finally got my first ridable dino! need gameplay advice.

[Soapstone]

i feel it took me WAY too long to figure out how to tame the dinos that aren't dodo birds or dilophosaurs. it took me a few tries as well as i had one that i knocked unconscious die by drowning in the water (Parasaur), one die from a titanoboa after knocking it unconcious (Carbonemys), and have ran out of tranq arrows as well. My first ridable that i saddled was the Parasaur, and i have all the materials for a Carbonemys saddle except for the hide which i am working on collecing right now, have the Carbo tamed and waiting at my starter base.

I am lvl 43, and just got the pike and the metal pickaxe and axe made, I also have a raft. i feel i am still confused as to a a lot of the game mechanics so far. i have visited the red obelisk on the island near the the easy area starting point, and have no idea what i am supposed to do, have been giving it the spare implants from when i die. I have no idea where to go to find the artifacts, i have maybe 3-5 notes found so far.

any advice for what to do now?

[StabbyBobby]

Tame a handful of dodos, one male, the rest, female.  Keep them in a group inside your base somewhere.

While you wait for the females to lay you some eggs, tame a couple of raptors with raw meat.  You should bolo them first, it makes them easier to knock out.  Also, tame a trike.  Can't bolo trikes, gonna wanna kind of circle it will tranqing it.  Aim for the body on a  trike, not the head.

The raptors will help you get meat, the trike will help you get berries.

When you have about 30 dodo eggs, make a cooking pot and look up the recipe for dodo egg kibble.  Make all that you can.

Use the aforementioned kibble to tame a good ptera.  They are easy to tame:  bolo it, tranq it in the head, keep some narcotics handy to keep it unconscious, and feed the kibble.  Takes about an hour, do 2 at a time if you can, it's more efficient, and you might lose one.  Use the starve taming method, because if anything goes wrong you keep your kibbibbles.

 

Once you have a ptera, the sky's the limit, but I'd suggest the following:

• female dilos for eggs.
• ankylo for gathering metal (dilo egg kibble)
• doedicurus for gathering stone (dilo egg kibble)
• low level beaver to gather wood (tamed with non-berry crops iirc)
• icthysaurus for a water mount (use dodo egg kibble, get that oil and pearls, your first nonviolent tame probably)
• dung beetle for fertilizer (tame with dookies, nonviolent tame)
• if you don't already have em, you need a smithy, forges, mortar / pestles, cooking pot, preserving bins, et cetera

 

Good luck.

 

TLDR? 

dodo egg farm.

dilo egg farm.

tame what you can with the above two kibbles.

[Ganelon]

Good on you, mate. Thing to remember is... don't be afraid to go for it. Don't be afraid to put up a tame trap, either. Make a 4x4 wood structure with ramps on one end and 2x tall door frames all around. Aggro a trike and run up the ramp so it follows you... jump in the trap and out the doorframe on the other end. Then hit it with tranqs. You will drop it before it breaks through the wood.

Boom... trike is in tame... and reasonably protected...especially if you put doors in the frames to keep out dilos and rapters.

Just remember... be kind and destroy a tame trap you are done with.

[Mrstcrook69]

Man all that work on taming all those dinos and getting eggs for kibble sounds EXHAUSTING lol...I use prime meat and mejo berries and sacrifice the small percentage myself. No need for all that extra work,time and clutter UNLESS the breeding route is the way you want to play(there's LOTS of different ways to play)so to each their own.

ARK is one of the hardest games to play when you're new. There's no instructions. No tutorial and the best of all..no guidance. You are completely free to do whatever you want.

The obelisk are for summoning the boss battles. Theres three of them and each color represent a boss. Green for the giant spider which is easiest. Blue for the giant monkey which is medium and red is for a dragon which is pretty much impossible unless you "cheat" in some way. Trust me when I say you are a LONG ways away from even challenging the green boss on easy...im lv99 and currently building an army for my first attempt...so don't get too caught up with that just yet.

The artifacts are in caves around the map. The caves are well hidden and FILLED with every danger you can imagine from unbearable weather conditions to super strong dinos that only live in the caves and more. Tread very carefully and some research into what exactly is in store for you never hurts. 

A taming raft or just having the parts for a taming pen on your parasaur will do you wonders. Theres videos on youtube..but with either method you can pretty much tame any land dino with relative ease. 

And as said earlier, once you get a Ptera the game opens up alot...use him to lure an argentavis (giant eagle) into a taming pen and boom. You got yourself a fighter flyer with decent carrying weight so you can scout safely and carry almost anything you need. 

It's overwhelming when you first start..but I also found the challenge very rewarding..hopefully you do as well and continue to play...and become addicted like most who play haha

 

[LokiTDD]

2 hours ago, Mrstcrook69 said:

Man all that work on taming all those dinos and getting eggs for kibble sounds EXHAUSTING lol...I use prime meat and mejo berries and sacrifice the small percentage myself. No need for all that extra work,time and clutter UNLESS the breeding route is the way you want to play(there's LOTS of different ways to play)so to each their own.

ARK is one of the hardest games to play when you're new. There's no instructions. No tutorial and the best of all..no guidance. You are completely free to do whatever you want.

The obelisk are for summoning the boss battles. Theres three of them and each color represent a boss. Green for the giant spider which is easiest. Blue for the giant monkey which is medium and red is for a dragon which is pretty much impossible unless you "cheat" in some way. Trust me when I say you are a LONG ways away from even challenging the green boss on easy...im lv99 and currently building an army for my first attempt...so don't get too caught up with that just yet.

The artifacts are in caves around the map. The caves are well hidden and FILLED with every danger you can imagine from unbearable weather conditions to super strong dinos that only live in the caves and more. Tread very carefully and some research into what exactly is in store for you never hurts. 

A taming raft or just having the parts for a taming pen on your parasaur will do you wonders. Theres videos on youtube..but with either method you can pretty much tame any land dino with relative ease. 

And as said earlier, once you get a Ptera the game opens up alot...use him to lure an argentavis (giant eagle) into a taming pen and boom. You got yourself a fighter flyer with decent carrying weight so you can scout safely and carry almost anything you need. 

It's overwhelming when you first start..but I also found the challenge very rewarding..hopefully you do as well and continue to play...and become addicted like most who play haha

 

Argentavis are more closely related to vultures than eagles iirc 

[Rintrahhh]

Don't feel as though you need to hurry. Remember to take in the scenery while you're on land mounts because once you start flying you will begin to miss out on these beautiful maps. 

[Baton]

try official pvp 

[TranqRex]

8 hours ago, Soapstone said:

i feel it took me WAY too long to figure out how to tame the dinos that aren't dodo birds or dilophosaurs. it took me a few tries as well as i had one that i knocked unconscious die by drowning in the water (Parasaur), one die from a titanoboa after knocking it unconcious (Carbonemys), and have ran out of tranq arrows as well. My first ridable that i saddled was the Parasaur, and i have all the materials for a Carbonemys saddle except for the hide which i am working on collecing right now, have the Carbo tamed and waiting at my starter base.

I am lvl 43, and just got the pike and the metal pickaxe and axe made, I also have a raft. i feel i am still confused as to a a lot of the game mechanics so far. i have visited the red obelisk on the island near the the easy area starting point, and have no idea what i am supposed to do, have been giving it the spare implants from when i die. I have no idea where to go to find the artifacts, i have maybe 3-5 notes found so far.

any advice for what to do now?

Some decent advice already given above - it depends on what you're wanting out of the game really? There is a progression model (called Ascension) involving fighting bosses, traversing ARKs etc. Are you playing single player? Official servers? PvE/PvP?

The red obelisk (or indeed any of them) is largely useless unless you want to fight a boss or transfer to another ARK (e.g. Scorched Earth), the implants you can just discard when you die, there's no need to keep them. The artefacts you get from caves and these are spread out across The Island and vary in difficulty. The Explorer Notes, Rockwell Recipes etc are also spread out but on the surface, just 'hidden' most of the time - for example, at ruins or behind boulders. These will give you a temporary (5 mins I think) XP boost so it can be useful to only collect one when you're planning on getting XP, whether that's using a decent dino to go on a killing rampage or using the industrial grinder, or killing an alpha creature. You'll need other items to summon the bosses too, like Argentavis talons, Rex arms and so on. There's a list on the wiki that'll tell you what goes with what and to be honest, you'll probably need to have a good read through that and check some videos to understand a lot of the game - it gets quite involved!

[s710]

Also, a raptor at low levels will help at gathering meat/hide. And its super easy to tame, really.

And a ptera is also incredibly easy to tame at low levels, even without kibble.

Those two you should probably get early on for mobility and meat/hide gathering.

[edit] Oh and you might want to bookmark and heavily use http://www.dododex.com/taming/raptor. It will give you all the exact details of 1) how to knock something out 2) what to feed it 3) how long it will take to complete. Of course not only for raptors, you can search/use it for any dino in ark.

[MirageUK]

If on PvP - get good quickly or expect to lose everything.  If PvE just take your time, learn the environment and build up your army of helpful dinosaurs.

We started with dodos, pteranodon (before they increased level requirement to prevent beginners going airbourne too soon and "skipping" content)... then Argentivis, Doedicurus (stone gatherer), Anklyo (metal/flint/oil gatherer) and lucked out and managed to tranq a low flying quetz into the side of a hill where it got stuck and we could knock it out and tame our first.

Now we have most animals on The Island with a LOT of high level breeded Rexes for the boss battles.

Couple of sites that I find invaluable:

• ARK Wiki (All things ark, recipes, various images/maps etc.)
  • https://ark.gamepedia.com/ARK_Survival_Evolved_Wiki
• DodoDex (Taming helper/calculator/timer)
  • http://www.dododex.com
• Ginfo ARK Map(s) (resource maps for cave locations etc.)
  • https://ark.ginfo.gg/islands/

 

[Aushegun]

I'll be honest, I started playing ARK after seeing some YouTube videos of the game. When I started playing, it was confusing and I died a ton.  But I made the decision to use YouTube tutorial videos to learn more about the game, and tactics.

Those videos REALLY helped.

Also, many of the post above on this thread have some great advice.  Remember The ARK Wiki website is your friend. I still use it all the time!

[RageQuitter]

17 hours ago, StabbyBobby said:

Tame a handful of dodos, one male, the rest, female.  Keep them in a group inside your base somewhere.

While you wait for the females to lay you some eggs, tame a couple of raptors with raw meat.  You should bolo them first, it makes them easier to knock out.  Also, tame a trike.  Can't bolo trikes, gonna wanna kind of circle it will tranqing it.  Aim for the body on a  trike, not the head.

The raptors will help you get meat, the trike will help you get berries.

When you have about 30 dodo eggs, make a cooking pot and look up the recipe for dodo egg kibble.  Make all that you can.

Use the aforementioned kibble to tame a good ptera.  They are easy to tame:  bolo it, tranq it in the head, keep some narcotics handy to keep it unconscious, and feed the kibble.  Takes about an hour, do 2 at a time if you can, it's more efficient, and you might lose one.  Use the starve taming method, because if anything goes wrong you keep your kibbibbles.

 

Once you have a ptera, the sky's the limit, but I'd suggest the following:

• female dilos for eggs.
• ankylo for gathering metal (dilo egg kibble)
• doedicurus for gathering stone (dilo egg kibble)
• low level beaver to gather wood (tamed with non-berry crops iirc)
• icthysaurus for a water mount (use dodo egg kibble, get that oil and pearls, your first nonviolent tame probably)
• dung beetle for fertilizer (tame with dookies, nonviolent tame)
• if you don't already have em, you need a smithy, forges, mortar / pestles, cooking pot, preserving bins, et cetera

 

Good luck.

 

TLDR? 

dodo egg farm.

dilo egg farm.

tame what you can with the above two kibbles.

Forgot to mention crops, no good getting all them eggs then not having any veggies to make kibble 

You'll need rockcarrots & citronal to make dodo & dilo kibble but if you want to kibble tame then you'll need to set up a small farm with all 4 types of veggies, you'll also need cooked meat jerky for dilo kibble so need to get some oil and put it in a preserving bin with cooked meat & sparkpowder.

[SmokeyB]

14 hours ago, Mrstcrook69 said:

Man all that work on taming all those dinos and getting eggs for kibble sounds EXHAUSTING lol...I use prime meat and mejo berries and sacrifice the small percentage myself. No need for all that extra work,time and clutter UNLESS the breeding route is the way you want to play(there's LOTS of different ways to play)so to each their own.

ARK is one of the hardest games to play when you're new. There's no instructions. No tutorial and the best of all..no guidance. You are completely free to do whatever you want.

The obelisk are for summoning the boss battles. Theres three of them and each color represent a boss. Green for the giant spider which is easiest. Blue for the giant monkey which is medium and red is for a dragon which is pretty much impossible unless you "cheat" in some way. Trust me when I say you are a LONG ways away from even challenging the green boss on easy...im lv99 and currently building an army for my first attempt...so don't get too caught up with that just yet.

The artifacts are in caves around the map. The caves are well hidden and FILLED with every danger you can imagine from unbearable weather conditions to super strong dinos that only live in the caves and more. Tread very carefully and some research into what exactly is in store for you never hurts. 

A taming raft or just having the parts for a taming pen on your parasaur will do you wonders. Theres videos on youtube..but with either method you can pretty much tame any land dino with relative ease. 

And as said earlier, once you get a Ptera the game opens up alot...use him to lure an argentavis (giant eagle) into a taming pen and boom. You got yourself a fighter flyer with decent carrying weight so you can scout safely and carry almost anything you need. 

It's overwhelming when you first start..but I also found the challenge very rewarding..hopefully you do as well and continue to play...and become addicted like most who play haha

 

Nah it was good advice they gave you mate,  a few dodos and a carrot crop plot and you will be able to tame strong pteras really fast,  it will open up the game to you. 

A trike will give you more berry's than you can use,  make taming and eating easy,  plus strong defence no more dying.

Then all the gathering dinos will help you build mega fast,  it will be like a different game for you.

[Soapstone]

i am trying to do as much as possible without a wiki or youtube vids. i am confused about what a taming group is supposed to be for.

sadly, soon after obtaining my parasaur, 2 raptors came at me and killed my ride, and i barely managed to kill them before i croaked as well, just made a pike. however i am now near the red obelisk, and as you guys have said they are not useful to me without the artifacts, i have come here for no reason, and may potentially die trying to get back to my base. hopefully i can get back safely with leather collect to use to make a carbonemys saddle, only missing the leather atm.

i found like 3 notes that told about the species on the ark near each other and then 1 by itself and another which was helena's notes #7.

still only got leather armor, have no idea how to get obsidian so i can craft scissors and get rid of my long facial hair!

[Mrstcrook69]

5 hours ago, SmokeyB said:

Nah it was good advice they gave you mate,  a few dodos and a carrot crop plot and you will be able to tame strong pteras really fast,  it will open up the game to you. 

A trike will give you more berry's than you can use,  make taming and eating easy,  plus strong defence no more dying.

Then all the gathering dinos will help you build mega fast,  it will be like a different game for you.

As I said to each their own. I personally don't find the time,clutter and resources to be worth using kibble. Especially in early game dinos 

Example: A level 1 trike needs 4 carno kibble...thats atleast two carno tames first so that's going to take atleast a bow and 15-20 tranqs for a lv1 Carno. Now double that. That's alot of resources right there. And you might need a taming trap..or two. So now you got your two Carnos..time to build a breeding pen..aka more time and resources. Ok you got some eggs...still not done...gonna need a crop plot and all the necessary pipes for arigation...aka more resources and Engrams..now you got your veggies growing but once again time is against you. 

OR you could just pick 50 mejo berries by hand..no resources needed and about 5mins...grab your one bow and 25 tranqs  (needed to get one Carno) and go get yourself a trike in about 5% of the time and resources it'll take the kibble way..all for what?

You save exactly 20 mins with a lv1 trike using kibble over mejo berries...youll spend WAY more time getting everything to make kibble guaranteed. But again to each their own..i have mad respect for you breeders..i couldn't do it myself.

13 minutes ago, Soapstone said:

i am trying to do as much as possible without a wiki or youtube vids. i am confused about what a taming group is supposed to be for.

sadly, soon after obtaining my parasaur, 2 raptors came at me and killed my ride, and i barely managed to kill them before i croaked as well, just made a pike. however i am now near the red obelisk, and as you guys have said they are not useful to me without the artifacts, i have come here for no reason, and may potentially die trying to get back to my base. hopefully i can get back safely with leather collect to use to make a carbonemys saddle, only missing the leather atm.

i found like 3 notes that told about the species on the ark near each other and then 1 by itself and another which was helena's notes #7.

still only got leather armor, have no idea how to get obsidian so i can craft scissors and get rid of my long facial hair!

I respect the no vids or wiki rule...but man i couldn't do it...theres just too much to figure out without anybody or anything telling me anything lol.

Hide armour is a good armour untill you get alot better stuff. I stayed with hide for a long time.

Try getting yourself a raptor..you can use it to traverse the map alot more safely then a parasaur. Either get high up where it can't get you or build a taming pen. Once you got one, slowly build it up by killing things smaller or weaker than it untill it can become more durable. 

The notes are worth XP and there's lots if them littered all over the map..usually by ruins so make sure to investigate when you see them. 

Obsidian is mostly found in the mountains..as are alot of the best resources like metal and crystal...but with reward comes risk..the mountains are home to alot of dangerous dinos so beware. This is where the argentavis could come in handy because you can stay in the air and scout what's dangerous..swoop down and kill anything you can till you feel it's safe to land. Mine the obsidian with a metal pick. Throw it in your argy than take off again.

Id get a Petra first before an argy..makes it easier to lure them into a trap.

[Soapstone]

i know that near the starting easy beach on the island there is a bit of a mountain path, up top are lots of rubble and giant stones and one of those round headed dino's that you mentioned that harvests metal for you, i think. i do not see any crystal or anything past rocks. how do i know when i find it?

[CourteousD]

Crystal is a bright white colour, kinda glows, found in small clumps, usually at tops of mountains. You'll probably know it when you see it.

[Deathwaits]

On 9/25/2017 at 5:27 PM, Soapstone said:

i feel it took me WAY too long to figure out how to tame the dinos that aren't dodo birds or dilophosaurs. it took me a few tries as well as i had one that i knocked unconscious die by drowning in the water (Parasaur), one die from a titanoboa after knocking it unconcious (Carbonemys), and have ran out of tranq arrows as well. My first ridable that i saddled was the Parasaur, and i have all the materials for a Carbonemys saddle except for the hide which i am working on collecing right now, have the Carbo tamed and waiting at my starter base.

I am lvl 43, and just got the pike and the metal pickaxe and axe made, I also have a raft. i feel i am still confused as to a a lot of the game mechanics so far. i have visited the red obelisk on the island near the the easy area starting point, and have no idea what i am supposed to do, have been giving it the spare implants from when i die. I have no idea where to go to find the artifacts, i have maybe 3-5 notes found so far.

any advice for what to do now?

When I first started playing I can't tell you how intense it was.. this was way back in the very early EA days.

I went a few days without even attempting to tame anything and instead just trying to survive and build up a decent base. When I finally get go to tame stuff the first thing I tamed was a trike, I farmed all the materials and was so proud of myself then BAM server crash... the rollback robbed me of the 2+ hrs I spent taming this darn thing!

My next tame was something shorter which turned out to be a low level raptor. Man did I feel tough running around munching everything I could find. I think I got this thing up to a whopping 600 hp and pumped the rest into weight/stam/attack. This served me really well until one day I ran across a Trex... I turned to fight and chomped away at him, but after a few moments realized I wasn't going to make it. I turned an ran only to run into a spino which quickly took the life from the raptor and myself. At this point I was looking for a chance of pace and went exploring only to find a mammoth that was knocked out and being eatin by a scorpion... I saved it and tamed it. This began my ability to mass farm narcos then I was able to tame a trex shortly there after and the rest is history.

[Aushegun]

15 hours ago, Soapstone said:

i know that near the starting easy beach on the island there is a bit of a mountain path, up top are lots of rubble and giant stones and one of those round headed dino's that you mentioned that harvests metal for you, i think. i do not see any crystal or anything past rocks. how do i know when i find it?

As someone else said, Crystals are normally only in the mountains and literally look like long pointed crystals grouped together. They are small and whitish. They glow slightly at night too.

Obsidian looks like black shiny stones, and are normally in the mountains as well. They look very different from most other rocks.

Metal can be found in the bright gold looking rocks, or the rocks that have gold flecks in them. Also the small rounded rocks on the edge of the beach/water contain some metal too.

The ANKY is the dino that is covered with spikes all over it's body, and has a tail looking like a club. They help with the metal harvesting. The Doed is the round ball armadillo looking dino that helps with stone harvesting.  They are friendly UNTIL you attack them, so I try to build some walls or dino gates around them before even trying to tame them. They will just chill out there, as long as you don't aggro them.  I always leave a small gap between one of the gates, so I can sneak in and out, but the Dino can't.  Then I pop in, shot tranqs, and jump out again before they can hit me.  Plus then they are mostly protected while unconcious and taming  up.

As many have said, if you can get on a small cliff or rock outcrop above a dino, then you can shoot them safely. Be Aware that most dinos will run AWAY from you after a while, even if that means running towards water. So keep your angles in mind when setting up a dino ambush.

Another good rule is to build some wooden spike walls to place around the dino after knocking it out. make a little ring of spikes around you and the dino. This will offer you some protection from other dinos who might try to attack. Just remember to recycle those spikes when done.

 

I'm no expert, but I would suggest (like others have ) to tame a Trike pretty early on. Also get a raptor and even some Dilos if you want. Make sure you learn what all the dino whistles do.

ME personally I love flying, so I go for Pteras as soon as possible. even if I can't make the saddle, I rarely pass up a chance at a high level Ptera early on. Use a bola, then aim for their head. easy peasey.

Eventually you will want to get more resources including metal. Now is the time to build a trap to lure in an Argentavis. By making one stone dino gateway and gate, plus 9 stone foundations, 8 stone ceilings and less than 40 stone pillars, you can build a perfect taming pen for Argies. Just imagine an old school zoo enclosure cage.  Leave the dino gate open at one end. Fly up to a Argy, and hit it with your Ptera, to get it to come after you. SLOWLY fly towards your taming trap. Keeping the Argy close. Then lead it into the trap. and fly your Ptera thru the pillars out the back.  Land your Ptera (make sure it is on passive, and out of reach of the Argy in the the trap) and run around to close the dino gate.  Now the Argy is trapped. You can take your time to tranq and tame it.   Once you have an Argy, you arre on your way to kicking some Dino butt.  Tame multiple Argies. Level up 1 for Melee & Health. another for Stamina and Weight, and then another that is kind of well rounded in everything. That way you have an Attack argy, a "Mule" Argy and finally,your Swiss Army Knife Argy to use all the time for scouting.

Then you can build bigger taming pens ,and either pick up with the argy, or "kite" otehr dinos into the pens.  Before long, you will be trying to figure out how to feed all your dinos!

 

Good luck.

[RageQuitter]

17 hours ago, Soapstone said:

i am trying to do as much as possible without a wiki or youtube vids. i am confused about what a taming group is supposed to be for.

sadly, soon after obtaining my parasaur, 2 raptors came at me and killed my ride, and i barely managed to kill them before i croaked as well, just made a pike. however i am now near the red obelisk, and as you guys have said they are not useful to me without the artifacts, i have come here for no reason, and may potentially die trying to get back to my base. hopefully i can get back safely with leather collect to use to make a carbonemys saddle, only missing the leather atm.

i found like 3 notes that told about the species on the ark near each other and then 1 by itself and another which was helena's notes #7.

still only got leather armor, have no idea how to get obsidian so i can craft scissors and get rid of my long facial hair!

Tame groups just make it easier to separate dinos into individual groups so you can give orders without it affecting every dino, as an early game example you could tame a few dilos and put their class into group 1 and make it your active group then if you want to go out hunting and have them come along as bodyguards you just need to press J to get them to follow and - to put them on neutral so they'll fight back at anything that attacks you or them, any other dinos or creatures you have will ignore the whistles.

There's quite a few things you can do with it, I mainly use it for setting up defensive dinos by mounting a non defensive dino then whistling all the defensive ones to follow and put them on aggressive, this way they'll attack anything that comes within range then return back to the dino they're set to follow so you don't lose them if they chase something, also use it for organising a land train, if you ever get to the point where you've got a big base with lots of dinos then it's a good idea to have an empty group active when you're in and around your base just in case you accidentally press J, done that a few times and it's not fun untying a big knot of dinos 

16 hours ago, Soapstone said:

i know that near the starting easy beach on the island there is a bit of a mountain path, up top are lots of rubble and giant stones and one of those round headed dino's that you mentioned that harvests metal for you, i think. i do not see any crystal or anything past rocks. how do i know when i find it?

There's not much crystal in the south, there's a small mountain near the south 2 spawn, off the top of my head it's around 75 lat 45 lon, there's quite a bit of metal, a few crystal nodes and an explorer note at the top, you'll need a metal pick to harvest the crystal, stone picks just give stone, best bet for a decent amount of crystal in the south is in the caves, not been in any of them for a while but the south eastern cave has a good amount very close to the entrance so you don't have to worry about getting killed.

[Soapstone]

unfortunately i havent even found a cave yet, i am at the beach where if you go north it turns into the swamp very quickly, at the bottom of a cliff. i have seen phiomias near the swamp on the cliff, but it is too close to the titanoboas that sometimes leave and wander nearby.

[MirageUK]

You want to get yourself some decent armor and a Saber or Baryonx tamed before you hit the caves.

With a Baryonx the following caves become relatively easy:

• Central Cave (entrance on lower south east side of the Volcano)
• South East (lava cave, very hot and not recommended without making up potion or decent Ghillie armor.  Entrance on the beach in an alcove just off the south east coast)
• Lower South Cave (Entrance hidden in the woods and not visible without exploring the ground - just above the island left of stone henge on the south coast)
• Upper South (quite a large cave, lots of underwater sections, recommend scuba gear - entrance just east of the south east swamp in the trees beyond the beach)
• Carno Island (North east, little island out at sea. Entrance is west of the ruins on the south east coast of the island).

If you manage to tame yourself a Basilosaurus you can easily do the Central West sea cave - literally edge of the map on the west coast about central on the north/south - you can tell you found it when you see nice long seaweed around the entrance)

There is 1 more cave on the cold ice shelf cliffs of the North West - no mount can enter so its a foot job.  If you can make Graple Hooks with your crossbow its quite easy - stick right, graple to artefact.  Recommend sword, health tonic and some othe ranged weapon to kite things out of the way.

Then there are the difficult three:

• East Sea Cave - not recommended without a couple of players and some good Basil/Tuso/Mosa combination.
• Snow/Ice Cave - just north of hte Volvano in the cold harsh biome.  Even decent furs (min Ramshackle/Apprentice) aren't enough to protect from the cold in here.  We ended up breeding REXes in the cave to help us clear it - very chaotic - polar bears, wolves, purlovias, yetis.
• Swamp Cave - entrance just south east of the nice lookin lake in redwoods.  Air is toxic and will injur you unless fully covered in Ghillie/Scuba gear - and high end gear at that.  Standard will still allow the air to kill ya.  Lots of bugs/flys.

If you want to experience any of these I'd be more than happy to gear you up and give you a guide on our private server. PM me or something and I'd be happy to give you a tour.

[Soapstone]

so i lost the dodos i had, i had a pen made near a ledge and a triked walked in and got trapped so i took the opportunity to tranq it and tame it. lost all my dodo's but i can get more when they respawn in the area.

also had my first fertilized dodo egg, i had to put it in a house to let it incubate. then i got a juvenile male dodo which got killed by something. (this was before the trike) what is funny is i was about to ask how to hatch eggs when i got it and figured out how to hatch it.

i have the trike set to harvest from environment and it was following be but not getting any berries, so i tried setting it to wander, not sure if it will do what i want though. i need to make a saddle for it, so that is the next milestone i am working on: collecting leather for it.

i have started a garden and finally got the hang of how pipes and taps work.

[Soapstone]

On 9/28/2017 at 6:59 AM, MirageUK said:

You want to get yourself some decent armor and a Saber or Baryonx tamed before you hit the caves.

With a Baryonx the following caves become relatively easy:

• Central Cave (entrance on lower south east side of the Volcano)
• South East (lava cave, very hot and not recommended without making up potion or decent Ghillie armor.  Entrance on the beach in an alcove just off the south east coast)
• Lower South Cave (Entrance hidden in the woods and not visible without exploring the ground - just above the island left of stone henge on the south coast)
• Upper South (quite a large cave, lots of underwater sections, recommend scuba gear - entrance just east of the south east swamp in the trees beyond the beach)
• Carno Island (North east, little island out at sea. Entrance is west of the ruins on the south east coast of the island).

If you manage to tame yourself a Basilosaurus you can easily do the Central West sea cave - literally edge of the map on the west coast about central on the north/south - you can tell you found it when you see nice long seaweed around the entrance)

There is 1 more cave on the cold ice shelf cliffs of the North West - no mount can enter so its a foot job.  If you can make Graple Hooks with your crossbow its quite easy - stick right, graple to artefact.  Recommend sword, health tonic and some othe ranged weapon to kite things out of the way.

Then there are the difficult three:

• East Sea Cave - not recommended without a couple of players and some good Basil/Tuso/Mosa combination.
• Snow/Ice Cave - just north of hte Volvano in the cold harsh biome.  Even decent furs (min Ramshackle/Apprentice) aren't enough to protect from the cold in here.  We ended up breeding REXes in the cave to help us clear it - very chaotic - polar bears, wolves, purlovias, yetis.
• Swamp Cave - entrance just south east of the nice lookin lake in redwoods.  Air is toxic and will injur you unless fully covered in Ghillie/Scuba gear - and high end gear at that.  Standard will still allow the air to kill ya.  Lots of bugs/flys.

If you want to experience any of these I'd be more than happy to gear you up and give you a guide on our private server. PM me or something and I'd be happy to give you a tour.

i just started getting the chitin armor, i made leggings, waiting for the next lvl up to learn the engrams for making the rest of it.

[Soapstone]

my biggest need of knowledge right now is how do i upgrade stuff?

one of the loading screen tips said you can, and another said you can replaced thatch with wood, and so far when i hold down E to look at the object options, i only have demolish, repair, locking (for doors and such), but never have seen an upgrade option.