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Failed alpha hunt mission; scaling broken?


N601J

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Failed alpha hunt mission; scaling broken?

We're on a private unofficial server with boosted breeding/taming/gathering rates, but, in all other respects, the same settings as official. There are two of us, and we have done all alpha fights from all maps prior to genesis, including the Center, Ragnarok, and Valguero. After failing at alpha Spy Vs Spino using 10 spinos and 2 turret-bearing paracers, where there were four deaths in the first two encounters, we tried again. This time we decided to go for a more traditional boss-killing setup of dps/tank dinos with pig and yut.

We bred, imprinted, and levelled 18 X-Spinos to between 275 and 290 putting 1 point in weight and all the rest in health. Their health ranged from 27k-30k. Originally, we were going to go for the traditional 20 dinos, but decided to bring an additional yut and pig because we could. The yuts were level 308, the pigs 334, and both were also bred and fully-imprinted. All dino saddles were from ascendant blueprints and ranged in armor from 200-300. The pigs carried 5k kibbles.

One of us rode a yut, and the other rode a pig. We split the spinos into two groups and had each group and the ridden dino's mate follow each of us. My partner had the yut group and followed the tracks, pausing before the first brute encounter so that I could ready the pigs for healing. After this, we sent in the spinos to fight. My partner covered the courage roars, and I capered around on the pigs ensuring healing coverage and force-feeding as needed. We completed this encounter with no deaths.

As we followed the tracks headed for the second encounter, we continued the pig-healing of the spinos. There's only 15 minutes for the whole mission, so there is not really any time to break and heal. At the second encounter, things went very downhill. We had only 6 minutes left in the mission, and we lost a yut and 7 spinos. At that point, we canceled the mission.

I am really wondering if the alpha hunt missions are working as intended. The group we brought was a solid boss-killing squad with extra healing even and was similar to many armies we've raised for other alpha boss fights, although we've never used spinos before. The alpha brute spino was taking about 70-100 damage per hit, but was dealing ~1000 damage per hit. I am not sure how we would counter that without having 4x the army we had and accepting the loss of many dinos. This seems absurdly difficult for a mission where the beta level can be completed with two good spinos. If this is, in fact, broken, please fix it! I really like these missions and really like a challenge, but the success conditions for the alpha hunts seem excessive.

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Oh, it wasn't just me? Cause even though I tried this on an unofficial server where the dino levels were 435 max or so, decided to try out an alpha mission for hunting raptor tracks in the bog with a 530 mammoth with 450k hp. Brute Raptor spawned at level 2300 and eviscerated my mammoth for 6-10k per hit while taking barely 800 a stomp.

I felt that was extremely overtuned for an alpha mission even on an unofficial server where no dino is gonna break 1000, let alone 800 without going more than a few generations in.

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You could beat the gamma end boss, then do the alpha missions

Which is what I think is the motive here, complete gamma then step it up to beta, then alpha

Most people just wanna walk right into the end boss and go pew pew pew, I'm the greatest xD

But in saying that they need to buff alpha moeder and alpha controller because the brutes hit harder than them, it's actually sad being one shot by a brute, yet u can kill the bosses pretty easy

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19 hours ago, MrHalloween said:

Skiff with mounted minigun turrets and a mounted tame in the grapple to get the tracks

Then when brute appears you melt with turret

Seen streamers complete that way,

That's really creative and interesting, but I'm with @Darkholis: "a bit ackward from a progression pov".  I think the mission should be doable with the dinos in the biome. Even bringing x-yuts from Snow and transferring in my pigs rankled when we made our attempt.

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14 hours ago, MrHalloween said:

But in saying that they need to buff alpha moeder and alpha controller because the brutes hit harder than them, it's actually sad being one shot by a brute, yet u can kill the bosses pretty easy

We haven't gotten to those bosses yet, but if what you say is true, I think that is more evidence that there is a scaling error.

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I had a conversation with darkholis about this the other day and I think he may be correct. As we all know there was a problem with the loot scaling during release getting Asc. Saddles during dodo ball and phiomias during harder beta variants. I think somewhere down the line the scaling for difficulty got twisted as well.

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Just an update post-patch 307.02: the brute x-spino in alpha Spy vs. Spino now actually does more damage (1400-1700) and takes possibly even less damage (80). Our setup was the same as that first detailed in this thread. He was well on his way to wiping our entire army in the first encounter. Soooo, either not fixed or we are intended to use the skiff, download titans, put everybody in meks, or whatever, just not attempt it with a dino army.

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I don't understand the thought process behind these alpha missions. Even some of the betas are insane. My friend and I are the only ones that play on our PvE player dedicated server and we tried doing Built Fjord Tough on gamma and breezed through it but tried the beta and could't put out enough damage in the time given even when using different methods. Then tried doing Mound Over Matter and did the gamma and beta easily then the apha saw me and him get absolutely destroyed because every dino does insane damage while you do about 200 with a Rex that normally does 4000 or more. It needs to be fixed to at least be doable and scale to the amount of people in the mission

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We have no problem with beta missions but alpha are overtuned. Tried kingslayer alpha, it almost wiped us, had to cancel with the brute rex at 90% hp or so.

Let see what happen when uploads are available, if those op rexes or gigas with 180 saddles can kill the brutes easily.

Also, the eggstraction mission, DILO, even in gamma it is almost undoable not only because half of creature reflect damage but also the escape its insane.

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You thought that's bad, try any of the underwater alpha hunts/retrieval. Tracking the thing already takes away more than half of your time because of clunkyness of water tames, unless you bring something small and risk insta dying. Then if you dare to have something follow, you gonna lose half of them, they'll get zapped and stuck by eels/jellyfish or captured by air bubbles, or get out of render distance because of constant swimming in circles. Even with hour time I don't think you would be able to do anything, alpha squid was hitting for 5k damage too so that's the same scenario as op presented but no way of healing or buffing with youty/pig. I tried the leed one because it doesn't hit hard but then it has 500k health and riddiculously reduced damage, might as well go and hit it with a pike. I had 5 mosas with 200 saddles, fully imprinted with min maxed stats and a squid, seems like not a lot but bringing my whole moeder army seemed like a massive headache. There's no way anyone tested this, I play on single player with slight boosts to resemble dinos from a looong time ago pre nerf and doing all this on my own is pure madness.

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I spent 3 hours today with a tribemate to farm the "Ruffle Some Feathers" mission at gamma/beta to test out the loot and the overall difficulty. We also tried the alpha variant 3 times and always got our rear ends kicked...

For our beta fights, we used a 40k hp reaper to tank hits while I was riding our tek giga for dps. After the final fight, reaper would usually end up with 10-12k hp left and giga at 9k hp out of 19k.

Results :
- Gamma is very easy and can be done with your favorite fighting creature.
- All snow hunting missions are nearly undoable during daytime because light-blue tracks in the snow are almost invisible, unless you seriously turn down gamma (0.5 for me did the trick).
- Gamma loot is vastly superior to beta, not taking account the difficulty of beating beta. Among the gamma drops, we got crafted drills, magmasaur saddles, tek claws, tek sensors, metal ocean platforms, hazard suits, desert suits, titanosaur saddles, astrocetus saddles, basilisk saddles, flamethrowers and all BPs for previous items up to journeyman quality. Beta loot was mostly ramshackle stone tools, soups/stews and other useless items like glow sticks...
- Beta brute yuti will hit a reaper (100% imprint, etc.) for 250 dmg on average while the giga (44 armor saddle) received 512 per hit on average.
- Alpha yuti hits are in the 1-2k range each on a reaper, which is absurd.

Our conclusion is that the loot is not properly balanced accross each difficulty of the same mission. Worst, the overall difficulty just get beyond ridiculous as you attempt beta/alpha missions.

 

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Having problems signing in, but wanted to share my little test.  Went on single player and summoned in a level 5000 theri, 7500 post tame.  Wanted some big numbers to confirm my observations so far.  It was doing 18,854 damage to regular wild dinos.

Gamma: 94,273 damage to yuty, or 5x normal
Beta: 18,854 - normal damage
Alpha: 2,828.  this is normal damage divided by 6 and 2/3

With just those, it would make Alpha 33 times more difficult than Gamma, but that's not the whole story.  The theri had an ascendant 250 armor saddle.

Gamma: 8 damage done BY yuty
Beta: 46 damage done by yuty
Alpha : 163 damage done by yuty

These numbers will vary depending on the particular yuty spawned, but the Alpha yuty did 20 times the damage of the Gamma.  Combine the numbers from damage done and damage taken and Alpha is approximately 660 times more difficult than gamma.  Now that's scaling at its best (insert sarcasm emoji)

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On 3/14/2020 at 7:24 PM, arkark said:

We have no problem with beta missions but alpha are overtuned. Tried kingslayer alpha, it almost wiped us, had to cancel with the brute rex at 90% hp or so.

Let see what happen when uploads are available, if those op rexes or gigas with 180 saddles can kill the brutes easily.

Also, the eggstraction mission, DILO, even in gamma it is almost undoable not only because half of creature reflect damage but also the escape its insane.

tip:
2 Megatheriums (bred, both ridden)
one daedon

Alpha kingslayer is extremely easy. Just bring megas instead of rexs, spinos, etc. With the insect killer buff, you'll take 100-300 a hit, and deal almost 1k a hit>

Without the buff however, you will die. 

But Volcanos easy to keep it up as you go, so yeah. Try this! This is how we did it, Unofficial but non boosted stats.

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Just don't get hit. Genesis is plenty with weaponry to deal ranged damage, and hunt missions don't limit what you can do. Hover Skiff, Astrocetus, Mek, even Bloodstalker can help you on this task. So far Astrocetus is the best, offering 2 well-placed automatic turrets and being capable of bombing areas to get rid of minions. If you can't either do Gamma or Beta Master Controller, there is no point doing Alpha hunt missions, but if you still want to face the challenge, just don't throw tames at it. Not even a 50k HP Megachelon with 200+ Saddle will last them for very long.

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  • 1 month later...

So something I've noticed with alpha brute Spino.  I play on single player with boosted stats.  I beat gamma spino with my imprinted deinonychus capitalizing on the bleed out effects.  The spino was losing over 6k health per second to bleeding out.  Made for a rather easy fight.  I tried alpha spino fight as the gamma was so easy.  The alpha barely loses health to the bleeding.  Which only makes sense if it has a saddle on.  As I understand it the bleeding takes away a bit over 1% health per second.  So it should be doing even more damage to the alpha.  Does anyone else notice the same thing? 

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We were able to do Alpha Deer with 3 raised Ferox's around 25k hp, 900 melee. Took some damage and lost three helmets each ranging from 300 to 215 durability. 

Failed twice trying Alpha Magma. Killed it once but Carno's had too much hp left. We lost 4 mid tier Rex's, one good Rex before we canceled. Second attempt one we lost one Rex, tried with 10 Rex's (4 ridden) and a Yuty buff but there just wasn't enough time. We healed after second encounter. 

Alpha Mammoth we failed. It destroyed the 300 dura helmets our Ferox were wearing in 2 stomps then knocked about 8k hp off with 2 more stomps before we could put on new helmets. 

Lack of proper loot seems to be biggest factor.

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Anyone an idea how to do the "Hop, skip and jump" mission int he bog on alpha? If we take smaller creatures they are in the way, if we take larger creatures - they are in the way. If we just go with 2 ridden Spinos we don't deal enough damage and the frog dies quite fast. We don't have a lot of big dinos, we started playing ARK with the new map, so we also don't have any TEK-items unlocked and of course no skiff~

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