Singleplayer/Solo question

[Ocro]

I have been considering getting back into the game a little bit, but I don't want to deal with the online community (for obvious reasons, I hope).  I understand that there is an option for singleplayer/offline servers meant to adjust for solo play.  Does this option make all content soloable, including bosses, or would it be better to seek a specific mod?  If there are mods to better adjust the experience to a solo-oriented one, which mod(s) would you recommend?

 

Thanks in advance.

[ChocolateCake]

The single player  mode gives you full customization for how you want ARK to be. Want to level too 100 in an hour? max out all xp modifers. Want your Dinos to be near invincible? max out the TAME dino modifiers, or even just use Admin commands if your feeling cheeky.

The point is... in solo player it's whatever your comfortable with. 

[ChargingParacerParacer]

One thing this game has done VERY well is the amount of customization that single player does provide. You can make it easier or harder to suit your tastes. Definitely check mods out if you have the means though.

[Ocro]

22 minutes ago, ChocolateCake said:

The single player  mode gives you full customization for how you want ARK to be. Want to level too 100 in an hour? max out all xp modifers. Want your Dinos to be near invincible? max out the TAME dino modifiers, or even just use Admin commands if your feeling cheeky.

The point is... in solo player it's whatever your comfortable with. 

That's the thing, though.  Everything is so sensitive, I have no idea what is optimal for something that is reasonably challenging, not too easy, and not too hard.

EDIT: I know how to do too easy; I once made a mod for tek armor that is craftable with 1 stone per piece and consumes no element.

[ChocolateCake]

Well easiest thing to do is play on single player for a bit without changing anything, and if you feel something is unbalanced for you change the settings. ( you are not locked to any setting once you play single player) 

They way I did single player was I boosted crafted xp to 2X and I put Taming up A LOT. otherwise you'll be sitting there 8 hours trying to tame a Rex or something. Otherwise I'd recommend just trying out Official PVE and playing it for a bit and youll know what needs to be changed after about 2 - 3 hours of playing.

[Ocro]

1 minute ago, ChocolateCake said:

Well easiest thing to do is play on single player for a bit without changing anything, and if you feel something is unbalanced for you change the settings. ( you are not locked to any setting once you play single player) 

They way I did single player was I boosted crafted xp to 2X and I put Taming up A LOT. otherwise you'll be sitting there 8 hours trying to tame a Rex or something. Otherwise I'd recommend just trying out Official PVE and playing it for a bit and youll know what needs to be changed after about 2 - 3 hours of playing.

Thank you for the advice.  I have already started a singleplayer save with default stats and the solo play option checked.  It's a little too easy, I think, so I will probably turn up the difficulty.

On that topic, I've always found the difficulty slider to be the most sensitive of all.  Do you have a medium-tier difficulty value that you would recommend?

[PaleoJoe]

I tested a bunch of settings in single player before setting up my Xbox dedicated server. If you go to facebook.com/DungeonsAndDinosaurs you will find a list of every setting available (without the PC configuration options) and what I have set it to. My players absolutely love it. It is not too hard, not too easy, but just right. It also gives a dungeons and dragons type of feel to it. The list is in the About page.

[Ocro]

3 minutes ago, PaleoJoe said:

I tested a bunch of settings in single player before setting up my Xbox dedicated server. If you go to facebook.com/DungeonsAndDinosaurs you will find a list of every setting available (without the PC configuration options) and what I have set it to. My players absolutely love it. It is not too hard, not too easy, but just right. It also gives a dungeons and dragons type of feel to it. The list is in the About page.

Interesting.  I'll try it out.

For reference, notable attributes:
Difficulty: 0.2
XP Mult: 1.5
Taming Speed: 2.1
Harvest Amount: 1.5
Food and Water drain: 0.4

[HalfSlabBacon]

34 minutes ago, Ocro said:

That's the thing, though.  Everything is so sensitive, I have no idea what is optimal for something that is reasonably challenging, not too easy, and not too hard.

EDIT: I know how to do too easy; I once made a mod for tek armor that is craftable with 1 stone per piece and consumes no element.

So You're the guy that made that overpowered mod. ?

24 minutes ago, Ocro said:

Thank you for the advice.  I have already started a singleplayer save with default stats and the solo play option checked.  It's a little too easy, I think, so I will probably turn up the difficulty.

On that topic, I've always found the difficulty slider to be the most sensitive of all.  Do you have a medium-tier difficulty value that you would recommend?

If you want increased difficulty try this:

Turn single player settings off as it limits Max difficulty and makes everything faster/easier.

Override official difficulty set to 10 (Max level 300)

Wild dino multipliers set melee and health to 2 times.

Have fun getting your butt kicked.

[Ocro]

4 minutes ago, HalfSlabBacon said:

So You're the guy that made that overpowered mod. ?

If you want increased difficulty try this:

Turn single player settings off as it limits Max difficulty and makes everything faster/easier.

Override official difficulty set to 10 (Max level 300)

Wild dino multipliers set melee and health to 2 times.

Have fun getting your butt kicked.

If you're familiar with such a mod, I can assure you it's not mine.  I kept mine private because I couldn't get the damn tek boots to absorb falling damage.

I said I want a challenge, not to get pummeled into the dirt.  So far PaleoJoe's settings are working out quite well.  Looking forward to seeing how they hold up in lategame/endgame.

[HalfSlabBacon]

3 minutes ago, Ocro said:

If you're familiar with such a mod, I can assure you it's not mine.  I kept mine private because I couldn't get the damn tek boots to absorb falling damage.

I said I want a challenge, not to get pummeled into the dirt.  So far PaleoJoe's settings are working out quite well.  Looking forward to seeing how they hold up in lategame/endgame.

Lol... I was being easy on you. My servers Max level is 500 and in addition to the double melee and health, wilds also have double resistance. ?

[Ocro]

2 minutes ago, HalfSlabBacon said:

Lol... I was being easy on you. My servers Max level is 500 and in addition to the double melee and health, wilds also have double resistance. ?

I wonder if anyone has ever raised the difficulty to obscene levels, but balanced it out by tweaking the per level stat multipliers.  Basically it would be superhumans vs super dinos.

[HalfSlabBacon]

2 minutes ago, Ocro said:

I wonder if anyone has ever raised the difficulty to obscene levels, but balanced it out by tweaking the per level stat multipliers.  Basically it would be superhumans vs super dinos.

Yes, it's been done. However over level 1000 wild there's a stat reset that can happen to tames on server reset. Over 250 levels on any one stat will also cause the stat reset on restart. Max level 750 (difficulty 25) is about as high as you want to go.

I have Max player level at 250 and 250 level ups for tames, hence the super wilds to balance things out.

[Aushegun]

I play single player on PS4.

Difficulty 5

Taming speed is 3x

Hatching 50x ( I think is stupid to watch an egg incubate for hours)

and maturing is at 5x 

I also tweaked spoilage to last longer before going bad by 2x.

Other than that, pretty much the default settings.

I find it to be a pretty good balance. But still hard enough for the bigger dinos. In fact, I have yet to be able to tame a Giga nor kill one. 

[Ocro]

On 9/25/2017 at 2:05 PM, Aushegun said:

I play single player on PS4.

Difficulty 5

Taming speed is 3x

Hatching 50x ( I think is stupid to watch an egg incubate for hours)

and maturing is at 5x 

I also tweaked spoilage to last longer before going bad by 2x.

Other than that, pretty much the default settings.

I find it to be a pretty good balance. But still hard enough for the bigger dinos. In fact, I have yet to be able to tame a Giga nor kill one. 

Sorry for the late reply.  Is ascension possible?  How do bosses scale at these settings?

[Aushegun]

I have not even tried Ascension.  This summer I spent weeks breeding and building up a Rex & Allo Army to take on the Bosses. I defeated the Brood Mother and King Kong and was just shocked and disappointed by the low level of Element I was rewarded with. I then tried the Dragon, and was wiped out.   Looking at the TEK tier stuff, I was amazed how much Element I would actually need to build that stuff.  I would have to farm the bosses for months just to get enough resources. NOT WORTH THE TIME!

So I have not ascended.  But I did use the Ascend2 cheat to play Ragnarok.

[Ocro]

12 hours ago, Aushegun said:

I have not even tried Ascension.  This summer I spent weeks breeding and building up a Rex & Allo Army to take on the Bosses. I defeated the Brood Mother and King Kong and was just shocked and disappointed by the low level of Element I was rewarded with. I then tried the Dragon, and was wiped out.   Looking at the TEK tier stuff, I was amazed how much Element I would actually need to build that stuff.  I would have to farm the bosses for months just to get enough resources. NOT WORTH THE TIME!

So I have not ascended.  But I did use the Ascend2 cheat to play Ragnarok.

You're on consoles so you don't have the luxury of mods.  I got EZTek, which lets you craft element with 20 polymer and 20 ingots.  Even still, the resource demand is absolutely nuts, so I feel your pain to some extent.  I am currently working on a cloning facility in the northern biome.  I will have teleportation, a cloning chamber, a ton of kairukus to breed and farm for organic polymer, and eventually I will clone an army of rexes and use this army for ascension.  Before I accomplish this, I need to gather tens of thousands of obsidian, ingots, and cementing paste.

[HalfSlabBacon]

48 minutes ago, Ocro said:

You're on consoles so you don't have the luxury of mods.  I got EZTek, which lets you craft element with 20 polymer and 20 ingots.  Even still, the resource demand is absolutely nuts, so I feel your pain to some extent.  I am currently working on a cloning facility in the northern biome.  I will have teleportation, a cloning chamber, a ton of kairukus to breed and farm for organic polymer, and eventually I will clone an army of rexes and use this army for ascension.  Before I accomplish this, I need to gather tens of thousands of obsidian, ingots, and cementing paste.

Oh God, I'd be careful of Trendy mod devs like NarKotix, they come on strong with a million weakly coded mods and bamb, leave you hanging with broken stuff! Sometimes it crashes servers beyond repair! (Been there done that!)

You want a good element mod, look up Elementor... Sound coding based on Dev Kit. Everything's vanilla & you can customize your element crafting costs based on server settings. Zero Risk! Takes time to learn how to pick these.  

[Ulta]

If you have singleplayer turned OFF, I am uncertain what kind of luck you'll face when it comes to the bosses and Tek cave. I know when it's turned ON that the bosses are scaled down specifically so that one person supposedly can take them down (even on Hard. Gasp!), least that's apparently what WC claims.

Weird too, because it's singleplayer...why would you even give them the option? Maybe in case people do want harder mode? Guess we'll find out if you turned it off. Just don't be surprised if the bosses seem impossible, since there probably is a chance that with singleplayer 'off' the bosses might be scaled for more players (even though it's...single player...WC you are confusing often). Guess you'll find out when you get that far in the game, but other things might get affected if you change it down the rode (I'm unsure if your tames and such will magically become a little stronger or weaker if you changed the singleplayer setting later for example, so if you do change it, take note of your dino's beforehand, so you'll know for sure if changing it did anything).

Other than the bosses though, you really won't need mods from the sounds of it. Only include mods in your singleplayer if you feel you really want whatever it offers. Like for me, I'd rather larger stacks on my items, so I found a stacking mod. Also found one or two 'building' mods that had more desirable building textures and pieces. But singleplayer already can change a lot, from taming speed, to increasing or descreasing stat gains, to less known things like turning damage numbers on (so you can see how much damage you are doing to something), making you able to build where beacon drops, to changing what spawns even (don't like those pesky thief birds? Put dodo's in it's place and let it rain dodo's!).

For future reference, it's always best to just start vanilla and then eventually you get a 'feel' for what you wanna change. In the end, it's not very hard to go right into your singleplayer 'server' settings and changing the things that the local in-game screen doesn't have (like the aforementioned visual damage numbers). If you wanna know how ot do it I can explain if you are interested.

[Ocro]

On 10/5/2017 at 8:51 PM, HalfSlabBacon said:

Oh God, I'd be careful of Trendy mod devs like NarKotix, they come on strong with a million weakly coded mods and bamb, leave you hanging with broken stuff! Sometimes it crashes servers beyond repair! (Been there done that!)

You want a good element mod, look up Elementor... Sound coding based on Dev Kit. Everything's vanilla & you can customize your element crafting costs based on server settings. Zero Risk! Takes time to learn how to pick these.  

This mod looks pretty solid.  If EZTek crashes my save, I won't really mind, as I start fresh pretty often anyway, but I intend to use this one if/when it does happen.

[Duskwillow]

I play my singleplayer games on Difficulty 8 (max level 240).

On 9/22/2017 at 8:12 PM, ChocolateCake said:

Well easiest thing to do is play on single player for a bit without changing anything, and if you feel something is unbalanced for you change the settings. ( you are not locked to any setting once you play single player) 

They way I did single player was I boosted crafted xp to 2X and I put Taming up A LOT. otherwise you'll be sitting there 8 hours trying to tame a Rex or something. Otherwise I'd recommend just trying out Official PVE and playing it for a bit and youll know what needs to be changed after about 2 - 3 hours of playing.

This is the best strategy in my opinion, and the easiest way to customize the game for how you want to play and how much time you have (or want) to sink into the game and it's various activities.