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A very exciting day here on single player. Having successfully conquered the Overseer, it was finally time to move forward. You'd think I would take some time to say goodbye after spending a year on The Island working my way up. But honestly, I didn't. I was so eager to move forward I barely gave myself time to mindwipe, which is something I had planned to do before transferring. I stashed all my stuff, fast traveled to one of my obelisk shacks and it was off to Scorched Earth for the very first time. Not going to lie, after hearing so many complaints about how hard this map is, I expected a challenge, But even after a day of play I've thus far only died once and that was to the 150 raptor that ate me when I spawned in. Then again I have played on Aberration so I'm well used to real environmental challenges. Much too much happened to go too much into detail but I will say I have made a really solid start and I am absolutely loving this map. It's beautiful and different and I haven't been so inspired in a very long time. Here's basically my entire day summed up:

Scorched Earth, day two: I just want to say, I absolutely did not plan nor intend to get a wyvern this early. But as I've been doing the grind on the base, I've been taking breaks on and off to do other things. One of those included the 3 argents in the back, there's one low level and two high levels. I've been taking the low level one out to scout around and get the lay of the land, doesn't matter if it dies since I have the other two significantly better ones. I've been trying not to spoil too many details for myself but having watched multiple series about this map obviously I do know some things. I didn't actively intend to fly all the way to the wyvern trench as that's quite far from my base. But I was checking out the obelisks and happened to fly close to the end of it. I peeked down into it and didn't really see any wyverns around, I've spotted the rare one flying about here and there in other places but the trench appeared to be empty. I flew closer to get a better look and noticed a nest. Obviously, Ark is 90% preparation, but fortune favors the bold too. We winged quickly into the alcove and waited for stamina rather nervously. Then I hopped off, grabbed the egg and we took off as fast as an argent can fly, which is to say not very fast at all. Our little stunt raid did not go unnoticed as we pulled the interest of the fire wyvern parent below. It was a harrowing flight on this barely midlevel bird as we juked and dodged, avoiding fire breaths as much as possible while taking the occasional bite. Flying close to the mountains and trying to lose aggro while our stamina and HP steadily dropped. It was a very, very, very close call, one I wish I had recorded because it was wild. I've run wyverns on Ragnarok enough, but this was something else. The wyvern itself is nothing special, only level 30 and I only got one imprint on it before it wanted milk. Given that I have virtually no infrastructure right now, that wasn't about to happen. Yes, my settings are unintentionally high enough that it can grow up without milk and not starve. Anyway. This wyvern is absolute trash but it has one purpose and one purpose only: to steal more, better eggs. So it's going to get stamina and maybe some HP, honestly at that level it really isn't going to make a difference. But that's a long way off, of course. Can't say I'm not immensely pleased with the day's events, but I'm a long ways away from taking any more field trips into the trench. I have a base to build and I've barely begun.

Whew, what a wild night I had. So I didn't end up playing at all yesterday. That means when I got home today I rushed my boss prep. Basically just threw together whatever I still needed, packed it all up with lots of ammo, soups, med brews, grabbed my cryopods and flew up to the volcano. Not going to lie this was by far the most frustrating part. Positioning all my rexes just so and then still having them get stuck at the entrance to the Tek cave. I should have been able to get around 40 rexes in but I actually ended up with about 25, because one rex tripped and furballed the entire following line. By the time I got that sorted I didn't have enough time to grab the other group. Too late to turn back now obviously so we pressed forward. Single player doesn't have a time limit past the door so I took my time. I walked one lead rex through the cave clearing a path and then brought my two battle lines down one at a time following. The cave itself wasn't hard, except I lost 5 rexes to poor pathing. 3 of them died to the lava. 2 somehow fell on a rock in the lava so they're stuck unless I cheat my way over to rescue them. So aggravating to lose extremely well raised animals to poorly designed gameplay. I determined the issue is because if a rex stops to poop it will bunch up the line behind it so when it runs to catch up to the rex in front it won't path the way it should, causing pileups that end up with rexes falling off ledges. At least I didn't lose the yutys or the pig. Yet. Funnily enough I wasn't really scared of the giga at the entrance to the portal. Didn't quite get him to fall into the lava on his own so I pushed him in with my rex. We've sure come a long way from drowning them with an argent. Could have taken him if I wasn't concerned about losing the whole line into the very hot drink. Anyway we made it through to the teleporter with a relatively small force. I didn't have high hopes for this but too late to turn back now, right? So we pressed on. Put the yutys on auto roar, pig on passive healing, and charged into the fray. What a long, intense, desperate fight this is after the long slog through the cave. The rexes were slow, their progress constantly impeded by the annoyance of the Defense Units. They are powerful and bulky but unable to engage at speed, drawing the battle out much longer than it would have been with therizinos or allos. We were doing well until the first dragon change, but then I lost one yuty, then the other. Then the pig. The rexes started to fall one by one, including the one I had ridden through the cave and had started to grow attached to. If he had lived he would have earned a real name and a Tek saddle. Rest well Omega 2, you were a champion. I got the Dragon twice. More rexes were falling, all were bloody now. I was starting to debate the merits of using my Tek armor and taking on the Overseer solo. Whittling away its energy with tired, heavy rexes. Wading through a sea of Defense Units, frustrated and desperate to get through them. Dismounted again and again by the beams. The ape again, then broodmother. We absolutely can't tank the dragon another round. Then the message pops up. The Overseer has fallen. Victory! Bloody and exhausted, we've nonethless won the day. Calming down while the credits roll, reveling in a hard won victory, the culmination of a year's steady grinding. And then logging back in to do a few things before moving forward. First, heading back to the volcano to recover the sad remnants of a proud fighting force. I had maybe 6 rexes left, all of them very bloody. Surprisingly, most of the survivors were actually some of my oldest rexes, the 2nd and 3rd gens. I think 2 of the Omegas survived. I also picked up the rexes that didn't make it through the door. Between all of them and the rexes that never left base, and the original first gen rexes, I have more than enough for the Manticore. Not that I'm transferring anything yet. These are my personal "Ultimate Ark" rules: once I tame a wild dino on the next map, I may transfer any of that species from previous maps. Yes, it's not as "authentic" but I just spent a year on The Island, I am absolutely not starting over with brand new bloodlines. Unlike Syntac I'm not getting paid for this either lol. I think that's a fair balance between being challenging without sacrificing previous achievements. I am debating the rule being once I can make a transmitter, but that would mean defeating the Manticore once for the element and I don't know if I feel up to doing that from scratch. Although I will likely do it on gamma to get a feel for the fight since I've never set foot on Scorched before so..hm. We'll see, I have plenty of time to work it out. For now, a well earned rest is in order. Tomorrow I will be starting completely fresh and clean on Scorched Earth.

(Posts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5) Well, to get the good days, you gotta get the bad, and today was definitely more of a bad. I've learned to quit while I'm ahead in my time on ARK, so I decided to call it quits for the night even though I definitely could keep going. I logged on and had a normal enough start to my night. Farmed some metal and decided I wanted to make electronics, so I headed to SE to whip up pearls on the back of my griffin, Saturn. Now, Saturn is not a high level griffin. Saturn is leveled strictly in stamina and was a level 25 pre-tame because I couldn't find any higher than that and it was taking too long to kill them off on my pteranodon (read first post for more about that). Anyway, I intended to get more pearls than what I had at that point, but as I was uploading what I had on my person at a drop, a direwolf attacked Saturn and my menu bugged. I was stuck in the uploading menu while the direwolf just chewed away at Saturn. I force closed, hoping that might let me log back in in time to save them... nope. Server did that fun thing where, for about 5 minutes, it still thinks I'm logged in even though I'm not. Logged back in and Saturn and I were both dead. It wasn't a huge problem, I know SE like the back of my hand and was able to get the stuff back pretty easily, but now I'm out a griffin. I think, "Oh, what the hell, I have a wyvern back on Ragnarok and a griffin trap already set. I'll just go get one real quick." Yeah. Sure. So, Dododex insists that my crossbow won't kill one, and I'm feeling lazy. I made enough tranq arrows to knock a 150 out two times over - lag and the griffin's sporadic nature have taught me to be prepared - grab narcotics and take my lightning wyvern, Remus, out to go hunt one down. My trap allows me to use the wyvern to lure them in and then I jump off and quickly shut the door, or else the griffin loses interest in the wyvern near the trap and I kite them in on foot and shut the door while they claw at me some. Of course, the area around where griffins spawn is heavily built on in this particular Ragnarok server, so I have to travel... quite the distance to spot some griffins. Eventually, I found a lv 50 and decided to kill it - but wait, suddenly there's two griffins! I kill the 50 to discover the second is a 130 that is now quite bloody from my attacks. I decide that's no problem, I'll just wait for it to heal--I've heard bringing dead things back to carnivores and letting them eats it restores their health anyhow. So, it's a long and tedious journey, but I finally get the 130 caught in the trap. I spend some time healing Remus since he was quite injured over the few hours it took me to find this griffin (also, I leveled his health up some before I set out, as he's still new). Once that was done, griffin was still bloody, so I went and got some things for it to eat. It appeared to just have a couple splotches of blood left so I gave it some more time. A couple of people with some sickness came to inspect what I was doing, they were both on their feet--I didn't want anything to do with that so I told them to back off or I'd kill them, gave them a threatening display with Remus. They seemed to get the memo and stayed away. Finally, I decided to just try and tranq the griffin and I'd just take my time and be mindful. Yeah... didn't work out. It died in the end from the shots. Wholly frustrated, I just headed back home, cryo'd the wyvern, and decided to call it a day until tomorrow. Lesson learned. Do not try to be a cheapskate. Even if Dododex swears that your crossbow won't kill things, that doesn't account for wild damage they've taken, or damage you might do to them prior to getting them trapped. Tomorrow, I'm going to make the appropriate number of darts and go find me another high level one. I could do that tonight, but my patience has worn thin and low patience is a killer in ARK. I can't afford to lose Remus and I fear that if I try to do too much more while aggravated I could somehow lose him, too. Then I'd really be up the creek without a paddle.

@Ohma No problem, I almost made the same mistake myself. The underwater loot drops use the same loot table as the SE desert drops. The wiki has lists of what's in each beacon if you need to double check for a specific BP. @d1nk Unfortunately chainsaws are Scorched Earth engrams and it probably wouldn't help with the sheer quantity I need right now anyway. I have one theri but I mostly use it for fiber gathering, since these saddles also need a toooon of fiber. I'm glad I went with rexes for the bosses, I can never find any theris with decent stats. What I do have, however, is Heartbreaker, my Valentine's giga. It doesn't really matter how efficient he is at gathering hide when he's efficient at killing literally everything on the map, up to and including a marauding 145 alpha rex that was up the nearby river. So we spent some of the tail end of last night and most of today walking up and down the volcano river slaughtering everything on both sides. Once I gathered enough for a saddle we would return to base, build the saddle, cryo the newly equipped rex, empty his inv and then head back out again. Not that I really needed to keep much but I've been stocking jerky for some of the event stuff so cooking more meat wouldn't go amiss. In our many journeys across the map we also came across some very nice things. First, a high level doed notable for having 32 points in weight, which was my current high roll at the time. You bet I got one of my argents, grabbed the doed and brought it home to tame. Stood up with an impressive 47 points in weight, a full 15 above my previous high roll. Oh man I can't wait to work that into my line. Weight is so critical for utility dinos and I feel like I never find doeds with good weight so this is awesome. I know it seems kind of silly at the tail end of this map but as I continue playing using my own transfer rules I'll be able to bring the line with me and hopefully continue to improve it along the way. Second, we found a unicorn. No, literally. The last one I found was just its body ragdolling on carno island. This one was in one of the swampy borderland areas but we killed its attackers, then I went and got my argent again to carry it to the taming pen. It was calm by the time we dropped it in and I was able to tame it in complete safety. Crap level but it doesn't exactly matter for a literal trophy tame. So that's cool. I also spent some time underwater and got extremely lucky with both an alpha leed and an alpha tuso, giving me the final two apex drops I need for the Overseer and most importantly, the captain's hat skin. Found an underwater drop and got an asc tropeo saddle, woo lol. I can use that 6 maps from now, exciting. And I started building my staging platform in the volcano crater to make it easier to arrange my battle lines and gear prep, etc. All in all a very productive weekend. I'm far from done but significant progress has me feeling quite confident, honestly. I've got 9 saddles left to make, then transporting the army up to the volcano. I haven't turned on my replicator since I built it, waiting until I'm completely ready to craft everything I want in order to conserve element. Trying to figure out what I need for gear and scraping together the last few things. I need a good pump-action shotgun bp, a yuty saddle bp would be ideal. I have excellent fur armor already. I'm debating on if I should build 1 or 2 sets of Tek armor. I'll be doing a few more metal runs for ammo and all that too, I also ran sooo much metal this weekend and have enough for all the saddles if nothing else. I did briefly have to shut down for a thunderstorm and came back to find I was missing water texture which was a really weird experience. Got that fixed and decided to call it a day. I'll plan my course of action for the week with the expectation of finally, finally taking on the Overseer this coming weekend, probably Sunday. Not going to lie I'm pushing it a little more than I had planned in large part because I would really love to start Scorched Earth in time to maybe get some wyverns with event colors. Side note maybe I'm a little too nerdy but I keep a bullet journal just for gaming and it's 90% Ark notes lol. I'm legit considering doing a spread to plan this whole week out.

I have recently returned to Ark because my 10yo son has been expressing interest in it. So we have started in the base game on The Island just like I started years ago. We are just playing non-dedicated while he learns but he is a quick learner. I jacked up some of the rates of course, may have overdone the taming rate as he only used one berry to tame a low level Moschops which he then named Berry. And he was thirlled that he could ride it without a saddle. Then when I asked him to gather Narco berries he thought the gather rate was amazing until a Trike I tamed later showed him a much better rate lol. There was a funny moment early on when he was attacking Dilos and my 7yo daughter yells at him not to do that just in case their mother was nearby. She thought they were baby dinos. So far the tether distance is a bit of a pain (we are playing the gamepass version since I only have the one PC and a few Xbox Ones) but we have a Trike and a Parasaur and of course my sons Moschops and I keep upgrading our hut for storage, soon we will be able to get exploring and taming some of the more difficult tames. I am really enjoying getting back to the basics of the game and sharing the experience with someone that is experiencing it for the first time.