Alpha Rockwell on aberration, the most obnoxious boss fight

[Eclipsomations]

So as the title said, I find this boss fight an absolute unfair pain and would like to discuss it. I entered the boss fight with my best pair of flak, a rock drake with 3k+ Stam and 40k hp and an ascendant saddle with 133 armor, 18 megalos each with ascendant saddles 40k hp and each dealing 4k with their primary, and a heavily leveled reaper king. I had a pump action shotgun with 300+ damage on it and just under 2k durability and 800 slugs along with shadow stakes and med brews. So you may be thinking I have everything I could possibly need right? NO, and If I had to guess I wasn't even close. Each tentacle took roughly 3 reloads to take down (14 shots each) and dealth 200-400 damage to my drake even with the great saddle. On top of that, each of the orbs DESTROYED my armor and a good chunk of health leaving me naked before the nameless even started spawning, I later got 2 shot by the orbs as he was roughly half hp and turned of the game. This, in my opinion, is absolute bs. I play solo and can't get other tribe members to help so I'm just screwed unless I can reload to the save I made before the fight and perform a miracle. This could entirely be a skill issue but I don't think I was playing all the bad and it was just a combination of constant orbs, WAY too bulky tentacles, reaper slow, and the stupid electric attack that just made it a migraine followed by a stupid death. Am I the only one who went through this or something similar? I say we scale him down more for singleplayer before abb comes out on ASA to make him less of a hassle, such as making the tentacles weaker as to not survive 15k worth of damage. 

Tldr: Alpha Rockwell on aberration is too strong and obnoxious and deserves a nerf, sincerely a disgruntled ark player

[spiderpk]

What honestly helped me the most was practicing it - fail, understand where I needed to improve, reload, try again.  I probably ran through at least a dozen practice attempts before I felt I had a decent chance at success.  Gamma and even Beta can sort of be brute-forced, but solo Alpha requires fairly flawless play - there's so much bad in the second half of the fight, and it can quickly turn into chaos.

 

When doing it solo, I found it a lot easier to bring a handful reapers with - having most of them following really helped keep the focus off of me.  Also, bring more than one set of armor - at least two or three.  Even though you're watching for orbs, eventually you'll get hit.

Using the rock drake camouflage helps a lot as well.  You should always be moving - the only time you can really safely stop is between phases.  If your drake is going to run out of stam, try to glide to a place far away from enemies so you can get as much back as possible - it helps to be proactive about this where possible (e.g. your drake is at half stam, only 1-2 tentacles left, and no enemies nearby - best to fill up on stam now than wait and have no chance when a ton of enemy reapers spawn) - waiting on stam is also an opportune time to check armor and swap pieces that are low on durability.

When the tentacles come up, kill the ones on both sides of the ramp first - that gives you a bit of space to collect yourself and if needed deal with enemy reapers.  As far as shotgun damage, assuming by reloads you mean pumps then that sounds about right - enough damage to kill a tentacle without stopping.

The electricity is death if you're solo - you'll get stunned off your mount and swarmed by reapers, so no matter what don't go into it - look at the tentacles to see where the next patch of electricity will be and be prepared to slow down, and even turn around if needed.

For the orbs, I bring an assault rifle in case I needed to quickly swap weapons.  Keep moving, and always make sure you're always checking for orbs - getting hit by one or two here or there isn't a major deal, but getting hit by several at once will probably mean death.  I try to just focus on tentacles first, so by the time the last tentacle goes down the orbs are mostly clumped together and most are pretty easy to get rid of.  Even doing that, there are times the orbs get too close for comfort and need to be prioritized over tentacles.

Make sure you're whistling the megalos and nearby reapers onto the boss each round (or just have them on aggressive) - they tend to stop attacking otherwise.  Also make sure you're helping on the boss itself - the megalos do their "pick up" attack and therefore do a measly amount of damage compared to what they could do.  Having a reaper devoted to the boss helps a lot.

 

Even with all of that advice, I still think practicing helped the most. I can't remember how many times I glided into electricity or got stuck in a corner and couldn't shoot through reapers to destroy the mass of orbs.  I really do feel like alpha is balanced for multiple players, so it's not surprising that's it's hard to solo.

[Eclipsomations]

Alright I have an update on the boss situation, and my stance has not changed in the slightest of the boss being remarkably stupid.

I had taken your advice into account and had reloaded my save to re-attempt the boss fight. The second go around I had gotten him to an absolute sliver of hp meaning that the next time I could damage him he would absolutely die. Only 4 tentacles were left and they were all low and I thought this was it. However, I miss clicked and dismounted causing me to get one shot by a tentacle slam. Would've been fine if the game didn't glitch and save as a I die for whatever reason causing me to loose EVERYTHING in that fight with no chance of reloading (besides the tames). This was my last straw and I honestly couldn't be bothered knowing I had essentially won if it hadn't been for a misinput, I just went into creative and cheated the boss.

Is that "Fair", no but is it better than regrinding for everything I brought into that damned fight, yes. I'm not apologetic for this and whether you think it's unfair is up to you but since I'm single player and had pretty much won the fight already, I'm just gonna appreciate the admin gun.

Tldr; Boss was easier but still stupid, I caved and "cheated"

[spiderpk]

Glad to hear it was easier, sorry to hear about the dismount and bad save timing

I imagine most people playing solo or on servers they control have used cheats at some point - I honestly wouldn't have put thousands of hours into the game if I hadn't been able to use console commands to bypass grind that is useless for a solo player.

Tamed dino stuck in mesh?  Yep, I'm cheat ghosting.  Absurd gauntlet mission requirements that are exponentially harder than the expansion boss and virtually impossible to solo (or require "clever use of game mechanics")?  Yep, I'm cheat completing it.  Game decides to spawn a titanosaur that wanders on top of my base?  Yep, I'm cheat killing it.

I'm actually quite happy that Wildcard has made Ark so configurable as well as leaving access to an admin console in the game - we can all tailor the experience to what suits us.

[NickOnzo]

Dang, what a cool story for a boss battle all to end with cheating.  DOH