On aberration (official pve), I needed some red gems. Since me & my buddy's level 180 rock drakes recently matured, I figured I'd use mine to get to the red zone. And since we want more rock drakes for other maps, I figured I could just pay a quick visit to the drake nests while down there. (I have never been there alone, just with my buddy, and we both rode strong spinos) However, I had the good sense to take along two cryoed spinos to fight off the onslaught of rock drakes, because I'm really unexperienced with my drakes fighting abilities.
Once I reached the radiated zone, I was extremely tempted to just jump into the abyss with my drake. But, since the only part of the zone I know is the spino-friendly route to the grave of the lost, I decided to just follow this path - whilst skipping almost all fights along the way thanks to the drake's cinvisibility, and taking the occasional shortcut. Compared to the time it took to get to rock drake land with the spinos, this trip was a breeze.
Once I reached the three nests, I saw that I had brought the wrong spinos. It was a mate boosted pair, but they had poopty saddles. This was the day where I learned just how much of a difference the saddle really makes 😮. On our previous two visits, the spinos would take almost no damage from the drakes - this time, once I cleared the area around the nests, the spino I rode had already lost 1/3 of its total health.
Anyway, the area was clear, so I used the drake to grab an egg, then quickly mounted a spino. This was when things went south. Because after defeating the first wave of attacking rock drakes, the one spino that was unridden decided to jump down into the trench below the nests. And then, a second later, the drake also jumped into the trench. I quickly whistled the drake to follow me, but it did not manage to climb back out on its own. And then, suddenly, it ran towards the right and disappeared completely, despite being on follow.
I started cursing myself for coming to this place alone - if my buddy had been with me, none of this would have happened. Then, I decided I had to jump down myself & look for my 2 missing dinos. At least I still had one spino with me, even if it's health was low.
I found the other spino quickly, it was fighting against 4 drakes and was also quite damaged. As I ran towards it, more and more drakes appeared from above. We managed to kill them all, but there still was no sight of my own drake. And without the drake, I had no idea how to get out of the trench. Plus, I noticed that my hazmat suit was going to expire soon.
I decided to move my spinos back to the location where they had initially fallen down, then die with dignity & return on my buddy's rock drake and pick them up. I Just hoped I'd be able to do it without losing the second drake as well. When I reached the location, all of a sudden my missing drake appeared behind me! Idk where it had been, but it's health was also rather low.
I wasted no more time, cryoed the spinos and got the hell out of there, again skipping all fights with invisbility. I made it back to the blue biome just before my hazmat suit broke. Then, I looked at the stolen drake egg that caused all this trouble. It was level 20. I then proceeded to eat the egg.
I never got the red gems I was initially looking for.