Boss Difficulty and Game Difficulty?

[BeeTamer]

How exactly do boss fights scale to game difficulty? My single player Scorched Earth is on .6 (highest level wild dinos around lv. 100). But I've heard people say the server difficulty affects bosses too, but how? Will the Alpha Manticore have more than 160,000 health, cause the wiki doesn't say it has higher stats than that? I don't quite understand what would make it harder? (On Xbox too, if that makes a difference)

[ArkWriter]

The difficulty scale is a bit broken. I believe the highest you can set difficulty on single player is 1.0. But when you set the difficulty higher, it results in higher level dinos you can tame, which then in turn make the bosses easier because the bosses levels/hitpoints stay the same, while your tames are able to have higher HP and more melee damage. Plus I believe the difficulty offset also determines the quality of loot you can get from drops. So having it higher means better loot.

TL;DR - Boss fights don't scale. They don't get more difficult by setting the difficulty higher. They get easier because you have better dinos and gear to fight them with.

[wizard03]

On 1/22/2022 at 11:52 PM, BeeTamer said:

How exactly do boss fights scale to game difficulty? My single player Scorched Earth is on .6 (highest level wild dinos around lv. 100). But I've heard people say the server difficulty affects bosses too, but how? Will the Alpha Manticore have more than 160,000 health, cause the wiki doesn't say it has higher stats than that? I don't quite understand what would make it harder? (On Xbox too, if that makes a difference)

I do not believe it scales. Iv got maximum difficulty checked for lvl 150 dino's to spawn and its still difficult, but its not exactly easier. Gamma manticore will be challenging, and beta will be tougher. However if you have problems during beta, you better change things or fix your fighting crew cause alpha will wreck you.

Never forget a yuty. Never!

[BeeTamer]

Thanks for the info; I saw a video of one guy do the Alpha Manticore fight solo on official with 17 rexes and 1 Yutyrannus. 25k health on rexes with 350% melee and journeyman saddles.

That kinda astounded me because I'm raising an army of 19 rexes (yuty included) only 20k health but 600-700% melee and all with ascendant saddles. All things considered, I'm expecting to annihilate this alpha manticore

[wizard03]

3 minutes ago, BeeTamer said:

Thanks for the info; I saw a video of one guy do the Alpha Manticore fight solo on official with 17 rexes and 1 Yutyrannus. 25k health on rexes with 350% melee and journeyman saddles.

That kinda astounded me because I'm raising an army of 19 rexes (yuty included) only 20k health but 600-700% melee and all with ascendant saddles. All things considered, I'm expecting to annihilate this alpha manticore

When it comes to the alpha, try your best to keep your crew "moving" until the manticore lands on the ground. You will want to reduce damage as much as possible while the manticore is up in the air and the rock golems and deathworms will do what they can to take advantage of when your parked and not doing anything.

[Pipinghot]

12 hours ago, BeeTamer said:

Thanks for the info; I saw a video of one guy do the Alpha Manticore fight solo on official with 17 rexes and 1 Yutyrannus. 25k health on rexes with 350% melee and journeyman saddles.

That kinda astounded me because I'm raising an army of 19 rexes (yuty included) only 20k health but 600-700% melee and all with ascendant saddles. All things considered, I'm expecting to annihilate this alpha manticore

You're on the right path. For boss fights you want to prioritize damage over health points, for three basic reasons.

 

1) Some of the boss fights (like the Dragon on The Island) do percentage damage rather than just straight numbers, which means that having more hit points doesn't help at all. When a boss is doing percentage damage a rex with 25k health will die just as fast as a rex with 20k health, the extra hit points don't do anything for you.

2) If you're using a daeodon for healing during boss fights (and IMO they should be used for almost every boss fight) the daeodons will run out of food more quickly if they're healing animals with more hit points that are taking percentage damage. It's easier to heal a 20k rex that just took 10% damage than to heal a 25k rex that just took 10% damage.

3) Doing more damage means the fights end faster. The longer the fight goes on, the more chances there are for things to go wrong, every round of bosses spawning adds, taking off and flying around, or doing whatever tricks they're capable of doing, is just one more opportunity for a player to make a mistake and get themselves killed. I would rather take in rexes with 20k HP and maybe lose 1 or 2 of them during the fight than take in rexes with 25k HP and have the fight go longer which increases the odds of failure.

Obviously your boss animals have to have a certain minimum of health, you wouldn't want to do a boss fight with rexes that have only 5k HP, but I would rather do a fight with your 600-700% melee rexes than with that other guy's 350% rexes.

 

On a separate note - I suggest considering therizino's rather than rexes.

* Theris are much more agile than rexes, meaning they're less likely to get stuck on terrain or stuck on each other

* Theri's are smaller and easier for you to maneuver around, so you're also less likely to get stuck, trapped by your own tames (they also take up less space in your base when you're breeding them than rexes do)

* Theri's can do some self-healing if you put veggie cakes on them which rexes can't use, so theris have a better chance of surviving if they miss out on some group healing during the fight.

* Theri's take reduced damage from fire, which helps them survive better against the dragon (and probably a couple of other fights that I can't think of at the moment).

 

There are other animals that you might want to use for specific fights, like you might prefer megatheria for fighting the spider boss. But any fight that you would normally use rexes for, it's better to use theri's instead.

Personally, I think they are superior to rexes for any use in the game. The only downside to theri's, and for some people this is a big deal, is that it's harder to find good ones to build up your bloodline. Rexes are available in more locations on more maps so it's easier to tame a bunch of them and try to keep only the good ones, whereas it takes more work in the beginning to find good theris to do your breeding. Then again, it's a lot easier to feed theris once you begin the breeding process. It takes less work and less time to keep troughs full of berries than to keep them full of meat, so you can make up that time on the back end during the breeding process.

 

 

[BeeTamer]

I thought about bringing Theris cause they did well for me against the Dragon and Overseer on The Island, but I wanted to do Scorched Earth with only the dinos natural to the map. Honestly the only thing I'm wary of with the Alpha manticore is gonna be the torpor, but since I'm about to have ascendant saddles on all of them, the armor ought to protect them from getting ko'd I figure

[wizard03]

4 hours ago, BeeTamer said:

I thought about bringing Theris cause they did well for me against the Dragon and Overseer on The Island, but I wanted to do Scorched Earth with only the dinos natural to the map. Honestly the only thing I'm wary of with the Alpha manticore is gonna be the torpor, but since I'm about to have ascendant saddles on all of them, the armor ought to protect them from getting ko'd I figure

If you want to do dinos natural to SE, Id suggest the wyverns......Iv done the manticore exclusively with wyverns only. Just make sure you do everything in your power to max out their health and don't forget to turn on the AI special attack found in their behavior wheel. I forgot to do it once and while I still managed to win, took nearly half an hour and almost every single wyvern got knocked out.....not killed, but KO. on gamaa XD
Oh, and do bring a yuty. He still makes a huge difference! 

[BeeTamer]

Absolutely folded that Alpha Manticore, suffered no losses, rexes lost about 2k health at most and that was probably from Rock Elementals rather than the Manticore itself

[WallToTheArk]

We’ll keep in mind that that boss fight was made in the very early days of ark.

not to long ago 500 melee rexs were all the rage…..before that it was basicly a bunch of people riding around on slightly better then wild tame stats…..

The game is not meant to be played where you go on social media and trade for 1000+ melee rexs with 40k hp capable of doing the Alpha Rag fight unlevled and unsaddled…..naked…..those rexs literally took half a decade to make.

 

you want a challenge…….tame wild rexs and breed them up to Alpha boss capable status. 
 

like it’s supposed to be done…….

FYI I adore the trade pages and think they are a key part of the community, even if it’s basicly pay to win with poly.

[Dreadcthulhu]

I do hope for Ark 2 that they really rethink the mutation system - being able to mass produce uber creatures takes the fun out of a lot things, the mutation process itself is honestly a tedious game of waiting for the RNG fairy to bless you, and plays havoc on PVP balance.  Plus all the creatures you need out (and the giant base to hold them) are bad for server performance. 

My suggestions to replace mutations is to have more stuff like mutagel, rare materials in dangerous areas that provide small one time boosts to your lines, and/or special missions/quest that provide small, non-inheritable stat boosts. 

[wizard03]

45 minutes ago, Dreadcthulhu said:

I do hope for Ark 2 that they really rethink the mutation system - being able to mass produce uber creatures takes the fun out of a lot things, the mutation process itself is honestly a tedious game of waiting for the RNG fairy to bless you, and plays havoc on PVP balance.  Plus all the creatures you need out (and the giant base to hold them) are bad for server performance. 

My suggestions to replace mutations is to have more stuff like mutagel, rare materials in dangerous areas that provide small one time boosts to your lines, and/or special missions/quest that provide small, non-inheritable stat boosts. 

I think they could keep it, but they need to be able to make it an absolute. None of this "keep a zero female for infinite mutations" thing. Once a mutation is in, it takes up a mutation slot and you only have 40 before that line is locked. 

With that said, I also think the mutagel idea isn't bad.....High risk, mid game priority, keeps a player going and not bored out of their mind waiting for mutations or maturation. Yes, this would be good for the game as a whole.

[james123786]

i think dificulty scale is broken you need to figure out your self 
Charter spectrum

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[Wallengren]

Kinda necro but thought I could provide some useful info, bosses do scale with difficulty.

Their health doesn't get lower nor higher, what does scale is the amount of damage they take and the amount of damage they deal.

An alpha broodmother on difficulty 5 takes 81 damage from a level 1 rex bite on my server, the total hp of the broodmother is 972k.

Same test again but this time on difficulty 10 "max wild dino level 300 instead of 150" she takes 42 damage from a level 1 rex instead of 81 still the same hp fyi.

 

If you look at the info below, a boss on difficulty 5 has 4 times more damage than on difficulty 1, also takes 4 times less damage btw.

Hope this was insightful incase you're struggling to find concrete updated info on the subject like I was and this thread in most cases is the top google result.

 

Here are the damage taken/damage given multipliers per difficulty.

Difficulty 1: 3.00007

Difficulty 2: 1.715

Difficulty 3: 1.2

Difficulty 4: 0.916

Difficulty 5: .75

Difficulty 6: .6315

Difficulty 7: .545

Difficulty 8: .48

Difficulty 9: .428

Difficulty 10: .3866

[Argon]

On 5/31/2022 at 12:22 PM, Wallengren said:

Kinda necro but thought I could provide some useful info, bosses do scale with difficulty.

Their health doesn't get lower nor higher, what does scale is the amount of damage they take and the amount of damage they deal.

An alpha broodmother on difficulty 5 takes 81 damage from a level 1 rex bite on my server, the total hp of the broodmother is 972k.

Same test again but this time on difficulty 10 "max wild dino level 300 instead of 150" she takes 42 damage from a level 1 rex instead of 81 still the same hp fyi.

 

If you look at the info below, a boss on difficulty 5 has 4 times more damage than on difficulty 1, also takes 4 times less damage btw.

Hope this was insightful incase you're struggling to find concrete updated info on the subject like I was and this thread in most cases is the top google result.

 

Here are the damage taken/damage given multipliers per difficulty.

Difficulty 1: 3.00007

Difficulty 2: 1.715

Difficulty 3: 1.2

Difficulty 4: 0.916

Difficulty 5: .75

Difficulty 6: .6315

Difficulty 7: .545

Difficulty 8: .48

Difficulty 9: .428

Difficulty 10: .3866

I dug up my old account just to sign in and thank you for this. I apologize to the mods for necroing your necro, but I found this thread via a google search and this was actually very useful information. A new thread really wouldn't make sense here, and this isn't widely known info. Hats off to you, kind sir/ma'am.