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fanfiction Single Player Game on Crystal Isle


rpicardi1

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My latest game play adventure in Ark Survival Evolved.

 

The map; crystal Isle.

Settings; Single player with taming, harvesting, leveling set at 3X.

MODS; Ultra Stacks. Kraken’s Better Dinos. Castle, Keeps, and Forts Remastered. Marnimods wildlife.

 

Kraken’s Better Dinos is a mod that enhances most of the abilities of the Ark’s creatures. Herbivores, such as a Doed, can now harvest berries. New tek creatures such as a Tek Trike and Giga are now in the map. So are several variations of new and useful creatures. New types of attacks are available on some dinos such as a stomp by the Bronto. Wild creatures may run away if they are badly hurt. It also offers a combo preserving bin, cooker, workbench that allows for the crafting of special foods from the special meat that some creatures will have when killed or from the milk of certain tamed mammals. Early, but less capable saddles are available for some creatures that have late more expensive to craft ones. Extensions can be made for platform saddles and rafts. There is even a Trike platform saddle available. Most interesting is the Valerian Reins that can be crafted from various rare materials. When placed on a flying creature, it enhances their speed, maneuverability, and stamina.

 

Castle, Keeps, and Forts Remastered uses special workbenches that allow you to craft building sections in them  thus freeing the player to continue to gather resources or start construction of structures. Like S+, you can pick up those pieces later. Foundations will also stack. Walls are 1/3 higher then Vanilla or S+ walls which gives your player more head room in placing storage chest and other items. You do not need to learn the individual pieces in this mod, only the three crafting workbenches which produce the equivalent of wood, stone, or metal structures using the same building materials and amounts. That will allow me to save up those engram points for other useful items early on.

 

Marnimods Wildlife spawn in at logical places in logical amounts. They range from rats to elephants. Each of her more modern creatures has a special taming requirement.

 

I will be playing this adventure totally unscripted. While I will have specific goals in mind for my adventure, what happens in this map will be whatever Ark presents to me. Comments will be included from my past game play on this map to compare what happens in this adventure.

I don’t plan on doing any boss fights under single player due to the grinding needed to build up a dino army strong enough to take on the Heir Queen Wyvern. Instead, this will be more of an adventure of exploration of the many areas of this map.

 

The first days in Crystal Isle.

 

My character, given the name of Robinson Crusoe, starts his adventure in the Southwest Tropical region of this map. There are several spawn points in that region where one will spawn on the beach. The one exception is a spawn point that will place your character on top of a mesa next to a small pond. Being just sheer cliffs on it’s edge, there is no way off of this area on foot other then a ramp in the far back that leads into a dangerous swamp. All stones in the Southwest Tropical only yield stone, flint and sand. Metal nodes are scare and hard to find in this area.

On this first day, he wakes up on the ground on top of the mesa. This spawn point contains a small pond nearby for water. Generally, the only dangerous creatures on this mesa in the past have been the dilos and the pesky seagulls. I know that getting enough hide to get started with basic tools is going to be difficult. Finding metal bearing rocks will involve a long trip around the mesa to find the path to it’s top where several metal rocks are located. This adventure starts out with several dodos in the area, a level 20 Parasaur, and a level 95 Tek Parasaur.

The first tasks at hand is to get leveled up, get some weapons, build a starter shelter, and place down a bed. Until I can unlock the Settler’s Workbench, I will unlock only a thatch foundation that I can use for crafting items and a bed saving the engram points to get weapons and crafting items as quickly as possible. The three Dodos are quickly dispatched for meat and hide. Half of the meat is soon cooking with the other half split for spoiling. With leveling up to unlock the wood tier, the Settler’s Workbench is unlocked and a 2x2 wooden hut is built for a starter shelter.

More Dodos have spawned in giving me the hide needed for a bed, mortise and pestle, and a refining forge. With a bola, bow and stone arrows, I decide to take out the Tek Parasaur to get the scrap metal needed for the Better Dino Workbench and basic metal tools. Later, with a saddle made for one, I tame the level 20 Parasaur so that I can have my first utility dino for gathering berries and alerting me of danger nearby. I name her Starter Patty.

To make a spyglass, I take Starter patty up into an area where larger crystals are located. The small ones located by the pond cannot be mined. I get the crystal needed for a spyglass along with a rare mushroom.

It is the next morning when the scrap metal from the tek parasaur is smelted, the Workbench put in place, and some basic metal tools are crafted. I need to go hunting to get more leather and raw meat. I take along the new crossbow for the hunt. I also take the rare mushroom and flowers along as I know that I have found moschop in the past on that long trip towards the ramp to the swamp. I haven’t traveled far when I spot another mid level tek parasaur and a Level 150 Male Parasaur. I prepare to tame this bad boy. He will be a huge improvement in stats over the present starter one.

The bola and take down goes well. With the 3x rates, my new Perry is soon ready for me to continue on. I head back to camp to get the saddle off of Starter Patty as I am short on hide for crafting a second one. I am now ready for that first serious metal run to the top of the mesa using a much stronger parasaur.

I level Perry up in weight and melee as his other stats look good. That soon pays off when I run into Dilos near the ramp up to where the metal rocks can be found. Perry dispatched three dilos in short order. They give me more meat and hide along with a low level parasaur the dilos had just killed. I also have observed two Moschops in the area. I’ll come back to see if I can tame one of them after I get the metal back into the refining forge. Some more Dilos are dispatched on the trip back to camp.

Making the trip back on foot, I find the two moschops where I had last seen them. One of them is a Level 150 male that asks for my rare mushroom. He is tamed in the one feed thanks to the Better Dino mod.

Coming back, I find a low level tek parasaur stuck in the terrain. It is soon chopped up by Bart into scrap metal, oil, and other resources.

A Level 145 female Parasaur has spawned in while I was gone on the moschop run. I come back to tame her. That now gives me three Parasaurs and a Moschop as tames by the end of the day.

While out exploring the next morning, I find a way to scale the steep terrain above me to reach where the metal rocks can be found. I take Perry up that same path and load him up with metal ore. There are some of those pesky seagulls in the area, but the Krakens mod reduces their agro range so I don’t have to deal with them. The forge is now filled as I now have my full set of metal tools by the end of that day.

So far, I have not seen any of the Tropical Wyverns in this area. In past game play, I have spotted them either in the swamp, or up where the metal rocks are. It is hit and miss what will spawn in on this map and when. The only creatures that have showed up so far on this mesa are the dodos, seagulls, low level pteradons, moschops, parasaurs, and dilos.

With the Marnimods Wildlife mod installed, chickens and camels should show up in the beach areas of the other spawn point. Most interesting on her camels is they like the yellow berries with one being more then enough to tame a Level 150. They can be ridden with or without a saddle. And, like real camels, they can spit at something when attacked. However, they have poor stamina and are quite squishy with only a stomp attack, the spit doing little damage to it’s target.

The next day is spent on a major project. I want to go down directly to the beach below the cliff and back up to where I am camped. I would also like to take a parasaur or moschop down the same way as well. Loading up the Settler’s workbench with wood, I get some foundations, pillars, ceilings, and ladders made to set up temporary scaffolding for constructing a ramp to get down to the beach. It takes a lot of material to construct the stairway and platform steps. Those modded pillars are so much easier to snap to the edge of a ceiling then the default ones. Still, it takes much of the day to construct the stairway that a parasaurs can use to get down to the beach. A raft is then outfitted for further exploration of the area.

I quickly find out that sailing towards the interior from the stairway location is not safe. While I have yet to see one, Leeds are an issue on Crystal Isle and can spawn into the interior waterways. A Berry is spotted along the shore at the base of the cliff. The Bolas don’t appear to work to immobilize it. I also spot a Krapro in the water as well as a Sarco on the beach. I take out the Sarco with the new crossbow which yields 285 toughened hide. That will be useful for crafting the Valerian Reins later on for a flier.

Two beaver lodges are spotted in the nearby shallows. I’ll raid them later due to being on a raft and the number of beavers I see living close by and in the swamp.

A trip is made to a safer island area back away from the swamp. There are chickens along the beach with the Dodos. I mine the area for wood and thatch loading them into the Settler’s Workbench on the raft as I have stripped the camp area of those materials for the stairway up off the beach.

Sailing back to the stairway, I find that the Starter Patty is alerting me to some unknown danger up in the camp area. She has spotted something in the pond. It turns out to be a Dimorphion. I have never seen them spawn in this area before. They normally would spawn in the Swamp below the plateau. I take it out with the crossbow from shore as they are a real pain in the butt to tame being only partially useful as a living air conditioner for egg hatching.

The next morning, I start sailing along the shore towards the Green Obelisk. I spot some of Marnimods Camels and Elephants along the shore of a large island. Then, I spot a blue Tropical Wyvern that has just landed in the jungle on this island. The spotting scope IDs it as a Level 150 female.

Level 150? I have never seen that high a level as a first spawn before on previous plays on this map. They are usually low level ones early on in a single player map. Having just reached Level 76, I decide to make this my first flier with my attempt at a passive tame. Time to prepare for this quest before it despawns from the area or I lose it.

I gather up the large stack of crystals the tame will need along with a parachute. Then, I slowly approach the wyvern so that I can get onto her back to start the tame. That is necessary because, even if they are stuck in a tree, they will take off for parts unknown with that first feed. Besides, I don’t have the materials on me to set up a trap as they will usually fly off when you start putting one down. You could also lose the ability to passive tame one if you agro them to get them into a trap.

Luck is with me as I am able to stay on her back as she flies all over the Southwest area of the map. Still, even on 3X, this is a long tame and quite a ride until the process has been completed. Finally tamed, I do some hunting with her as I head back to where the raft is. I have her follow me back to the stairway as I sail the raft back, then fly on her to land next to my starter hut.

I check out the requirements for the Valerian Reins. I have everything I need except for the organic polymer. A trip will need to be made either to the snow biome to kill penguins, or to the desert area to kill mantis. That will have to wait until the following morning. As it is, the Tropical Wyvern are fast fliers on their own, They can become even better with increased speed, turning radius, and more stamina when equipped with the Valerian Reins. I most certainly want to craft a set for Tropical Tammy. It will greatly increase her ability for exploration, gathering rare resources, and in obtaining utility tames for my camp upgrades, especially to Villager structures that require lots of stone.

The next morning, I take tropical Tammy out on a trip to the desert to look for mantas. The trip goes along the tropical islands along the South, then into the desert south of the Heir Wyvern Mountain to avoid getting into a fight with them. Eventually I find two groups of mantas in the open desert and get the organic polymer needed for both the reins and gill armor. That mission is completed before it gets too hot to be out there.

Returning to the camp, I find Starter Patty going nuts with warnings about danger nearby. She is picking up sharks and mantas swimming close to the drop off by the cliff side shoreline. I finally have to move her to the other side of the temporary shelter which puts them beyond the range of her radar.

I build a wood taming pen built next to the pond as I want to find a doed for harvesting stone for my camp upgrades.

With the Valerian Reins and Gillie Armor crafted, I spend the rest of the day looking for a doed. I find that Tropical Tammy flies so much faster using those reins as well as has a lot more stamina and hitting power in her attack.

While I have observed locations containing many other creatures, finding a doed has remained elusive. I will resume that search in the morning.

To be continued?

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  • 3 months later...

Palm Sunday was a bad day for me. Not with playing Ark given that you should never become attached to any of your tames, but with tames you own for real. I was forced to put down two badly injured mini horses of 20 years after they were attacked in their pen by two dogs. That's something that one never expects to ever happen in a residential semi rural neighborhood. The only positive note from that is Animal Control has the one dog that I trapped in the pen and the owner located. We should soon confirm the owner of the other dog given the photos posted on social media inquiring about the two dogs when they were running loose. They were not pit bulls. Social media is a wonderful thing for quickly gathering evidence and locating those responsible. The neighbor down the road found his mauled dead cat in his front yard.

 

On to the story;

 

4-15-22. Given that I have added the Crystal Island mod, I have restarted this map. The spawn location has placed me near the jungle area across from the bay overlooking the desert.

 

There are two things I don’t like about the area. 1. There are dangerous creatures in the area such as a spino and a berry living nearby. 2. There is no metal nodes anywhere in the location or harvest-able crystal.

 

I do spend the next hour getting a starter base established up on an overlooking hill and even find a mid level Parasaur to tame. I just give up on this location due to the lack of metal without cheating. I would have to make a major move to the islands to the Southwest to where there is metal and no threat from the spino and berry that show up down the hill on the beach.

 

4-16-22. With the map wiped, I spawn in and am promptly placed by a small pond in a familiar location. This is exactly where I wanted to be on the first adventure. The area is flat for easy building, has Dodos, Lystros, Compys, Dilos, pteradons, parasaurs, and has access to crystal with several rich metal nodes up on the hill.

 

I proceed to get started finding a stone, punching a tree, and gathering from the numerous bushes to get leveled up. Basic weapons are soon made and some thatch clothes to give my character some protection from the tropical heat of the day. I pass on learning thatch saving the engrams for later items such as bolas, bow, arrow, and the Settler’s Workbench. A 4x4 starter hut is then built next to a pond. That mod has the advantage of using walls that are 1/3 taller then Structures + or the generic ones. It also unlocks all of the building pieces thus allowing for a huge savings of engram points in single player.

 

With bolas and the bow with arrows, I head out to do some hunting in this area. The most dangerous creatures out here would be compys, dilos, and the annoying gulls.

 

With the Easter Event underway, the Dodos have bunny ears and are dropping eggs like crazy. Those can be easily gathered and cracked open for a chance at a chibi. Mainly, I just spear some of them so that I can cook the raw meat and spoil some of it for tranc arrows later on.

 

Needing a harvesting dino and having crafted up tranc arrows, I head out looking for a Parasaur. No luck. I only find a Level 15 which I proceed to kill for meat and hide.

 

Coming back, I find that some moschops have spawned in along a point. I check them out. Raw prime fish meat, Nope, no Leeds nearby. Rare flowers. OK I can find those up on the hill by the metal nodes. Coming back, I feed the rare flowers and now have an overpowered harvesting dino that can get me berries, some wood, thatch, and lots of fiber. Being an omnivore, It will kill herbivores and harvest them for meat and hide. With the melee settings I am running, it doesn’t take long to turn this girl into a killing machine.

 

Leaving the moschop secured in my starter hut, I walk around the point to explore the larger island in the southwest. Even though no metal spawns on that location, it does have higher level dinos living there that includes trikes, brontos, and tropical crystal dragons. There is also a deep sea lot drop that spawns there, but I need to be a Level 80 in order to access it.

 

Throughout the night, I continue the shoreline exploration finding little other then dodos, some spitters, a trike, and some very colorful low level dragons.

 

A note on the crystal dragons, they will bot bother you so long as you don’t do anything to hurt them. Not so on the Heir variants found in the desert. They will attack, especially, if you steal an egg out of the nest. Those can be hatched to produce normal crystal dragons which prefer a special crystal found by knocking out the wild ones. Once they reach adulthood, they live on raw meat but will prefer crystal. At Level 67, one can passive tame the normal wild ones but it is a similar process to taming the Equuis only you better be grappled to one or have a parachute handy as they promptly take off the second they are fed. Trapping with gates is possible if you find one stuck in the trees. Just don’t depend on them staying stuck in trees as they will still get away with the first feed.

 

Continuing through the night, I walk the large island around spotting a drop coming down at the extreme southeast point of the map. I spot some parasaurs there as I proceed to the white drop with the ring. It gives me a high level thatch shirt blueprint, a bed, standing torches, a storage box, a set of thatch clothes, and misc stuff.

 

Checking out the parasaurs, one of them is a Level 145 female. I proceed to bola her and knock her out for taming. By morning, she is awake and ready for work. Her buddy is a Level 60 female which I don’t need.

 

Heading back to the starter base, I see two more tropical dragons. One of them is a Level 145. I’ll come back for him later once I reach Level 67.

 

Back at the starter base, with a set of metal tools, I use my starter Patty to help me haul the large quantities of wood I will need for the 10x12 barn. The Settler’s Workbench will process that as I make several more trips for wood up on the home island. It takes all day and night to get the barn foundations and walls erected. Between the narcoberries and spoiled meat turned into narcs and the amount of crafting, I eventually reach Level 67. You know what I will be doing on the next day once I can get a roof on the barn. I’m going after that Level 145 dragon.

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  • 2 weeks later...

On the exploration of the next day while looking for the Level 145 dragon, I am distracted by a Level 145 male parasaur. I proceed to tame him so that I have a mate boosted pair. It is around noon by the time I get him back to join Starter Patty.

Back to the Southern Island, I finally find the Level 145 Dragon. Having landed, I proceed to confine him in dino gates so that he can be tamed. He tames out with some very good stats.

I then go looking for three utility dinos while leveling up the tropical dragon. I could use an Ankylo for efficient mining of crystal, metal, and flint. I also need a Doed for stone for the Villager’s Workbench to put a ceiling on the pen. A beaver or Stego would also be useful for wood gathering. No luck on finding anything other then a beaver. However, the requirement for the saddle is pretty steep.

Hitting the drops, I do obtain a high level chainsaw. I won’t need to tame a beaver or Stego at this time.

With the assortment of stuff from drops and outright garbage primitive blueprints from yellow drops, I also obtain a Mastercraft Doed Saddle.

Flying further North, I spot the first crystal creatures from the Crystal Island mod. It is a pair of parcers. Further North, I find overspawns of “Crystal Fluffy Raptors.” Not good at all. Worse yet, there are no nest. This may not be such a good mod to use given that creatures showing up on this map are not ones originally removed when Crystal Isles was a mod map. Later explorations find flaming yuttis and overspawns of colorful lava spitting crystal magnasaurs around the volcano. The Griffin Trench has many colorful crystal variants. A Level 174 tek griffin is with them along with a tek quetzal flying overhead.

Given the lack of any Ankylo and Doeds anywhere near where my camp is, along with the utter lack of anything high level. I end up cheating in the two utility harvesters.

I find that Annie can harvest over 1,000 metal ore from the rare metal rocks covered in moss on the tropical islands. That is a huge boost from less then half of that amount from a rich metal node. There are no river rocks in the Tropical area. And, she gets the 75% weight reduction on top of the stack mod reduction. She is also very efficient at getting crystal from the harvest-able formations both on land and in the water. I will need large amounts of metal and crystal for the windows on the lower walls.

The Doed gathers large quantities of rock from all of the smaller stones. I need that for the Villager’s Workbench to upgrade the 12x10 pen into a barn with a landing pad for the dragon. I can be doing something else while 100 ceilings are crafting up. The chainsaw is very efficient at providing plenty of wood from just a couple of trees. I find that Perry and Patty Parasaur are good for getting the needed thatch from the stumps and driftwood along the beach area.

With the required raw materials processing in the Villager’s Workbench, I am able to craft up the required materials for upgrading and finishing the 12x10 barn with a workshop inside.

Bunny Dodos have been in the area where I have collected hundreds of eggs. It has been a drought of cracking them for Chibi something like a 10 to 1 odds. As the event will soon end, there will be no more eggs. However, there are still some very colorful creatures all over the map where I have explored so far.

During the continued exploration, I visit the wyvern pyramid to check for eggs. I find a Level 190 Ember in a nest.

Later that day, I am exploring along the blood crystal forest. A Level 100 Blood shows up in that biome that lands in a safe area nearby. I proceed to trap and tame it away from the crystal fluffy raptor hoard. Tamed, I take it out on the fluffy crystal raptors. They are an easy level up using the blood sucking attack which will drain the health from several targets at once. Still, there are overspawn issues with them as there is least a cluster of a dozen in one spot to deal with.

Back at the base, I check out a male Moschop that has been hanging around for days, Although he is low level, I have two females that will start laying eggs if he is part of the pack. Easy tame with a rare mushroom that one can obtain from crystals.

At this point, the Easter event has ended. There is much that can be done just back at the base before even considering setting up satellite camps in the other biomes. I have dragon eggs to hatch. That tek griffin is still around in the griffin trench. The desert has some oil nodes for placement of oil rigs, a safer place then where the isle of oil is located. The map has many special spots where one can obtained colored gems, element, black pearls, bee honey, and, a death trap den of dire wolves and saber cats. The floating isles are, of course, straight out of Avatar as is the giant tree swamp biome.

With the end of the Easter Event, I will now place this map into the archive of adventures on Ark.

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