my end). 

Then DN started to decline. First, I'll put down some names for tribemates - there's me, D, M, S, A, and N. For a while, D and S were close friends but also clashed a lot. S then started to grow rather inactive. D was invited to join one of the cluster's alphas. D waffled on this for some time until they finally relented and left. D was the same player I had been with since the start of SS. S was deeply hurt at first by this, but was already quite inactive anyway. S eventually quit playing all that often. M, being D's family member, didn't play much to begin with but really didn't play after that at all. A, N, and myself were almost never online at the same time and I never knew what to do because DN's base was just so large and needed so much done that I didn't know where to start. S had been our leader. A slowly overtook that role, but was mostly a grinder tribemate. They could churn out ingots, bullets, and so forth like you wouldn't believe! But anyway, that's pretty much all they wanted to do. N... enjoyed Aberration a lot and skipped around the maps often, growing interested in Ab and Extinction. 

Eventually, I left the tribe as well when I noticed everyone's declining activity levels. I took all my dinosaurs (quite a lot, as I enjoyed taming and breeding) with the permission of the remaining tribemates (so it wasn't like I stole anyone's dinos or anything), took some of my supplies and things, and slowly moved to SE because of the low population and because it reminded me of Rag's desert. There I started a tribe we'll call LA. LA was just me! At first, some other people from the Ragnarok tribe were in it so they could help me move and such, but they didn't really come over often and they had low perms. Anyway, that's where I plateaued for a while. I just built up this metal base on some pillars, slowly tried to work on defenses, but... then the COVID-19 crisis began and I fell into deep, deep depression because I was forced to go back home to live in an abusive household. For a while, I just cryo'd all the tames and would log in just enough to repair generators and refresh things, but then I had a particularly nasty week where... I didn't come online for 10 days. This was just after I had tried to get back in so I left a lot of tames out. The innards of my base was made out of adobe because otherwise, the negative hyperthermal insulation would nuke me in seconds (even at 400 health and full asc ghillie!!). Out of 12 or so cryofridges of tames, only one cryofridge was left standing in that mangled mess of metal and I couldn't get to it since I had no flyers and lived on uneven pillars (plus, the decayed adobe meant a lot of other structures collapsed and were impossible to navigate). I had to just abandon ship. 

To Ragnarok I went. There, I made yet another tribe that's still just me that we can call AC. I spawned in the highlands in the midst of the birthday event and gathered some rockarrots and tried to find an equus to tame. All I could find was a measly level 25. I jokingly named him Spirit in reference to the DreamWorks animated movie, but I digress. Spirit shocked me with just how incredibly helpful he was in getting started. Within a day or two, I had two argies and was back at my preferred location in Ragnarok's desert near the metal mountain. Once I felt I had some measly defenses up, I traveled back to SE with one of the argies and was able to finally pick apart the remains of the base there. I retrieved the single cryofridge of animals and discovered that what had survived included pteranodons, argies(!!!), rexes, tek rexes, and ovis. The argies were a godsend to have survived because they had incredibly high weight stats. I was so glad to have salvaged that. The tek rexes may also have really good melee and health on them, but I still haven't looked at that yet. Once I retrieved as much as I could carry or as much as I cared to carry from SE, I went back to Ragnarok and have continued to build up AC there.

DN has since merged into the server alpha, but the old desert base on Ragnarok is now devoid of life and use. It's a big, turretless metal husk that I think is just there because they haven't bothered to take it down. I don't mind that too much. I kinda like having them there, lol. The old members of DN have moved on as well and a lot don't play ARK anymore. Personally? Although I was devastated when LA's SE base decayed, and for a few days I didn't want to do anything, I found it... weirdly refreshing to hop onto Ragnarok with nothing and try again. I had a blast riding around on that pathetically low level equus and clawing my way back to where I wanted to be on the map. The adventures I have had in just the week or so since I have started this new journey... 

I won't say that I'm glad LA decayed, because there are some tames that were lost that I really, really would love back and were sentimental to me, but I am glad to have started AC on Ragnarok. I went to tame a griffin the other day and after finding 8 level 25s and suffering through trying to kill them with my pteranodon (which, because all of mine that survived in the cryofridge were meant to be breeders, was leveled in food and not stamina, took forever!!!), I just relented and tamed a crappy level 25 griffin. I stuck it in an empty cryopod and let it amass levels and leveled it strictly in stamina. Then, I went to the scar and managed to grab me a level 100 lightning egg without getting us killed. With the boosted rates, it only took one milking to get it to adulthood (which I am so grateful for, playing chicken with wyverns on a griffin with 760(!!!) health is not fun). I am hoping to level it as needed in stamina and health so I can steal a higher level lightning egg, but in the meantime, it will do for trips to the far desert for organic polymer from mantises (I do not have the patience to tame a moschops at the moment--I will in the future, but for now, just flying around on fast lizard and monching the mantises should hold me over). I wanted organic polymer to be easier to gather because I wasn't having any problems with paste, metal, crystal, etc, but polymer has always been such a pain. I want to briefly focus on defense for my base, but after that, I intend to tame a bunch of low level female yutys and a single male so I can get a bunch of eggs. A couple of oviraptors, ironically enough, survived the great LA decay event, so I don't need to worry about getting one of them. With those, I should be able to tame just about anything. I want to focus on therizinos though. My intention is to hyperfocus on these therizinos so that I can take on the Dragon on the Island to get the Transmitter tekgram. I want to have bases across the maps, but I get so angry with trying to use drops and obelisks (Aberration is ESPECIALLY an enormous pain since I don't have a rock drake anymore... rip Seafoam, you will be missed). 

So yeah, that should catch everyone up to speed more or less with where I'm at in my ARK journey. It's been a wild two and a half years and 3k hours, but I'm looking forward to so many more regardless of how much heartache this game has caused me. 'Cause for all the heartache and bad days, there have been so many more good and wonderful days. In Helena Walker's words, for every sunrise I lose track of on this island, it's like each one seems more beautiful than the last... potentially because of how much I have been through to get there. :)

Edited by Slvr
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

@DodoRaptor I've watched almost every video of his from his season 4 series onwards. He shows his settings yes, but if you look at the stats on his dinos in the season 4 playthrough, particularly the Alpha Dragon fight they are not actually possible with vanilla settings. It may or may not be intentional on his part, we all know updates can screw up settings from time to time. It's also easy to overlook certain things because the settings are not organized in any particular way. Believe me I enjoy his videos a lot, that's just a specific issue I have with a specific part of his content.

@Cordiste He has the timer in the Tek cave because he's hosting his single player game on a server, which is not reflective of actual single player gameplay for this and other reasons. Personally I don't think it's worth it to add that much extra stress in an already challenging environment for the sake of authenticity, but I've also been playing on this map for a year and I'd really rather not give myself any extra reasons to fail and be stuck on this map for even longer lol. If I mess up on my Overseer run I'd either have to restore my pre-battle backup save, which is cheaty, or spend another 2 months rebuilding to try again when I'm already bored and fatigued with being on The Island for so long. Neither of which is appealing as an option for me. I'd like to finish this map and move on to Scorched Earth.

Speaking of, I am a bit behind on progress. I made one saddle yesterday and one today and that's about all I've managed to get done.

I do think I'm going to bump my plans up. I'll do the majority of my prep tomorrow and I'm just going to go ahead and run it on Friday night after work with whatever I've got ready. I'll probably be short something like 5 rexes but whatever. There's a reason for the rush, it's so if I do manage to conquer the Tek cave and defeat the Overseer, I'll have the entire weekend to enjoy a brand new (to me) map, as Scorched Earth is the only one I've never set foot on before.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

(Posts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5)

Well, to get the good days, you gotta get the bad, and today was definitely more of a bad.

I've learned to quit while I'm ahead in my time on ARK, so I decided to call it quits for the night even though I definitely could keep going. I logged on and had a normal enough start to my night. Farmed some metal and decided I wanted to make electronics, so I headed to SE to whip up pearls on the back of my griffin, Saturn. Now, Saturn is not a high level griffin. Saturn is leveled strictly in stamina and was a level 25 pre-tame because I couldn't find any higher than that and it was taking too long to kill them off on my pteranodon (read first post for more about that).

Anyway, I intended to get more pearls than what I had at that point, but as I was uploading what I had on my person at a drop, a direwolf attacked Saturn and my menu bugged. I was stuck in the uploading menu while the direwolf just chewed away at Saturn. I force closed, hoping that might let me log back in in time to save them... nope. Server did that fun thing where, for about 5 minutes, it still thinks I'm logged in even though I'm not. Logged back in and Saturn and I were both dead. It wasn't a huge problem, I know SE like the back of my hand and was able to get the stuff back pretty easily, but now I'm out a griffin. I think, "Oh, what the hell, I have a wyvern back on Ragnarok and a griffin trap already set. I'll just go get one real quick."

Yeah. Sure.

So, Dododex insists that my crossbow won't kill one, and I'm feeling lazy. I made enough tranq arrows to knock a 150 out two times over - lag and the griffin's sporadic nature have taught me to be prepared - grab narcotics and take my lightning wyvern, Remus, out to go hunt one down. My trap allows me to use the wyvern to lure them in and then I jump off and quickly shut the door, or else the griffin loses interest in the wyvern near the trap and I kite them in on foot and shut the door while they claw at me some. Of course, the area around where griffins spawn is heavily built on in this particular Ragnarok server, so I have to travel... quite the distance to spot some griffins. Eventually, I found a lv 50 and decided to kill it - but wait, suddenly there's two griffins! I kill the 50 to discover the second is a 130 that is now quite bloody from my attacks. I decide that's no problem, I'll just wait for it to heal--I've heard bringing dead things back to carnivores and letting them eats it restores their health anyhow. 

So, it's a long and tedious journey, but I finally get the 130 caught in the trap. I spend some time healing Remus since he was quite injured over the few hours it took me to find this griffin (also, I leveled his health up some before I set out, as he's still new). Once that was done, griffin was still bloody, so I went and got some things for it to eat. It appeared to just have a couple splotches of blood left so I gave it some more time. A couple of people with some sickness came to inspect what I was doing, they were both on their feet--I didn't want anything to do with that so I told them to back off or I'd kill them, gave them a threatening display with Remus. They seemed to get the memo and stayed away. Finally, I decided to just try and tranq the griffin and I'd just take my time and be mindful. Yeah... didn't work out. It died in the end from the shots. 

Wholly frustrated, I just headed back home, cryo'd the wyvern, and decided to call it a day until tomorrow. Lesson learned. Do not try to be a cheapskate. Even if Dododex swears that your crossbow won't kill things, that doesn't account for wild damage they've taken, or damage you might do to them prior to getting them trapped. Tomorrow, I'm going to make the appropriate number of darts and go find me another high level one. I could do that tonight, but my patience has worn thin and low patience is a killer in ARK. I can't afford to lose Remus and I fear that if I try to do too much more while aggravated I could somehow lose him, too. Then I'd really be up the creek without a paddle. 

Edited by Slvr
  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Today:

Tamed an awesome diplo. Low-level, but gorgeous dark blue color with teal spikes and white belly.

Raised quetzals to 7%, froze for later.

Noticed that I've hit 80 dinos (I'm trying to keep below that number. Might expand to hundred when I start getting REALLY good dinos, but for now 80 is the max amount I'll have non-podded), so I froze some dinos I might use later, but not using at the moment (ones that aren't important egg-layers. So, therizinos and all female rexes are still standing at the base), as well as UNfroze and killed some dinos I'm definitely not using ever again and that I'm not attached to. The latter included my old high level diplo male, since diplos are only used for in-base berry runs and dino painting practice, so good colors matter much more than good levels. By the end of it I was left with, if I recall correctly, 67 dinos standing in the base - all without losing anything significant.

Edited by AllOfTheAllos
  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

(Posts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5)

As expected, today's events went much more smoothly. Well... smoothly as in, there was no real loss other than time. It took so long, but I finally managed to track down a lv 135 black and red event griffin. I was so excited! I nearly have it at my trap, but it loses interest and I figure that I need to get stamina anyway, so I make note of where it's at and then I land. I go back to find it and... it's vanished. I look and look and look and look and... it's just nowhere. After 30 minutes or so of fruitless searching, I admitted defeat and headed back to lure away a 130 griffin I had spotted hanging out with it. This one didn't have any notable colors but was a higher level like I wanted.

I noticed that it appeared to be stuck, so I thought what the hell, I'll just knock it here. Nope... It didn't budge the entire time until I got it high enough in torpor that it started to run. Then I couldn't land anymore shots on it. Had to admit defeat and lure it back to the trap. After a grueling hour or so long struggle to get it to the trap and lure it inside, I finally manage to lock it in and knock it. So, in the end, I did get my new griffin - a paler brown with dark gray wings. Their name is Nightfall, in reference to the very first griffin I ever had on a private server between friends. I put them in cryo to gain levels.

I also added tons of turrets and put some bullets in them. It's still not fantastic, but it'll definitely do for now, and eases my anxiety some while I continue to work to get set up. I think tomorrow I'm going to tame a castoroides, thorny dragon, or mammoth so getting wood is a little easier on me and then I'll just hammer away at base defense for a while. Well, I do intend to pause at some point to make sure to get a couple of backup griffins, because taming a griffin without already having one is such a pain. The griffin was mostly so I could continue to travel to SE to get silica pearls for easy, quick electronics. Note to self, though, make sure to clear out any threats long before trying to upload stuff while standing on the griffin... 

Anyway, today we welcome Nightfall to the fold!

Edited by Slvr
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Today I continued to declutter the base by taking down the quetz trap (I got a male, I got a female, far as I'm concerned I have no need to be ready to catch any more quetzals!), freezing the three unleveled crystal wyverns, leaving me with just Bloodwind, Skysoul and Wildfire staying unfrozen, and installing a second cryofridge, because I was starting to run out of space in the first one, seeing as I now have quite a lot of adult dinos podded.

Also, tamed a pair of lystros. High-level (wild levels 145 and 150). Gonna breed them, but anything that doesn't have an interesting color mutation will be killed right after hatching.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Whew, what a wild night I had.

So I didn't end up playing at all yesterday.

That means when I got home today I rushed my boss prep. Basically just threw together whatever I still needed, packed it all up with lots of ammo, soups, med brews, grabbed my cryopods and flew up to the volcano.

Not going to lie this was by far the most frustrating part. Positioning all my rexes just so and then still having them get stuck at the entrance to the Tek cave. I should have been able to get around 40 rexes in but I actually ended up with about 25, because one rex tripped and furballed the entire following line. By the time I got that sorted I didn't have enough time to grab the other group.

Too late to turn back now obviously so we pressed forward. Single player doesn't have a time limit past the door so I took my time. I walked one lead rex through the cave clearing a path and then brought my two battle lines down one at a time following. The cave itself wasn't hard, except I lost 5 rexes to poor pathing. 3 of them died to the lava. 2 somehow fell on a rock in the lava so they're stuck unless I cheat my way over to rescue them. So aggravating to lose extremely well raised animals to poorly designed gameplay. I determined the issue is because if a rex stops to poop it will bunch up the line behind it so when it runs to catch up to the rex in front it won't path the way it should, causing pileups that end up with rexes falling off ledges. At least I didn't lose the yutys or the pig. Yet.

Funnily enough I wasn't really scared of the giga at the entrance to the portal. Didn't quite get him to fall into the lava on his own so I pushed him in with my rex. We've sure come a long way from drowning them with an argent. Could have taken him if I wasn't concerned about losing the whole line into the very hot drink.

Anyway we made it through to the teleporter with a relatively small force. I didn't have high hopes for this but too late to turn back now, right? So we pressed on.

Put the yutys on auto roar, pig on passive healing, and charged into the fray.

What a long, intense, desperate fight this is after the long slog through the cave. The rexes were slow, their progress constantly impeded by the annoyance of the Defense Units. They are powerful and bulky but unable to engage at speed, drawing the battle out much longer than it would have been with therizinos or allos. We were doing well until the first dragon change, but then I lost one yuty, then the other. Then the pig. The rexes started to fall one by one, including the one I had ridden through the cave and had started to grow attached to. If he had lived he would have earned a real name and a Tek saddle. Rest well Omega 2, you were a champion.

I got the Dragon twice. More rexes were falling, all were bloody now. I was starting to debate the merits of using my Tek armor and taking on the Overseer solo. Whittling away its energy with tired, heavy rexes. Wading through a sea of Defense Units, frustrated and desperate to get through them. Dismounted again and again by the beams. The ape again, then broodmother. We absolutely can't tank the dragon another round.

Then the message pops up. The Overseer has fallen. Victory!

Bloody and exhausted, we've nonethless won the day.

Calming down while the credits roll, reveling in a hard won victory, the culmination of a year's steady grinding.

And then logging back in to do a few things before moving forward. First, heading back to the volcano to recover the sad remnants of a proud fighting force. I had maybe 6 rexes left, all of them very bloody. Surprisingly, most of the survivors were actually some of my oldest rexes, the 2nd and 3rd gens. I think 2 of the Omegas survived. I also picked up the rexes that didn't make it through the door. Between all of them and the rexes that never left base, and the original first gen rexes, I have more than enough for the Manticore. Not that I'm transferring anything yet.

These are my personal "Ultimate Ark" rules: once I tame a wild dino on the next map, I may transfer any of that species from previous maps. Yes, it's not as "authentic" but I just spent a year on The Island, I am absolutely not starting over with brand new bloodlines. Unlike Syntac I'm not getting paid for this either lol. :P I think that's a fair balance between being challenging without sacrificing previous achievements. I am debating the rule being once I can make a transmitter, but that would mean defeating the Manticore once for the element and I don't know if I feel up to doing that from scratch. Although I will likely do it on gamma to get a feel for the fight since I've never set foot on Scorched before so..hm. We'll see, I have plenty of time to work it out.

For now, a well earned rest is in order. Tomorrow I will be starting completely fresh and clean on Scorched Earth.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

A very exciting day here on single player. Having successfully conquered the Overseer, it was finally time to move forward. You'd think I would take some time to say goodbye after spending a year on The Island working my way up. But honestly, I didn't. I was so eager to move forward I barely gave myself time to mindwipe, which is something I had planned to do before transferring. I stashed all my stuff, fast traveled to one of my obelisk shacks and it was off to Scorched Earth for the very first time.

Not going to lie, after hearing so many complaints about how hard this map is, I expected a challenge, But even after a day of play I've thus far only died once and that was to the 150 raptor that ate me when I spawned in. Then again I have played on Aberration so I'm well used to real environmental challenges.

Much too much happened to go too much into detail but I will say I have made a really solid start and I am absolutely loving this map. It's beautiful and different and I haven't been so inspired in a very long time. Here's basically my entire day summed up:

20200704210030_1.thumb.jpg.14e1bcf17d68f7859fb2a2b097ada4f6.jpg

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

(Posts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5)

Yesterday, I had some good progress. I tamed a thorny dragon - her name is Katara, like the ATLA character (although... I don't know why I was reminded of her by a thorny dragon... but I digress) - and hammered out tons of gunpowder. Also made tons of paste with the asinine amount of chitin I had everywhere and then started working on a perimeter of the base. Someone had started to build nearby and I was getting a little nervous about their presence, but then... Alas, they had a raft and drove it too close to my base. They and their two parasaurs were shot down and they didn't have a bed at the little thatch base, just on the raft. I grabbed what looked useful to them as noobs from their raft and bodies, took a dermis of the parasaurs and the players, made them a new raft, and ferried the stuff over to them. Told them it'd be best if they built elsewhere and they have. Sometimes sewing seeds of good deeds is a good idea, yknow? Especially as a solo. ;) I did something similar with a solo player the other day. I am hoping this means in the future they will have goodwill toward me if they stick around. They aren't threats to me right now nor could they pose much threat to anyone, really, but allies are always welcome.

I've also been taking advantage of the 3x breeding to raise some Ovis. Usually, they are far too much of a pain on 1x settings to raise for mutton, but as I've been mostly working in/next to the base anyway, getting these 10 or so babies up and growing wasn't hard. If I had something better than an equus to gather berries, it'd be even faster, but I don't mind dealing with the equus for now. They finished today and by killing one, I managed to nab three yutyrannus - granted, they are all low level as they are for egg farming, but still. Had I been smart and ran back to base to cook the rest, I'd have probably gotten another few out of it.

Of course, I think the yutys were  hiding today, because aside from the few I tamed, I saw none. I killed things and killed things and killed things but just... nope. I did end up getting a few pretty event equus out of it, but those and the three yutys are all I have to show for the day's efforts. 

The idea is next time I play to tame even more yutys -- I want a lot, like 10-15 females -- and then get the rest of the stuff going I need to make extraordinary kibble, and then it's off to find high level therizinos. While I breed them up, I'll probably just focus a lot on furthering base defense. It's passable right now but there's always room for improvement! Of course, that's the long haul. Tomorrow I'll probably just tame some more yutys and focus on repairing some gear. I am running low on usable gear... I've been very lazy about repairing. 

Anyway, today we welcome to the fold Katara (Thorny Dragon), Rosa, Hotwater, Lucy (Yutyrannuses... Yutyrannusi? lol), Confetti, Grayson, and Skittle (Equuses)! 

@Cymas I just wanted to say I am glad you are enjoying SE! I lived there for a while myself and I honestly really enjoyed the map. It just doesn't make sense for me in a PVP sense to live there anymore on my cluster, but I look forward to reading about your adventures there in SP, because it was a blast for me. 

Edited by Slvr
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Scorched Earth, day two:

20200705212128_1.thumb.jpg.a661957a9ca618c38ef794741ea7dd74.jpg

I just want to say, I absolutely did not plan nor intend to get a wyvern this early. But as I've been doing the grind on the base, I've been taking breaks on and off to do other things. One of those included the 3 argents in the back, there's one low level and two high levels. I've been taking the low level one out to scout around and get the lay of the land, doesn't matter if it dies since I have the other two significantly better ones. I've been trying not to spoil too many details for myself but having watched multiple series about this map obviously I do know some things.

I didn't actively intend to fly all the way to the wyvern trench as that's quite far from my base. But I was checking out the obelisks and happened to fly close to the end of it. I peeked down into it and didn't really see any wyverns around, I've spotted the rare one flying about here and there in other places but the trench appeared to be empty. I flew closer to get a better look and noticed a nest. Obviously, Ark is 90% preparation, but fortune favors the bold too. We winged quickly into the alcove and waited for stamina rather nervously. Then I hopped off, grabbed the egg and we took off as fast as an argent can fly, which is to say not very fast at all. Our little stunt raid did not go unnoticed as we pulled the interest of the fire wyvern parent below. It was a harrowing flight on this barely midlevel bird as we juked and dodged, avoiding fire breaths as much as possible while taking the occasional bite. Flying close to the mountains and trying to lose aggro while our stamina and HP steadily dropped.

It was a very, very, very close call, one I wish I had recorded because it was wild. I've run wyverns on Ragnarok enough, but this was something else.

The wyvern itself is nothing special, only level 30 and I only got one imprint on it before it wanted milk. Given that I have virtually no infrastructure right now, that wasn't about to happen. Yes, my settings are unintentionally high enough that it can grow up without milk and not starve. Anyway. This wyvern is absolute trash but it has one purpose and one purpose only: to steal more, better eggs. So it's going to get stamina and maybe some HP, honestly at that level it really isn't going to make a difference.

But that's a long way off, of course. Can't say I'm not immensely pleased with the day's events, but I'm a long ways away from taking any more field trips into the trench. I have a base to build and I've barely begun.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Today:

Raised quetzals a bit more.

Started raising the new baby tek rex (double mutated health AND mutated melee inherited!), finished hatching  the two tek rex eggs left from yesterday (1 hatched a female with only health inherited, the other - health inherited+a stam mutation, also female. Killed both).

Killed a level 24 tek quetzal. I don't normally kill valuable tameables, even if I'm not interested in taming them myself, but the server was wonderfully non-laggy, my mood was great, and I was really curious about how many firebreaths from Wildfire it'll take to kill it. 2 breaths, by the way. Well, that plus however much burning damage happened while I was aiming for the second one.

Nothing else happened. Was thinking abut going to get a dung beetle, but don't really feel like doing that. Maybe later.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Scorched Earth, day three:

20200706204019_1.thumb.jpg.aac2e53c2c2484b0777250b1cb59714f.jpg

Is this the most extra taming pen in the history of taming pens? Yes. Is it also the most fun I've ever had building a taming pen? Also yes. Side note the covered plaza next to it does actually give the house buff. Makes it so I don't have to run back and forth if a weather event pops up during a tame. The vessels are mostly there for decoration. The line of foundations is actually my as yet unbuilt perimeter wall. I did do some work on that as well, but I am in dire need of better utility animals.

I also tamed a Tek Parasaur, which sounds like a useless tame except I'll be using it much, much later to find a very special trophy tame I've wanted for literally years.

But anyway yeah I'm really having fun with this map. I haven't been this inspired to build in ages and I think a new map was actually the change of pace I desperately needed in this game.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Today I tamed two dung beetles. At first I wanted to tame them on Valguero, since the wiki states that they do spawn there, but the thing is - I don't really know Valguero all that well beyond things that interest me, such as the location of beaver dams, the closest deinon nests, metal  and crystal deposits - that kinda thing. And since I have no interest in regular wyverns, even less so since I got my Crystal ones, the location of Valguero's wyvern trench was a mystery to me. So basically I went to where the dung beetles are supposed to be, realized that THAT'S where the wyverns (and also gigas, at least one) are, and noped the hell outta there.

So instead I used my other survivor on Crystal Isles to tame a couple beetles and transferred them to Valguero. I named them Khepri and Kabuto. They now live in the kitchen/greenhouse thing, in a small pen of their own (which shares a wall with the dodo pen because the space's kinda limited).

Holy fertilizer! Khepri and Kabuto are making TONS of the non-holy variation of the aforementioned substance. I mean, I've read about how much dung beetles produce, but it's different actually seeing their inventories filled with so much fertilizer. Might expand the greenhouse, not because I need more plots but just because I can maintain more now.

Edited by AllOfTheAllos
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 6/29/2020 at 6:03 PM, Cymas said:

You don't have to cheat to get a giga in single player. I've noticed when doing a dino wipe if a giga is going to spawn it may not show up for 10-20 minutes. You can actually check to see if one is up without flying around looking at all the spawns, it's the getallstate command, use it with the code for whatever animal you want to look for. It won't tell you level or location, but it will tell you how many are up on the map at a given time. When I was farming giga hearts I had to wipe multiple times to get them to spawn in, but it worked eventually.

For myself, I did plan out my week last night and spent my time working through today's to do list. I took Heartbreaker out farming and built 2 more rex saddles. Then I brought 10 rexes and my newly bred pig up to the volcano. I actually set one battle line up last night, so this is my second line. I got a little hyped up after watching a solo Overseer video and jumped back in for a little bit yesterday. So I am a tiny bit ahead of myself.

I also did a very short metal run, I may have enough for the saddles but I need more for other things.

Honestly I'm starting to wonder about the efficacy of bringing all 50 rexes into battle. Well ok, 47 rexes. The pig was a recent choice after watching that video last night. It kind of seems like this might be massive overkill, even on alpha difficulty. It's also proving to be a major logistical issue, as even 20 rexes are taking up a massive amount of space at the volcano. A full 50 might not even be possible to get into the cave within the time limit unless I build a large platform, which I kind of don't want to do.

But I also feel like I may have wasted a significant amount of my time if I don't bring all these rexes since I'm going to the trouble of breeding, raising, leveling and equipping them. Sigh. I mean, this army is my top of the line rexes, even more powerful than the army that defeated the Alpha Dragon. Getting that last mutation took forever, too. I don't want to not use them after sinking so much time and resources into them.

On the other hand, using a full rex army means I have a disadvantage in speed. Most people use allos to keep up with the Overseer. I've struggled to get any even half decent allos on this map; currently I only have two and no female so I can't breed them even if I wanted to. So it may be worthwhile to be making up in power what I can't do with speed, so having a larger army may still work in my favor. Honestly I don't really know. There aren't that many resources for solo play around and the two main videos I watched (Syntac and Phlinger) are problematic in their own ways and not reflective of standard play. Syntac honestly shot himself in the foot by hosting his "solo" run on a server so he had to deal with the time limit in the cave. And Phlinger's dino stats in his comparable solo run indicate he was actually using boosted settings in some way.

Have fun walking them down!!! We did it in squads of 10 per player and it was still a pain!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@d1nk Yeah it didn't go well lol, but I won so who cares. :P I'm really glad I did that on alpha though so I don't have to worry about ever doing it again if I don't want to.

Scorched Earth, day four:

20200707204931_1.thumb.jpg.f2e2a8126b676c5b833441d14ba8ddc8.jpg

Uneventful day of building. This is the rear view of my outer perimeter wall, well half of the front anyway. 

After I finished this section of the wall I took a break to run some drops. Best item of the day, an ascendant crossbow.

I did peek in the wyvern trench and have spotted no less than 3 alphas. Gonna need a bigger wyvern..

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
 Share

×
×
  • Create New...