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Help for a completely lost newbie?


Heebyjeebies

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My husband and I bought this to play together and needless to say, we're lost. We are playing a local non dedicated server, so there aren't any other players and I definitely want to keep it that way haha. I'm at level 25, he's at 24. We have 1 trike, 2 dilos, 1 para, so our tamed dinosaur herd is quite modest currently haha. We've got a smithy, refining forge, bed, pike, bow, stuff like that... so basically, we aren't "brand new" or at total square 1. But we are very much stuck and confused on advancing. Feels like I'm in limbo, unable to get better or begin new things. I try to find guides to help me understand the game better but they are all for completely new people, going over how to pick berries and basics like that, which I most certainly don't need. But everything else that I find is far too advanced--talking about how to breed the best stat tamed dinosaurs and how to handle caves and going underwater adventuring, stuff that's nowhere on my radar yet, stuff ages away from my current goals/level.

 

We can't venture beyond our original spawn location on a little beach. Even moving down the beach a little bit to start a new, bigger base gets us killed. When we try to venture out, we get killed in places that we can't get our bodies back from because we repeatedly die trying to retrieve our stuff, and have thus lost all of our tools and clothing twice already due to that issue. We've had to restart from total scratch twice now in a single day--that is, losing the stuff you always have on you and having to begin from there again. I do keep resources and stuff at my tiny base so I have that and don't start brand new on, like, wood and thatch and stuff. More like, I gotta start making a torch and pickaxe and all of that stuff all over again. Mining metal and getting hide at my level is quite difficult still, so it's extremely disheartening.

 

Every carnivore kicks our butt, even what I imagine are simple ones like dilos let alone that dang boa and bugs we ran into trying to escape some feathered raptor looking thing, we can't move our base anywhere new, and honestly I'm just confused by what to do next. The game is massive with so many details, it's very overwhelming to a newbie, I don't know what all there IS to it, like what all features there are and the things to do. And, unfortunately, googling is kinda useless. I've tried learning more for hourrrrs on google, but so much of what I find is outdated information that is a waste of my time and adds to the confusion. I'll find articles completely contradicting each other because they're from different times, or an article that is very confusing, or an article that contradicts things I've experienced firsthand; trying to find really recent articles that are hopefully more updated is particularly difficult. When I try googling a specific topic or question, I rarely can find something talking about that particular issue. We're stuck as not total-beginners but also don't have our feet quite under us yet. 

 

Do you have any guides you recommend that are for sure updated and accurate that could help me begin to understand the game better overall? I am on xbox one. I'm going to ask a few specific questions below, but one problem is I can't ask questions about things I don't even know are a feature or exist, and that's why I'm hoping for some sort of guide that fits my current level. Because, obviously, a guide will hopefully introduce me to things I am currently unaware of and thus can't ask about here.

 

Some specific questions I have right now:

- On our local, non dedicated server, is time passing when we're offline? Can our dinos starve or get killed, can we starve or get killed, and if a dino is getting tamed does that process continue (and thus fail) when I'm offline? Or do those things pause until I return? I can only find references to how it is handled on PVE/PVP servers, not on my offline server. It has me very nervous that my tames will die while I'm offline and I feel like I have to log in every day to keep them from starving, which isn't feasible in my life. I know I can pack them full of food, but food spoils, so won't the food all spoil while I'm gone? And I also worry about even trying to tame some dinos. If a dino is going to take 8 hours to tame and I can't be online that long, I worry about even attempting, because I may waste an hour knocking them out and tons of ammo, just to find I don't have the time the process is going to take. Trying to learn how long a certain dino may take to tame is generally useless; I tried that tactic and read it would take like 3 hours for one dino and it took me 20-ish minutes, so.... that wasn't exactly accurate or useful.

 

- How the heck do you survive carnivores and becoming more than babies hiding on the original spawn beach? Our tamed dinos die fast and so do we, despite hide outfits and pikes/bows/tranq darts/etc., so I'm not sure what more I can do or what to work toward. Hard to tame more dinos when you die leaving your base haha and I'll admit I make the mistake of getting attached to my dinos and not wanting to risk them dying.... what can I say, I'm sensitive lol

 

- How do I get my tames to harvest for me? I have harvest enabled and wander enabled but nothing seems to happen?

 

- Please, for the love of god, someone explain this weird group and class and whistling thing with tames. When you go in behavior, most of those options confuse the crap outta me. 

 

- What the heck do I do about temperature? I've read it's glitchy so maybe there's nothing I can do, but dang it is really kicking my butt. I'm wearing full hide outfit and have a torch and my character is still whining about freezing, I start starving, and 90 berries later I only have a sliver in my food bar--burns through my resources fast. Then later I take my armor off and am in the shadows of a forest but I'm still overheating. I had to go back to the water twice because of dehydration when I was trying to explore, which basically meant 30 minutes of going inland, going back to the shore, finally getting to the same place inland again, and then had to go back to the shore again cuz I couldn't keep water in me due to overheating. I have begun investing in waterskins since then, but it gets counterproductive when I've got so much weight that I'm losing water fast cuz of that, too. I do leave everything extra at home before I take off exploring, but with tools, ammo, enough resources to craft more ammo, berries and meat, waterskins, my outfit... well, I always seem pretty heavy. Plus, I got trapped exploring in the dark and reaaaally got murdered trying to get back home in the dark, so I feel like bringing a few walls and foundations would be smart to get through the nighttime when I'm out and about, but dang that's even more weight. 

 

- What stats do you suggest I focus on most in the beginning? I've done some toward weight, stamina, movement speed, and melee damage so far, but I level so slowly that I feel like I need to invest many points into a stat to make any type of difference, so scattering my stats the way I have feels like I've barely improved. What is the most useful to get high in the beginning?

 

- Can I bring my same character and/or my stuff to different servers? Or is it all stuck on the first server you made them on? I've seen conflicting/confusing topics on that, so I don't quite understand how that all works.

 

- What is "official" server vs.. whatever is not official? 

 

 

I guess that's all I have for now. I'm sorry this is so long, it's just the ramblings of a lost soul hahaha any help is so greatly appreciated!

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As far as I know the game should pause when you log out the same as playing single player.  Easy to test just start a campfire before logging out and if its still going the next day you were paused.

I would recommend making a bunch of bolas, they can help you with most of the smaller threats.  If your running into large carnos your probably in a bad area and may want to relocate.

As for stats I would put a few points in torpor to help with the freezing, also a bunch in speed will help with dinos, once you can outrun most threats it gets a lot easier.

Otherwise if you still find it too hard or leveling up too slow change the stats when you first log in, almost everything can be adjusted.  I prefer to turn up harvesting, taming, and breeding to cut back on horrible time sinks.

Hope that helps

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Wow.  

Official vs Unofficial - Sounds like you should stick to playing locally rather than on a server for now.  You'll know when you are ready for multiplayer. Official are "public" servers and usually contain meanies.

Night time - Turn gamma all the way up in settings this will help

Stats- Early on weight and health - pick a bunch of fiber and make like 100 cloth hats to level up faster

Don't wistle

You have to be riding the dino and use the attack buttons to harvest stuff - this does not happen automagically.

Make lots of bolas and use them on the dilo and raptors stay away from everything bigger than that until you are ready.

You will die frequently. 

 

 

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I don't know that I can accurately answer all of your questions, but I can give you some tips from when I was first getting started... as others have suggested, I'd reconfigure your stats  or use single player settings to help you progress through the game.

I started by myself playing single player, so I totally get not knowing what the heck to do with yourself... that's the fun part of Ark though... it's pretty much a "choose your own adventure" game. Taming, breeding, and building (always looking to improve what I have - never satisfied with anything - lol) are where I focus my efforts now. As previously stated, you WILL DIE... a lot. It's just part of the learning curve. Your trike should be able to take on most low level carnos for you though, just level XP into health and melee. Parasaurs also now have some sort of alarm call that can scare away carnos that are raptor or smaller - I don't use parasaurs though, so don't ask me how to do it - think it's the secondary attack maybe (left trigger on xbox)?

The single thing that helped me the most when I was starting was taming a flyer. There are pteras all over the place - make yourself a bola, some tranq arrows, and find one to tame. Getting off the ground and being able to explore safely out of reach of predators was incredibly helpful. It can also help you get to rarer resources and can help position you to tame better Dinos. My first rex was tamed from the crevice of a cliff that I was able to land on and shoot tranq darts into it -  from a place that it couldn't reach me to eat me. 

Gathering resources like hide shouldn't be too hard - dodo's are a good and plentiful source of it. I never really could bring myself to kill dodos though - so I got pretty skilled at killing dilos with a spear. Once I tamed a trike, I used her to kill them instead.

As far as keeping your tames and items safe - make sure you're building a base with walls to enclose a "Dino pen" of sorts. If carnos can see your tames, they will go after them. A good Dino pen keeps your tames safe and contained in one area. It also gives you a place to build storage boxes to stockpile resources for further building/crafting.

Ark is a learning curve for sure - google can be your best friend (I can't even tell you how many times I've googled some random ark question, assuming I'll find nothing, only to discover that 40 other people have asked exactly the same thing). The Ark gampedia or dododex sites can be helpful too... as is this forum (you can search specific terms here too). I also watched a lot of YouTube videos - mostly above my level, but it gave me something to work towards. 

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Welcome to the game mate! So many hours of fun ahead. First thing I would say is soak in these experiences as starting out for the first time and exploring was some of the most fun I've ever had in a game before. 

The very best tip you can have when starting out is get a flyer. Once you have a flyer the rest of the map opens up, you can scout for dangers before you land meaning you dont die a million times just looking for a new base location. 

I cant answer all of your questions but I'll try to the best of my ability.

 

1. Time does not pass offline meaning tasks such as breeding and growing crops can take a long time. I suggest playing with your settings on some of these timers.

2. To survive longer get a flyer. Start with pteranadon then tame an argie using an argie trap on YouTube. Make flak armour in smithie, take water and cooked meat with you when you explor. Cooked meat regions much more food then berries and heals you also. You can also make med brew for healing.

3 and 4 not sure about sorry.

5. I wouldn't be super worried about temperature unless your in the snow or desert. Once the icicle appears in the bottom right of the screen you need to reevaluate your situation. If your in single player build somewhere mid temp like hidden lake or that Cape on the west side of the island until you learn more about the game. 

6. Stat wise I do more pvp then pve bir you would want to level your speed a bit to outrun Raptors, rexes, carnos and troodons. Also some torpor so you dont get one shot by troodons 

7. If your in single player you can transfer from map to map. Same in official but not unofficial. Pvp is different though, for example cant transfer from official small tribes (3xrates) to normal official. Just be careful you dont create a new character on the map your already on, I could be wrong but I believe this deletes the original character stored there. But again could be mistaken. 

8. Unofficial are peoples personally tweaked servers where they more then likely have played with the gathering rate, taking rate etc to make life easier. 

 

At the end of the day you'll learn the most from your own experiences. Just remember in your situation, bird, flak, cooked meat, water bottles and bolas. 

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Like @DizzyDo said, I think nondedicated servers pause when you log off, worth testing with a campfire.

Avoid conflict unless you have bolas; if the carnivores are too big you should probably move house.

Herbivores, with only a few exceptions, don’t harvest resouces by themselves, you have to be riding them and attacking the resource node. Carnivores will gather resources by themselves but only from dead creatures.

Here’s a wiki page that explains how whistle groups work: https://ark.gamepedia.com/Whistling

If you can’t make fur clothes, level up your fortitude and keep a torch at hand. 

Fortitude and movement speed are good options to go for. 

You’re able to transfer your characters, tames, and items to different servers. You can’t, however, tranfer from your local game to an official server.

Speaking of official servers, they’re the servers hosted by the game developers. Unofficial servers are hosted by players. 

 

 

 

 

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I would strongly suggest trying out an official PVE server.  Due to more players there are less killer dino concentrations.  It can be hard to find somewhere to build but once you do the other benefits are that you can buy some of the dinos like Argents and things, and some players may even help you out with a dino or two that they aren't using.  Also more experienced players might answer an odd question or two, or refer you to a guide.  It is very normal to die lots eary on.  Just keep taming and building up your resources/base.  I always like to start my taming with a raptor and pteradon...then head straight for getting the Argentavis.  Next up get the best harvesting dinos (Ankylo, Doedic, Therizo (great for berries, wood and fiber) so you can quickly get all the necessities without the painful manual farming.

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I think you can only build a flyer saddle at something like level 38 (or so). As said above, the game really opens up then.

Up to that level, what helped me was a kind of "mind switch". Stuff (hide metal and etc.) is really not important, when you get to a higher level that stuff is relatively easy to get even when starting naked with no base.

My current strategy with a new start character is to spawn in, build a bit (as you have done), and when I get to the kinda stuck bit (as you seem to be), spawn in somewhere else and build a new base.  What this does is firstly expose areas of the map to you around your new spawn, and secondly, simply building up a base is the very best early game method of leveling up. You could do the same by simply building a bunch of wood / stone foundations and then destroying them, but that's too much like grinding the game for experience rather than playing the game for my liking.

In terms of taking some of the carno's in the game, build an army. Yeah I get your being attached to your dinos - but if you are wandering around with 6 - 10 dilos with you, all set on neutral (i.e. they will attack what is attacking you / them) you should be mostly OK - they will take even up to a carno - maybe with some losses, but never all. Depending on where you are and what dinos are around - a flock of the small flyers, like Dimorphs or Vultures are easy to tame, and in a flock of 6 or more are deadly - 6 dimorphs will take out a rex with no issue. I guess you are on the Island, so Vultures are not gonna happen - but they are REALLY easy to tame, even at level 1, and nothing better for a body guard flock.

As above, if you keep dying, spawn somewhere new and start again. Just leave a bed in your current base and pop in there every so once in a while to feed the beasties. Later when you are gotten all big, you can come back and go again (upgrade to stone, build perimeter walls and etc.) if you still find yourself attached to your starting base. 

 

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I'll try to explain the groups and whistles thing.

Whistles give basic commands to your Dinos.

Follow me, Stop following, Go here, Attack this,

Be Aggressive- attack anything you see,

Be Neutral - Only attack if we are attacked first

Be Passive - Don't fight and just stand there.

Whistles are divided into ALL and ONE.

If you whistle Follow ALL then every tame that hears the whistle will start following you.

Tame ordering groups define who exactly is considered ALL. You can set a group with individual tames or by class - i.e. every Trike or every Dilo you have.

If you set a group for all Dilos and make it the active group; Whistling Follow ALL will only affect the dilos. 

For example I had a group called Woodharvest that contained Castorides Class and a specific raptor named Rascal. When I set it as the active group and whistled FOLLOW ALL my 2 beavers and Rascal would come running. None of my other Dinos were affected by the whistle. .

 

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Look up the location of explorer notes on youtube or ark gamepedia. Explorer notes and Dino Dossiers are the same thing. They come in little chests all over the island but not the center or ragnarok. you can find them easily by searching for old ruins. They will cause you to level up when you stand on top of them, and will give you an XP boost. Carnotaurs are less intimidating when you have had to deal with rexes. If you add me on xbox I can join your game and help you. I can give you a level 4 rex I have. Its useless to me I have level 150s. My username is JarJarXIverson. Or you can try to experience the game yourselves without help. Its up to you.

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I'm new myself, but playing with some friends who were already established, so I advanced fairly quickly. I can give you some advice that I think may help.

Location is everything, and it sounds like your location may be holding you back. Whatever map you are using, you need to start out in a 'friendlier' location. I would research to find out where a good starting area is on the map you are playing on. Then travel there by whatever means. Run if you have to. But if you can get an easy flier and fly there, even better. If you die along the way try re-spawning closer if possible, or just try again. When you get there, put down a simple shelter and bed so you can re-spawn there.

Once in your preferred area, scout out resources and perhaps a more ideal location for a permanent base. Start your base building and tame some dinos useful for resource gathering. Taming a capable 'body guard' for when you are resource gathering is also a big help. Whistle it to follow you as you resource gather. 

 Get an easy flier such as a pteradon. Flying above the aggressive dinos is so much safer & faster. 

 

We recently moved to the Ragnarok map. After spawning we each made our way to the North East coast by travelling along the beaches. Beaches give you the option to avoid water dinos by moving to land, or moving to water to avoid aggressive land dinos. Although there are wyvern and Gigas in the area, there are far fewer dangerous smaller dinos, such as raptors. It's way easier when you only have to avoid a few large aggressive dinos, and most dinos are peaceful in nature.  Now we're taming and killing Giga's... so we can go anywhere and deal with anything pretty much now. But we needed the chance to get built up in this more peaceful area first. It makes a huge difference, and the possibilities open up suddenly once you reach a certain level of building yourself up and taming some capable dinos. 

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Lots of things to do lol

  1. be sure to check the wiki for almost anything
  2. get a high lvl ptera/flyer as soon as possible
  3. tame a mid tier carnivore soon to get meat
  4. argy's are very useful, they have high carry weight, good in combat, if you breed and imprint new ones, they can get pretty fast
  5. if you want a semi decent source of oil, silica pearls, and chitin, kill trilobites
  6. don't mess with the gigas, it can and will eat you and your tames' asses
  7. a trick to avoid fall damage on a land creature is to dismount right before you hit the ground, you might take a bit of damage, but your mount won't
  8. watch youtube it will help a lot more than you think
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Welcome to ARK and congratulations to losing your sleep ins and early nights :)

Firstly, what map are you playing on, I guess it is Island? If so there is a herbivore island which you can get to, and it will be perfect as there are no carnivores and you can start a base and then tame your first flyer more easily (Pteras can be bola'd and these are great starter birds).

Once this is done, build some taming pens to catch the larger carnivores and once you have one of these you can go round killing most things you see, and you will level up sufficiently quicker than by grinding resources.

Once you get comfortable on your local non-dedicated server, I would suggest moving onto an Official PvE server as being part of a community will open you up to great new adventures.

Feel free to ask any further questions, I think the posts above have answered nearly everything you originally asked :)

 

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Anarki beat me to it.  Taming Pens are an incredible early game strategy.  They are great at the end of the game as well, but you can farm all of the materials and build a simple trap in 20 minutes that will tame almost every ground dinosaur in the game.  The earlier you can get a big carnivore tamed the better.  I am also a great fan of the taming raft.  At the beginning levels you can keep your base in a safe beach area and venture down the rivers to a more dangerous zone and trap a Rex or whatever you are looking for.  You can also use the traps to kill stuff and get experience, food, and hide.  Build a trap near your base too, and if you get in trouble, just run to your trap.

Lay down sleeping bags or make outpost bases with beds when you venture out on journeys.  (Always name your beds and sleeping bags if you have a chance)

Never be afraid to start over either.  If you are on the island, I would move to a location like rock island, or the beaches in that area.  Plenty of resources and access to smaller carnivores, while being close enough to go tame a Rex or Spino.  As soon as you get established and get some building materials stored up I would move along the river in Redwoods.  I just like the central location personally, but there are all kinds of great base locations.

I had my kids watch some play through videos on YouTube.  They are set up in episodes, and you can move past the first few episodes if you want and see how they get their bases established, etc...

This is a very frustrating game at times, but you will have a good time together.  

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If you can somehow tame a larger carnivore, things will get so much easier. Rex's get stuck on rocks and cliffs easily, and Allos can get stuck in small trees. use that to your advantage. A decently leveled rex can destroy pretty much anything outside of a Giga/Titanosaur easily, if your on the Island. If you can manage to get a spino, traveling in the water is a cakewalk. Build a smithy and get metal asap, build a few crossbows and make narcotics and tranq arrows for taming. 

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Also, if you really want to explore, and tame as you go, get a Tapejara and build a saddle for it. Its manuverability, along with it being being able to carry a driver and 2 passengers to shoot, makes it invaluable. Just bola it as soon as ya can, because they are skittish and fly away if you get to close. 

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