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Just Starting, Helpful Tips?


MixableSon

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PvE- Get to raft level, look up locations for explorer notes. Common areas are heavily pillared or built on. If on Island, stay close to shore so a leed doesn't destroy your raft. Tame a Ptera, gather building supplies while scouting for a base further in land.

PvP- Stay out of chat and get off the beach. Most servers are owned by an Alpha tribe or Mega tribe and they will kill you on site. Place little storage boxes in several places so if one gets hit, you have other stuff to get back on your feet.

All modes- Don't ask for handouts. It mostly makes you a target. 

Finding a place to build will be hard at this stage of the game so be prepared to scout quite a few servers before you find one. 

Avoid legacy servers unless you can take your server being removed down the line. 

If you're struggling on official check the unofficial servers until you find something  that fits your playstyle and time commitment.

Be prepared to be very frustrated at bugs and to die often early. 

Learn on single player if you need to. 

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Start on Ragnarok. It's a free DLC. If you, for some reason, can't download that, fiddle around on PvE before even attempting PvP. I don't like PvP. Toxic as all getup. Punch a tree, study your engram list (skills), and always make a bed. Make spears as soon as you can, kill dodos for hide, and you will be good. Nothing wrong with a thatch hut for a while. Stay away from Therizinosaurus, Dilo's, and Calicotheriums. They look harmless. They're not. 

You will die.

A lot. 

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I personally would attempt single player first to learn how to play, rather than jumping on a server and being hit with hundered of rules.

My first bit of advice.. don't get put off by dying it happens a lot in your early days.. don't worry about having to get your stuff back it's easy to craft stuff again at early levels and sometimes not worth the hassle recovering stuff.

My second piece of advice if the Dino's are emitting a red cloudy aura it more than likely is an alpha take a look at the wiki for an image.. do not attempt to pet these Dino's, they will make it their mission to chase you down at eat you alive. 

My third piece of advice start gathering everything and crafting straight away putting your levels into movement speed at the beginning helps you outrun most Dino's.

I think that's enough to get you started.

Oh and have fun. 

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Upgrade your beachbob house to stone, but dont settle for too long - move inland to be closer to resource and away from the large water bases. 

Get storage down and use it. You'll need a few hundred chitin for a saddle at some point and wish you had. 

Don't ask for hand outs. You'll probably just frustrate the long term tribes, but you'll not appreciate the game at all and will probably give up after a could of weeks. 

Prepare to be killed. A lot. It's going to happen so just accept it! Use the map to figure out where you are so that if you die, you'll have a better idea of how to get home (unless you have a bed) 

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Make a bed or sleeping bag and put it in a safe place as soon as possible. Make 2-3 copies of your tools and clothes early game. Then put them in a storage box.  That way,. when you die. (and you will)  you can grab your extra stuff from the box and get back to it, right away.

Don't neglect your Fortitude level.  Putting points into it, can really help.

Bolas are a great tool to catch and help tame Pteras, Parasaurs, raptors, etc.

 

I agree that single player mode is the best way to start and learn the game.

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16 minutes ago, MixableSon said:

I mean mainly more taming speed, exp multipliers and that kind of thing.

Don't go over 5x on harvesting. Lags quite a bit. 

Other than that, adjust as you see fit.

I personally go 92.5x on hatch since there is no skill involved in watching an egg cook down or mammal be pregnant.

I'd try 3 to 5x for most things though. 

Adjust as you figure out what works for you.

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The best advice I can give you as a veteran with thousands of hours of play time is to play on Official PVP servers. By choose to play PVP you will experience the full game, the complete package as intended by the developers themselves. Additionally by choosing to play on an Official PVP server you will experience one of the best PVP experiences of any game on the market today. Official PVP servers offer you thousands of other players to destroy, butcher and fight against as well as occasionally ally with. There are no rules on Official PVP servers, you can slaughter and kill to your hearts content. In fact this is the reason why they are so popular, PVP folks like their freedom of action. There is nothing worse then a "PVP" server with annoying "rules" that lesser skilled players use to hide behind. If you like "rules" there are Unofficial PVP servers but I do not recommend those.

At first you will die and die often but that is what will mould you into a superior player. Each time you die its a chance to reflect and look back at what did you wrong and where you can improve. There are some commentators above making false statements about PVP being mean or nasty or whatever. Ignore them, those folks clearly aren't qualified to discuss PVP and should refrain from doing so. PVP isn't easy, that is true but what do you get out of life if you duck challenges?

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9 hours ago, MixableSon said:

I mean mainly more taming speed, exp multipliers and that kind of thing.

Exp doesn't need to be set very high, personally I rarely go above 2x. If you build even a midsize base the exp from crafting all those structures will rocket you up the ranks faster than you need the Engrams. Plus if you're playing on any of the story maps you can just collect Explorer Notes for exp. There's also narcotics, they give decent exp and you need to mass craft them for taming anyway.

Taming I have set to 10x, you can tame most things without kibble but using it decreases the time enough to make it worth it still. Anything between 5-10x is fine for SP, above that and you might as well just force tame everything...

For breeding I use the following SP settings:

Mating interval 0.001

Egg hatch speed 45

Baby mature speed 45

Baby food consumption 0.25

Baby cuddle 0.4

Cuddle grace 10

Baby cuddle lose imprint speed 0.015

I also use S+ and set my hatchery to have 1000 egg slots.

What this does is allow your animals to breed every 2-5 minutes, eggs hatch in minutes and babies grow up in 1-6 hours depending on species. SP doesn't have the advantage of always online multiplayer so when you are not in game nothing advances. The cuddle stuff also allows full imprint if you aren't using the nanny or don't have one yet.

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13 hours ago, MixableSon said:

Thank you to everyone that has replied to me it is all extremely helpful, are there any good values to set for my singleplayer map?

I'm going to be brutally honest here. This game isn't a single player game, you will be disappointed if you play this game in single player. Yes it is has single player but its more of an after thought then a real mode. Multiplayer and in particular PVP is where this game truly shines.

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1 hour ago, ForzaProiettile said:

I'm going to be brutally honest here. This game isn't a single player game, you will be disappointed if you play this game in single player. Yes it is has single player but its more of an after thought then a real mode. Multiplayer and in particular PVP is where this game truly shines.

We get it, you like PvP:|

 

There are many, many ways to enjoy this game. @MixableSon try them all and you'll decide which way you like. 

Objectively there is no "best" way to play this game other than the way that suites you. 

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3 hours ago, Cymas said:

@ForzaProiettile Are you really just pasting the same thing about PVP servers in every single thread? It's almost like this game has multiple game modes to appeal to multiple types of players. Not everyone enjoys PVP, tribing or has time for official rates.

No not at all. I am simply telling him the truth. Single player isn't where this game shines, I am presume he is new and wants the best experience hence my recommendations.

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If you're gonna be looking to play on a server here's my advice: play unofficial. Official pvp requires a lot of time to be put in to have even a chance to progress, so if you don't wanna dedicate 12 hours a day to ark, probably not the best. Official PVE is pretty crowded and can be toxic. Spend some time looking for an unoffical server cluster with a community and server settings you enjoy.

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Some alternative advice..

Keep everything.

Okay not everything but the vast majority. That charcoal that clogs up your campfires? Useful. That rotten meat? Useful. Only things I trash early game are Stimberries and Seeds. And obv keep Seeds until your farm is setup.

Use Default Official Rates

This is up to taste but if you play RPGs then 1x Official rates are perfectly acceptable (until breeding). Those advocating raising rates are interested in skipping large portions of the game to get to end game PVP or Creative Mode building. 1x rates keep all systems relevant (kibble matters, high dinos necessary for big bases, you actually NEED to leave base to acquire resources, etc).

Host Server not SP

There are tradeoffs but in the end I recommend hosting your own server (even if playing alone) rather than clicking Play Single Player. One major Pro is hosting a server fixes the resource respawn bug that gets pretty annoying pretty quick. However one Con is increasing game startup time significantly.

Different Maps are VERY Different

Island should be your starting map. Some examples of things that change between maps include; vastly different rates for gathering the same material (Aber seems lower on certain things), resource availability is dramatically different (Ragnarok is ez-mode), certain items are broken/not available (Aber has climbing picks and cliff platforms but grappling hooks and tree platforms dont work), the gathering dino meta per map is vastly different, etc.

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22 hours ago, ForzaProiettile said:

No not at all. I am simply telling him the truth. Single player isn't where this game shines, I am presume he is new and wants the best experience hence my recommendations.

Wow. Doubling down on "my favorite color is better than your favorite color because I like it more," eh?

"That's a bold strategy, Cotton, let's see if it pays off."

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11 minutes ago, SMP said:

Google.  Take advantage of the hive mind, we have millions of combined hours and almost everything you can do in Ark has been discussed at length.  Also, you get info about 100x faster than asking for it on the forums.

 I used to be puzzled as well why people will ask things that are so easily researched, or that are clearly subjective preferences ("what class should I play?").

Then I remembered that humans are social creatures and many of us first instinctively go to others for answers.

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3 hours ago, Oldster said:

 I used to be puzzled as well why people will ask things that are so easily researched, or that are clearly subjective preferences ("what class should I play?").

Then I remembered that humans are social creatures and many of us first instinctively go to others for answers.

On the note of preferences. People want to hear the facts supporting each side. I do see a lot of threads though that cover the exact same topic though. 

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