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PvP On The Island


Logan96
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Hi guys, just got wiped by a level 154 using tek so I decided I could use some updated advice. 
 

My goal is to start on the island and move through each map on official PvP after beating the bosses. This means I wont have access to the power creepers that came with later dlc until I beat my way through a few maps.

I also haven’t played since any of the genesis maps released so I have no idea what to expect from raiders these days.

just curious how the meta has changed and if you guys have any advice…thanks!

 

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Just now, Logan96 said:

I was really enjoying my current attempt until the tek dude. I’ve always done PvP and am fine being raided but this felt a little ridiculous. What do you even do when there is a dude just spraying your base down with tek weapons lol

Options:

1. Hide - can't, between flying parasaurs and .ini files.

2. Git gud  - not useful advice in any way shape or form, although popular.

3. Get naked and club it up with the rest of the slobs on the beach living life moment to moment. 

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41 minutes ago, Logan96 said:

I was really enjoying my current attempt until the tek dude. I’ve always done PvP and am fine being raided but this felt a little ridiculous. What do you even do when there is a dude just spraying your base down with tek weapons lol

Well, you asked for updated advice, and the updated advice is that tek is part of the game.

You either need to accept that you're going to get bent, folded, spindled and mutilated by people with tek, and that it's impossible to hide because of parasaurs, or that you're going to need to join a tribe in order to work your way through the sequence of maps on PvP.

The very idea that a single person would be able to play enough that they could not only survive, but have a base containing enough animals to beat bosses on each map without having animals from the later maps is a pipe dream. If you start on the Island using only Island species you're never going to be able to build up enough to advance to Center or Scorched Earth, much less complete all of the maps. You could work your way through every map in PvE, or PvP in a tribe, but to do is solo... as Joe said, life is too short.

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Sorry - I can't comment. I ain't done PVP on official for years. I actually finally packed it in from a very similar encounter w a level 800 guy on a level 6253 Mana that trashed both my main base and my "hideaway". I don't remember the actual levels but they were ridiculous. And the guy was from "off server". Just there in passing looking for kicks. Good Luck is all I can say ... especially seeing that you are limiting yourself to the kit available on the current map. That's HARD dude! 

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First tip: PvP is unplayable on PC due to RAMPANT cheaters. WCs anticheat can't even detect speedhack which is everywhere these days, along with desync hacks where people can soak your turrets with their bodies without dying etc. It's bad. Only play PvP on xbox series x or ps5 and if on xbox don't play small tribes because it is crossplay with windows 10 which literally has no anticheat...literally.

Second tip: You'll have a rough time starting on island, they've added a lot of OP stuff to the game with the DLC maps. Also most islands are completely inhabited and spammed off by one tribe. I highly doubt you could tame, breed and kill the bosses on the island with no transferring unless you can get in good with a big tribe, even then people scout island a lot.

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12 hours ago, Logan96 said:

Im one of those freaks that wants to do something more when people say that I cant.

I don't think anyone's saying you can't... well ok I pretty much said that. But a better way of phrasing it would have been, "it's not worth it". I mean, I got the "Insane" achievement in Warcraft back in the day, and about 10 minutes after I finished it I realized that it had been a big waste of time even when compared to how much time I spent playing WoW in the first place. Obviously your mileage may vary, but even if you can do what you're saying you probably won't feel like it was time well spent.

Edited by Pipinghot
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8 hours ago, Pipinghot said:

I don't think anyone's saying you can't... well ok I pretty much said that. But a better way of phrasing it would have been, "it's not worth it". I mean, I got the "Insane" achievement in Warcraft back in the day, and about 10 minutes after I finished it I realized that it had been a big waste of time even when compared to how much time I spent playing WoW in the first place. Obviously your mileage may vary, but even if you can do what you're saying you probably won't feel like it was time well spent.

I dont know...I feel like I've always enjoyed Ark for that feeling of achievement when completing something difficult. We all play for different reasons I'm sure, but whether the achievement is worth the time or not is up to the individual. I personally get a kick out of finding a path to success while facing against overwhelming odds. I would much rather struggle this way and even fail than do something like PvE where success is all but guaranteed. 

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5 hours ago, Logan96 said:

I dont know...I feel like I've always enjoyed Ark for that feeling of achievement when completing something difficult. We all play for different reasons I'm sure, but whether the achievement is worth the time or not is up to the individual. I personally get a kick out of finding a path to success while facing against overwhelming odds. I would much rather struggle this way and even fail than do something like PvE where success is all but guaranteed. 

Determination. Nice.

It's really hard to hide indefinitely but not impossible. I think I've finally found a permanent spot but it took literally years and countless wipes.

One thing you can do is hide a base long enough to at least scrape some good gear and animals together, then stash some away for a rainy day so when the inevitable raid comes you arent starting from scratch.

My go-to stash is preserving bins in bushes underwater that are not right off shore but are easy enough to swim to naked. No one has ever found my underwater stashes and I've been doing them for the last 3 or 4 map releases.

Actually that probably wouldnt work on the cancerfest that is Ark on PC due to the aforementioned ini files. Oh well.

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13 minutes ago, St1ckyBandit said:

Actually that probably wouldnt work on the cancerfest that is Ark on PC due to the aforementioned ini files. Oh well.

Yup. Sucks, but you can't hide in the water with .ini files. It's the reason I stopped playing PVP. You can't build out in the open and you can't hide (playing solo).

Edited by Joebl0w13
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2 minutes ago, Joebl0w13 said:

Yup. Sucks, but you can't hide in the water with .ini files. It's the reason I stopped playing PVP. You can't build out in the open and you can't hide.

Yeah whenever I go to watch a YT vid of Ark and see that the guy is playing in potato mode I immediately shut the vid off.

It's so cheap.

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5 hours ago, St1ckyBandit said:

My go-to stash is preserving bins in bushes underwater that are not right off shore but are easy enough to swim to naked.

Yeah I think most peeps do (did) that trick ... As above, such failed me some years ago. It turned out to be a haystack hiding in a needle :) 

Glad that you still have success w that - must be you have found better stash positions that I ever had - the best luck I had was actually not in the sea at all but in a winding river running in a narrow gorge. But even that got trashed on my last official dip.

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6 hours ago, St1ckyBandit said:

Determination. Nice.

It's really hard to hide indefinitely but not impossible. I think I've finally found a permanent spot but it took literally years and countless wipes.

One thing you can do is hide a base long enough to at least scrape some good gear and animals together, then stash some away for a rainy day so when the inevitable raid comes you arent starting from scratch.

My go-to stash is preserving bins in bushes underwater that are not right off shore but are easy enough to swim to naked. No one has ever found my underwater stashes and I've been doing them for the last 3 or 4 map releases.

Actually that probably wouldnt work on the cancerfest that is Ark on PC due to the aforementioned ini files. Oh well.

My game plan for the island is to play as though I am going to get wiped literally every single day. The plan is to make a crafting/kibble production raft and immediately after that make stuff for a second one but upload it. After that I'll tame duplicates of the starter dinos...for me that is argy, anky, frog, doed, beaver...those go straight to upload. It will be a pain to pull them out and refresh upload each night, but I'm confident that with a duplicate set I can recover everything mentioned within two hours even if fully wiped...

Thats the starter plan at least. Getting my rex lines and water mounts going for the caves/bosses is where things are going to get tricky. 

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11 hours ago, Logan96 said:

My game plan for the island is to play as though I am going to get wiped literally every single day. The plan is to make a crafting/kibble production raft and immediately after that make stuff for a second one but upload it. After that I'll tame duplicates of the starter dinos...for me that is argy, anky, frog, doed, beaver...those go straight to upload. It will be a pain to pull them out and refresh upload each night, but I'm confident that with a duplicate set I can recover everything mentioned within two hours even if fully wiped...

Thats the starter plan at least. Getting my rex lines and water mounts going for the caves/bosses is where things are going to get tricky. 

Breeding is tough when trying to keep your footprint small. I use a sky quetz for breeding.

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Well just finished my first day and so we will see how well i hid my stuff. I ended up scraping the raft idea, its been awhile since I've played raft life and it seems like there are more leeds than before...lost 3 rafts in different areas so that mess was a strikeout. 

Other than that things have gone pretty well. Got my gatherer dinos all tamed up and uploaded so those are safe tonight. I tamed up a level 10 argy which was surprisingly useful despite the low level. Made good use of the mobile smithy and put up a little fabricator station in the forest. Left it all open so if someone comes along I'm hoping they will just loot it and move on. Uploaded a couple hundred electronics and poly made from said fabricator, so I suppose it's served its purpose. 

I also managed to find a relatively well hidden spot, which I think I'm going to turn into my main headquarters. As far as making plans for breeding I'm playing with the idea of taming up an army of dimetrodons and using them to hatch eggs out in the middle of nowhere...either that or I'll probably use the advice @St1ckyBandit provided and make a sky quetz. 

Last but not least I managed to make 6 c4 and got that into upload. I think I'm going to avoid raiding and pvp as much as possible and just prioritize getting the bosses beat as fast as possible, but I'd like to build up enough gear for some sort of retaliation effort if someone manages to grief me. 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm trying to take multiple screenshots along the way but it looks like I can only upload one per post...so here my best one of the day.

 

I always love the early stages of the game. Ironically it seems like the stronger you get the less freedom you have to just explore and have fun. I took my time during this note run. All I remember at this point is waking with a single entity calling for me to find her.  Hopefully I can complete the mission before Ark 2 releases... 

20230120214228_1.thumb.jpg.a645098bf8fdb23bf389fd48e5882f66.jpg

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I did attempt this a few years ago, and I only made it past Gamma Broodmother with Megatherium before my sky quetz was found. Breeding was a nightmare, and taming high level Rexes on The Island was tough for me, which is why I switched to Megatherium just to get one done. Saddle BPs are also tough. It seems most of us who have replied in this thread have quit Official PVP for good, it's not like the good ole days anymore. I have also been out of the loop for a bit, so some of this could be out of date. Here's some suggestions:

1. Server scouting - battlemetrics.com/servers/ark - that's a great place to monitor the player activity and population of your server at specific time frames daily, weekly, and monthly. It also tracks players by Steam ID, which is why so many 123's are out there. It could be helpful to change yours to something more common.

2. Live out of upload - Keep living out of upload. During my solo attempt, I went with a sky quetz because the constant 24-hour countdown to total loss in upload was not something I could handle due to out of game responsibilities - see #3.

3. Consider storing tames and gear on Ragnarok - In my solo Island attempt, I regret not doing this.  Back in the day, Ragnarok was a gift from heaven for those that were tired of The Island. It fixed almost all of the little annoying aspects of The Island that made progression seem unnecessarily tedious. For the solo player, Ragnarok offers so much more space for hiding a sky quetz or even a raft with less important gear. Because of its larger size, it is more difficult and more tedious to scout the entire map and it's much easier to transfer on and off than most maps. If living out of upload doesn't work out due to time constraints, I would recommend hiding stuff on Ragnarok and just transferring to the Island to play and tame, kind of like a Tarkov raid. Also always kill your character before logging off, never leave it physicalized on the server.

4. Diversify loss - wherever you end up putting your storage, spread out the important things. Keep your breeding Rexes separate from the babies and boss adults, so you don't lose them all at once if they are found. 

5. PVP tips - Most of your gear will be ineffective against Skiffs, Manas, Astrodelphis, Owls, Wyverns, and Gigas, etc.

                      a. Shield, bolas, grappling hooks, rockets, club and gas grenades are the best combat options that are learned on The Island. The lance exists but I haven't tested it in a while. Player speed, desync, and lag make projectile weapons useless sometimes. I usually put stats in Melee and Speed when I'm solo, and focus on bola and torpor knockout with a club or gas grenade when fighting on foot. Some players go full Health, so meleeing to death can take forever. Torpor values stay the same and Fortitude leveling is rare. Aimbot is a huge problem, but a metal shield will stop headshots. If you happened to find some charged batteries from Aberration, a battery-powered turret can be a force multiplier. 

                      b. Dismounting the rider or immobilizing the dino are the best chances for escaping. A Microraptor shoulder mount will dismount a rider when you're picked. That C4 can be attached to a flier that has picked you up and it will slow it down considerably.  

                     c. Always carry some SCUBA flippers in case you need to jump in water to swim away.

It looks like you've made some impressive progress so far. The Island doesn't have any area I would consider "the middle of nowhere" to put out Dimetrodons for hours at a time. I would use a sky quetz out of a cryopod, just don't leave it flying on The Island while logged off. I would avoid raiding anyone, even in retaliation for an attack. It draws too much attention and will encourage that player to keep coming after you. Even just typing in global chat will announce your presence in the server and draw attention. If a fight happens, don't make it personal.

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1 hour ago, Mackiecool said:

One thing i have learnt after a long time of playing ark that’s helps is if you can’t ride a flyer but you have one grapple to it and keep whistling it to fly.                        
 
 

 

or quit and come have a nice life with all us pve players

Honestly I do stuff like this even in pvp. I am not very successfull in my ventures most of the time lmao. 

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23 hours ago, DrSmithDVM said:

"Snip"

Huge shout out to @DrSmithDVM for the in depth advice. Some of which I used today and it helped immensely. 

DAY 2

Woke up with my gear mostly intact. Found that one of my hidden staches was destroyed. Thankfully it was just my narcotic station. I'm wondering if it's because It was only a wooden foundation with some pestles...rebuilt on metal and with walls in the same area to test. 

After that I went ahead and tamed up my duplicate argy and anky. Cryoed and hidden...at least now if I'm killed while gathering I'll have a backup. I feel pretty confident in my hiding spot at the moment so I decided to store them at home base instead up uploading. Now that I finally had my starter dinos established it was time to make progress to the mid game.

I chose to pursue the most important tame yet for my progression...the dire bear. Now some of you may be scratching your heads at this next step but hear me out. I did my research and I'm pretty sure that mutton tamed rex's with some yuty/daeno support are capable of handling the gamma dragon...no breeding needed. If so that is going to save me a TON of time, so the current plan is to start producing veggie cakes for the sake of ovis taming...and to do that with a low footprint means a bear is needed. So whalla! 

 

443239433_Day2bear.thumb.jpg.b80fe487a71ee7dbdbf803280f868850.jpg

.....

After taming I decided to do a little leveling and get my first artifact. Artifact of the clever at the central cave. It was a struggle...the bear tamed out to level 75 and after the cave we are standing strong at a whopping 104 which tells you how much of a fight it was. 

Now to make the veggie cakes. I needed tree sap so I decided to make use of the c4 from last night and go on a few raids while I scouted for a tree platform. It was a fairly successful trip. I got my tree sap along with a host of other materials but something about these raids just felt wrong. I actually ended up trying to help a fellow pvper recover from my own raid out of guilt. They ended up leaving to start fresh on a PvE server...I have never felt ashamed from a video game before but that did it...

After the looting I was able to make up 11 c4 (net) along with some useful saddles for later. Last thing needed are crops for my veggie cake production...hopefully there will be some humanity left in me after accomplishing my goals. 

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Unfortunately, that wraps up my weekend and now life calls. I think it was a pretty good start, however my job now requires me to work 2 weeks straight before getting another weekend. I feel fairly good about my hiding spot but 2 weeks is a long time to go staying hidden.  I should still be able to get an hour or so in each day, so the plan now is to setup my crops and tame any ovis I can find each morning before work. 

After my 2 weeks of work I will get 4 days off so the goal is to tame enough ovis to begin mass taming my initial rex line. Lets just hope that the odds of finding ovis are in my favor as well as the odds of being found. 

Due to the circumstances, I don't expect any major progress to be made until the 4 day weekend, so unfortunately, I don't expect to be making another progress post until week 2. I will however keep checking in with you guys for more advice and general comments. Y'all are the frigen best. 

 

Edited by Logan96
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  • Logan96 changed the title to PvP On The Island

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