houseofbacon Posted March 19, 2019 Share Posted March 19, 2019 I started a single player save file with my 13 year old son on Xbox One X about 2 weeks ago, we figured it was like complicated Minecraft with Dinosaurs, exactly our cup of tea. I think we're doing something wrong. First, I'm up to level 30 and he's level 25. I just spent my Engram points on a Pike and Crossbow, not that it matters. We started on default difficulty settings, I've died 30 times or so and he's probably over 100. At one point our beds got destroyed by a Brontosaurus tail and he kept spawning across the river from our houses and piranhas kept killing him trying to get home, so I spent 3 hours and built him a bridge all the way across the river out of thatch foundations/ceilings with wooden pillars in between. We die A LOT. The thing I always hated about Minecraft was dying and essentially having to start over, except you at least had your house still. So to summarize our position, we are currently homeless. We tried making a home by the beach to be safer but three days ago a level 34 Alpha Raptor came to our beach, killed us both and destroyed a good chunk of our wooden houses. Since then we have been unable to return home. At one point I even tried taming 3 Dilos and going in with tranq arrows hoping to be able to tame or spear it to death but it powered right through and slaughtered the lot of us. We tried building homes elsewhere, but it seems every time I get a decent set of hide gear and some tools and momentum going, some new dinosaur I've never heard of before shows up, kills me, I lose all my stuff, repeat. Carnotaur/BaryOnyx/some giant ass crocodile/some warthog looking thing, you name it. Recently we tried adjusting the difficulty, which I hate having to do in games. Made the day a little longer, night a little shorter in hopes of being able to see threats approaching. Adjusted damages in hopes of allowing us to survive a single encounter, at which point a level 1 Otter or something killed both of us and our parasaur. Am I missing something? I know this game isn't supposed to be easy, I know the tutorial is... thin. I just feel like by the time I'm level 30 I should at least be able to survive and maybe even reclaim my home from that Alpha Raptor some day. Any help is GREATLY appreciated. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MateoModolell Posted March 19, 2019 Share Posted March 19, 2019 Have you tried to modify the game in order to make it easier? Also, what lvl are the creatures and the location of your base greatly affects the kinds of creatures you encounter. As a low lvl, make your base on the beach until you are fully kitted out and have good mounts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
houseofbacon Posted March 19, 2019 Author Share Posted March 19, 2019 I'm going to try messing with the difficulty settings a bit. Our base is on a beach in the southwest where it's supposed to be easy, but I'm having trouble getting a level 30-something Alpha Raptor to leave our base. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Whipples Posted March 19, 2019 Share Posted March 19, 2019 I started in a similar situation back in when the game was first available on PS4 playing with my son. We started in Redwoods and the terror birds made everything seem impossible. If you are going to tweak settings, mainly up the taming speed. That seems to be the one that works best for making things fun and challenging. The other thing to tweak would be resource gathering. To get started, focus on a stone base about 3x6 with a stone dino gate. It'll end any issues with dino's wrecking your base and give you a spot to spawn at that isn't likely to be destroyed by anything. Knowing how much my kid and I die at first, I'd also recommend a second smaller stone structure a fair ways away but close enough to run to that also has a bed. Because it really sucks when you die together and one of you has to wait 5 mins on the bed cool down. For the pesky alpha raptors right outside your base, strip naked and run them off as far away as you can. (A second bed nearby can really helps with this). Once you have yourself 3x6, you can safely store a couple dinos. Parasaur is great early on for berries, but now that you are 30 you can make an iguanadon saddle. Forget the Parasaur and go for an iguanadon, highest you can find, tranq, surround with spikes if you can, and tame it up. With that you can quickly travel long distances and escape most situation, but it won't fight well. Just use it to collect lots of berries for narcotics, kill dodos, dilos, lysties and moschops with it and ax the corpses for meat/hide. After that have fun learning to build traps for stuff and building up to start searching for a permanent base location. I'd highly recommend going for a Doedicurus as soon as you can (lvl 34 saddle). Doesn't really matter level at the start of the game, and put all points into weight. I wouldn't recommend going for a raptor. They just don't seem worth it and kids constantly get them killed. Instead, go for a Carnotaurus if you can, but aim for the higher levels. They are a good one to learn to build traps with and can be a fun killing mount till you upgrade. If you bump the taming rate up, you can raw meat tame them okay. Once you have one and learn to use it to run prime, you can get better ones faster. The game will speed up from there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
houseofbacon Posted March 19, 2019 Author Share Posted March 19, 2019 I'm glad to hear someone else has been in my situation before, thank you for that. It's also nice to hear that adjusting the difficulty isn't the same as giving up, and is in fact common practice on single player server. The extra beds is a real "oh my god, why hadn't I already done that??" Thank you very much for your response. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Piffguru Posted March 19, 2019 Share Posted March 19, 2019 Been there before, like most people have. For me the biggest handicap early on is not being aware of which dinosaurs are aggressive, which are passive unless you get too close or hit them, and which will just straight up run away even if you hit them. Once you get more familiar with what the real dangers are you will fair much better. As for the alpha raptor, Ive heard that a decent trike can kill one with its reduced damage to its head and its knockback. But when I was early on and ran into alpha raptors I would usually just try to avoid them or get up on a rock he cant reach and wait for him to kill a wild dino and just shoot it to death with a crossbow and arrows. Alphas cant consume corpses and therefore do not heal. This is part of the mechanic to stop them from being able to be tamed legitimately. So it will just sit there attempting to bite this corpse that it just cant, so just shoot him till he dies. Eventually the alpha raptor will leave the corpse and you may have to wait till he finds something else to kill OR you can go out there naked and let it kill you and respawn grab ur stuff from where ever you stashed it and try shooting him from a distance again. I would highly suggest not changing the difficulty settings as this game IMO is the most fun when everything feels dangerous and you have to do a lot of problem solving to get by. Once things get trivial things will be more mundane. I got stuck in a bad situation leaving a cave the other day with an alpha raptor right outside. Had to fight it with my sword and actually won the fight. I thought at the time, wow I remember when those were like the scariest thing I would see. GL and have fun out there PS: one of my early houses had like 15 beds in it so me and my tribemate could handle those terrible situations where you die constantly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
houseofbacon Posted March 19, 2019 Author Share Posted March 19, 2019 Wait, so you can just have a stockpile of beds in random places, or together, and they call count as 5 minute cooldown spawn points??? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Piffguru Posted March 19, 2019 Share Posted March 19, 2019 5 minutes ago, houseofbacon said: Wait, so you can just have a stockpile of beds in random places, or together, and they call count as 5 minute cooldown spawn points??? Yup, we just made like a floor 2.5 in our base with a huge row of beds. But I would suggest renaming the beds in that situation cause the icons will all be really close together on the map and can sometimes make it hard to select the bed you want or it will show no beds available even when you do. So just name them something like B1, B2 and so on so you can just type in the name if you get stuck in that situation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kaprosuchus Posted March 19, 2019 Share Posted March 19, 2019 everyone has given good starting advice, i'd also like to mention to try and avoid angering brontos at all costs early on they will ruin your day. they WILL come up and walk on your house, it's like part of their AI to try and mate with people's houses or something. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Piffguru Posted March 19, 2019 Share Posted March 19, 2019 1 minute ago, Kaprosuchus said: everyone has given good starting advice, i'd also like to mention to try and avoid angering brontos at all costs early on they will ruin your day. they WILL come up and walk on your house, it's like part of their AI to try and mate with people's houses or something. Yea that reminds me of when I tamed my first rex and wanted to kill a few things on the way back to base. Saw a diplo halfway into a forest line.. went to kill it.. about 20 seconds in I was like why is my rex hurt... Come to find out it wasnt a diplo it was a 145 bronto who wrecked my low lvl rex LOL. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
d1nk Posted March 19, 2019 Share Posted March 19, 2019 Walls man. No base is a base without some walls! Have atleast 7 foundation length (more is better) between your walls and building(s) Once you get a dinosaur gate you will be golden. Tip: Do not build the wall out of spiked walls.. use real wall pieces (or dino gates) atleast 3 tall. Otherwise some dinos will walk right over. Your biggest accomplishment for getting 'ahead' will be fliers. Get a ptera downed (use a bola, then tranq arrow it in the face) Once you have this and a saddle you can scout / get resources / tames a lot easier. Use Ptera to get an Argentavis, then that argentavis to get more. Argentavis can carry lots of wild dinos and most of your tamed ones (size permitting) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sikaflex Posted March 19, 2019 Share Posted March 19, 2019 I loved reading your story. This newbie struggle you will never forget my friend. Put the settings back to normal and stop crying about dying. Once you get to a point where you can live normally you will feel such an accomplishment. Make sure you're starting in an Easy Zone first thing, and lay a bed/sleeping mat. Then work up from there. Sounds like you just had some bad luck. You have already learned to run from raptors and never agro a bronto near your base, good job! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Woodsman Posted March 19, 2019 Share Posted March 19, 2019 u can try the house boat strategy then just sail away when ever there is trouble Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sikaflex Posted March 19, 2019 Share Posted March 19, 2019 1 minute ago, Woodsman said: u can try the house boat strategy then just sail away when ever there is trouble Until he travels out too far and a whale gets him! Tip: stay near shore when sailing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ArianaGaming Posted March 19, 2019 Share Posted March 19, 2019 Hello, Two ways to go speed 143% on character or type cheat to cheat in the game. If you need a legit way use the speed and set difficulty to one, its better. Location is the island in the lower right of the island map. Build a raft to get there. Cheats: infinitestats Kill Gcm Gcm is super useful in caves. Always tame a male and female use the baby produced. Never use the tamed dinos. Cheats setimprintquality 1 Setbabyage 0.999 Have fun and to die is not bad in Ark as compared to minecraft. Use it to your advantage in caves as example. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hedgehog Posted March 19, 2019 Share Posted March 19, 2019 I felt the game was extremely difficult at first. Once you get a handle on all the mechanics it starts to become easier. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
P8triot04 Posted March 19, 2019 Share Posted March 19, 2019 An easy to build strategy to avoid the problems you've had thus far, build up. I mean literally UP, on a cliff and then pillars and then ceilings/beds so you dont have to spawn far away again to get back. Hopefully this will present an easy start for you. (Alpha raptors can destroy stone, hence a cliff, brontos can not. ) Good Luck. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ArianaGaming Posted March 20, 2019 Share Posted March 20, 2019 On 3/19/2019 at 5:31 PM, houseofbacon said: Wait, so you can just have a stockpile of beds in random places, or together, and they call count as 5 minute cooldown spawn points??? Use several beds in one spot when you run into a cave without gear. I forgot to say in my last. What makes the game easy is lowering the dino count. Default is one. Set dino count to 0.1 and start ark, once started type destroywilddinos If you like more just increase without the destroywilddinos command, only needed for lowering the dino count. If you have dinos you intend to tame on the map then use killaoe wild 20000 This killaoe command only destroys wild dinos in your area. Destroywilddinos removes all wild dinos on the map. Well enjoy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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