Well I had a lot to do around my apartment today (read: laundry) so I spent my morning passively breeding in Ark. Got my first dilo mutation! In speed...thanks game. Wasn't even a color either unless SP is still glitchy about that. Well, at least I got a perfect dilo out of it eventually. Also did some argent breeding, as I noticed a fatal flaw in the bird I raised for Rag; he inherited his mom's 42 HP...and his dad's mere 17 stamina. Yeah, no. So I ended up rebreeding multiple times until I got one with HP and mom's 30 stam. In fact I managed to get a perfect stat clone of mom in a male, so I can use that as my base line for transport birds. Nothing fancy, it's just easier than catching more argents.
Also tamed a 130 thyla just to have one, and found an allo to grab for colors. I find myself gravitating back towards old projects, both mine and my old tribemates'. I think I just miss playing with my friends, none of them play Ark anymore. I've been watching Netflix while playing but I'd rather be having adventures with my tribe.
Decided to work on my spino line and after 5 dead baby spinos in a row I started getting aggravated.
So I did something I've been thinking about for awhile.
I loaded a fresh character up and stepped into Extinction for the first time ever. I've avoided looking up any info on it, just playing from the ground up for fun. I don't think I did too badly, only died 3 times and one of them was my own stupidity. The other 2 were snakes before I upped my movement speed/got a crossbow. And now my fort is high enough that I don't pass out from one bite, which means I actually have a chance if one gets the drop on me.
Spent most of my time in a tiny little area of the map just grinding it out, levels and mats and gear, repeat. Scouted out and found a really nice noob base location, the only issue is the aforementioned and fairly occasional snakes. No matter. That's what fences and crossbows are for. Spent all afternoon and evening building, laying the foundations of my base and building the perimeter. You know how newbies all have their little thatch Bob huts? Well, here's mine:
Weird thing about windowframes, the snakes tend to get stuck in them. Makes for easy target practice.
You'll also notice my first tame way in the front there, got him in the last 2 hours of my night. A very low level anky, his only purpose is farming metal, thatch and berries. Sadly that still leaves me to farm stone and wood by hand, my resource multipliers are turned up but not to insane levels and even with a stacking mod weight is a constant issue anyway, only to about 250 so far. It's not unusual for me to run 400 or more carry weight because of all the building.
I almost got an iguanodon too but right after I KO'd it what rolled up but a pair of Defense Units. One of them beat the poor thing to death while I immediately abandoned the tame and left the area. Stupid things. Too bad, I was hoping to get a relatively fast pack mule/scout with some potential longevity. I'll be impressed if the anky makes it for any length of time, he was only level 10 wild but was conveniently walking around right outside my gates. I'm piling all his points into melee, no point doing anything else.
In case you're wondering, I'm at about level 53 or so, my exp is actually only set to 2X. I find it's not really necessary because when you're actually playing through the game and not just bum rushing to the endgame, you spend so long setting up your Engrams outpace your abilities. Well mine do anyway. But then again I'm forever incapable of scaling down my builds. I could have but this area fit so perfectly the way it's set up, I couldn't resist.
Just wish I had a doed. Maybe I'll find one tomorrow. Irrationally I really want to tame an iguanodon so maybe I'll get lucky and find another one while working on my build. I don't plan to stay here forever obviously but until I get something strong enough to defend itself or fast enough to escape there's no point taking a lot of risks traveling any sort of distance.