So what did you do in ARK today?

[riceandvegetable]

Aberration with friends. We wanted to risk it and look at the surface with only spinos. That went surprisingly well. Nobody died and we managed to hold out for the most part of the night. Proud of my tribemates! Drops however were underwhelming, and the one red-with-ring that appeared was too high level for us. That's what you get for rushing! But it was a great test for our spinos.

After much searching I finally found my dream spino to complement our weak melee stat, all event purple too. The new spino line looks pretty atrocious with hot pink and red, but they're strong! Like "take them to the red zone" strong.

We had fun with the Fear Evolved goodies that came our way and decorated our dinos and the base. Lots of basilisks around, though. Standard ones, ghost ones and one alpha. Alpha Basilisks were one of the last great unknowns of Aberration for me but with our strong tribe we triumphed easily.

Out of sight of my arachnophobic friend, I then rode my crab into the blue zone and had a long look around for drops, but only wound up risking my butt for compass and door blueprints.

Tribemate had used the opportunity to fill the base with breeding piles of featherlights and otters after a big metal run. Fluffy. When all was said and done we cleaned up and called it a day. Not much drama but many little successes.

[AllOfTheAllos]

(Official, Lost Island) Uploaded sinos, went to the magma nests to see if there's anything good. In the first cave - 2 eggs, 140 (same magma as previous ones), in the second - one 95 and one 55. Took eggs form the first cave, uploaded, returned home, fed dinos.

(Official, Valguero) Imprinted magmas, downloaded new eggs and sinos. Magmas are both male, both staying.

Did a bit of a wood run with my rollrat, then fed gachas for a bit, then zoomed around the base on hoversail.

Hatched drake. Yep, I'm right about wanting those colors all on the same drake. Looks good. This one goes to the leveling fodder fridge anyway, though - having right colors for once does NOT excuse the wrong melee.

Bred megatheriums, then took Death Of Bugs on a chitin run, since with my new tek storage I actually have a place for all of it.

Then took Alduin, did a bit of a cementing paste run.

Then fed gachas a bit more.

Then hatched gigas form the last time, and yeah, that new color IS interesting! So that one goes to the fridge for things that I might raise, rest - to the leveling fodder one. Hatched new magma eggs and put them with the maewing.

New sino is adult, moved him to the coop. Podded Kimmy, and my previous sino breeder, Bird Lord, is my new shoulder sino, as he's better. New allo soon grew up too, I named her Spicy Pumpkin Pie (don't question my naming choices)

Killed some of the podded dinos that I definitely won't need, podded some that I might need but not now (that includes most of the allos, Except for Midnight, Hellbeast, and Spicy Pumpkin Pie).

Bred sinos, gigas and allos, one sino good (clean female, right stats), allo good (couldn't be any other way - parents have all the right stats), gigas no good and will go to the "leveling fodder" fridge once hatched.

Megatherium finally born, podded for later, and that's all for today.

...

By the way: plans for the near future: take a good look at the fridge with babies that I intended to raise, raise what I STILL want to raise, and get rid of the rest. Thing is nearly full and I'm pretty sure that half the stuff in it is leftovers from breeding projects I completely lost interest in.

Edited October 31, 2022 by AllOfTheAllos

[AllOfTheAllos]

(Official, Extinction) Uploaded the last time's loot, wandered around harvesting lampposts for a pretty long while, uploaded the dust from that (24 stacks). Fed dinos.

(Official, Valguero) Downloaded the loot and dust, made element. Decluttered the baby fridge, killed most babies in it, and unpodded all remaining ones except for four (2 basilos, maewing, and the interesting color giga) with the maewing. Hatched the eggs I had form last breeding, too, allos and sino went  to the maewing, gigas- to the leveling fodder fridge. The tek troughs and maewing, of course, are filled near to bursting with all the necessary foods.

Imprinted magmas.

Bred drakes, rexes, and gigas. No luck. One giga has a cyan mutation, though. It's oxygen, but I'll see how it looks and decide whether it's an Exp giga or a raising giga after that.

Fed gachas for a bit, because even though I got all that dust form Ext, it never hurts to have a little bit more.

And that's all for today.

Edited November 1, 2022 by AllOfTheAllos

[Griffin998]

6 hours ago, AllOfTheAllos said:

cyan mutation

Ooh! Which region? Cyan could look really nice on the back with a darker blue or red on the underbelly.

Edited November 1, 2022 by Griffin998

[AllOfTheAllos]

2 minutes ago, Griffin998 said:

Ooh! Which region?

I already forgot, unfortunately. But it's either body or back, I definitely remember it being on first or second square in the incubator.

[Griffin998]

3 hours ago, AllOfTheAllos said:

But it's either body or back,

Either region would look really nice if you got the right combo colors. Very cool.

[AllOfTheAllos]

55 minutes ago, Griffin998 said:

if you got the right combo colors.

And I think I do. A long, long time ago I got two fail (stat-wise) muts that I kept AND RAISED for colors - one had Dark Warm Gray on body, other on belly. That should make for a nice giga.

[riceandvegetable]

Tried out the Panterra mod map, which was released in its 1.0 version yesterday. It's one of several maps by Project Sumero. Joined their discord, which is a super friendly community from what I've seen.

For now, there seems to be only one spawn point, on the desert island where you have trees - but you cannot punch them. Sacrilege. So I trekked nude across a huge, seemingly neverending bridge towards the mainland. I spotted several pelagornis and ichthyosaurs, but no land animals. But from the rough look of the textures and models there I guess the spawn is in one of the areas that haven't received their final polish yet. For now I could eat berries and leftover cactus, but without hide it would be difficult to get set up. And the landscape looked... not good in this area. I blindly ran land inwards until I got trapped in a series of giant hollow logs, with the only way out being a suicidal jump down.

I respawned and ran down the endless bridge again.

Near the end of the bridge I found a little (punchable) grove by the water, where five or so basilo corpses had washed up. These provided hide, so I could finally make a sleeping bag. I made a little camp there which I nicknamed "smelly beach" and even drank from the water.

When I turned around, I saw the first land creature, a little trilobite. I proceeded to whack it with several spears, which broke. Because that thing was lv. 300 and the text above it was so tiny that it was for all intents and purposes invisible. I still ate it. The dodos that began spawning were lv 400 plus, and I got myself a first dilophosaurus in that level range as well. Asked the discord if this was normal, it wasn't. So I went back to fix my settings, turns out the Official Difficulty Override was missing from my ini for whatever reason.

The last animal I tamed was a chonk of a Parasaur before the normalized levels took effect. Took said chonk on a trip to find a more finished area of the map, instead came home to Smelly Beach with a new saber, high level tek raptor, two dimorphs, a hyaenodon and a little lystro. In absence of cryos or soul traps we did the good old dino caravan back to camp, where I completed a little bob shack against the worst of the cold and logged off.

Edited November 2, 2022 by riceandvegetable

[AllOfTheAllos]

(Official, Valguero) Podded some of the newly-grown dinos, as well as some other adult ones (for example, no need to have Mega Terry out, since his son is nearly grown already, has his colors AND both parents' best stats).

Hatched the cyan giga, and yeah, she's cyan on back. Should look good enough, once mixed with dark warm gray.  Put her with a meat-filled maewing, filled the tek troughs with meat, too.

Moved the new sino to the coop, podded some weaker females - gotta do stats first, then maybe colors if I don't get anything good when breeding for stats.

Hatched other gigas, podded and put into the leveling fodder fridge.

Bred drakes, allos, gigas, spinos and sinos. One sino stays (male, previous best stats inherited and new best melee, 41), drake stays (right colors, unless I misremembered anything, almost right stats except for melee, female. If I'm not wrong about the colors, then I'll raise her and breed her back to Moss until I get one that's all right colors, all right stats). The rest was no good.

Fed gachas for some time.

(Official, Crystal Isles) Looked for high level tropeos. Found no tropeos at all. Fed dinos.

(Official, Fjordur) Got killed again. But I had nothing on me anyway, and my yuty killed and harvested the rex that killed me, so I didn't even need to do a meatrun to feed the dinos - the meat was ready!

(Official, Lost Island) Fed dinos.

That's all for now, will try to remember to log back on later to check on the giga.

...

(Official, Valguero) Checked on the giga, and yeah, she's doing fine. 7% grown, ready for imprint. Imprinted her, restacked meat in the maewing, and that's all for today.

Edited November 2, 2022 by AllOfTheAllos

[Griffin998]

2 minutes ago, AllOfTheAllos said:

cyan giga, and yeah, she's cyan on back. Should look good enough, once mixed with dark warm gray

Nice combo. Super bright cyan or slightly dull?

[AllOfTheAllos]

Just now, Griffin998 said:

Nice combo. Super bright cyan or slightly dull?

Just... Cyan? Color number 5. So I guess "super bright".

[Griffin998]

Huh. Cool. That's a nice contrast between the gray and the cyan :). If you've got stat mutations, you could try testing it on the little val broodmother. Be careful though-if the fight's going badly, just peace-those things can do a pretty decent amount of damage, and I think I've seen one with 2 million+ health (this was on difficulty 6).

[riceandvegetable]

On Panterrra, a 140 Pelagornis was attracted to Smelly Beach and I was close to unlocking the saddle, so I tamed it. I bred up a travelling dimorph friend and rode out on my tek raptor to keep exploring and find a better base spot. Found a better dimorph and had the old one follow, but a theri took offence and murdered it. Not long after, a curious event colored sino approached me and I ditched the new dimorph too, but that one survived and is currently safe at our new base spot. Before we found that, our group had grown by another tek raptor, the prettiest event iguanodon I ever owned and a dinopithecus. I'm almost disappointed that I got the uber monke so early in the game.

I'm still not convinced by how the map looks. The terrain is beautifully formed, extreme verticality and interesting shapes, but much of that is covered in a single green tiled texture which is a complete eyesore. Wonder if the devs simply looked at it for so long that they don't really perceive it any more. But around green ob, the landscape changed into an enchanted swampland that even makes Vanaheim look boring, and something as simple as a new set of ground textures made all the difference in the world. We found a naturally enclosed safe spot between mushrooms, rocks and the edge of a bioluminescent shallow lake. I set up spikes and a bed, left my new dinos and fast travelled back to Smelly Beach.

With the pelagornis saddle finally unlocked, I grabbed my smithy and transported it to the new place. I still hadn't found any crystal so I explored a nearby cave and harvested a few nodes. Didn't get much but enough for a handful of soul traps, a water jar and hopefully a spyglass. I need a doedic if I want to build there, and now I can realistically move one through the swamp. I noped out when a lightning wyvern showed up near the crystal cave and returned home.

Edited November 2, 2022 by riceandvegetable

[AllOfTheAllos]

10 hours ago, Griffin998 said:

Huh. Cool. That's a nice contrast between the gray and the cyan :). If you've got stat mutations, you could try testing it on the little val broodmother.

As for the stat muts - so far there's one melee mut on my current gigas. But no spider-testing would be needed - my current ones, even before the mut, had 200% base melee, and the Valg's broodmom was handled pretty well even by one of my previous, 125% melee ones.

[AllOfTheAllos]

(Official, Valguero) Early in the morning checked on the giga. She was doing fine, I imprinted her and moved remaining meat from the maewing to a tek trough.

Just now imprinted giga again, saddled my newly-grown megatherium (his name is Tyranid Eater) and went on a leveling/chitin run. Leveled him to 10000 health and 500+% melee, even killed an alpha (well, skeletal) carno!

Returned home, put chitin into the storage, topped up tek troughs, podded two newly-grown magmas, hatched drake (I was wrong, not all colors are right - wrong feathers. Off to the leveling fodder fridge she goes!), and that's all for now.

...

Checked on the giga (doing fine, troughs so full that no refill is needed), imprinted her.

Moved new sino male to the coop, podded old one. Bred sinos, drakes and rexes. One sino egg stays (female, clean, all right stats), drake and rex staying too (drake female, most right stats, this time really all the right colors, rex male, mut stats inherited).

And that's all for today.

Edited November 3, 2022 by AllOfTheAllos

[Griffin998]

13 hours ago, AllOfTheAllos said:

Valg's broodmom was handled pretty well even by one of my previous, 125% melee ones

Dang. Yeah, gigas are insane no matter the mutations. Just a wild tame could probably take on some bosses. Mutated ones could 100% take on the broodmother (if you could bring them into boss arenas) and maybe the thicc monkey (have you seen that behind? chonk 100).

[riceandvegetable]

Panterra... what even is this map? Mountains stacked upon mountains stacked upon mountains. It's the grandest thing in terms of scale I've ever seen. You could put hundreds of players there and they'd never meet each other. The size of the whole thing is disheartening. I just wanted a doedic... I flew on and on without finding a single one. Crossed into the redwoods biome, where a lot of the terrain is still not fixed or solid and then tried to find the south-west corner of the map. When my character left the drawn map, there was still more land. I spotted a little mission terminal and thought that would be a little easteregg to mark the corner... nope, there was still more land. My positon arrow left my mapbook altogether. More. Land. I'd been on that journey for an hour just flying in one direction and began to feel that I was doing it all wrong. This map is probably amazing on the cluster where people just need space! But imo totally unsuited for single players. Large parts of it look really rough as well but at the same time it's got sights that are almost shockingly beautiful, like Tree Biome at night. Anyway, I'll unsub for now unless I'll join the cluster... the community still seems extremely nice. Will be keeping the sino and the iguanodon though, they can live on Caballus with me.

[AllOfTheAllos]

(Official, Valguero) Checked on the giga, imprinted her, hatched eggs and podded babies. That's all for now.

...

Planned a 100 rune run using ARK wiki's map - only runes that are NOT in dangerous places (trenches, onyc-containing caves, deep redwoods). That got me 88 (plans changed a bit later, a few turned out to be in too dangerous areas, had to be replaced partially by ones in safe-ish caves, forgot about another, but 86 that I ended up with was good enough) in Midgard, rest in Asgard.

Lowered graphics' quality to as little as I can without it causing my eyes to try to leave my skull.

Unpodded my old bat, Konrad. He had saddle, which is fortunate. Put all of his accumulated during podding levels into stam. Repodded him, waited for server save, hopped onto a Fjordur server.

(Official, Fjordur) Spawned in Vannaland, South. Unpodded Konrad and went rune-hunting.

Got the nearest ones to my spawn, then went to that swamp island (sorry, don't remember the name. Most location names on Fjordur sound to me like a drunk Viking choking on gravel, and I can't memorize what I can barely read), grabbed the non-cave runes there.

Then Vardiland, grabbed all surface runes there.

Then the volcano island, that's where my plans had to be changed a bit - didn't realize while planning that a few runes there were too close to the trench.

Then island between the volcano and Vardiland, then Vardiland itself. Waited for night, grabbed runes in the cave with nameless venom.

When looking for the ones near Redwoods, spotted a decayed vault. Looted that. Couldn't get everything, but did take all jumping pads, a cryofridge, a transmitter, a replicator, tek double frame and door, some tek lights, and (my first time seeing one of those!) electronic binoculars.

Waited for nearest save (grabbed a couple of runes while at that) uploaded that sweet, sweet loot.

Finished the Midgard part of my run with the rune in Hidden Worlds and went to Asgard.

Wasn't hard to get the remaining runes there.

The whole run took me a bit over 5 hours. Would be less if it wasn't for extra-laggy megabases (I get it. Big bases are cool. But are all those astrocetus really necessary?).

Tried to travel back to Valguero.

Loading.

Loading.

Loading.

"You were kicked by BattleEye, reason: client not responding"

So there I am, my heart physically switching places with brain, judging by how it felt. and just generally nervous as hell.

So I try to log onto Valg.

Connection timeout.

\I waited for a little bit, tried again.

Took a looong time to load.

But finally, thankfully, not character creation menu, but survivor download one.

I download myself, I spawn on my bed, I grab my sino, I download all the loot, and that's all for now.

Later I'll log back on to top up the tek troughs, feed gachas, maybe hunt something for a bit of Exp, but right now I just need a break.

...

Okay, break's over. Placed some of the tek lights, stored the rest in a vault.

Tested the binoculars. A fun toy, but not much more. Spyglass is better - at least it doesn't require me to be on foot.

Replaced my house's door (upper one. I go outside by jumping off the balcony with my sino much more often than I do it by exiting like a normal human being through the door on first floor), and installed the new cryofridge.

Took Abaddon, went hunting. Killed a lot of hyaenodons and sabers, then went to the swamp, killed stuff there, too. Gonna take a lot more to push me to the next level, but I'm not in any hurry (especially since the engram I'm leveling (hoversail. Can't just be forever-careful with the only one I have!) for isn't available on Valg, and I think it'll be quite a long time before I'm brave enough to transfer again).

Returned home, topped up the tek trough for the giga. Imprinted giga (her final imprint!).

Unpodded drake, fed gachas for a while, most element went into generators.

Repodded drake (1% grown) and that's all for today.

Edited November 4, 2022 by AllOfTheAllos

[Griffin998]

22 hours ago, riceandvegetable said:

Panterra... what even is this map? Mountains stacked upon mountains stacked upon mountains. It's the grandest thing in terms of scale I've ever seen. You could put hundreds of players there and they'd never meet each other. The size of the whole thing is disheartening.

Now that's my kind of map. But then I play on console.

[Griffin998]

10 hours ago, AllOfTheAllos said:

Tried to travel back to Valguero.

Loading.

Loading.

Loading.

"You were kicked by BattleEye, reason: client not responding"

So there I am, my heart physically switching places with brain, judging by how it felt. and just generally nervous as hell.

So I try to log onto Valg.

Connection timeout.

\I waited for a little bit, tried again.

Took a looong time to load.

But finally, thankfully, not character creation menu, but survivor download one.

I download myself, I spawn on my bed, I grab my sino, I download all the loot, and that's all for now.

Later I'll log back on to top up the tek troughs, feed gachas, maybe hunt something for a bit of Exp, but right now I just need a break.

#ARKed

 

[AllOfTheAllos]

1 hour ago, Griffin998 said:

#ARKed

 

Well, it could have been worse (I mean, I was sure I'll lose my survivor and therefore everything I worked hard to get (or had mad luck to get. That piece of territory my base is built on? Pure luck). So I'd say 5/10 on the ARKedness scale: pretty bad, had potential to be seriously bad, but at the end of it did more damage to my nervous system than to anything actually important.

[Griffin998]

42 minutes ago, AllOfTheAllos said:

5/10 on the ARKedness scale:

Okay then. Honestly, the only time I've really been #ARKed is when ARK crashed a couple times (not in a row). I do play on console though, so...

[riceandvegetable]

I had that today... wanted to get an artifact on Caballus for a quest that's been updated. The cave is Rockwell themed and near the end there's a part that I call "the Thyla room". That's where the game decided to crash.

That was the final straw. Did a massive rollback of my display drivers and have my fingers crossed that this fixes the increased crashes.

[AllOfTheAllos]

(Official, Extinction) Chomped some lampposts, uploaded dust. Fed dinos. 

(Official, Crystal Isles) Looked for high-level tropeos. Found none, also my kibble was stolen by a pego and my ptera ate it when I killed the pego. Oops. Found a tropeo after all, right near my base. Not high-level at all, though - only 15. Okay colors, though. Trapped, regular-bolaed, hurt to make it starve, chain-bolaed, tamed with raw meat (and a bit of prime). Podded, will upload later.

(Official, Fjordur) There were two alphas outside. A raptor and a carno. Had to kill them. Fed dinos.

(Official, Lost Island) Fed dinos.

(Official, Valguero) Downloaded dust. Bred drakes in case I'll get something even better than what I already have. And, well, the scales are wrong, but rest of colors and stats are right, and it's a female. So I'm keeping her, will raise her and the previous one both. And that's all for now.

...

Okay, so this second part of today was largely to test a little something. You see, I did that thing where a flash drive is formatted and used for extra RAM, wanted to see if it'll affect my ARK experience, and... IT DID. Looks like most of my "lag problems" were just RAM problems, actually.

So, (Official, Valguero) Unpodded the drake and left her to grow. Took my rollrat, went on a wood run. For the first time ever, was able to roll for 1/3 worth of his stam instead of a stutter stopping me after a few meters. Good sign already, though can be "blamed" on the server feeling unusually good.

Then, after moving all the wood to the vault, I took my hoversail.

Out of the base I went and on the lake, right past a rather laggy base, with a tower, a few large, fully enclosed boxes, and a ton of dinos. You get the picture. Not the worst, but definitely not a "just zoom past it" one for someone with a weak PC like mine. Wandering near it could result in a hard time turning back, so laggy it can get.

Well, didn't exactly zoom past it, but was only slowed to the minimum of about 12 FPS - still high enough to stay in control, turning as I please and even doing tricks when it went a bit higher.

Then took my ice egg-run wyvern. Went to the trench, but not right away - first a few loops around that same base - maybe on hoversail I just wasn't close enough to be affected?

Nope. Flew around it fine. Same low-but-still-not-a-slideshow FPS.

To the trench I went, circling a few more big bases on my way - and flying around them just fine. No need to stay high up, out of everything's rendering range, to enjoy a mostly-uninterrumted flight.

In the trench killed a few wyverns. No lag there, either. Not surprising at that point.

Back, and on my way back - a nice loop over a base with a few astrocetus floating above it. And still went nice.

Returned home, the drake was ready to have her first meal, so I logged off and on to

(Official, Fjordur). Took my chainsaw and my yuty, went into the cave. About 2 seconds to go in - unusually fast. So, definitely the flash drive thing doing wonders, and not just my main server feeling good.

Harvested one node, 15 venom. Waited for upload, killed some stuff in the mean time. Uploaded, exited the cave. About 5 seconds. Again, unusually fast. Normally it's more like a full minute. Returned home and put the chainsaw away.

(Official, Valguero) Fed drake, hunted with my bat, made elixir, used it on the drake and fed her again. Repodded her and that's all for today.

...

Okay, wasn't ALL for today because I was still awake, and event started, and update dropped. So

(Unmodded singleplayer, the Island) Spawned a few low-level wild carchas and tried to figure out their taming on my own. Then saw the actual method on Reddit, felt dumb, tried that, yep, it works, it's good, it probably can be done (wonder about best trap, classic box with ramp, but huge and one wall a tek behem gate? Well, considering that I play on Official PVE, I'll probably have to make do with whatever whoever claimed the territory comes up with).

(Official, Valguero) Unpodded drakes and the rex (the one that was finally male and with both mut stats), took Ekimma (my bat) and a shotgun with some ammo, and went to check giga spawns because according to another comment on Reddit, that's where carchas are maybe supposed to be and at the moment that's all the info I have, so might as well try. One was empty, other two contained low-level gigas. Returned home with nothing.

Took Abaddon and went killing stuff. Tek dino hunting was somewhat profitable, got enough dust for 1 element and 60 shards. Also, I got a level and Abaddon got one, too. Mine went into weight, just because 350 is neater than 340, and his, naturally, into melee. He's a giga after all. Though it was a pity to lose his 404% melee - I mean, 406% is better, bot 404 is FUNNIER.

Returned home, decided that might as well get some more levels while they're fast, unpodded some fail gigas and shot them. That got 3 levels for me (all into crafting skill) and 10 for my sino (all into weight).

Drakes got hungry enough, logged on to

(Official, Fjordur), took chainsaw and yuty, and... There were no nodes.

Waited, nothing.

Went outside, took bat, wandered around for a while, returned - nothing.

Logged off for

(Official, Valguero) again: bred gigas (all fails), imprinted one drake, podded both, and that's actually all for today.

Edited November 6, 2022 by AllOfTheAllos

[riceandvegetable]

Did the current version of the Caballus Adventure, which was a lengthy dungeon crawl without any crashes, thanks to the driver rollback I guess. The cave got a few extra details, like the demented scribbles of a previous explorer, which were wonderfully creepy, and a new numbers riddle. It took me a while to realize what I was looking for but then I gradually found them all. They unlocked an absolutely stunning room with bright nodes of "Shimmer Element", which is going to be used in a future update. I stuffed my pockets full. Getting all the stuff back to the exit transmitter was a bit of a chore, since that is in the center of a jumping puzzle in a giant lava room, but I've had enough forced practice to be halfways competent at that. Teleported out, brought loot home feeling very pleased with myself, updated cave guide on reddit.