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(Gonna try my usual narrative style for the official server. Why not! Seems fun!) #1 #2 #3 It's been a grueling first week on this new ARK. I only spent one day alone, but even with the help of my one new friend, it's been... difficult. Refreshingly so, however. I have spent a little too long being comforted by the pampering of some friends on another ARK.... I'm glad to have finally found the time and materials to write down my adventures. Following Helena's journals and the myriad other survivors I have encountered across the few other ARKs I have transiently moved through, I have a basic understanding of their mechanics, and how they operate. This experience, however, is new... Most of my ARKs have stuck me isolated and alone on the Island, or with a small, select group of friends. I ventured into more densely populated ARKs here and there only to make the quickest beeline I could for the obelisk, to quickly forget about this ARK altogether. It's a miserable existence, understanding the multitudes of ARKs out there, and that none of them mean much of anything in the grand scheme of things... But, this is different. This one isn't so densely populated, but there certainly are people. They seem more apt to trade and discuss than draw their spears immediately, though I've certainly witnessed a couple flare-up of tempers. Nothing that resulted in devastating casualties, however. Nobody has approached me nor my friend in a hostile manner, really. Several have offered their assistance, actually! One helped us befriend several creatures, and yet more helped us befriend the fantastical griffin. Despite having owned one in a previous ARK, it still blows my mind that such a creature graces the harrowing ARKs... and that it is willing to accept human command. Despite the streak of good favor in between the brutal, ruthless deaths, I can't shake the bitter taste the ARK still leaves in my mouth til this day. Many have moved past this, and understand this is their life now. Many don't seem interested in leaving any time soon, and even enjoy the time they spend here. Personally, I still want to find out how to go home. Though, I understand the reluctance... I have no idea if "home" even still exists, and it is a painful thought to leave behind all of my creatures, my friends. But just as the ARK can give friends, it takes. My first friends on this one were laughably destroyed, one after the other. First Courier, a megaloceros, then Pinstripe, a parasaur... then Moonside, and Spry, both also parasaurs... And poor Lucille, my first raptor here... Algae, Lucitania, again, parasaurs.. Those are just the ones I lost before my friend joined me. She lost a little dodo she had named Plankton shortly after that. I need to remember their names so once I can begin the graveyard, I have them on record. Many call me silly for this, getting so sentimental over these creatures that many tame with the understanding will die. But even if they are artificially created... they live in the time they are with us. And I can't help but feel guilt when their assistance to me brings about their untimely demise... Currently, I am living in a mash of wooden and stone encampment. My new friend - I'll call her D for short - has an affinity for building while I have an affinity for the creatures of the ARKs. While she has been busy working on the base, I have been tirelessly gathering us new friends. Our current lineup includes five raptors - Looper, Special Girl, Slick, Dustin, and Jailor... I have missed having a raptor pack, though one of them, Special Girl, appears to have a lame foot. She is much slower than the rest, and I can't for the life of me figure out how, or why. Perhaps it explains why she befriended us so readily... An offering of free food to an injured, lone raptor must have seemed like a gift from the gods themselves. Before these five I had managed to find another after Lucille, who I had jokingly named 'Sinna,' as in sinner. He had been a confident goofball... Poor fellow only lasted a day. I felt awful for it, as it was innately my fault. I had been walking him through some woods in a bid to find ankylosaurus in the treeline. A pack of wild raptors, however, called these woods home. They rushed us from all sides and even after throwing me free and to safety, they continued to assault him. Sinna tried desperately, it seemed, to 'negotiate'... But after listening to his snarls and pleading growls for a few seconds, the alpha of this new pack had decided it had heard enough, and lunged at his throat. I had been forced to look away at that point, but that didn't save me from their cruel jaws next. Why couldn't that stupid raptor have ran? Ahem... Anyway... continuing on... We also have a carnotaurus. That was one of the dinos a fellow survivor helped us with. I never quite understood what he was saying, but I knew his name began with an A, so I just call him A. The carno is a spunky one, but seems to think it's a jerboa, with its desire to be as physically close to you as possible at all times. I'm starting to think he may be so clingy because of body heat. We do live awfully close to the tundras... Shortly before Sinna died his cruel death, I managed to down a tyrannosaurus. This beast was vibrant green with angry red streaks mixed in to her scales. Her name became Palmyra, after a valiant struggle to gain her trust, I succeeded. She, of course, is very much still alive. Among our other beasts include an otter, a pteranodon, two griffins, two doedicurus, a dimorphodon, a tek stegosaurus, and a castoroides. Well... we did have a castoroides... It must have gotten separated from the rest back at camp while I was out dealing with Special Girl, Slick, Dustin, and Jailor earlier tonight, because I came back to find his corpse... I'm not sure what I'll tell D, as she spent a lot of effort taming that thing down... Oh, and that's another one to add to the grave list, damn... Graves: Courier (megaloceros), Pinstripe (parasaurolophus), Moonside (parasaurolophus), Spry (parasaurolophus), Lucille (raptor), Algae (parasaurolophus), Lucitania (parasaurolophus), Plankton (dodo), Miata (parasaurolophus), Ashley (pteranodon), Hiro (dilophosaurus), Honeydew (dilophosaurus), Sinna (raptor), Liara (pteranodon), unnamed Castoroides; in that order Notes: Need to make perimeter wall keep direbears out Must find male rex Must find several ankylos Must find an argentavis Break news to D about beaver; letting it loosely wander the direbear and terror-bird ridden woods is a dangerous gamble

Having self diagnosed myself with an absolutely miserable case of strep throat, I spent the day in Ark taking my mind off of it. Basically just doing my best to keep the fever down until I can get to the doctor tomorrow morning. First thing I took the bird out to scout for a base location. As I expected, most of the area where I wanted to build was dense with bases in varying degrees of complexity. It seems like everything just spawns in and builds around Viking Bay. We circled further out afield and managed to find and kill a sheep, which will become important later. Ever the opportunist, I'm always keeping an eye out for anything useful. Eventually I found a spot, it's rather isolated and honestly a bit desolate. Almost nothing seems to spawn here, although there is a local allo spawn point nearby. It's a fairly prominent rocky outcrop overlooking large stone pillar formations on the coast, I didn't think to get any screenshots but it's a recognizable location. Just far enough out that newbies won't want to build here, as there is the occasional wandering argent overhead. I went back to the raft, sailed over and carried my tames up to get to work. All morning I built my new base, occasionally fending off said argents when they wandered too close. Also lured an allo pack over the cliff edge just to get them out of my way. Not much to describe really. It's a base, made out of stone, big enough for now but will need expansion later. Once we finished building it was time to move everything from the raft. This is where I made a fatal mistake. I had taken note that one of the allos was a 135 female with potentially breedable stamina so I was thinking about mutton taming her later on. They weren't really moving around so I stopped watching them. Next thing I knew I was trapped in my raft with my argent, all 3 allos snapping at us through the walls. One somehow managed to get into the top part of the raft, don't even know. I fought valiantly and almost killed one via pike applied liberally to the facial regions, but to no avail. I died, and realized my second mistake. I hadn't put a bed down in the new base, only the one on the raft was there. Respawned, died almost immediately, was hoping to at least save the bird. She died while I was running back after respawning at a player spawn some ways away. But in all of the commotion, global chat stirred. My misfortune had not gone unnoticed. Someone with a wyvern asked me what was going on and I explained the situation. They killed two of the allos and generously airlifted the alpha allo to a nearby taming pen, offering to tame it for me. Remember the mutton? I managed to salvage it from my bird's corpse and offered it as payment. 45 mutton after spoilage, more than enough for the allo and payment for the tame. While they did that, I frantically salvaged my 3.5k ingots from the smithy that was broken by the pack. A calm mind will prevail most of the time. But in my haste I didn't notice there is no easy path up to my base on foot so I had to go around and follow the path. Luckily I got my anky and cheesed it up the cliff, ankys are surprisingly good at that. My new friend, meanwhile, also downed a 150 argent flying nearby to replace my lost bird. Long story slightly shorter, I saved all of my gear and items, a replacement argent, and an allo. The argent also has impressively good breeding stats. A fair enough trade, there was enough mutton left for at least one more high level tame, and they said they might call on me later, which is fine. Much of the rest of the day was spent farming, including another run out to the oil pumps. I also got a nice level beetle after fighting off seemingly every carnivore within a mile of that particular beetle. I've got my crafting stations, electricity, and starting to grow crops. This is a surprisingly nice spot really, within easy flying distance of almost anything I might need for raw mats, except for cactus sap and sulfur, but I was out that way anyways so I've got plenty of propellant to run my item collector now. I also returned the kindness by making said new friend a quetz saddle, they used the mutton to tame a 140 that I had scouted in the area while out and about. All in all, a long and excellent day. I have the bare bones so now it's all about infrastructure and supplies. In short, a whole lot of hurry up and wait for the immediate future. Which is fine heading into the week. I'll be on call but not actually at work tomorrow so I will probably continue working on some of these projects that require a long lead time to get results.

A weekend of ARK... well nearly a full weekend and boy did I make the most of it. Tribe limit was 488/500 and I was getting pains at having to log in to feed everything twice weekly (Gigas, Rexes and the little ones dont have high food stats) so I decided to have a clear out. Created a few more cryo fridges and pods and got to work. 30 Allos, 30 Otters, a few Gigas and Rexes, 20 Terrorbirds, Pteras, Argies... I was running out of pods. So I now have 5 Cryo fridges full of dinos and hatched 49 eggs so created a baby folder so I could raise at a later date. I started to raise 15 new Pteras - no major stat breakthroughs but just a few newer females with a newer stat... saves me trying at a later date. The Yuty I have is a born 258 and I have one born 226... bred them and somehow came out at 277. Upon inspection nothing seemed to jump out statswise as to why it was higher - possibly torp - can you get a mutation in torp? I kept it, will be happy raising that - shame it didnt get a new colour. My 5th 100% imp Giga is now complete - and no more raising for a long long time, but took the fresher out on a meat run to start levelling it up - didnt take long to get to 300. metal, oh how I do love metal. Anky, 7000 weight Quetz and awaaaay we we go. Forgot that we still hadnt implemented a second forge on this server so when I returned it roughly took 3hrs to cook down all the metal into ingots but I have 150 stacks of ingots to show fro it which is nice No new tames this weekend, it was metal running and raising so I cant complain. My final efforts were to raise my Wyverns a little more, the 190 poison completed and so did my carrier argy so that was useful. Next on the list are the two 185 Fires but they are only at 20% whilst my 165 Fires are both at 85% so will try and finish those up this week. All in all, a lot of time spent on the ARK but not fun stories really, just a progress update.

Ragnarok Unofficial Continued the island build tonight. I could feel d1nk on the other side of the Atlantic itching to get breeding , so I added a breeding barn onto the side of the crafting area/cellar. Got the shell down but I havent furnished it yet. I really need to get a move on and start crafting up electronics and industrial stuff. After a bit more touching up around the base I adapted the taming raft to trap flyers and went to the south island where argys spawned. Used my ptera and spotted a 150 male argy on the mountain so lured it back to the trap and downed it. Took it back to base and tamed it up. Went back for a female and spotted a 135 female in the same place, so got that into the trap and took it back to tame up. Put both aside to mate and got a clutch of eggs for hatching later. Still trying to decide the functions of the different rooms. I think I'll turn the lower level into a generator room and/or log out room. Annoying when playing about with various layouts trying to turn the second level into a bedroom/storage area, I discovered that when building the second level, I sunk the foundations one too many times and that I can not place any structures on this level at all. And because I lowered the foundations too far them to far I can not pick them up to rectify the problem. I shall probably have to ask the admin to come along and remove the foundations in ghost mode.... such a sily mistake. Am just glad the way I built the build that removing the second level should not impact the first and third levels.

Thats funny, my main build plans are in the desert too. Going to hit up the desert ruin, that farm Saltire built in last Rag.. unless I come up with a good plan for that half castle

Hey Ced, I've been playing Ark for about 15 months now. All but the first month in Prim+ crossark3. I find mixing dino's and advanced tech silly. I think that integrating the prim+ files into the main game would waste the experience that prim+ brings. Overcoming all the challenges with a primitive game style is what makes prim+ special. Its like playing Ark on hardmode. Adding the engrams to the tek servers would simply allow you to bypass those challenges. If that's the route chosen you've just wasted all the effort that's been put into Prim+. Would it be possible to make it into an officially supported mod that is hosted on official crossarks that preserves current progress that is on the servers already? At the same time adding the engrams to the main game engram tree? This would allow for the rest of the Ark players to experience a taste of what we've had the pleasure of enjoying and give people the option to keep the prim+ hard mode struggle. As well as not making us start over. I'm not 100% opposed to starting over, but I'd prefer not to have to if it means having the ability to fix the game. My second choice would be to make it into an unofficial mod where we can download the saves from current server files. There is plenty of support from the prim+ community that will keep it alive on unofficials servers. I wouldn't be surprised if there are enough code savvy players out there that could move it forward.