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Suggestions for Single Player playthrough?


Vit0Corleone

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Hi all,

So far I've been playing exclusively on official PvE, but I've decided to start a new playthrough on single player.

I'm sort of testing the waters to see how things go, and trying to adjust my settings in a way that "feels good" to me.

One of the things I'm struggling with, is the fact that it seems that time doesn't pass at all when I'm not playing, which makes sense since there's no server to handle that.

In itself, this wouldn't be a bad thing, but I'm not sure how to handle this considering how it radically affects some things in game.

There are several cases where this impacts my gameplay, but as an example: Cooked/Prime meat Jerky. Each one takes 36 minutes to craft on a preserving bin, which means that if I want to make 20 kibble, I'm basically looking at leaving my game on for 10+ hours. On a official server, this basically goes by when I'm IRL sleeping etc.

Even simple things like smelting iron, waiting for resource respawns, or other more complicated like how to kibble farm on a scenario like this.

How do people that play on SP handle this? Do you just leave your game on when IRL sleeping.. or?..

Any advice would be much appreciated 🙂

 

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1 hour ago, Vit0Corleone said:

One of the things I'm struggling with, is the fact that it seems that time doesn't pass at all when I'm not playing, which makes sense since there's no server to handle that.

I think the way most people cope with that issue (including me, when I've experimented with single player) is to spawn in things that would have completed while you were logged off.

 

The more complicated method:

Example 1: if you have farmed 300 metal you put them in the forge with 100 wood for burning, then you log off. When you log back on you dump the 300 metal on the ground and spawn in 150 ingots and 100 charcoal, which is what you would end up with on any dedicated server.

Example 2: Lets say you want to spoil a bunch of meat so you can make narcs. You leave 10 stacks of meat in your inventory when you log off. Meat spoils in 10 minutes, so if you're logged off for 2 hours then each stack of meat would be reduced to 28 meat and you would normally have 120 spoiled meat, so you throw 120 meat on the ground and spawn in 120 spoiled meat.

 

The easier method:

Or, if you don't like keeping notes and doing math on how long it takes for various processes to complete in ARK (because obviously that could get pretty tedious) then just take the approach that "it's been long enough". If you've been logged off for at least a few hours just assume that everything you wanted to do completed while you were offline. Throw away all of the metal, wood and meat that you wanted to process and spawn in the ingots, charcoal and spoiled meat that you wanted to make.

 

You can also apply this approach to processes that are difficult to calculate. Let's say you've put up a bunch of dino gates to fence in an area and inside those gates you've put a bunch of doed's, castroides and megaloceros and put them on wander so they can harvest stone, wood & thatch for you. Look at how much weight they can carry and just assume they've harvested that amount of resources while you've been logged off. Auto-harvesting is a huge help on Official & Unofficial servers, and you should be able to take advantage of it too. If you've tamed the animals that would normally be use for auto-harvesting then you should give yourself the same benefits that people get on regular servers. Whenever you log in you also spawn in that amount resources and put them in your storage containers. The more harvesters that you have tamed or bred up the more resources you can spawn in to account for what they would have done when you were offline.

 

I would also recommend using an add-on like Structures Plus, or something else that automates some of the processes even when you're online. There's no reason for you to have to run around your base collecting poop for fertilizer or eggs for kibble, part of the point of playing a local solo game is to avoid all of that silly busy work. Decide how much maintenance you want to make yourself do and how much you want to let the mods do for you, and that way the time you spend playing the game will actually be spent doing the parts of the game that you enjoy.

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Don't start spawning in stuff that 'should have been done - thats a slippery slope. 

I believe the fuel consumption rates affect how fast wood burns doesn't it? Maybe test with ingots too.

 

You're going to be annoyed with single player. No doubts. Besides the things you listed you ALSO need to make sure you render your rocks and stuff frequently or they have a chance of respawning when you're not there - which means the nodes become bugged. The one nice thing about no time passing is you can log out mid activity, maybe use to your advantage. 

 

Ultimately if you can afford to rent a small server and do it that way - it would be best.

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So I don't see the fact that the server turns off as any kind of issue. In fact for me it would be the reverse, I would hate the obligation to collect enough food for example, for my Rex babies to survive the night. That's when it starts to feel like a job to me. Being able to turn it on and off at whim is a critical part of maximizing the fun. That's actually one of the main reasons I stop playing wow, raiding became an obligation.

That said, in the event that you do need to leave the server running for some reason, for example aging your babies while having dinner or whatever, doing so is not an issue. I run my personal server on my crappy laptop that I pay bills on, so I'm not burning 700 Watts with no gameplay happening.

Secondly, in the event that you need to skip a large amount of time, you can just grab the chair mod that speeds up time, or do so via the command. Although I'm not sure why you would need to do that.

In the times when something will take a long time, like a 6-hour tame, or waiting on a large amount of metal cooking, I simply go do something else. Plenty of caves to run, resources to harvest, babies to feed, building, Etc.

Running your single-player server as a server removes all of the issues from using the single player option. It also means that your server won't crash when your game does, and your kid can't save over your game.

As for game mechanic recommendations, I'd recommend cutting experience to 1/4 until around level 50. This restores all of the mechanics around the earlier tiers of structures. In other words you'll actually need (or at least benefit from) a wooden base, Etc.

Another enormous game changer is that you'll have your pick of Base spots. Weather PVP or PVE, your base choices are usually restricted, but in single player the determining factors are far different.

I would say a primary one is whether you're going to skip the egg-laying mechanics. Egg laying out of render is broken so you'll need a centralized hub if you intend to play the mechanic. If you're skipping it, say with structures plus egg collectors, just build however you want.

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7 hours ago, Vit0Corleone said:

PC Steam

I'd use S+ or Super Structures then, you can change the crafting speed of all of the different structures, each one has it's own setting so you can customise it to what suits your needs without making it feel too much like cheating, so basically set preserving bins to something like 4x which would make 1 jerky every 9 mins, maybe double or triple the speed of refining forges and increase the speed of compost bins as well unless you prefer to use beetles, most of the other structures can be left at default settings without making the game too slow.

You can also use put your egg layers on a hitching post which prevents them going into stasis so you'll still get eggs while doing other things on the map instead of having to stay in render distance, Dino Storage v2 is probably better for this but can be a bit OP so depends on how you want to play

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41 minutes ago, RageQuitter said:

I'd use S+ or Super Structures then, you can change the crafting speed of all of the different structures, each one has it's own setting so you can customise it to what suits your needs without making it feel too much like cheating, so basically set preserving bins to something like 4x which would make 1 jerky every 9 mins, maybe double or triple the speed of refining forges and increase the speed of compost bins as well unless you prefer to use beetles, most of the other structures can be left at default settings without making the game too slow.

You can also use put your egg layers on a hitching post which prevents them going into stasis so you'll still get eggs while doing other things on the map instead of having to stay in render distance, Dino Storage v2 is probably better for this but can be a bit OP so depends on how you want to play

Thanks. This does sound like the best option so far. I will definitely take a look.

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Crank up certain things like taming speed, gathering rates, baby maturity, ect. Everyone is different, but i find it incredibly tedious to play single player with official settings, especially considering you have to essentially let your console/pc running for hours to get anything done while on such settings.

 

As far as admin commands, i only use a tiny handful regularly, such as saveworld, destroywilddinos, giveengrams, and the such, to make the experience a bit smoother and more streamlined. I generally dont like using any others, unless im extremely desperate and don't have the time to do or get something. 

 

I could give you a 100 more tips, but i imagine you want a different experience then i do, and i hope you can find the enjoyment your looking for. I'll gladly share if you ask though. Good luck.

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12 hours ago, d1nk said:

True - which i do. I can admit it. Though I would put money on that most would. Its easy when you're going good. The second you encounter a glitch / bug (it is ARK after all) guaranteed the first thought is: I can fix this..

True, but that's completely fair. If something goes wrong and it's the game's fault (glitch or bug) then using admin rights to fix that problem is one of the things that makes ARK a good single player game. That's exactly what admin commands should be used for, to fix problems caused by glitches/bugs with the game.

There are problems that you have to put up with when playing on Official servers and even on many Unofficial servers, but one of the perks of playing solo is that you don't have to put up with that kind of junk.

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23 hours ago, d1nk said:

True - which i do. I can admit it. Though I would put money on that most would. Its easy when you're going good. The second you encounter a glitch / bug (it is ARK after all) guaranteed the first thought is: I can fix this..

Well now hang on those are perfectly legitimate opportunities, right? It's the, "Oh, shoot, I forgot to bring the kibble from base... I'll just Admin Fly back super fast and snag it..." occasions that slowly pile up and feel cheaty.

Ive started using Cryopods, which I consider cheating, for both tame storage for performance reasons, and for bypassing issues where for example Argies like to fly, no matter the follow distance, straight up my Bronto's tailpipe and get us both stuck. Both those are definitely edging on my idea of cheating but I'm still holding onto self control.

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15 hours ago, Countrydude89 said:

Crank up certain things like taming speed, gathering rates, baby maturity, ect. Everyone is different, but i find it incredibly tedious to play single player with official settings, especially considering you have to essentially let your console/pc running for hours to get anything done while on such settings.

Doesn't anyone multitask? I keep seeing this mistake made, don't people realize the very INTENT was for you to return to your 4 hour tame every half hour to refill torpor, NOT sit there staring at it?

I just popped 20, yes 20, rex eggs. Im going to be uh... handling lots of meat... for many hours but why would I just sit still in between hunts and refilling? Honestly baffled why folks think this.

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On 12/13/2020 at 3:36 PM, Vit0Corleone said:

...

How do people that play on SP handle this? Do you just leave your game on when IRL sleeping.. or?..

Any advice would be much appreciated 🙂

 

Mods... Just a lot of mods... 😄 I can't imagine playing SP with official rates and without mods. But to be honest if you own the Extinction or Genesis-DLC, things aren't as bad because you can do orbital supply drops (EXT) and missions (GEN) to get some good gear + jerky/brews/stews as well. And on GEN you can just collect hexagons and buy some of the stuff you need.

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Just make more. More forges, more preserving bins, more everything that you need. Adding more forges decreases the amount of time it takes to smelt 10K metal, and having 10 preserving bins means you're getting 10x the amount of jerky in the same time. I know it isn't the best or most resource efficient solution, but it's the one that works best for me. I have a huge platform with 6 industrial forges open to the air seeing as how I don't have to worry about other players.

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6 hours ago, Qwertymine said:

Just make more. More forges, more preserving bins, more everything that you need. Adding more forges decreases the amount of time it takes to smelt 10K metal, and having 10 preserving bins means you're getting 10x the amount of jerky in the same time. I know it isn't the best or most resource efficient solution, but it's the one that works best for me. I have a huge platform with 6 industrial forges open to the air seeing as how I don't have to worry about other players.

This is the way most single players solve the problem for Beer or jerky.

Also just a suggestion but if your looking for "Balanced" breeding times I recommend using multiples of 60. At maturation rate = 60, maturation times are reduced from hours to mins, e.g. rex's normally take 3d 20hrs 30 mins, on 60x maturation rates it becomes 92 mins 30 seconds from hatch to fully mature. And for intervals use 1/60 or 0.017.

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16 minutes ago, Rumackay said:

I think much of what you need to do with single player to be enjoyable has been touched on already. But, I can't stress enough the importance of destroywilddinos. Memorize it, use it often. You'll thank me later  😆

What reasons would there be to run this? I know what it does, but why would I use it?

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