Two and a half years later... And not one decent Singleplayer Overhaul Mod...

[CyanicEmber]

I cannot find any sort of mod that makes progression and crafting costs and all that even remotely reasonable for playing alone. Not to mention the fact that finding Explorer Notes on your own is a nearly insurmountable task. Your entire experience is spent as a lost monkey building things to pass time... *ahem* Perhaps I sound more spiteful than I intend...

Don't get me wrong, I love ARK. But after playing over 1500 hours of Singleplayer I was excited to get back into the game with Aberration... And it felt like slamming into a wall. The amount of work necessary to progress is just not fun anymore. And the story is so difficult to follow with the disjointed locations and random order of the notes, I WANTED to find everything on my own and go at my own pace and fight the boss legit, but I quickly realized that it would take an unbelievable amount of time to do it (even with custom rate configuration) and instead opted to read the notes on the Wiki and go on YouTube for the end cinematics... My fanboy spirit is crushed.

This is why the game got solid 7's across the board on release. The grind is too much and always has been. Officials must be hell. That's all I can say...

[HalfSlabBacon]

Well I've got to agree that the vanilla settings are beyond stupid and just not fun at all.

However, WC do provide the customization to change it however you want... Do what the majority do and speed things up.

I did and I love the game even more as time passes.

[SgtMorrigahn]

There is alot of mods out there that will cut the chores for you....

Personally I have created several mods that is build around just that thing, making life a bit easier for pve and singleplayer .. change your rates, use some essential mods and your'e good to go!
Ark will always be a grind game, as it's a huge part of the game. Have some fun, make wild/tamed dinos stronger .. set your taming to 100% ( it's not waiting for the tame to be done, but rather the time to knock it out that is the thing here )
 

You can change stats for each dino to make it feel more immersive .. change your hunger/thirst if needed... Make bosses a bit easier ( since you are on singleplayer ).

Make a battle plan, and a to-do list.
1. Make a hut
2. Tame a few small helpers dinos
3. Expand Base ( first move if needed/wanted )
4. Grind up resources needed for longer tames, veggies  and such
5. Set up a greenhouse

...and so on

Ark is nothing more than what you give it, and what you make if it.. it will bite you!!

[PieDuck]

On 16/12/2017 at 5:42 AM, CyanicEmber said:

And the story is so difficult to follow with the disjointed locations and random order of the notes

I would assume this is to make you WANT to find the missing notes..

For example, if you found a 'cliff hanger' note, you'd want to find the previous notes to find out what led them into that situation and maybe even the notes after to find out what happened to them. Good play on their part..

[Pipinghot]

On 12/16/2017 at 12:42 AM, CyanicEmber said:

Don't get me wrong, I love ARK. But after playing over 1500 hours of Singleplayer I was excited to get back into the game with Aberration... And it felt like slamming into a wall.

It's hard to find the right way to answer this, because almost any choice of words sounds like picking a fight, and that's definitely not my intent. Single player in this game is nearly perfect. No, that's not a joke or a typo, it really is. And the reason this is true is that you can completely configure the game for any difficulty level you want.

You can change every setting that matters, you can chose from bunches of mods that offer a wide variety of functionality to suit your personal preferences. You can use admin commands to spawn/fix/kill everything in the game. You have absolute, godlike powers to customize this game to exactly fit your personal preferences - which is something can't do even in most single player titles. The amount of power and control you have over your personal gaming experience when you play ARK in single-player mode is astonishing.

Now, if you want to play this game using Official settings, well then it's going to be suuuuper un-fun. This game is fundamentally designed around group play. Even on Official PvE servers the game is much better in a tribe than solo. Anyone who wants to play a single player game using official settings either has way too much time on their hands or just likes punishing themself. Take advantage of the possibilities this game offers you, experience the content the way you want to, on your own terms, with your own settings (and maybe mods), that is far and away the best way to play this game single-player.