So what did you do in ARK today?

[Stretch11]

So I see that it has been a year or two since I last posted.  I guess it is time to bring everyone (if anyone cares) up to speed on the adventures Flont and I have been having.  We spent quite a bit of time hopping from world to world trying them out and trying out PvP and PvE on official servers and we decided that a private server was best for our purposes.  We had wiped our characters out several times while I figured out how to properly implement a Linux Ark server.  I never did figure out how to run multiple Ark worlds simultaneously, but I did get everything set up using "services" to start and stop different worlds all sharing the same Ark ID so that we could transfer items when necessary.

At the time when I got everything straight (and thus we were no longer starting from scratch with every world change), we were in Crystal Isles.  This is the best place to get Wyverns.  Firstly, they are non-aggressive unless you attack them or go near the Wyvern trench.  Gather a lot of crystal first and then walk onto the back of a Wyvern when it is on the ground.  Surf the Wyvern as it flies around, feeding it crystals until it is tamed.  Scary at times, but not dangerous.  Secondly, tamed Crystal Isle Wyverns do not do damage to you, your tribe, or your creatures.  Regular Wyverns (like from Scorched Earth) do "blue-on-blue" damage and you cannot really do large battles without inflicting damage on your teammates.  Unfortunately, the "floating islands" biome there was too graphic-intensive for my poor graphics card and it caused it to crash whenever I went near that area, so I never really explored that part of Crystal Isles.

We decided that we would go through all of the worlds one at a time, "conquering" them.  We set up some rules so that we would "enjoy" the idiosyncracies of each world in the way that they were intended.   We would not bring a dino from another world without first taming one of those dinos in the new world.  We did not bring any goods into the new world - we arrived naked, although we still had our levels.  Sometimes we did a mind-wipe before a new world, but sometimes not.

Stay tuned for the next exciting episode where we return to The Island (and we finish it this time)!

Edited May 17, 2022 by Stretch11
typo

[AllOfTheAllos]

(Modded singleplayer, Crystal Isles) Got two aurochs and a female bos (Animals of Atlas mod) for my cattle enclosure. And a second ovis (male). Bred ovis, killed baby, made bait, tamed the dragon.

Started building an enclosure, thought it'd be for some large carnivores I'll tame later, possibly spinos, but after adding the gate (from eco's Empires - Tokugawa) I realized it'll look the best if I keep the dragon in it. By the way - auroch cart saddle is awesome! I put the crafting table from Prehistoric Structures mod onto it, whistled the aurochs to follow me, and it's much more convenient than carrying the mats to the crafting station and then carrying the building parts to the building site (the dragon enclosure's wall is made form triangle foundations from that mod).

(Official, Valguero) Fed dinos, bred thorny dragons (blue-backed male was used), gigas, yuties, rexes, spinos and velonas. Spino egg stays because I want to see if this mutation looks good (previous one did not), all other eggs cracked right away.

And that's all for now (or for today).

 

[Stretch11]

Part 2 of our saga - "Stretch and Flont Return to The Island":

We started from scratch again on The Island, although we kept our levels that we had earned in Crystal Isles.  We had made it to the Tek cave on a couple of other lives, but the first time all of our Rexes ran into lava (like that has never happened to anyone else).  The second time, we only got one string of five Rexes into the Tek cave before it timed out.  We really needed to work on our line dancing with dinos.

Our experiences in the cave remind me of something...  The first time the Rexes sank into the lava.  The second time, we got some Rexes in, and then they sank into the lava.  But the third time, the Rexes stood on dry land!

We got all the way to the Overseer this time and I died halfway through the fight.  Flont finished it and ascended.  We went back and did all of the other boss fights to get enough artifacts to do the Tek cave again and this time, I made it through and he died halfway.  At least we are equally ascended now.  That took about a year with all of the keep building, dino breeding, blueprint gathering, etc.  A good chunk of that time was spent hitting all of the underwater drops over and over looking for a good Rex saddle blueprint which we finally got.  On the plus side, we built up a solid breeding area and have good lines for many useful dinos (Rexes, Allos, Yutis, Argys, Theris, Daeodons, Megatherium, etc.) and a good base of all things Tek except we did not get around to building teleporters yet.

Our successful forays into the Tek cave and Overseer battles used the following:

Flont on a heavily mutated Rex (I think we ended up with around 20 health mutations and 15 melee mutations) leading a string of three other Rexes.  He led the way into the cave and cleared out any dinos in our path.  He had a Tek saddle on the lead Rex to shoot opponent dinos from a distance whenever possible.

Stretch on a mutated Yuty (we did  not spend as much time on Yutys, they only had 3 or 4 mutations in health) leading a string of another Yuty (a backup) and five Daeodons (for healing).  When Flont had damaged Rexes, I would run the Yutys and pigs up to the front and do some healing and encouragement.

While I was waiting for him to clear out the cave, I was running back and advancing a couple of strings of five Rexes each.  I had a third string, but neither time that we went into the cave did I successfully get them inside in time.

When we got in the Overseer part, we only rode when we needed to make healing or encouragement or more delicate direction was needed.  Most of the time we were on the ground sprinting using Tek pants and shooting at any of the flying drones with either shotguns (ascendent blueprint) or Tek rifles (which overheated from time to time which is why we swapped back and forth).  Whoever was closer was whistling everything into the Overseer.  When the Overseer was changing, we just let the dinos clear off the ground clutter.

Stay tuned for the next exciting episode, "Stretch and Flont Need a Drink in Scorched Earth".

[DromaeoSapiens]

Tried playing a combination of Spanish bull-fighting and a game of chicken with a giant prehistoric rhino.

 

Edited May 19, 2022 by DromaeoSapiens

[Joebl0w13]

38 minutes ago, DromaeoSapiens said:

Tried playing a combination of Spanish bull-fighting and a game of chicken with a giant prehistoric rhino.

Who won?

[DromaeoSapiens]

18 minutes ago, Joebl0w13 said:

Who won?

I did 😎

It helped that it got distracted by some wooden pillars and a bear trap. I didn't use any real cage though, so it could still chase me around. Destroyed some pillars, smacked me around a rock, ran off into the distance and thought it was running, but turned around and barreled towards me. I knocked it out before it got to me, 10/10 would do it again.

[Joebl0w13]

4 minutes ago, DromaeoSapiens said:

I did 😎

In Ark, that's all that matters my friend.

[Penguin73]

On 5/16/2022 at 6:42 PM, L4D2 said:

i run my tek gen out of shards i get from Eldritch Isle, stryder and dedi storage make things easy

Thanks. I forgot you can run them on shards.  I don't have a stryder so it will just take a little more time to gather.  All good though.

[AllOfTheAllos]

(Modded singleplayer, Crystal Isles) Finished the dragon enclosure, moved the dragon to it, enabled wandering... And nothing. Turns out dragons from this mod don't wander. Pity. Still, a dragon standing still in an enclosure looks better than a dragon standing still on the stable's roof.

 

(Official, Valguero) Unpodded wyverns. Put some meat and berries into the maewing, unpodded yuty and ankylo.

Bred thorny dragons (with blue-backed male), argents, gigas, rexes, sinos and velonas.

One argent egg stays (mutation, want to see what it's on). Rest all bad.

Last time's mut spino didn't look any better than the one before. Killed.

Did a milk run (two wyverns tranqed), fed the wyverns.

Wanted to go look for fire wyvern eggs, but the game isn't performing too nicely today. I'm not risking it.

Podded babies and that's all for today.

[L4D2]

12 hours ago, Penguin73 said:

Thanks. I forgot you can run them on shards.  I don't have a stryder so it will just take a little more time to gather.  All good though.

highly recommend using a stryder and dedi storage to harvest shards , otherwise it is not really a  viable option

[Stretch11]

Part 3 - Stretch and Flont Need a Drink on Scorched Earth

We had both been on SE in the past and we quickly gravitated to a place with 100% wind that was somewhat protectable near water.  We set up a windmill and ran some stone water pipes and we were ready to go!

Taming a Megatherium is a must in this world.  They can roam at will in the desert killing bugs (especially Deathworms!).  They only thing that they fear is Wyverns.  Think of the desert like the water surrounding The Island and it gives a good idea of just how vast the sands are.

After raising good Argies (over level 200 at birth), we came up with a plan to steal a Wyvern egg (it was not necessary to steal an egg in Crystal Isles).  Flont worked on a fast Pteranodon with some endurance while I bred 20 Argies.  He snuck into the Wyvern trench, grabbed an egg and immediately flew into the cloud of Argies that I had hovering just outside the trench.    On our initial try, I included 6 Moths for the slowing ability, but it ended up not being necessary.  After the Argies started attacking, I flew away and waited nearby and watched them kill up to six Wyverns at a time.  Having met our self-imposed requirement of taming a Wyvern locally, we proceeded to bring some breeding Wyverns from Crystal Isles to Scorched Earth.  We tried using the SE Wyverns, but we kept hurting each other and each other's mounts.  The CI Wyverns are faster, but a bit more delicate (if one could call any Wyvern "delicate").

We also tamed some Mantises, but we did not spend too much time using them. We might revisit them on some other world in the future.  As for now, we have some good breeding stock in SE.

One "old" dino that came to new purpose in SE is the Thylacoleo.  Besides just being plain fun to ride, they are most useful in taking down Rock Elementals.  They move much faster than a Rock Elemental and can circle them, attacking from behind.  The Thylas inflict bleed, so the Elementals continue to take damage while the Thyla circles looking for its next opening.  It is not a fast kill, but even a Rex or a Wyvern take a while to chew on a Rock Elemental.

We did not attempt the Manticore this time since we had done that in some previous lives and it did not give us any new ascension bonuses.

Stay tuned for the next exciting episode, "Valguero Looks Easy".

Edited May 19, 2022 by Stretch11
Added desert description

[AllOfTheAllos]

(Modded singleplayer, Crystal Isles) Got high enough level for an argent and tamed one. And then remembered I saw a level 15 ironbelly wyverns (Ancient dragons and wyverns mod) nearby, so I went to tame her. I started taming and... I saw a 145 female ironbelly dragon walk out from behind the trees! So I started taming that, too.

It too a while, but I got both of them and I moved them to my base. The dragon is parked in the pen with the fireball one (still gotta find a female for him. Too bad there' no crossbreeding between different types!), and made the saddle for the wyvern (ancient wyverns, unlike vanilla ones, require saddles. They're also WAY smaller, and can fly backwards and dive), and went to wander around the map. Briefly entered the crystal wyvern nests, fortunately ancient wyverns are so fast I had barely any trouble escaping from the heir - once my wyvern's stam got low and the heir was about to catch up to me, I simply went underwater (ancient wyverns can do that, too. Dragons can also do that, but they're not nearly as fast) and the crystal wyvern had no choice but to fly away.

I returned home, killed a kolponomos (Animals of Atlas mod) for polymer on my way back. finally crafted the soul terminal (Dino Storage mod) and bred the ovis so that I'll have some mutton baits ready when I next decide to tame something. After the ovis was born and auto-trapped by the terminal, I decided that that's enough of SP for today.

For now that's all.

[Addock]

i tamed a level 145 quetz on my island server and it didnt end in disaster. technically it was my first quetzal tame also.

took almost 2 hours and i netted it next to some guys base, so creature spawns were heavily reduced. it was about 3 in the morning when it finally tamed and i almost fell asleep multiple times, which lead to a few close calls. didnt lose any effectiveness tho! happy with my first high level quetz tame, got some decent stats but nothing spectacular. its going to be really helpful for building up a breeding base on the iceberg. i already have a lot of the structures pre-crafted in a vault at my temp base and it would take MANY trips back and forth with the argents to move it all. only caveat is that the only platform saddle i have is a mc and extremely expensive for me right now.

if we get evo this weekend im definitely going to be using it to build , ive been living out of a fancy stone box for many months and even playing solo its getting very cramped with all these tames everywhere breeding for mutations. even my cryo fridges are getting full now and i dont have much room on the land arch (whitesky peak, island)

 

[AllOfTheAllos]

(Official, Crystal Isles) Fed the trike.

(Official, Extinction) Fed dinos.

(Official, Lost Island) Fed wyvern.

(Official, Valguero) Unpodded wyverns. Filled the maewing and unpodded yuty and ankylo. Bred ankylos, thorny dragons, yuties, spinos, gigas, sinos, rexes and argents. Thorny dragon stays, I want to see it. Also had muts on a velona and a yuty, but velona's on oxygen and yuty got bad stats and the mut color is ugly green.

Hatched egg from the last time, doesn't stay (mutation is useless: it's mom's weight with a mut on top, so essentially it's dad's weight with extra steps)

Fed dinos.

Did an egg run, only got one egg (170). Stats unremarkable but female, so stays.

And then I podded everything back up and that's all for today.

[Woody714]

I finally polished off some ok base level rexes for clean breeding and expanded the regular stego base to 6 females. Just finally got those guys polished up yesterday or the day before. I'm playing on Lost Island. I still have the Aberration Cave and Labyrinth to scour for artifacts and then hopefully a rag tag team of rexes, stegos and or tek stegos, yuty, daedon and possibly some bleeders like allos can take out the gamma dinopithicus.  I need that Tek Rep for crafting, lol.  

[Woody714]

Also had a busy day in the ocean looking for loot...ok a rex saddle. No joy on that, but I visited the sunken ship and brought home another artifact and killed 3 or 4 alpha megalodons and an alpha mosa. The chibi is at about 640,000 xp.

[AllOfTheAllos]

(Official, Valguero)

Bred gigas, yuties and spinos nothing good). Hunted rhinos for horns. Made enlightenment broth (7 pieces). Crafted full ghillie armor.

Uploaded that as well as two cryopod, parts for a trap, and some repellant.

(Official, Crystal Isles) Retrieved all that, went to the desert. Found a semi-decent male arthro, built the trap, tried to lure it in.

Failed.

Put down some sleeping bags and tried to tame without trap.

Success!

Dismantled the trap, podded the arthro.

Then found another male arthro, 140! Tamed that. Threw out the first one, set it on wander and unclaimed. Okay, might not be the best decision. Maybe later I'll find it, reclaim it and kill it properly. But I felt like doing it that way at the moment.

Then started looking for a high-level female. Took a while, but I found a 145!

Too close to a wild giga for my tastes. Had to carefully lure the giga away (but not drown, because drowning a 140 giga would be pretty bad), then finally tamed the arthro, podded her and uploaded them both. Returned home.

(Official, Valguero) Retrieved the arthros.

...

(Official, Crystal Isles) Went back for the reject arthro. Reclaimed, and made it attack the wild giga. It survived two bites before the giga ate it!

And that's all for today.

Edited May 22, 2022 by AllOfTheAllos

[AllOfTheAllos]

(Official, Valguero) Bred arthropleuras, thorny dragons, gigas, rexes, spinos, velonas and yuties.

Unpodded wyverns for raising, hatched the 170 and moved her to the rest.

Kept arthro egg (clean male, mom's colors entirely, got dad's melee, but it's only two points below mom's, so that's okay) and both thorny dragon ones (each male, blue inherited, and a new mutation).

Had a mut on giga, but health. And on a rex, but neither health nor melee. And on yuty, but who cares what it was even on? Dude didn't get any of the good stats! So, that's all eggs cracked.

Hunted beacons with my griffin because it turned out that while I did often get great arthro saddles/BPs I just never kept any. So got nothing to make a decent saddle with.

Had no luck. Will try again, and again, and again.

When I returned home I found that youngest wyverns were at 400 food. Went to the trench, milked two ices, returned home and fed the wyverns.

Hatched the arthro egg... And the baby wasn't there. I took down the foundation on which babies normally land - nothing. One next to it - nothing. Took everything out of the cryofridge, hatched, claimed, and mewinged the thorny dragons that were in the incubator, and dismantled the foundations on which the fridge and incubator stood - nothing.

I heard a hiss and looked up.

The baby was on the ceiling.

Claimed him.

Made replacement foundations, walls and roof pieces, new incubator and fridge. Moved all babies (and 18 new pods) into the new fridge.

Raised the arthro for a bit. Checked the thorny dragons... And killed both. Food mut on one, oxygen on the other.

Podded the babies, filled the troughs for carnivores, and that's all for today.

[Stretch11]

Part 4 - "Valguero Looks Easy"

I had done some hard time in Valguero before on PvP and PvE offical servers, so I knew a bit of what to expect.  That tranquil lake and beautiful white cliffs look so peaceful, but don't let them fool you.  There were up to three Alpha Sharks in the lake at once and the White Cliff area teems with Raptors and Deinonychus.

One of our goals in Valguero was to tame some Deinonychus to see how they compare.  They are faster than Raptors and do much more damage.  They can climb better than just about anything short of a Thylacoleo and they can glide short distances (and take no fall damage!).  All-in-all, we give them a "thumbs up" rating as mounts.

We found a large tunnel (not a cave because both ends were open) near the White Cliffs that was large enough to fit our entire base inside.  A Bronto could stand in it in most places.  We just added a Humongous Dino gate on each end and we were nice and safe.  Most of our early time was spent using a raft to travel.  The Sharks can't hit a raft and there are no Leeds present.   Pteranodons are OK for flying, but they have no range or cargo capacity.  The Argys were all the way on the other side of the map, but we got them eventually while dodging Yuty gangs.

One of our other goals was to check out the "Aberration Trench" before going to Aberration to see what we might have to encounter.  It was a fairly easy walk-in, but the Dienonychus made it easy (unlike the real Aberration as we discovered).  We mined some colored crystals, got irradiated a bit, and made out way back out.  It was going to be a bit of a hassle to get everything necessary to build hazmat suits, so we decided to move on to Aberration.

Stay tuned for our next episode, "What does not kill me now will probably just get around to it later".

[AllOfTheAllos]

(Official, Valguero) Bred arthropleuras, thorny dragons, gigas, rexes, spinos, velonas and yuties.

And yes, I just used the line from my previous post.

Why not? I did the same thing as that time!

Also bred sinos and ankylos.

Kept arthro egg (mut), both thorny dragon ones (one new mut, and one female with mut color inherited, which I'll raise and breed to Raspberry to combine his DarkViolet body with Gotta Go Fast's blue scales), and yuty (mut. Want to see if it looks acceptable).

Unpodded wyverns, filled the maewing and unpodded yuty, ankylo and arthro.

Wandered looking for beacons, and got an arthro BP! Almost 40 armor, not great at all but it's a start. Saw two gigas.

Returned home, made arthro saddle, put it on Ripley and rode her around the base. Killed a jerboa. Not bad, not bad. Needs more weight though.

Went to the trench, milked three wyverns, and used almost all milk - my wyverns at home were pretty hungry.

Decided to maybe tame a good male theri, since I had a female since forever, took narcotics, darts and kibble, went looking, and the only male theri I found was level 20. Didn't tame anything.

Hatched the thorny dragon eggs, and the new mut is not staying. It's melee, but mutated on mom's stat, so it's same as dad.

Fed dinos, podded babes, and that's all for today.

[AllOfTheAllos]

(Official, Crystal Isles) Fed the trike.

(Official, Lost Island) Uploaded loot I had saved, hunted crates, uploaded what I got, and even went into the ice trench and got an egg - and NOT the first I saw! I actually looked around and chose one, despite my wyvern being a general purpose one rather than a proper egg-getter, and my character on LI not having the imprint advantage (all dinos are bred and raised on my main base on Valguero, and I use separate characters for the sidebases, so imprint bonus only happens on Valg). It was a 185. I uploaded that, too. Fed the wyvern.

(Official, Extinction) Checked for drops, but only saw a yellow, which I can't do. Fed dinos.

(Official, Valguero) Retrieved the loot and ground it up for resources. Hatched yesterday's eggs and podded the babies. Checked the new wyvern egg, cracked. Bad stats, unremarkable colors. Bred arthros, gigas, and spinos (only one giga and one spino were ready). Also turns out I forgot to turn mating off on rexes last time. Picked up the surviving egg and turned it off.

Checked eggs, arthro stays (it's okay. But even if it wasn't - when I bragged on Reddit about taming arthros an idea appeared in the comments, about making an arthro pit and luring wild dinos in. I think it needs to happen. Need some dsposable arthros for that, so I'll be keeping and raising some abominations).

Fed carnivores (yes, they already ate everything).

And that's all for today.

[AllOfTheAllos]

(Official, Valguero) Fed dinos, filled the maeiwng, unpodded babies.

Hatched last time's eggs, put the arthro and one of the thorny dragons with the maewing, killed the other (wrong mut) one.

Bred arthros, sinos, yuties, argents, dodos, spinos, gigas, rexes and velonas.

Only arthro egg stays.

Went to the trench, killed all ice wyverns, ate all eggs (nothing above 50, anyway), waited for one wyvern to spawn, it was fortunately a low-level female, got milk. Returned home, fed some of the wyverns.

Wandered around. First on tropeo, then on griffin, then on giga.

Went to the trench again, got more milk, fed the rest of the wyverns. Imprinted them. Podded all babies except for the two oldest wyverns, who have enough food to last until adulthood already.

And that's all for today.

[AllOfTheAllos]

(Official, Valguero) Filled the maewing, unpodded babies. Wyvern left out yesterday are now adult. Bred Blackthorn (one of the newly-grown ones, 41 stam. Not my best stam, but best I have on an adult) to Ouch (older one, annoying colors, but 41 melee). Cracked the egg, it was no good.

Bred gigas, spinos, sinos, rexes, yuties, dodos, argents, ankylos and arthros. Podded velonas, except for Ratteki.

Only arthro egg stays. Had a mut on rex, but not health or melee.

Made tek gateframes (one dino, one behem) and gates for them and replaced the old, stone gates in the water pen.

Took a SCUBA and went wandering on a basilo. No abyss, just around the lake. Killed an alpha megalodon. And and alpha rex (yes. It was on the shore, stuck, so I stood on my basilo and shot it with the shotgun).

Returned home, went to the trench, milked two wyverns, got a 150 egg. Returned home again, fed wyverns, checked the egg (no good). Named the unnamed wyverns, so now previously nameless ices are Frozen Sea and Clear Sky and fires are Inferno, Persimmon, Brown Sugar and Spicy Caramel.

Podded wyverns, ankylo, and oldest arthro (I'll raise him with full imprint), put as much spoiled meat as I could get into the tek trough, turned the gen on, and the rest of arthros are staying out for the night. Should be fine.

And that's all for today.

Edited May 29, 2022 by AllOfTheAllos

[AllOfTheAllos]

(Official, Valguero) Unpoddd wyverns and Xeno (the arthro Ill fully imprint) for some raising.

Arthros that I left out yesterday are adult now, moved the clean female to the first one, and for the rest built a centipede pit. Round, not too big, two walls high except for where I extended it up a bit to build a small platform with chairs on it. I mean, wouldn't be much of an arena without anywhere to sit and watch!

Put arthros in there, set them to aggressive with minimum range.

Spent some time luring wild dinos in there. The only thing they couldn't kill was a 145 bronto, and only because it escaped. It had so little health left that one hit form my argent finished it, though.

Fed dinos, bred arthros, sinos, gigas, yuties and spinos.

One sino egg stays (female, but it's a new stam mut. I haven't seen that since forever), both arthro eggs stay too.

Imprinted wyverns, podded them and Xeno. And that's all for today.

[AllOfTheAllos]

(Official, Valguero) Fed dinos, bred arthros, wyverns, gigas, spinos, yuties, rexes, dodos and argents. But forgot about argents, so oops.

Arthro eggs staying, nothing else was any good. Got a mut on giga, but weight, female, and melee not inherited, so cracked anyway.

Unpodded Xeno and wyverns, hatched arthros and sino form the last time and put them with the mae.

Added a leash to the arthro pit, spent some time luring dinos into the pit and watching arthros deal with them. They're strong!

Went to the trench, got milk, fed some of the wyverns.

Fed the gacha, not much, just enough to get a it over two element worth of dust.

Went to the trench again, got more milk, fed all the wyverns, podded wyverns and Xeno, gathered spoiled meat from all the troughs and put it into the tek trough, turned generator on - rest of arthros are staying out, so does the sino (she has plenty of chitin in the maewing).

(Official, Extinction) Fed the dinos.

(Official, Crystal Isles) Fed trike, checked if wyverns still good on crystals.

(Official, Lost Island) Fed the wyvern.

And that's all for today.