It's time to look at the Phoenix Wildcard.

[Chrysa1is]

Before i start, yes the phoenix is rare and yes its supposed to be hard to find, and yes i know 3 spawn now instead of 1. But the phoenix needs to be looked at and tweaked.

The problems you face when looking for the phoenix is/are:

-very irregular heatwaves- Heat waves need to happen on a more regular basis, and the heat waves themselves need to be much much longer. You can't afford to stop flying around during the heatwave time window as it is a very short amount of time. Its betweem 3-5minutes i think. Get rid of the pointless rain and thunderstorm weather events as they reduce heatwave event probability. The sand storm is fine and acceptable. Weather events also need to be more regular, as sitting around for hours waiting for the heatwave is very annoying and boring.

-phoenix ashes- Now unless you've seen them before, how the hell are you supposed to know what you're looking for? Sure, you can google the phoenix ashes and see a picture, but, there are thousands of rocks that you can easily mistake for ashes, and the rocks are everywhere. Phoenix ashes need to completely stand out from the rocks. A small flaming ash pile would most likely be hidden by bigger rocks or bushes if the phoenix despawns and the ashes land in these spots. Even with tek helmet and parasur, its hard.

-phoenix spawn- Looking on the ark wiki, it shows the whole map as the phoenix spawn location, which really isnt helpful given that heatwaves only last for a very short amount of time. Phoenix spawn locations need to be more restricted and accurate. Ive tried searching for spawn locations, and no one can give a definitive answer because the whole map is the spawn point. The phoenix also moves every heatwave so if it can go anywhere, how on earth are you expected to find it?

This thread may fall upon deaf ears so to speak, but it is my hope that others agree, and, that wildcard see this and consider tweaking the phoenix to make it easier to find. It isn't fun and id strongly disagree with anyone who says it is easy. It isnt. Some people get lucky, and for that i hate you (not literally). I've popped on to scorched earth whenever im not busy, to search for one, and ive been popping on every so often for about a year, and have still yet to find one. Maybe im unlucky, but id say its more down to the mechanics and conditions of finding one that is the problem. Fingers crossed this gets considered.

 

[Pipinghot]

17 minutes ago, Chrysa1is said:

Get rid of the pointless rain and thunderstorm weather events

I won't argue against your ideas for the phoenix, but this is a terrible idea. Many people depend on those rain events for their water supply on SE, especially in PvP. It's the only way to have a good amount of water without having water pipes that give away the location of your base.

[Hemplethwaite]

It's a no from me. These are supposed to be rare and hard to obtain. It's like Nerfing all the bosses so that they aren't a challenge

You have to be a bit more dedicated to acquire one than popping on occasionally. 

If it was just a case of going to xx, xx on the map and waiting 5 minutes for a heatwave it takes away the rarity and makes them just another tame

I'd like a ferrari, but I am not willing to sacrifice my leisure time now to put in the amount of work needed to acquire one. That's just how things are sometimes

 

[Thyme]

I'm fine with how rare they are, its what makes them special. The thing is is that they're too weak for the one of the hardest to get creatures in the game. They serve no purpose other than a trophy, and high level ones are too expensive to even clone.

[Hemplethwaite]

Agree with both the above, it's a show pony nothing more.  It's nice to have one or 2 at your base, kind of like the boss trophies, so that people can marvel at how awesome a player you must be (or more likely call you a tool   😛 )  But they aren't useful by any means.

Perhaps they will get a buff in TLC 3 

[Qwertymine]

The only thing I don't like about the Phoenix is the awful stats it has. It should be the quintessential tame of Scorched, but it's so underwhelming.

[HeavenlyXInglex]

I played on official SE PvE and I owned 3 (1 normal and 2 event ones) I also tamed a few for friends. 

Now the phoenix takes dedication and work. I had a team of Jerboas at my base (20+. I became addicted to the pretty colours lol) so that I could hear them anywhere in my base. My base was located in the colosseum so it was in a good location to start from. My typical phoenix hunting preparations when like this. 

 

1) Make sure you have a whole day to be able to hunt this bad boy down. You can't do it in an hour or even a few hours, the irregular intervals of the heatwave are against you here. (I sat for 4 hours waiting for the next heatwave due to having a phoenix trapped already) 

2) A high stamina wyvern. Now I used to rock a wyvern with 2K stamina for taming phoenix as I needed to be able to fly at full speed for as long as possible and if I found one then I'd need to breathe fire as well and that drains stam a lot. Also you should be carrying rareflowers at all time during a phoenix hunt. 

3) Be prepared with the trap materials. Now I used stone pillars and ceilings for my trap the size was usually a 3X3X5 here is an example. 

The main cage is for the phoenix and the small platform was for my wyvern so that I was at the right height to breathe fire consistently. The different levels are for the next heatwave (ONLY BUILD THE NEXT LEVEL AFTER THE PHOENIX TURNS TO ASH AT THE END OF THE HEATWAVE. Remember where it turned to Ash then build your next level above the ashes. For me they always turned to ash in a corner so I would make sure for the next level I would build it so that it spawned in the middle of the next floor) as you can see from this trap it was a high lvl phoenix that took 3 heatwaves to tame. I had to stay online the whole time incase a heatwave came while I was offline and if that had happened it would of escaped and then bye bye phoenix. Also when building a trap to bring the phoenix to it. Leave a pillar out on the bottom row so the phoenix can fly in but not out. (once in the trap they fly to the top and don't come down) 

 

Now for the fun/Not-so-fun part. Finding a phoenix. As I said earlier in the post, my base was at the colosseum so my typical search patten went like this... 

Using a grid by grid search method, I would pick 2 cardinal directions and stick to them during the entire search (i.e North/South East/West) mixing it up just meant I would miss places. I'd head north from the colosseum and fly till I hit a marker I knew meant the edge of the map was near (a landmark, base, tree... Etc) then I would move to the next grid and head south, repeating this till I found a phoenix or the heatwave ended. Once I found one I would then eat rareflowers to bring it back to base or to a location where I could build a trap. 

If you have a good reputation on your home server then people might even call them out in chat. But the bottom line is that you need to be dedicated and have a lot of patience. They are meant to be a luxury Dino, not an everyday Dino you can take out whenever/wherever you like. That is why they aren't easy to tame. 

Hope this helped. Good luck finding and taming one. 

Edit: as for people saying they are useless well I disagree. I used to take mine on meat runs with my giga (Mass cooked meat with hardly any spoilage) or when I was talon farming then I'd use it to cook prime (Again mass cooked prime. No spoilage) even down to making gasoline, grab some oil before leaving base and you get gasoline while on your meat run. Metal farming, this thing can harvest metal and cook it so if you need some quick metal to hand then this is the Dino you wanna use. Of course it's no match for an indi grill or forge but it's meant to be portable. Also you can heal it by setting it on fire by any means (flaming arrows, fire wyvern, flamethrower, oil jar+fire arrow). So even if it loses hp while out and about then you can heal it and get back to work. 

[wizard03]

On the one hand, I agree that there should be a change up on the phoenix, but on the other, I feel like all of those points are not where the phoenix needs work.....How about its food supply?

Ill accept it eats Sulphur, if Sulphur was readily available on other maps. =/ Otherwise, the phoenix is only a one map show pony with no use in any other map as it will starve to death if you don't transfer extra Sulphur around.

[Chrysa1is]

On 9/28/2020 at 11:04 PM, Pipinghot said:

I won't argue against your ideas for the phoenix, but this is a terrible idea. Many people depend on those rain events for their water supply on SE, especially in PvP. It's the only way to have a good amount of water without having water pipes that give away the location of your 

It seems that the best course of action would be to make heat waves longer, and more frequent.

[skittles4free]

I spent several real-time days during the summer event capturing phoenixes during the last event. Our group (PvE) caught around 8 but we spent a ton of time doing this. I would love it if heat waves were more common and if they were twice as long. It's very difficult to do a full circuit of the map in the allocated time. We had 4 flyers hitting the different areas on Scorched during the event - and here's a couple of useful things I learned:

1. You can find glitched phoenixes after the heat wave - they are in the groud and untamable, but their flying form is above where they are actually buried. If you fly out of render from this phantom it will disappear. But it is useful for knowing what colour the phoenix is, what level, and where you have to set up your trap.

2. If you manage to find a phoenix flying during the heat wave it is very hard to tame it without a trap. Wait until the heat wave is over, do your best to mark the spot where it went into the ground and then use a Parasaur and enable its alert wild dino function to ping the spot the phoenix flew into. 

3. We used the trap this fellow made: 

 

[AllOfTheAllos]

Longer heatwaves and maybe a bit more restricted spawn points are good idea, ashes thing would make it too easy, but electric storms add challenge and variety, and the rain is actually necessary, since, well, it's a desert. Not much water in it, taking away some of that water (free water that just falls out of the skies everywhere and contains no kapros, at that!) would make things unnecessarily hard.

[wizard03]

Literally just got mine on SP yesterday.....More or less just kept marking off places on the map that Iv been to untill I finally got lucky enough to spot one.

I thought they didn't spawn out in the open desert? 
https://gamerdvr.com/gamer/wizardo3/video/111399507

[wizard03]

Oh, and it would also be nice to be able to let them land.....Is it that hard to make them land like an argy and walk around like an argy? I mean all of their characteristics are based on an argentavis, just with different colors and maneuvers.

[Exeme]

The abilities of the phoenix are definetly very underwhelming compared to the effort needed to tame one, maybe they could buff its smelting time so it is actually viable as a sort of lower grade industrial forge.