High lvl Dino spawns

[Kayvoss]

I have a server on the island with difficulty set to "1" and "max difficulty" box checked. the max difficulty checkbox should increase the chance of higher lvl dinos to spawn. But yet I barely see any lvl 135+ dinos. The highest Rex I've seen is a lvl 120, which I have to breed that one with a lvl 100 for bosses. Is there something I'm doing wrong to get max level creatures to spawn? I played on the Island a ways back and remember finding lvl 150s everywhere. 

[TheBlastMage]

There's nothing wrong, the 4 main maps (island, scorched, Aberration, and Extinction) all have an odd bias towards spawning lower level dinos instead of higher level ones.  There are further changes you can make to your server's ini files that will change this, but it's a lot of work to get done as you'll be basically rewriting the spawn code for every single dino in every single part of the map.  If you want to encounter more higher level dinos, The Center and Ragnarock both spawn dinos with more evenly spread levels, making it more likely to encounter a lv 150 dino than on the other maps.  If you do not wish to play on those maps, the only thing you can do is murder every single dino in the area, then leave and come back to hope something good spawned.

[Kayvoss]

33 minutes ago, TheBlastMage said:

There's nothing wrong, the 4 main maps (island, scorched, Aberration, and Extinction) all have an odd bias towards spawning lower level dinos instead of higher level ones.  There are further changes you can make to your server's ini files that will change this, but it's a lot of work to get done as you'll be basically rewriting the spawn code for every single dino in every single part of the map.  If you want to encounter more higher level dinos, The Center and Ragnarock both spawn dinos with more evenly spread levels, making it more likely to encounter a lv 150 dino than on the other maps.  If you do not wish to play on those maps, the only thing you can do is murder every single dino in the area, then leave and come back to hope something good spawned.

Then is there a way to breed a certain way to increase their levels? All the rexes I breed com about to be around lvl 160. 

[TheBlastMage]

2 hours ago, Kayvoss said:

Then is there a way to breed a certain way to increase their levels? All the rexes I breed com about to be around lvl 160. 

That's pretty low, you may want to first look into taming them using kibble and finding natural 150's (ensure they spawn in increments of 5, not 4, after a wild dino wipe).  That should boost you to lv 220 or so.

As for breeding, there are two ways to increase a dinos level in this way.

First, when you mate two dinos, the game decides which parent's stats are going to be passed along which means you can eventually get all of the best stat levels from your initial tames combined and passed down to your new babies.

Second, once you've done the above, there is a small chance that a dino could have a mutation.  This increases one stat by 2 levels, and changes one of the color regions on that dino.  Unfortunately, there is a chance that neither of these effects could get passed down, as the stat change is calculated on one of the parents, and is done before choosing what stat the baby has (eg. the mom's HP could increase, but you get the dad's HP stat, so no change).  In addition, not every dino uses each of the 6 color regions, but every dino still "has" all 6 regions in their data.  Thus one of the unused regions could get changed and nothing will change on your dino.

In practice, mutations tend to affect at least one thing (either a stat, or color) and can change both stats and color if you're lucky.  If you get a bad mutation, just spay/nueter that dino and try again, you'll eventually get a super powered dino.

[BlueberryJackal]

A higher difficulty doesnt give a higher chance of spawning. a high difficulty just let higher level ones spawn.

[Zahlea]

19 hours ago, TheBlastMage said:

There are further changes you can make to your server's ini files that will change this, but it's a lot of work to get done as you'll be basically rewriting the spawn code for every single dino in every single part of the map.

Do you know of any sources where I can read up on this? I didn't know it was an option at all (albeit an option meaning a lot of work) and would love to know how I could set it up on my server, to see if I feel it's worth all the work  

[HoganRyan01]

2 hours ago, Zahlea said:

Do you know of any sources where I can read up on this? I didn't know it was an option at all (albeit an option meaning a lot of work) and would love to know how I could set it up on my server, to see if I feel it's worth all the work  

https://www.reddit.com/r/playark/comments/940y02/ark_level_equalizer/

 

[Kayvoss]

19 hours ago, TheBlastMage said:

That's pretty low, you may want to first look into taming them using kibble and finding natural 150's (ensure they spawn in increments of 5, not 4, after a wild dino wipe).  That should boost you to lv 220 or so.

That's my problem, I can't find any creatures above lvl 135. I've looked for days to find 2 high-level rexes and can't find any. The two highest I found were wild levels 125 and 120. I do tame with kibble, with the low level they only come out to be lvl 180ish. 

[TheBlastMage]

2 minutes ago, Kayvoss said:

That's my problem, I can't find any creatures above lvl 135. I've looked for days to find 2 high-level rexes and can't find any. The two highest I found were wild levels 125 and 120. I do tame with kibble, with the low level they only come out to be lvl 180ish. 

Well on the plus side your settings are fine, it's just pure luck and pretty rare to find the 150's unfortunately.  I've at times spent 2+ hours in a high spawn area only to never find anything above 100 except for stuff I don't want.  Still, even with something around 130 you can get a good stat roll on a dino so make sure you record their stats and use a calculator to determine the actual base levels for their stats.  Anything above 35 is a good value, and anything above 40 is amazing!

[graystorm01]

Unfortunately on the Island, the "spawn weight" is toward the lower levels.  On my sp game this is what i did.

Difficulty=1. In my game user settings i put OverrideOfficialDifficulty=5 under server settings

I didn't touch the "max difficulty" setting

I found this plugin which equalizes the spawns on the island

https://github.com/ark-mod/ArkModifiedSpawnLevelDistribution

Put this in my main ark folder.

In game, in the console i did a plugins.load ArkModifiedSpawnLevelDistribuation.dll

Then did a DestroyWildDinos

 

This seems to work for me as 100-150 are 1/3 of the spawns on my map. (i have a program called Larkator which tells me exactly what dinos spawn, lvl, stats, etc)

Hope this helps

 

[Kayvoss]

49 minutes ago, graystorm01 said:

Unfortunately on the Island, the "spawn weight" is toward the lower levels.  On my sp game this is what i did.

Difficulty=1. In my game user settings i put OverrideOfficialDifficulty=5 under server settings

I didn't touch the "max difficulty" setting

I found this plugin which equalizes the spawns on the island

https://github.com/ark-mod/ArkModifiedSpawnLevelDistribution

Put this in my main ark folder.

In game, in the console i did a plugins.load ArkModifiedSpawnLevelDistribuation.dll

Then did a DestroyWildDinos

 

This seems to work for me as 100-150 are 1/3 of the spawns on my map. (i have a program called Larkator which tells me exactly what dinos spawn, lvl, stats, etc)

Hope this helps

 

How would I do this on console? I have a spare Xbox as the dedicated server

[graystorm01]

2 minutes ago, Kayvoss said:

How would I do this on console? I have a spare Xbox as the dedicated server

Sorry, i didn't know you were on the console. I'm not sure if you could get this to work on a console. I don't know anything about the console version. Maybe someone else with console experience can chime in.

[Techsupport]

On 3/12/2019 at 9:35 AM, Kayvoss said:

I have a server on the island with difficulty set to "1" and "max difficulty" box checked. the max difficulty checkbox should increase the chance of higher lvl dinos to spawn. But yet I barely see any lvl 135+ dinos. The highest Rex I've seen is a lvl 120, which I have to breed that one with a lvl 100 for bosses. Is there something I'm doing wrong to get max level creatures to spawn? I played on the Island a ways back and remember finding lvl 150s everywhere. 

if you're admin, try to run a dino wipe (DestroyWildDinos). it kills only wild dinos, not tamed, and you should probably tell anyone else on the server what you're doing. it also usually fixes low lvl spawns

[Kayvoss]

24 minutes ago, Techsupport said:

if you're admin, try to run a dino wipe (DestroyWildDinos). it kills only wild dinos, not tamed, and you should probably tell anyone else on the server what you're doing.

 

I do a dino wipe every couple of days, but it still spawns low-level rexes. When I do a wipe I always look on dead island and all around the three mountains for high-level rexes.  

[Techsupport]

24 minutes ago, Kayvoss said:

 

I do a dino wipe every couple of days, but it still spawns low-level rexes. When I do a wipe I always look on dead island and all around the three mountains for high-level rexes.  

oh then I don't have any ideas