Solo/unofficial player looking for ideas to keep solo playable but not too easy

[MazHammer]

I originally got a server to play duo with my daughter, but she won't be joining for a few months yet. In the meantime, I've been playing it solo and just doing what I enjoy, farming resources and building stuff. Bases, outposts, traps ECT..  

I had some basic ini settings I got from somewhere, and I'm thinking maybe my damage output is just too high, because really everything is seal clubbing.  I want a little easier gameplay as I have limited in game time due to work and no one to help with tasks/bosses, but I'm not looking to have it be risk free. So what kind of damage numbers for myself, my tames and wilds do more experienced players suggest?  

I'm a new Ark player, didn't play ASE, but I did play a lot of Atlas so I at least understand the game mechanics if not the details of this games server mechanics. Any suggestions or ideas at all would be appreciated.

 

[KingOfAshes]

I'd say your starting point should always be vanilla official settings and make minor tweaks. Overall it's really very subjective and depends a lot on how many hours and how often you spend time in the game to get the best out of it. I tend to only tweak taming(x4)/breeding/XP speeds as my playing sessions are spaced out and not long. Harvesting is also only slightly bumped up, but with regards to Player&Dino stats I leave them vanilla but do lower food/water drain to 0.85. 

I found when I started in ASE, tweaking too much can really ruin the game to the point you sometimes skip tiers/tames too easily missing the experience and effectively rushing to the end game. And once I do the boss fights once I lose interest in a map feeling there is no longer a goal. So, to me it's more about the road to get to the boss fight, more than the boss fights themselves. 

[MazHammer]

That's exactly the spot I'm in. My argy shouldn't be able to take a giga with only minimum effort. I didn't realize the damage amounts weren't basic, and by the time I figured it out, I was already breeding my rex packs.

Gonna be very tough to play solo with official damage levels, but might be the way to go at least to get a better idea of what Tweeks are needed to keep it engaging.  Ty for your thoughts on it

 

Edited February 9 by MazHammer

[SunsetErosion]

4 hours ago, MazHammer said:

That's exactly the spot I'm in. My argy shouldn't be able to take a giga with only minimum effort. I didn't realize the damage amounts weren't basic, and by the time I figured it out, I was already breeding my rex packs.

Gonna be very tough to play solo with official damage levels, but might be the way to go at least to get a better idea of what Tweeks are needed to keep it engaging.  Ty for your thoughts on it

 

Yeah. To make SP a bit more exciting, I always disable the "Use SinglePlayer Settings" 
Not sure how its really called but its in the options and gives a SP handicap boost.
With SP-Settings every stat gets insane boosts. I think Stats like HP are like doubled. So that makes all wildlife just a bunch of meatbags and they can hardly do more than nibble on your pets toes...

Either way, wildlife threats will be gone a few good hours into the game. Once you got your 100% imprint lvl 225+ Rex, most enemies are not a real threat anymore. Then progression is going for Bosses and then wait for the next DLC.
Will take some time for sure to get your Boss armies ready for Dragon, Alpha Bosses, Overseer...

Edited February 9 by SunsetErosion

[yarnevk]

You do not need to futz with ini since single player includes easy/medium/hard presets.   Hard is basically same as official servers except taming/breeding is boosted.   You absolutely want to use these SP tame/breeding presets because those activities are designed to require a 24/7 global tribe - it is simply not feasible to tame/breed high level dinos (times measured in days not minutes) if you turn off the single player preset - the server timers do not run when you are not playing so these tame boosts are necessary if you want to get to end game .  A timer that takes you a day on a server will take you a couple weeks if you only have a couple hours each day and even a month if you cannot play every day.   And even then it assumes you have a full time tamer/breeder

Yes tame scaling means even a parasaur can treat the beach as a buffet - but you want that OP dmg/hp scaling to have any chance of defeating bosses and alphas.  With SP it is unlikely you will be able to match an 24/7 alpha tribe with the dozens of expandable min/maxed mutant dino clone armys (as desired mutants are very low drop rates requiring massive breeding farms) but that is what the boss fights are designed for.   So instead of requiring a large mutant force that you cannot feasibly tame up they just multiply your dmg/hp numbers.  While you might find a video showing how to solo exploit bosses, these usually get patched out (like platforming the monkey boss so it cannot hit you)

If you truly enjoy the mid and early building and crafting game then set your XP to 0.125 - official is 4x what Ark early access used to be before everyone complained about bonus weekends not being permanent - then SP does another 2X on top of that.  With that setting it will take you months to level and you will not be bypassing tech tiers and instantly making metal bases - instead you will start with thatch base, upgrade to wood, upgrade to stone and it will take you a long time to get to metal.  If you want to force yourself to explore multiply the resource respawn timers so you cannot just revisit the same metal node, if you are on steam use -preventhibernation so dino spawns actually work like servers otherwise you will never find any dinos.

Edited February 9 by yarnevk

[KingOfAshes]

On 2/9/2024 at 2:07 PM, MazHammer said:

Gonna be very tough to play solo with official damage levels, but might be the way to go at least to get a better idea of what Tweeks are needed to keep it engaging.  Ty for your thoughts on it

 

Funnily enough a Youtuber called Brian Menard started ASE right around the time ASA was announced and pretty much followed the same path with tweaking the settings. Originally having SP setting on as well as added stat changes he flew through the Island and SE. Eventually,  he came to Aberration where having realised the issue, he set these back roughly to what I suggested above and confirmed he had a more fun experience. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised to find that actually vanilla damage/health etc is really fine for Solo play. 

Once you start getting to the end game and if you're finding it unenjoyably difficult and grindy to get the stuff for the end game, then you could always bump up some settings just to get over that finish line and move to another map. 

Barring the caves in the Island, I found the later Maps to be more enjoyable in Solo play with a better, linear Map progression curve. 

Edited February 12 by KingOfAshes