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Tips and advice to a new and unimpressed player


Zoglet

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Hi Guys

Firstly apologies for the somewhat hard title but honestly, this game experience is something new for me and I've been gaming all my life. Wondering what's happened to be honest.

Ok, So after having seen all the videos and tried the demo, I decided to give this game a go and bought it on the XBox store for a pretty high price but thought ok whatever,

I then spent a couple of hours figurng out what was going on, because I spawn pretty much naked into an envirnment filled with other online players basically all just trying to kill you. Reminded me of knife fight sessions on Battlefield but not really what the game was about to me. I would get a few minutes in before someone of a high level simply killed me and I could respawn.

After an hour I decided to try a different part of the map and got lucky, a bit quieter, and started to figure out the basics of the game. I raced to level up and get some protection and although was occasionally attacked by other players, it was much quieter and managed to get to a point of building a shack.

I must have got to about level 10 or so when some player appeared and started shadowing me. Whatever I did he wouldn't stay away. I now understand that in fact he was some kind of troll who was likely getting his kicks from infecting other low level players with some sort of mega virus that you need to have significant skills and experience to cure. Suddenly all of my boosts were impacted. and I'm constantly coughing and running low on food and water.

I carried on regardless an built up my shack, played solid all through the day and got to a point of building a pretty nice place place, with a smithy and a fair bit of material stored, plus upgraded all my tools so I could start building on this further. I went offline and to bed, and got up this morning, rejoined the session.

Message: "You were killed by human level 32 from the tribe 'Fuk Jewz'

Imanaged to find my way back to the shack and saw that although I played the game for possibly twelve hours solid, in the six hours I was offline, some nasty little racist kid broke through the walls of the wooden shack, killed me, and destroyed everything inside, the smithy, the storage container, and everything in, and obviously took everything I own. 

So now I'm back to pretty much square one, having to restart around the sixth time, only with some kind of uncureable infection that has nerfed all my stats.

Also, I'm pretty disappointed that this is what the gaming community has become now. The game looks like it could be fun, but I'm not interested in working at being fodder for some nasty malcontents, and if this is a game where everything you do can be wiped out overnight while you sleep by someone with little effort, I don't see the point.

Sorry for all the butthurt but it really has kinda pissed me off. I paid a lot for this game and it now I'm beginning to feel like doesn't warrant putting any effort in. However good I will get in 1,2,3, 50 days, there will always be a high level troll around who gets their kicks from fekking up other peoples stuff.

So seriously, to the Ark community, which seems pretty large, am I missing something huge here? I have to admit I am playing without instructions but I can't see that I could have done anything better or differently and not ended up in the same place, and I'm not that interested in putting the same hours in today for the same result.

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Wow Sphere, that's a pretty arrogant response. Try not to be too high and mighty, I played for just one day, and I followed the standard prompts to get started. Excuse me if I wasn't able to establish these facts from just reading the game guides. I assume you were absolutely magnificent on your first day lol. Thanks to the others for the comments. Can anyone provide any advice on best ways to protect from offline raiding other than build the hell up? I don't want to waste my energy doing what I assume is right only to discover some other workaround and get zeroed again. Thanks in advance for your help. Also what about this infection? It even stays with me after dying and respawning or levelling up? Is there anything other than antidote that I can use? I suspect not.

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Are you playing on a smalltribe Server? Sounds like. I would suggest to go on a low pop normal server. There you will encounter less people and they will less likley to attack on sight. Smalltribe is like the deathmatch of Ark.

 

And you should move away from the spawnzone asap if you want a base that last a few days, because every player that joins the server will see your base and you only need one asshole to lose all.

 

Hiding is the best protection, build near trees and dont chop them down.

 

In the end, ark is a full loot pvp game, and this game will always attract the scum from the gamerbase.

 

You should be able to cure the infection by traveling to another server and then come back. But you will be infected again if you stay in the starter area.

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You will be hard pressed to get any info that you want to hear on these forums Zoglet. As you can see, you are hearing from the types of dbags you have met in game. Learn to play, you cant handle pvp, blah blah blah is their mantras. The inmates have free rein to do whatever they want on officials and they show exactly why they are inmates in the first place every chance they get. There is no point trying to explain how griefing new players is bad for the game to them, they dont care nor will never understand. As someone else suggested, you might have to settle and play on a unofficial that has ORP and actual rules that are enforced.

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My advice is pretty similar to everything already stated. I'd log a couple hours in single player first to learn the ropes. Then switch to your server type of choice. 

Once on server build a small hut out of metal or stone, try to get a feel for the community of the server. Are there lots of trolls? Does one tribe own all the land? Dont tame anything you don't want to lose. Start talking to other players who want to talk, fight the ones who don't (within reason. Don't attack anyone you don't think you can take.)

Once you start talking to people join or create a tribe. Once you do this the game becomes much more fun. I've met some pretty good friends in this game and that's what I believe the appeal is. 

Also, uploading then transferring/ respawning your character can cure the illness.

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Dude there really isn't any protection you can get on official servers, people will always wait until you are offline and then level everything you have leaving you at zero again. This will happen forever regardless of anything on official pvp servers. 

I host an unofficial xbox server if you would like to play the game in a way less toxic environment. Just PM me for details.

 

Also they infected you with swamp fever, the majority of official servers are filled with the infected spreading it to others and because 70% odd are infected with it even after you cure it you will get it back quickly.

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7 hours ago, Zoglet said:

Wow Sphere, that's a pretty arrogant response. Try not to be too high and mighty, I played for just one day, and I followed the standard prompts to get started. Excuse me if I wasn't able to establish these facts from just reading the game guides. I assume you were absolutely magnificent on your first day lol. Thanks to the others for the comments. Can anyone provide any advice on best ways to protect from offline raiding other than build the hell up? I don't want to waste my energy doing what I assume is right only to discover some other workaround and get zeroed again. Thanks in advance for your help. Also what about this infection? It even stays with me after dying and respawning or levelling up? Is there anything other than antidote that I can use? I suspect not.

Unfortunately zoglet, that is how 99% of the people that play ark act. Not sure how long you had the game but as long as you tell the Microsoft store about all the bugs and crashes, you can probably get your money back.

however, if you do want to try to make friends by all means. I am just saying it probably won’t be worth the time it takes

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8 hours ago, Zoglet said:

Wow Sphere, that's a pretty arrogant response. Try not to be too high and mighty, I played for just one day, and I followed the standard prompts to get started. Excuse me if I wasn't able to establish these facts from just reading the game guides. I assume you were absolutely magnificent on your first day lol. Thanks to the others for the comments. Can anyone provide any advice on best ways to protect from offline raiding other than build the hell up? I don't want to waste my energy doing what I assume is right only to discover some other workaround and get zeroed again. Thanks in advance for your help. Also what about this infection? It even stays with me after dying and respawning or levelling up? Is there anything other than antidote that I can use? I suspect not.

Unfortunately that dreadful attitude seems to breed rapidly amongst the official servers, sadly not limited to pvp either.

 

Ark is a hard game to survive in the beginning. Felt like smashing the screen more than once, however once I got up and running it really grew on me. I’ve weLl and truly lost count of how many hours I’ve spent playing, definitely well over 500 by now. And I still love it.

sadly I don’t have any better advice than all the others, start out in single player to get used to how the game works and then try and find a decent server if you want to go to pve or pvp. Again, a private server might be the best idea, maybe look for some folks wanting new tribe members or ask for recommendations from people.

whilst there are obviously a large number of douches out there (and here in the forums) there are also a large bunch of super awesome and helpful people as well. Best of luck mate!

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Sincere thanks to everyone for the more useful pointers. I have no issue at all with there being a free for all attitude but it's pretty negligent of the developers to provide no guidance at all to starters. I didn't know half of this stuff. I also think 'lifers' don't realise the game has probably changed a lot since they started. It's certainly not easy. Also, as a mature educated 'grown up' gamer, I really dislike 'hater-tags'. Yeah the internet holds all sorts but you'd think you could at least leave your prejudices at home when you're playng a video game eh? I'm getting old lol.

Anyway I spent the whole day turtling so lets see how that plays out. I would hope at least to discourage the majority of low level raiders and keep me alive until the next logon. I suspect it will take nothing for a relatively powerful player to zero me though. Although I'm a regular gamer, I wasn't planning on dedicating my life to the game and I suspect if you stay offline for too long, it's inevitable that you'll get zeroed. Let's see. Thanks also for the advice on curing this illness. I'll have to try and figure that out. 

I'll look into this PVE thing, also how to switch between servers and the like. To be honest I wasn't expecting it to be such a ball ache. Lesson learned I guess.

If I can't get on with it, Knux I might just ping you on that invite.

Thanks again everyone!

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PvP is one of the harshest experiences which a new player can experience or even a returning experienced player due to changes. As many people have mentioned, either single player or PVE are sufficient options for learning the basics of the game, however, within PVE just remember that in older servers established players prefer that people do not join tame a few dinos and leave. If you continue with PvP it is advised to either have a load of time or (preferably) multiple tribe members to assist with raid protection and development. Otherwise, just stay low, be careful and enjoy the game :)

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As others have suggested, learn the game on singleplayer. There was a point when jumping straight on to officials made the most sense but that was way back when the game was much simpler than it is now.

Once you have a better understanding of the game, join a tribe and make your contributions know early on. Most tribes have the same sort of structure, find what you enjoy doing and put the work in.

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Hello,

My dad played ARK first so I started on a server crossark pvp. It was still difficulties but no nazi or criminals.

PvP is fun and ARK is PvP. But since that can be false statement I suggest single player. Or a crossark pvp with offline raid protection (ORP) just so you get a feel for it. On these clusters you can forget boss fighting since ORP stops you from killing tribes in caves.

Hardest PvP server for me was the center map so I checked builds there for our small crossark.

Just set in single player:

difficulty level to 1, maxlmum difficulty true, use single player settings to false and pvp dino decay to false. In singleplayer the game is paused and do not run when off so a set of commands to speed things up is good like command: slomo 4 

Ark.gamepedia.com/console_commands 

Also never tame below wild level 135 unless it's for kibble eggs that you need. Learned that in PvE.

Regards,

Ariana 

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There’s lots of tips you will eventually learn. I suggest you watch Kishko on YouTube if you’re Solo. Also tame a Purlovia and hide your base really well. You can also use the obelisks and drops to upload tames into the ark data so that they are safe for 24 hours. But make sure you pull them back out

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I'm a little offended that more people aren't saying this, but okay, here goes...

Don't play official, dude. Whether it's PvP or PvE. Just don't bother.
What you should do is find yourself an Unofficial Server community that is roughly along the lines of what you're looking for. There are literally hundreds, if not thousands of servers out there being hosted by actual players ranging from pure PvE to pure PvP and everything in between. A lot of the PvP servers still have a level of civility to them. Conflicts are allowed, but griefing is usually discouraged. Griefing being, oh, you know, smashing someone's wood hut just because you can. If you really want the full Ark experience with a PvP element to it still, then look for a server that functions in that way. You can find them on this board or through Facebook groups. Hell, you could even just browse and join random servers in the Unofficial server list and ask questions to see what it's all about.

You're just going to have a better time outside of the Official servers and you can cater the experience to what you're looking for. 

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I can pretty much agree with what most ppl above have commented on. PvP Official is for those players who can spend a lot of time ingame and also know the exact process they follow to build a base quickly and quietly.

I would possibly try PvE and build a base up, tame some dino's, get to know some players and learn your trade. Once you have got a good understanding, then you can again try and jump in the cesspool that is ArK PvP Official. Dont delete your PvE base as you may find you want to return to it :)

 

Good luck and dont lose heart... ARK is worth the time spent playing on it.

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Thanks to everyone for continued feedback and tips. Ironically, I joined the first server on the list, official pvp central map small tribes so I have my work cut out for me lol, but I’m still here. Funnily enough I found the first guy who raided me a little way down the beach and returned the kindness. I also had a couple of pretty funny run-ins, even with trolls and yes, your head’s on a constant swivel and it can be frustrating to lose a bunch of stuff but I’ve still managed to progress further than i expected.

I’ve been pretty much turtling since start, focusing on building a stone base that should hopefully hold off all but a focused and persistent high level or group attack, Most trolls will be bored before getting anywhere, and I’ve set up a couple of nice surprises along the way that may make them decide there are easier ways to get resource.

I had a guy catch me unawares and parachute into my base, knocking me out, robbing me and then killing me. I managed to respawn into another part of the base and lock doors behind him and leave him to stew. After fifteen minutes I got a message “Ok if I give you your stuff back will you let me out?”. After he heard I’d only been playing a couple of days, some more haggling and a real funny chat he ended up giving me some tips and showing me round the map, even coming back with a bunch of resources to make up for the base damage.Turned out to be a really nice guy. Another guy wasn’t quite so generous in returning stuff but again we ended up chatting for a while and again, got some great advice. So you know what. Yes, I’m sure there are some real asrehloes on there, many are just fooling around and playing in the moment, so i’m learning not to take it personally.

So in summary, I still maintain it would be zero effort for devs to add a warning to first timers as to whcih game mode and servers to start on or avoid (eg ‘PvP is likely to be ruthless and unforgiving, we recommend starting on a single game, beginners server or PvE first’). Although it would have been handy, I’ve actually had fun and learned a lot along the way. I will probably move servers eventually but I’ll continue to see how it goes for now.

I also heard that some players troll PvE servers too, so I will likely just go single game next. At least I’ll only have creatures to worry about. 

Sincere thanks again to everyone who has responded or helped me to date both here on the forum and online in-game.

I also take back the ‘unimpressed’ mark. There’s obviously some idiots online wherever you look but most of the people there are just having fun their way. And you put a bunch of people on an island with limited resources, I guess the results are inevitable.

Now if anybody wants to throw a few hundred chitin and crystal my way....

?

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Lots of advice, I'll echo Ariana above if you are interested in sticking with PVP, and in sticking with official.  The PVP CrossArk servers are pretty chill and pretty low pop.  I'm currently on PVP CrossArk12 and while I have had some troll issues it's mild compared to where you chose to start your playing time.  Especially small tribe servers are tough because they are pretty new so pop is going to be much much higher over there...

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