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Single Player - Island I wiped all my single player maps and started a fresh character because I have A.D...a bike. I don't know the plan but the beginning struggle is fun. So I started by getting some explorer notes. Raptors suck. Lol. Every time I'd get like 3 or 4 notes and 1500 seconds, they'd appear and waste that time. I handled them alright on the respawn but I just can't get the dodge down from their initial attack. Getting the notes up in West Zone 3, I spot an Alpha Raptor. So I farm up a simple 2 x 2 trap for it, give myself a spawn point near it, and set out to get that sweet, sweet xp. When I get to the area it was, I don't see the tell tale glow. I do run into a Carno so I run from it. I get it stuck on a few rocks when I hear a super speed raptor approaching from behind. "There's the Alpha" I say to myself as I never see it before I'm dead, just the glow of its fury. I spawn back in, grab my back up gear and head back. The Alpha bug continues as it attempts to harvest my corpse. It notices me, so I lead it from my first bag which has the trap mats in it. I respawn at my last sleeping bag near there. Grab my bag, set the trap, lay another sleeping bag and storage box of killing items and get the Alpha in the trap. I respawn and three crossbows later, finally get the kill. I really do like the early grind. After a few hours break, I pop on and decide to start taming. I have been saving a 125 Trike near my spot and get my supplies ready. I'm hunting the Trike when a 135 Ptera lands. Change of plans. I KO the Ptera and hunt for some prime. Not an easy task in the SW zone but I get lucky and find 2 Sarcos. I harvest their prime. Kill a few trilobites for Chitin, tame up the Ptera, and now I'm sky bound. Ptera tamed out with 507 (506?) stam and 201 wt. Perfect for my needs from it. I hit a few notes with it and get him up to 1025 stam and 250 wt. Back at base, I head back out and grab that 125 Trike too. Once the Trikes done, I get my narco harvest on. Farm up enough to make 200 narcotics. Turn half of those into tranq arrows. Time to get an Argy. I decide to hunt the Argy's on Rag so I farm out my trap and a small 1 x 1 for future Rag trips, load everything up, and head over. Rag is being finicky today. I see like 12 Argy's up in the jungle. 20, 55, 80, 90, 20, 15 but finally spot a 130. Not ideal but first bird, it'll do. Set my trap, get it caught, and KO it. 2.4k hp and 656 wt on knock down. Not too bad. Kill some of the low level Argy's for prime and tame it up. Ark boned that weight (thanks for the 3 levels in it putting it up to 680) but the hp rolled to 3.5k so I'll take it. I scan once more and hey, a 140 has appeared. I kite that to my trap but it's not cooperating. Losing aggro and flying back out before I can shut the door. I eventually get it trapped and KO it. Goes down with 270 melee. Very nice. I kill a few more Argy's for prime (I have 10x taming so prime still gives my 99% TE) and tame up this Argy. Sigh. 360 melee. It's not bad but I expect 400+ if it's got 270 on knock down. Bonus, these are a breeding pair so I'll have to get a couple imprinted to me once I got cryo's or kibble. I am happy with my progress today (level 72 at days end) and call it a night. I have put my unofficial Valguero map on the back burner because I was a bit tired of breeding, which is really all there is to do at this point, but I have some real nice lines going. I have the Deino's at 19 mutes and hatching 1740hp, 700+ stam, and 384 melee. I want to lock up a side there and then raise an Army for the fight. I got my Anky's at 484 melee. I started on Rhino's and got them currently at 6100 hp, 700+ stam, and 450+ melee. I also just started on Daeodon's after taming up 16.4k food. I needed a break though so we'll see when I go back. My friends are still enjoying it though and we paid through December in anticipation of Genesis. Until next time.

During my loot quest I also tamed a 130 Raptor near my starter beach base, because why not, and another Jerboa, for BP storage. In the loot I acquired was a mastercraft pump shotgun BP 297 dmg and 1447 dura, might be handy later.

Today on extinction: After work, I set out on gathering some stone to roof in my house and get my walls more than one high. I ended up finding my doed and velon that were apparently shot into orbit for a couple days by the geyser. After getting them home safely, I put my little 20 velon in turret mode on the few ceilings above my bed. A 135 spawned and obliterated it, so I had to go kill it. After that, I decided to raw meat tame a couple low level female velons while 2x is active. I now 2 female eggers and my 120. I am now up to 3 medium eggs! As soon as I get 20ish, I may try to hop over to aberration to go scout out a 150 aberrant anky because my anky is level 40 and only marginally better than a primitive metal pick. I really need to check on my aberration base. It's been a week and I left because I spent days on end looking for a crate, but people have walked off major pathways and I don't have a drake.

I've been breeding Managarmr since I introduced them to my server. Had a selection of coloured ones I'd picked up but oddly after breeding a few generations I decided I liked the White/Grey ones best. Especially after I was able to breed out that horrible pink sheen they usually get on their sides. Got a baby without it and boy oh boy did he get put to good use with the ladies haha If only there was a way to breed out their corrupted tummys and tails. I really think the model would look better without it but oh well I just wish their damn speed didn't go up so much once bred. Moving them around the pen is so annoying when they run at 3 gazillion miles an hour ?? Oh and I had this moment when Viserion decided he'd rather have a nap than give me a lift home. He looked so peaceful I just had to snap a photo ?

Loaded up SP Valguero and spent the first couple of hours pooping back and forth as I set up a new crop farming area. Went farming for resources until it got boring then did some crafting, plumbed in the industrial cooker and beer barrel at the new farm and set up the industrial grill so I can start mass producing kibbles when the time comes. Then went collecting drops in the hopes of finding a Tapejara saddle or BP, alas it was not to be (again). Flew past the Wyvern scar on my way home and there was only 2 Wyverns hanging out there, one instantly flew off towards 50/50 but the other one (lvl 170) kept circling around a nest. Eventually an argy flew into the scar, whilst chasing my argy, that got the wyverns attention and they flew to the bottom of the trench to argue over food. The Wyvern was so hungry it set itself on fire chasing something in the lava. It then embraced its new affinity for lava and flew into the fire Wyvern depths of the scar. I scoured the now safe scar and found 4 eggs, levels 15, 50, 170 and 175.

EU-PVP-Official-[REDACTED] An old nemesis is back in the neighbourhood. Known to my files by the codename "Chrysanthemum", the wily Frenchman struck like a thief in the night and Safehouse One is completely burned. Safehouse Two also got hit, but remains in play. Safehouse Three is secure. Cryopods have indeed been a game changer - I only recently discovered that you could make them in a supply crate. Being able to keep dinos alive has proven to be a real boon to productivity (who'd have thought?), allowing me to quickly amass the narcotics needed to tame the pteradon that significantly extended my range of operations and made Operation Beaver Snatch such a stunning success. I am now bathing in cement paste, free from the shackles of Big Chitin. I have, with some reluctance, traded beauty for functionality. I'd recommend the following instructions if your PC is struggling with Ark. I was still thinking of mine as being quite beefy, when it was actually quite beefy about six years ago... https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=475747492

(SP Valguero: An addendum to my above post) "That bow sure is powerful," HLN-A says. I beam with pride, "Yep, it sure is!" "Just think how powerful it would've been if you mind-wiped and put all your points into crafting first...." "Son of a *BEEP*!" I say as both Goner and Appy start giggling.

(SP Valguero: Operation Bronto Burgers) So either Armageddon has kicked off right above my cave, or the brontos have taken up line dancing. The sheer noise and shuddering of the ground is nearly overwhelming. I look across my base as dust rains down from above and notice Appy. She's sitting in an upside down miner's helmet that I grabbed from a drop not so long ago, and the impacts of the giant beasts above are moving it erratically across the open floor. Her smile of pure joy as the thunderous stomps cause the light from the headlamp to jitter across its surroundings leads me to a pause. Happiness, perhaps, can be found where one is free minded enough to embrace it. Me, though, I'm not so happy, and neither is HLN-A. "You really need to get rid of those things," she pleads. Agreeing with her one-hundred percent, I place the ascendant compound bow BP into the fabricator and take a look at its requirements. "Holy *BEEP*, this thing is expensive!" "You're seriously debating its cost versus the cost of never being able to sleep again?" she asks. "Well, no. But I may need to take out a loan to craft this," I admit. "Would you mind co-signing it?" "Je ne parle pas français," she replies. It takes a few seconds, but I follow that up with, "Wait, what?" What seems like years of grinding later, I am the proud owner of a 534% compound bow. And now, it's time to put it to use. Appy hops up on my shoulder as I'm heading out, and I whistle Rapz, my raptor, to follow. As he falls in behind me, HLN-A beams a big smile onto her display. We cautiously exit the cave and find nothing dangerous outside, so we head toward the incessant stomps above. Partway there, a raptor notices us and charges. I draw back the bow string and let the arrow fly. Things go into slow motion as I see the arrow spiraling through the air before it goes into real time and lances forward through the dino's skull. HLN-A's display shows a vomiting emoji after the raptor's head explodes, and its lifeless body collapses onto the grass. Meanwhile, on my shoulder, Appy's eyes have gone wide, and she's making an, OMG! That-was-awesome face. "Heya, Rapz, hopefully that wasn't a relative," I say, and my raptor just shrugs before heading over to devour it. Needless to say, things are quiet above the base again....

today I joined another tribe on another Extinction server, helped move some items around the base, and brought them some stuff i had crafted to help make the base better, even gave them a few velon eggs to help build up exterior defenses. after helping move stuff around for abit, my tribemates on the main server called me over to do a boss fight. We were short abit on stuff to do the boss so one tribe member headed out to grab the missing stuff, and i ventured to a friends base, after a long friendly conversation i had worked a deal for the missing tribute, and getting a black wyvern with a red underbelly. He also gave me a nice doedic and thyla too, i was thrilled new breeding lines! After goodbyes I headed back to base. We collected up our armor and food items, along with a little medi brew and figured we were set... we set out to do the alpha ape, as two of my tribemates didn't have him yet, so after spending yesterday tossing all the rexs out from cryo to find the best ones, we loaded up the teleporter and took them all over to the green obelisk. it seems it has become the spot for people to park dinos, surrounded with wyvern, ptera, griffon, rex a few other odd ended dinos, even a phoenix, but we managed to push our rexs in and get them all setup for transport in. I explained the tatics for doing the ape before we went in and asked if everyone knew their part, "aye, ready when you are", so i loaded up the tributes and in we headed. the first thing i hear once im inside is "you want me to start buffing with yuty?" (facepalm) "no, get your rex against the wall here then go pull ape to rex" (laughter) .. okay pulling my leg where ya? so he heads up the bridge and almost fell off going up to pull ape "careful! don't fall off that bridge!". Once he got pulled down to the rex, that was game over, the rex easily killed the ape, and only a couple took any damage, it was down in 4 minutes. Once back at base I joke with the yuty rider, tossing him 5 element "thats all you get!" lol, he pulled out his shotgun and proceeded to try to kill me, I laughed. After he was done trying to kill me I tossed him another 50 element and gave the last 55 to the other tribemate. I'd already done the alpha myself, and sense they needed it, figured splitting the element between them was a good idea, that way the could make some tek suit pieces if they wanted to. After the long process of parking all the rexs back inside the building, I headed out and gathered meat to feed them all. once fed the rexs I decided to call it a day, knowing I need to get alot of polymer and obsidian the following day I figured its best if I get well rested, So i laid down on my bay view bed and drifted off to sleep watching the sun set on the horizon.

Big Chitin. I love this, thank you for the laugh. I basically wade through thorny dragons near my base and keratin still isn't as abundant as I'd like. I'll try the link when I get back home. My old i7 3770 used to be fairly proficient at it's job, but that was a while ago. My 970 should still be okay. My ancient 1tb hdd and the 4g factory ram have been silently screaming for upgrades for years, though. I hope the settings ease up some of the castle lag when i'm out running around.

Ice Wyverns do look great don't they. Always been my favourite, and I have a lovely white/blue one at the moment.

Classes picked up a little more this week so didn't have as much time to get on Ark (and I played some Mortal Kombat with roommates instead). I got on Island SP yesterday and finally decided to put off any building, resource gathering, or projects and just dedicate myself to taming a quetz. I also messed around with settings a little more after reading D1nk or Aushgun on another topic yesterday to make sure I am not making taming or breeding too easy. After adjusting settings, I got on my argie and flew to the red OB to see if what everyone says about it spawning quetz's more often is true. I didn't find one at the OB but started flying north over the swamp and eventually found one crossing the border into snow biome. As I didn't think fully ahead and didn't have my fur armor with me, I hit it a few times to herd it away from the snow and eventually got it near the volcano. I landed and grappled onto my bird using the grapple/whistle method and shot it until it got itself caught on the side of the volcano. Dismounted, finished KO'ing it and after almost losing it when getting prime meat I finally tamed it! So I finally tamed my first quetz and though it was only a level 44, I think it will still be helpful as my first one. I have already built 2x3 foundation on it with ramps and retrieved a Rex I tamed on Carni Island. I have thoroughly enjoyed dismounting in mid air miles in the sky and looking down on the Island! On another note, a friend from college has just bought Ark and is wanting to play with me so I have been thinking about joining a PVE server. The cluster that Aushegun plays on sounds like it has great community and helpful players so I would love to join that one but also think that it might only be for a select group of individuals and it would be tough to get into. If it is open to the public, could you share the server name so I could check it out Aushegun? If not, any recommendations of PVE servers with great community and active admins would be appreciated.

Remember that Yutys scare most tames, so if on a flyer, stay high up in sky. Then scout a spot to build a taming pen. Build the pen, then go park your flyer in a safe spot( or cryopod it) Then kite the Yuty into your trap and tame it up!

PS4 - unofficial cluster I worked from home yesterday, so I was able to play over the lunch hour, a well as get right on after 5pm! I decided at lunch time to jump to a couple of the maps to refresh my bases and dinos. Logged into Abberation, and saw that I was running low on gas for the generator, so flew down to the river for oil. After collecting a bunch of trilolbite loot, I ventured over to the blue zone, to look for an event shinehorn (server is running Summer Bash this week) Found one right away and tamed it, but realized that I didn't have a cryopod with me. So I picked up the new tame, and left my lower level vanilla tame behind, to come back for. I then started the long trip back to my base, when I came upon an open teleporter, so I check it out, and there was another TP much closer to my base on the map, so transferred there. BIG PROBLEM! The teleporter at the other end was protected by a forcefield, so I immediately got forced outside of it, but it trapped my fully loaded with resources Ptera inside! And this base was in such a spot, that without my flyer, I could not safely get down. So I posted an SOS on the cluster discord, and within 20 minutes, an admin logged on, and came and turn the forcefield off. Turns out this base was of an admin who left the cluster 2 weeks earlier. So the admin helping me, gave me some of the contents of this base, including a dozen low level drake eggs, a mid level griffin, and a abberrant spino. I then got back to my base and logged off until after work. Spawned in on Abberation again, decided to try an tame some flow tails for my buddy who loves them. I found the glowtail cave , and after taming 2 glowtails near the beginning, I started freaking out, as I didn't have tek, and I kept getting attacked, and was afraid I would fall off the cliffs. SO I retreated, (flew back to blue zone, picked up my original shinehorn I had left behind at lunch time) and then transferred to Extinction. Threw out some owl eggs to hatch, and got the mutation I needed. Then ....... "Lost Connection to Server" Oh no, I hadn't put food in the new baby owl yet! Tried logging back in but server was dowe, and is STILL down. Admins don't know what is wrong with it. so RIP owl with mutation. Logged into Scorched earth, and waited for 2 hours with my buddy from Indiana was already there. FInally he had to go, and no heat wave. So I started back to my base to leave, when I saw a high level Tek Rex. tamed it up, and flew back to base. Then "Weather Gal" my jerboa started pawing at the ground, so I jumped on my fire wyvern and started looking for a phoenix! 5 minutes later, no sightings and the heat wave was over. Flying back to base saw another good level tek with cool slate blue, and I tamed it too. Logged into Valguerro, my good buddy from Texas was already on, so we both flew over to the abberration zone. This time I brought a full tek suit and taming supplies for featherlights, and managed to tame 5 while my buddy tamed 4, giving me 3 of them, so I have 8 new featherlights. Sadly one of them was killed when a near invinceable seeker attacked us. It took about 20 shotgun hits before it died, but sadly his shoulder featherlight was killed in the battle. We also found only 1 glowtail in the whole radiation zone, but we tamed it up. By now it was really late, I mean REALLY late, after midnight, and i had to be up by 6am. But then my Cali buddy got on and said he was coming to Val. So I waited, and eventually he got on, and gifted me an event colored Arthoplura! Yellow and green. I've never had one before, so that was cool. I promised California that I would do Abberation surface drops with him tonight, so that will be a first. I hope the color event is still going, as I'd like to try getting more event colored glow pets too. Plus Texas said he will be on ABB too, as he wants a colored Reaper, and I've never had one of those, so I will team up with him in hopes of getting Feinsteined by a reaper queen.

Official Valguero - Today I after getting on i launched the second pc and added that character to the tribe, sitting them in front of the grinder and chem station making flint, thatch, and narco, getting them all the way to level 45 before stopping with them. It'll be a crafting character for the tribe, that way we won't have to do mind wipes anymore. Going to take advantage of this 2x weekend with it and see if i can't get it all the way up to 90. While that one was busy at the grinder and chem station, i set off on the main valguero character to collect more stone and wood with the rock elemental, as its pretty easy in the chalk hills with him. afterwards I headed to the swamp and gathered more berries, was mainly after narco but brought back the other berries to top off the feeding bins for all the berry eaters who promptly returned the favor with a nice pile of eggs. After gathering meat for the rest of the dinos, I decide to do a little building, and one of my tribe members headed off to the scar to get some milk. shortly after he arrived there I heard across the radio "Fire wyverns are back!" and about 20 minutes later "I'm Dead!" I noticed he was out on his wyvern and asked if it was okay, "its got 200 health left!". it seems he got chased by 5 firewyvern from the scar, and after losing them he landed only to have a giga rundown on him and a rock golem pop up, not being able to take off due to stam, he was sure he was dead, but they managed to get back home. Were raising two wyverns at the moment, a 190 and a 185, the 185 came out almost all white, with a little grey on it, the 190 is white with light blue spikes and top of head, its so pretty, were hoping these ones don't vanish like the previous two babies did, a 150 and 155. I put them away after imprinting, and feeding them the last bit of milk. They seem happy, after all, they wanted cuddles. Afterwards, i headed to the island for abit, sat just feeding the gacha to make element for the tek geny to keep the feeding troughs there going, 40 element later all was good. topped off the feeding troughs and cryoed up the dinos at the outpost bringing them back to the main base to make feeding a bit simpler. I did abit of sorting of mats in containers to make it a little easier to craft some new structure pieces for building at valguero once transfers open up. I'm going to need a lot more pieces to finish off the base there. Sat at the steam page thinking about about purchasing Genesis for the second computer as well, thinking it may be nice to have a crafting character there too ready to use when the tribe needs it. Still debating.

SP Valguero (Just a quick update) The two Deinos, Shaya and Phoenix, are finally done maturing! "Woo Hoo!" And they've now given birth to a male offspring (Eagle) with one mutation, who is raising now. However, I doubled my maturation rate, and this one shouldn't take three days. Whew.... I also returned from gathering mats to find Appy painting Goner's talons, shocking orange. Cool by me, but as I got closer, I realized Goner is now female. This of course begs the question, was Goner always female? (Sometimes I drink beer while playing Ark, so things might be missed.) However, I've had two dilos in the past swap gender, so.... Either way, I said, "Looking good, Goner," and she replied with a happy trill. And now to the bad news, a family of brontos has moved in above the cave, and the noise is driving me freaking CRAZY! "Might I suggest crafting that ascendant compound bow we found the BP for?" HLN-A asks.

Not after the wipe they wont.

So I take my raptor up the mountain to grab some crystal, and halfway up I come across another raptor I thought I'd lost. Hurrah, I think. We all carry on up to the top and I start mining. When I look around, both raptors have completely disappeared. Not a squawk out of either of 'em - just there one minute, gone the next. Comme ci comme ça. Ark giveth, and Ark taketh away. I long for Paris. Life is pain.