fanfiction My single player game on the new Forjor Map.

[rpicardi1]

My latest game play adventure in Ark Survival Evolved.

 

The map; The official release of Forjor.

 

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

 

MODS; Ultra Stacks. Kraken’s Better Dinos. Castle, Keeps, and Forts Remastered. Echos Viking Structures, 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. 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 workbenchs that allow you to craft building sections in those workbench 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 and 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. Each of her more modern creatures has a special taming requirement.

Echo’s Viking Structures provides a range of Viking lodges, Furniture, and other useful items such as the Viking Longboat.

 

Very important if you are installing the official map and have the mod map Viking_P installed in your Ark map listings.

 

If you have the mod map version installed on your PC, It is highly recommended that you unsubscribe to that map, delete your Viking_P saves in the SavedArksLocal folder, and delete the 1838617463 mod ID folder from the Content/Mods folder to recover some disk space before downloading the official mod. Since there have been changes made to the map, you could run into issues if you try to use your renamed Viking_P save on the official map. You can always upload your character, important tames, and hard to get resources to an obelisk before deleting the mod map. Still, just prepare to start from a new or downloaded character. There is no guarantee that you won't run into issues if you have both the official and mod map installed.

Note, selecting the new map for download will start Ark, but the map will not appear until it is downloaded. Just exit the game and wait until Steam indicates that the map has finished downloading. Then start playing Ark and the map will appear at the top of the non story map listings.

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 the game play presents to me. Comments will be included from my past game play on this map to compare what happens in this adventure.

Gameplay to come in the next posting

[rpicardi1]

Spawning in on Vardiland. (Default area.)

 

My survivor spawns in on a peaceful beach in the Northwest corner of this pine forested island. Bob Eric is promptly complaining about the cold in the 50* weather. Picking up a stone and branch off of the beach, the nearest piece of driftwood gets punched for thatch in order to craft a pick. Levelups for now are split between weight and fortitude. Hatchet and spears are selected. Thatch clothes are crafted as soon as they are unlocked. As soon as a real Dodo is killed, given that most of them are party dodos that drop useless heavy cake slices, gloves and boots are crafted.

I work my way East along the beach towards an area where I know of the location of a shipwreak. I would like to craft a canoe but for some reason, those engrams are disabled. Given that Leeds live in the sea, a raft would be too risky at this time. Having to dodge raptors and troodons in one area of travel, it takes until noon to finally reach my destination. With stone arrows unlocked, I can finally make use of the crossbow I find in one of the loot crates by the wreckage. I also get metal hatchets, metal pick, pikes, scrap metal and cooked and spoiled meat from the other crates. Pikes of boards yield wood and thatch. The nearby bushes give up fiber and berries. A nearby Moschop is tamed given that it actually asked for something that I had on me.

Looking for a suitable flat area on this beach, I place down the Viking’s Workbench, load it up with the required materials, and craft a Viking Shed. To properly place it down, one needs to go into K mode. Placing it down, I place down a foundation, a bed, mortise and pestle, storage box, and a campfire to cook up raw meat. This job gets completed just in time to shelter from the freezing night time cold that even a torch and hide armor doesn’t protect against. I park the Moschop under the overhang given that he won’t fit through the shed door.

Having leveled enough in the morning to get the forge and Settler’s Workbench, I place some foundations next to the shed to get the scrap metal processed. The strange half buried rocks in the beach behaves as river rock as the metal pick gets sizable amounts of metal ore from them.

As I could use some crystal at this time, I head back down the beach to head uphill to a location where there is easy access to some. It can be a dangerous trip due to an abundance of dilos, raptors, and a spino that is in the area of the hill and hillside. I find the crystal mining it along with some obsidian and metal ore. On the way back, I gather some honey as I have an andrewsaurus that has showed up and got itself stuck in some boulders.

While the beach area by the wreak appears to be safe, inland and surrounding areas are not. I have seen an alpha raptor and t-rex in the hills among the other dangers such as the lions from the Marnimods wildlife mod and murder puppies.

The rest of the day is spent gathering materials to craft the Viking’s Blacksmith Barn and it’s two large doors. It is placed next to the shed. Meanwhile, the Andrewsaurus, a Level 145 male, is out swimming in the sea.

That morning, I set out to tame one of the Andrewsaurus I have seen nearby. I spot what I thought was the Level 145 along the beach but it turns out to be a Level 90. Committed to the tame, I go and tame it.

To tame one of these things, you need to throw them a honey bait while avoiding aggro. Once it is eating the bait, you jump on it’s back and play a mini game for further taming. Watch the red rage bar and jump off to hide before it goes full. Otherwise, you will be thrown off and killed. Rinse and repeat until it register as tame. Like the Equuis, you don’t need a saddle to ride, but a war saddle with a minigun that uses advanced rifle bullets is available.

Leveling up it’s melee, I soon turn this beast into a force to be reckoned with. It is a good thing given that the Alpha Raptor decides to pay me a visit. Taking it out gives me eight levels and Andrew 25 levels. Later, the nearby t-rex gets eliminated.

This creature has some amazing abilities. It is able to run fast smashing through boulders and trees with ease and can outrun a Giga. It can come to a sliding stop to change directions, It jumps far, and is an excellent swimmer that can swim faster then the Alpha Sharks. It also has a wicked stun kick that can send other creatures flying. I park him under the overhang of the barn for the night.

The goal for the next day will be to visit the nearby ice field to club penguins for organic polymer. I also need to find some beaver dams for cementing paste, then gather the rest of the materials for cryopods. It may be necessary to teleport over to Ascard with Andrew in order to raid beaver dams known to be there. As runestones are no longer needed for that task, given that they now act as Explorer Notes, I think that one can use the F key to activate teleportation to the other rhelms and back. I need to test that given that R did nothing prior to this edit. An update has fixed the issue of being able to obtain the canoe and harpoon net.

[rpicardi1]

The rhelm teleport key is R. However, it is only implemented for server based games. It is not available for single player at this time. So, one will have to go to the rhelm teleport cave to travel to the other three rhelms for single player. Canoes and harpoon nets are now available thanks to a patch update for PC.

[rpicardi1]

Spawning on on Vardiland South; New survivor.

 

This is an interesting location only because one spawns in close to a ship wreak. Otherwise, the area is just a small cove surrounded by steep cliffs with only a narrow path into the freezing cold high up. I think that there is a back entrance into the Darvon Mine in this area, but I haven’t found it yet.

With my survivor spawned in, he’s in the area of a ship wreak where loot able supply crates and barrels are scattered about. Crafting a pick, several of the crates are broken open where a hatchet, pike, crossbow, scrap metal, rotten, and cooked meat are found. Some nearby rune stones help with adding those much needed early levels necessary for quickly getting established in this cold unforgiving world.

A Viking Workbench is quickly placed down to store the extra items as my survivor starts the process of leveling up in order to get cloth armor and gather the materials to place down a Viking Shed on the flattest part of the beach area. Dodos remain hard to come by, the default ones that is. There are lots of party ones that only drop useless cake slices and nothing else. A spitter is taken out with the pike as bolas become available. Leather armor is quickly crafted up to deal with the cold. Level ups are split between weight and fortitude. With the bow becoming available, arrows can now be made for the crossbow.

A supply drop has given me a mortise and pestle along with a storage box. They are placed on a foundation and the extra items transferred out of the Viking Workbench. A Viking single bed is crafted and place in the shed give that it doesn’t require a foundation, but still acts as a spawn bed.

Late that evening, as I start working on getting foundations to place a refining forge down, I hear a parasaur being attacked by a raptor. Given the orange glow now showing up in the darkness, that is instantly bad news as it means that an Alpha Raptor is now on the beach close by. Getting up on a rock, I see that it has bugged out trying to eat it’s kill. By shear luck, I am able to hit it in the head for 225 damage as it remains bugged trying to eat the kill. 25 arrows later, I have eliminated the threat as I gain an additional 25 levels for the kill along with a higher level pick, hatchet, and a sickle.

With that danger passed, I am able to place the foundation down for a forge to start refining the scrap metal and river rock metal ore into metal. Instead of crafting a Smithy which requires a foundation, I craft the Krakens Better Dino Workbench. It does not require a foundation and combines a workbench and preserving bin in one. It will also give me access to special items such as the Valerian Reins for fliers. I place it inside the shed directly on the ground.

In the morning, thanks to an update that has fixed the issue of certain important items being unavailable in the crafting list, I am able to craft a canoe. Besides acting as a spawn bed and storage box, along being able to pick one back up, the Leeds tend to ignore it. I sail along the coast to a place where I can obtain crystal and to a small island that contains oil and metal rocks. With those materials in storage, I head back to the camp where I can process those materials.

Before I can go looking for starter tames, I need to build them something to protect them from the predators that are starting to show up. Troodons have been spotted up in the woods and will be a threat comes nightfall. With enough materials having been gather, the Blacksmith Barn and it’s twp large doors are crafted. It take a bit of time to find a suitable place to place it as it is quite large with the ground being so uneven.

Given that none of them spawn on this side of Vardiland, I cheat and spawn in a tamed Andrewsarchus for protection. The Troodon threat is quickly wiped out for the evening. In spite of his size, he fits easily into the Viking Barn.

Thanks to the location and sheer luck in killing an Alpha Raptor early on, I finish the second day on this map at Level 78. This map is now placed into the archive as I prepare to start another gameplay in a different location.

[rpicardi1]

Starting a new game on Vannaland West.

 

This location is one of several on the large northern island. The location is inspired by Phlinger Phoo game play posting on You Tube. In fact, I had forgotten about vising Skaland in the past, the small island of the waterfall that is just off the southern coast of Vannaland, when I was playing with the mod map.

I spawn in my survivor, Eric Robinson, into Vannaland West. He appears on the beach just across from the dangerous Swamp Island called Bulbjord. It is a cold location just like so many others in this island archipelago with the snowflake present and temperature in the 50sF. Grabbing a stone, a loose stick, and punching a driftwood log for thatch, I craft a pick and head East down the beach towards the island with the waterfall that I can see in the distance. I will split the level ups between weight and fortitude until that reaches 40.

Hitting a boulder with the pick, I soon have the flint for the hatchet and spears collected from the first levelup. A torch is made along with a hatchet and three spears after picking the bushes for berries and fiber.

I continue down the beach leveling up enough to get a basic set of thatch clothes to ward off some of the cold. Surprisingly, there has been a lack of creatures to kill for meat and hide. Anything that I see is too large to attempt to take out with a spear.

Crossing a stream bisected by a small island, I get over to where I can make the dangerous swim to Skaland. I don’t have the resources or the engram for a raft and the canoe is listed as unavailable. It takes nearly all of the stamina to reach the beach that is past the waterfalls. There are sharks and mantas in the water that I manage to avoid. It is with much relief that I have made it to this island without getting killed.

There are several Dodos on the lower slope but most are of the party type, totally worthless for getting meat and hide. I do get two regular ones and kill off the party ones to reset their spawns. Gathering the materials on the way, I head up to the bluff to set up a storage box, campfire and the Viking Workbench. With a Viking Shed and single bed crafted up and placed down on the bluff by the waterfalls, I have established my shelter just in time for protection from the freezing night. This bed doesn’t require a foundation, yet functions as a regular spawn bed that requires one. I place it directly on the dirt floor in the corner.

The next morning is spent in leveling up and looking for more creatures to obtain much needed hide for crafting a forge and mortise and pestle. Once I have obtained the hide, I place down foundations behind the shed and put a forge on it.

I find that the odd looking rocks along the beach are actually the same as river rock. Good, I soon have enough metal ore to get the Better Dino Workbench. That is highly desirable given that it combines the preserving bin with the workbench as well as provides access to the special preserving recipes and access to crafting Valerian Reins, a special costume for fliers that increases their abilities. Interesting is that I find an X Dunkleosteus stuck tail first in the shore. Given that there is quite a drop off there, I can see how it could have spawned there. There is also an Anglerfish stuck in the beach nearby. Easy water tames should I decide that I need them later on.

A Moschop is obtained when it asks for something that I already have. It is put to work gathering fiver and berries. I also clear out the Party Dodos and take out a spitter. While I have brought them inside the farmhouse structure on past maps, he doesn’t fit through the narrow door of the shed. I park him under the underhang. With Bart’s help I am able to gathered the required materials for the Viking Blacksmith barn and it’s two large doors. It will shelter him along with the parasaur that I soon tame that is roaming along the beach.

The next morning, I craft up a raft to sail across to Vardiland. I need crystal and metal ore from a hill near a stream where I have camped before. Using K mode to look out for Leeds, I sail across and beach the raft at the mouth of the stream. Going upriver is risky as a Spino is usually in the area.

Heading up the hill, I dodge the raptors and Troodons. I reach the top and gather crystal for the spyglass, Obsidian, and raw metal. Returning, I place those items into storage on the raft, go back along the shore to harvest honey from a honey cone, and sail East to the ship wreak to gather supplies abandoned there.

Beaching the raft at the wreak site, I gather extra metal tools, scrap metal, cooked and rotten meat, and lots of extra wood. They go on the raft. Then, I spot them. There are wild Andrewsarchus in the area. Time to place down a spawn bed on the raft and attempt to tame one using the honey I got from the honeycomb. This is not an easy effort given that I should have Gillie Armor. There are penguins close by in the freezing show, but I go ahead using the brush and boulders for cover and get close enough to a high level one to toss it some honey. Playing the minigame, I am able to tame a high level female.

What a great addition this creature is to survival. She moves fast, has a wicked kick, can slide on the turns, and hits hard enough to take out an Alpha Raptor in the area to gain a bunch of levels that go into stamina and melee. She is a good swimmer as well capable of out swimming the Alpha Sharks in the water. I soon have lots of raw meat, hide, and toughened hide from a rex that got in my way. I bring her back on the raft and place her in the barn with the parasaur and moschop.

The next day, and update released on Steam, I am able to craft a canoe thus being able to avoid the Leed threat as they will ignore canoes. The canoe can also be used for storage and as a spawn bed. It can also be picked up to be transported to where it might be needed such as on an inland lake or river where rocks are an issue for a raft. Up to three players can also access the canoe at once.

Back at Vardiland, I spot a Level 140 male Andrewsarchus and proceed to tame him. Getting him leveled up, which includes wiping out a Rex, I pick up the canoe and swim him back. He is easily to out swim the alpha sharks that show up to be a threat. No cryopods at this time.

During this fourth day, I find a high level pteradon using my little island for a resting place. A bola and three tranc arrows on a crossbow, it is out and taming. A day later, a Level 150 male shows up and it is tamed. Karitan has been hard to come by. Eventually, I get a saddle made for the Level 145 female. After killing off the penguins in the snow area near where I found the ship wreak on Vardiland, I craft up the Valerian Reins which doubles the stamina and allows for increased maneuverability. Eventually, I come up with enough resources for a second saddle for the 150 male.

On the fifth day, I make a trip over to the dangerous Swamp Island of Bulbjord. I use one of the Andrewsarchus for the trip. The place is crawling with snakes and Sarcos. Kapros are another major threat that can dismount you from most tames. However, they do stay away from my mount sensing that he can quickly tear them a new one. Interesting, I learn that I didn’t need to kill penguins. There are dead creatures here that yield organic polymer as well as hide and spoiled meat.

Cementing Paste is another resource that I need. Given that I can’t find the chitin and keritan needed to craft it, I will need to find Beaver Lodges to raid. This resource is needed for the Harpoon Gun and the now available net ammo. I fly about looking for them but find none. While flying along the cliff area, I do find the Patron’s Cave and the Rhelm Cave. However, flying on creatures is not allowed, so I will need to find another way to travel in those places. Besides, single player games do not have access to the R teleport command. I do find that the Rhelm Cave teleport controls do have access to the storage section found only at the Obelisks. Excellent, Given that Electra, my Lightning Dragon, has been uploaded to it, I spawn her in to this new world. Still, I have to have her follow me out of the cave before I can ride on her. Outside, having now crafted cryopods, I pick up the pteradon and ride on Electra taking out an Alpha Rex that gives me some very good weapons.

While checking out a cave, I find Demodus hanging from the ceiling. Some research indicates that taming them will involve lots of blood packs on both me and a high level sacrificial Moschop. Therefore, when I am back to my camp, gmsummon “desmodus_character_bp_c” 150 and craft up the saddle. I name her Brad the Impailer for now.

What an OP creature this giant vampire bat is. She can fly in any direction like a Tapa, glide, use radar location, has infrared vision, can latch onto cliffs and ceilings, has good stamina, and best of all, can fly in caves where no other flier can be use. She gathers blood packs, raw meat, and tons of spoiled meat from her kills. One thing discovered is that the Demodus Dracula will only harvest blood packs, raw meat and spoiled meat from anything that it kills. As a result, tek creatures and alphas only give up blood packs, raw and spoiled meat, so if you are looking for their resources, don't use the vampire bat to kill them.

I make the teleport to Asgard where I find beaver dams to raid. The weather there is much warmer where one can find ready made villages to live in. It also contains some very dangerous areas where Shadowmanes can be found after dark. Not a place to be at during the night in the Red Swamp. And the Blue Swamp contains a cave infested with Lightning Dragons. Anyhow, with the cementing paste, I head back to the camp to craft up the Harpoon Gin and a bunch of nets. A “Tickle Chicken” I spotted earlier and tamed helps me out in gathering the large amount of fiber those nets require.

With a Doed and Ankylsaur that I have found and tamed, I gather more resources and construct a fenced in enclosure to keep out the occasional dilo that spawns in om my island. The bat is even more efficient at killing off the pesky gulls. Currently, Valerian Reins will not work on them. But, that is not a big deal. These giant vampire bats are so maneuverable and can pick up creatures the same size that the Tapa and Pteradon can to suck their blood and kill them.

With the fence complete and Brad the Impaler, I can now concentrate on looking for “Feathered Raptor” eggs given that I have seen them in the mesas above the Patron’s Cave. That will be a job for tomorrow.