fanfiction My single player game in Ragnarok

[rpicardi1]

Ragnarok. The single player adventure.

 

Ragnarok is the second player created map that became available as an official stand alone map for Ark. It is a large map with logical transitions between them. With terrain that has sections that were modeled from the real world, the terrain is gorgeous and believable.

The history of this map was interesting having been released well before it was finished. Those areas being blocked by a barrier. With each map update, more and more of those areas were opened up with extensive details. In spite of the vastness of the terrain and the details, the map remained well optimized. Even under the sea has been well detailed right up to the world border.

 

The mod game.

 

Settings; Single player with taming, harvesting, leveling set at 3X. Movement Speed at 2X. Hatching and maturation rates set at 6X. Tamed dino’s health and melee set at 1X.

 

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

 

Ultra Stack is a mod that makes gathering so much easier through larger stacking, weight reduction, and reduced spoilage time on all meat types.

Kracken’s Better Dinos is a TLC mod that improves the ability of dinos in the game. It adds some additional Tek creatures such as an Ankylo, Trike, and Griffin. Cheaper to craft starter saddles are added for some high level creatures as well as a platform saddle for the Trike and extensions for existing platform saddles and rafts. Trikes and Brontos have a stomp attack. Doeds and Ankylos can now harvest berries. Fliers have the ability to move backwards. Equipped with Valerian Reins, all flying creatures have improved stamina, maneuverability, flying speed, and other useful improvements. Female Mammals can now be milked including Wyverns. New meat and hide types are available from some creatures. A combo Smithy and Preserving Bin adds new abilities including a way to cook and preserve new food types. And a substitute egg and Wyvern Milk replacement can be crafted for taming.

Castle, Keeps, and Forts Remastered is a building mod that uses three special crafting benches for creating the numerous building shapes available that are equivalent to wood, stone, and metal. All pieces are compatible with Structure+ and vanilla building pieces. The one exception is that all wall structures are 1/3 higher then standard which is useful for giving your player more head room and allowing large storage boxes to not poke through a ceiling. Morellotops and Amaragsaurus will fit through dino gates. When you learn the crafting bench, you have all the pieces available to you thus saving your engram points for other needs. Best of all, you just load the crafting bench with the required resources and let the items craft independent of what you are doing, just like the Mortise and Pestle. With the extra pieces available, one can make a proper looking round roof as well as a corner roof sections, and single section gable roof so that a three wide structure doesn’t need a flat center. Foundations will stack, pillars place properly, and all pieces can be picked up at a later time. The Crafting Bench can be placed on the ground, a foundation, or the raft. (Platforms?) It also acts as a huge storage crate.

 

The single player experience.

 

There are four main areas of the map one can get started on along with three subsets of each of those.

1. The Highlands. This area can be harder to get started in due to it being colder then the others. It also tends to spawn in Allows, Rexes, and Gigas. Being mostly of plains populated with sheep, horses, and Gallys, wood tends to be scarce around there.

2. Viking’s Bay. Resources tend to be abundant in this area. Depending where you spawn in, it is either safe, or moderately dangerous.

3. Jungle. Of the three areas to spawn in, Jungle 2 will place you next to the Blue Obelisk. While you will have access to wooden crated that can be looted for metal tools the area is lacking in creatures that can be killed for meat and hide. Jungle 1 and Jungle 3 spawn in more small creatures, but many of them tend to be compys, dilos, and those annoying seagulls. All three areas contain much more dangerous creatures once you head inland.

4. Southwest. This spawn area was added upon completion of the map. It is an arid region with many dangerous creatures.

 

For this game play, I spawned in at the west side of Viking’s Bay. This is a large flat sandy area bordered by a rock formation to the East and hills to the West. The area has an abundance of palms, bushes, stones and ground litter one can pick up along with sand. An abundance of river rock, along with some metal nodes, will get you started on metal tools. You will need a flier if you want to obtain any crystal as one cannot climb up to where the nearest nodes are located. Expect to find Pegos, compys, spitters, and seagulls to annoy you. Otherwise, Dodos, Parasaurs, and lystros can be found nearby. The path up into the jungle will take you up to the high bluff where you can expect to find Hynadon Packs, Sabres, raptors, carnos, and Argys. Some loot able wooden boxes can also be found at the top of the bluff.

 

Day One of this adventure;

Spawning in at Viking’s Bay West, I need to quickly get away from three thieving Pegomaxes. Thankfully, they don’t take any interest in me as I have nothing on me that they can steal.

Down at the shallow end of the sea area, I set about on the tasks of getting the basic tools and supplies. Resources are good here for that. Thankfully, those pesky gulls are not spawning into this area of the map. I save the engrams for when I can get the Settler’s Workbench to build a starter shack next to a large rock outcropping.

Next step is to place a storage box by the cliff. As I gather up wood, thatch, and fiber, the extra gets placed into it. Several Dodos bite the dust in order to supply me with much needed hide. With Bolas now crafted, I can go after larger low level creatures of which a Level 15 Parasaur bites the dust.

With the wood tier reached, the Settler’s Bench is now available. Loaded with the required building materials, a 4x4 starter hut is built. It is equipped with a spawn bed, large storage chest, and a mortise and pestle. Narco berries and spoiled meat is placed into it to get narcs for the tranc arrows once they are unlocked.

As late afternoon approaches. I add two more foundations to the hut. A Refining Forge is placed there and loaded up with wood and metal ore. The River Rocks that are abundant close by give me more then enough raw metal that is needed for the Kraken’s Workbench as well as the stone and flint for sparkpowder.

Heading West along the beach to get some metal ore from some rocks along the ridge there, I spot a Level 140 Parasaur and proceed to tame it. I can keep her hid behind the starter shack until I have gathered enough materials to build a proper pen.

By the end of the first day, I have a starter hut completed along with a spawn bed, forge, the Krakens Workbench, a tamed Parasaur, and a high level Moschop. I keep Patty and Miss Chomper hid behind the starter shack for the night.

During the night, I keep the Settler’s Workbench busy crafting fence foundations. I know that this area can become dangerous in a day or two.

While gathering wood, a Pteradon of Level 140 has been spotted. As I have the karatan needed for the saddle, I proceed to tame her and park her by the cliff. With Tammy, I am able to get the crystal needed for a spyglass.

As I am preparing to start placing the fence foundations, I spot a pack of “Murder Puppies” coming down from the jungle. I quickly unload the foundations and grab Miss Chomper to go after them. Killing the nearest one, the pack leader howls and they all go charging over to my starter camp. Fearing the worst, I race back with Miss Chomper. Fortunately, they ignore Patty and Tammy by going after something else in the water. I track them all down and take them out with the Moschop.

OK, this fence needs to be built and fast.

I spend the rest of the morning placing down the foundations and the walls. It takes a lot of wood gathering, but as soon as it is done, I have to deal with a Sabertooth that comes down from the same area as those Murder Puppies.

A raft is soon crafted so that I can head West to an area where I can cut down a lot more wood and thatch. The crafting bench on it is stocked with the needed fiber from the Moschop as the next project will be to go with a foundation 10x10 with walls three high.

With the supplies now crafting on the raft, I am able to start with the construction of the 10x10 just inside of the fence wall. I get most of the work done during the night.

The next day, I am finishing up with the pen when I place Patty on turret mode. She spots something stuck in the rocks in the bay. It makes no sense unless it is a shark, so I wade out there to investigate. It turned out to be a Megalosaurus of all things sleeping up in the corner in the water. Given that they usually only found in caves, or just East of the Lava Beach area it was strange that this one was in the Viking’s Bay rock outcropping. I proceed to tame it and name him Marty. He takes a while to get back into the pen but once in there, he curls up on the floor and goes to sleep.

I spend the rest of the day locating and taming an Ankylo and Doed. Annie is most useful for getting metal ore and rock and flint for sparkpowder. Danny is put to work to fill up the Villager’s Workbench for a more ambitions project, a two story round barn that is 36 panels in circumference. A wood and thatch run into Viking’s Bay loads me up with those materials.

Picking the large flat beach nearby the Settler’s pen, I start from the center out with well over 100 triangle foundations and many square ones to form the round foundation. The land is flat enough so that the only stacking needed is in the deeper part of the water. I use that spot for a dock.

That evening, Marty wakes up, so I saddle him up for an all night hunting run by torchlight. He is not the greatest hunter in the world but does the job well in cleaning out all of the nearby low level creatures around.

The next morning, I am pestered by a bunch of sea gulls in the area. I use the pteradon to ambush them from the air which works well in spite of not having Valerian Reins as I need organic polymer and toughened hide to craft them. That will come later.

Work continues on the round barn which requires a lot more stone, wood, and thatch. While I could use a Stego for wood and thatch, I gather the wood by hatchet as I use the parasaur for thatch. Eventually, by Day 9, I have a two story barn with an attic for the crafting and living area, and a watchtower on the top of the roof.

I will soon move all of the tames into the round barn and set up the work area in the attic. The old pen will eventually get a roof so I can use it for a flier’s landing platform. That will be on a later date as I have been distracted by a new player created map called Lasum. Blame a Matt Bishop video on the ten least played mod maps he picked out of the end of the Steam mod map listing. It has turned out to be a well made map that is mostly completed. I can see that map making for an interesting role playing world ranging from primitive mid evil to futurist apocalyptic world. Expect a single player report on that map in the near future.