DaveH

Fed my Basil a box of chocolates half way through the hard water cave. Insta killed it. Ark

Beat Alpha dragon for the first time. Only tried alpha once before and lost badly with 45k health rexes. Went with 17 theris this time, + yuty and 2 pigs. 25k health and 1135 melee on the theris. Got our revenge. only lost 1 their because it fell over the side. most had more than half health and the end. 5 cakes each plus the 2 pigs did the trick. Left the arena and realised that 2 of the theris hadn't travelled with us, so we'd done it with 15. Prepping for the alpha tek cave now. Hopefully get that done before genesis drops.

Healing up 18 or so dinos can take a fair bit. A few pig fulls. When you fill the pig with food, fly out of draw distance and back, he will automatically eat all in it's inventory. If I'm doing multiple boss fights I'll cook up several fridges of meat first. Cooked meat is better for pigs. As for the dragon. Yeah, mistakes, we all make them. Need full health going in, and I take 5 cakes per theri. Pigs aren't rare though, boat loads of them in the tundra. Yuty, yeah pile points into stam. I would breed both pigs and yuty though so you've got a mating pair.

Theris do wreck though. Big advantage for boss fights is their size, means more can get hits in on the bosses. We levelled some theris last week just to get a friend through gamma dragon. Had 25k health and 800m. Took plenty of damage even with a pig and yuty but none died. Then just for kicks we did alpha spider and alpha monkey and they breezed those fights. Thought the health might be on the low side for them but they eased through. Good luck mate.

What are the stats like on those theris?

Those pesky stealth jellyfish! I can relate. Happy days on the Basils.

I do that everytime i want kill desert titan, just hard to farm sarco skin for summoning it Yeah, I tried with a 270 meg. No option to feed it unfortunately.

2 days later and another female dust gacha popped out, happy days. I didnt leave this one's side. Also tamed a bunch of squid on ragnarok. More cave sharks spawned inside my island base as well. All water dinos on neutral now.

been ark'ed so hard the last couple of days on both pc and ps4. PC - hatched 300 rexes eggs yesterday, no melee mutation. fair enough. Ran the easy water cave and an eel glitched inside my basil. Unable to move or attack it died. Sweet dreams level 302 Basil. PS4 - hatched 150 rex eggs yesterday, no melee mutation. fair enough. Took my mana up to Scotland to check for gigas, went via the shore near the volcano. the volcano began to erupt. I touched the brown hardened lava on the beach and my mana died. This wasn't flowing lava, that hadn't appeared yet, it was the normal dormant brown colour. didn't know that was a thing! We have lots of male element gachas via cloning, and happy days a female element was born. I raise these off cooked meat, I find it the best. Anyway, it was at 5% maturation, 1400 food, and had 7 stacks of cooked meat in it. I left the base for 4 minutes to quickly imprint a Basil at the water base. Got back, no Gacha in sight. Check the log, it had starved. 1400 food in 4 minutes? really? and there was no gacha corpse or bag of meat there? a gacha that I had shot previously was still rotting away. weird. So, we rolled the server back. This put us at a point where the gacha had been born, and just needed claiming. Did so, and it was a black pearl gacha. ffs. So, mutations are determined at conception, sex is determined at birth, but gacha production wheel is determined at claiming. ARK! So, took a basil out to get some fish for the troughs. didn't wear scuba, because I thought i'd just stay near the surface. Blue screened. Drowned. Logged off, went to bed. Logged on PC and PS4 this morning. Hatched a load of Theri's on PS4, then switched HDMI over to PC. I can hear music in my base. Check the log. All my water tames are dead to a level 250 Meg. So, there's a 250 and a 260 Meg in my 100% secure water pen. Max level dino is 150. My water base is at surface level above the easy water cave on the island. I know the spawns in that cave are broken. People seem to believe that it's because they get taken up by salmon. It's not, the creatures spawn within the rocks, I've several times seen an alpha glow in the ceiling of the cave. But this time for them to spawn about 50m above the cave inside my base. DILO! Could I have been stupid enough to have 2 follow me from the cave yesterday maybe though? So, rolled the game back an hour, and all was safe and well. This proves the spawning issue once and for all. Love/Hate this stupid game...

The best bet is to let the Megapithicus come you rather than crossing the bridge. Or worse, getting stuck on the bridge and having rexes fall off the side. Standard practice tends to be to keep the pig following the yuty and have the yuty a little bit back not taking damage. When me and a mate duo though, he'll ride the yuty and I take the pig. he'll command the rexes from the yuty. I have a good few bullets on me for using after the pig runs out of food. I tend not to bother filling the pig with meat or kibble as the fights on the island are generally over pretty quick and the time spent force feeding seems a waste. But with 60-80K food you can get a good chunk of heal dished out. Best of luck. i'm playing the island through with my daughter. got all the caves done with her now except the hard snow and the swamp. Will be doing the swamp cave over xmas along with gamma/beta ape and spider. Not going to bother with hard snow yet. will come back to that and the tek cave later when she a bit more confident. Will pick up the artefact off Rag to do the dragon, and then move maps. Was supposed to be scorched next but may just press on to Rag.

yeah, they fit fine, no need for cryo

How about Basils for the water caves? I always used to do them by sitting on a Bary and commanding an army of about another 5 Bary's, whilst a mate did the same. But I've converted to Basils of late as there's no need to ever worry about Jellyfish.

new year, new start:) I had a male and 5 female gachas permanently on mate (0.0001 cooldown between pregnancies) and it took at least 500 babies before I got an element gacha, then another popped out the next day. male and female though which is sweet. Then my mate found one first night on extinction.

fair enough. I find the best item they can drop is the metal behemoth gate, that's some good materials for demolishing. Though for the element gachas we have on ps4 I keep the owls away from them as i'd rather have the dust. most of my loot has come from the easy water cave. good gear to be found in there and i've set my base up right next to it so I run it a few times a day. really simple with a good imprinted basil. want to start hitting up the swamp cave as well but a rule to myself is to do each of the caves the first time with my daughter despite having done them many times on ps4. Just enjoying treating this as a fresh.

Don't you find it's not worth it so much since the gacha nerf? used to get insane loot when extinction was first release, and now its just straight in the grinder. the nerf should have been so drastic. been on extinction the last months some mate and we've got 6 gachas permanently on the go, surrounded by owls. not a single useful item from them. just stuff for the grinder.

Yeah, I think we've got the balance just about right as well as a good gameplan moving forward. My daughter will never grind, she just expects to log in at the weekend and have everything she needs to go taming or try a cave. Which is fine, I don't want our limited time to be just metal runs etc. hence the gachas. I play on ps4 mainly in the week with mates, so keep the gachas full of stone on the pc at the same time with the s+ collector working its charms for me. no mutations with stats before imprint of 11k health and 343 melee. So, with an imprint and 50 levels shoul get them up to about 35k health 700 melee. 96 armour bp for the saddle as well, which is ok. So far we've done the chitin , lava and easy water caves. Plan to do the remaining caves next weekend, then the bosses over xmas. barys, thylas, and basils are ready and waiting for the caves. My rex line will do for up to beta in all the fights. Will work on some more mutations later for alphas, as well as my theri line for alpha dragon and tek cave. Still want a higher base melee roll to work from for the rexes. will be giving the hard snow cave a miss as I think that will be beyond her at this point. Will just get the artifact from Ragnarok, then come back to that cave at some point in the future.

nope. I'm going to wait for extinction. I know if I bring them back now then i'll quit on my argy breeding line and probably not bother with griffins much either. I've downloaded the breedable griffins and wyvern mods and i'm itching to have a good crack at those.

Stood guard whilst my 11 year old tamed her first squid. lvl 140 on 5x taming so was a 2 feed tame. Proud dad moment. She doesn't like getting off her mount much so swimming up to a squid on a Meg and then jumping off was a nervous moment for her. We've been playing on and off for a while in-between her starting high school and growing up too quick. So, I've been patiently raising an army for the bosses, and some Barys for the remaining caves on The Island. Plan to beat them all over xmas, do the tek cave and then move to scorched. One map at a time, not transferring dinos until bosses are beaten on a map... ...Except for Gachas that is. I tamed a few up to help the grind. After about approx. 800 babies I finally got a male/female element dust pair. These are going to be cloned no end once I've beaten the Alpha dragon!

PS4 Nitrado – We made the move to Ab last week, none of us having played the map before. Having a great time without flyers. Set up a big walled off open air base not far from the portal area. Got the basics set up, industrial forge, cooker, greenhouse etc. Tamed a few high level bears and bred those which we’ve been using for early game exploration. Starting a spino breeding line as well and got a sheep farm on the go for mutton tames. Tamed a 150 mega as well last night. Decent hp but low melee. But we can hopefully get it a high level mate tonight to start a line. Been venturing deeper into the blue zone, learning the ropes, and generally just having a lot of fun. Did the cave near the portal area. That was easy enough with the 5 of us. Loving the map so far. PC Island with daughter – not had as much time this week as it was her birthday but we got a bit done. Carried on breeding Sabers. Got a decent line coming out at 270 now, all the mutations into health and melee. Will now work the colours in over the next few days so she can look pretty (that of course being the most important element) when we eventually get to do a couple of caves this weekend. Carried on with argy breeding line as well. Got a great blue body mutation. Starting breeding the two 150 Zinos we got as well. Got a great Cyan one pop out, but need to tame some more of these as the stats aren’t amazing. Want the kibble rework to come out soon. As much as I like the progression tree, I don’t have the time in my life to grind on 2 games, taming all the different dinos just for kibble, or babysit and insomniac tickle chicken for 2 hours .Saying that, I did tame some low level Pachyrhinos, as I want to get Barrys breeding asap for underwater and the more difficult caves. Also built a multi platformed ewok village. Not a bad first attempt and learnt a fair bit in the process. This is the precursor to a tek treehouse base on a future map, that I’ve been instructed to build. Been trying to get her more comfortable on foot, so have been venturing out onto Carno island without mounts, just covering her whilst she shotguns everything. Need to speak to her about her language, as ‘come at me b*tch’ seems to be the standard line before opening fire.. Also hooked the PC up to the projector the PS4 plays through. This way I can just sit on the couch and play both maps at the same time, switching from one to the other to imprint. Lazy mode level 10.

PS4 with mates – Killed the dragon and then did the tek cave. Uploaded a few bits to keep and then switched maps to aberration. None of us have played Ab before. We’re not downloading any gear or dinos, we’re having a full play through from scratch, other than our characters. Spent a couple of hours there last night. Set us a small temporary base, got a fabricator on the go, tamed a steg and an otter. That was as far as we got. Need to get some dino protection tonight and have an explore. PC with daughter – Tamed about 5 rexes between 130 and 145. Best so far is 8140 health and 325 melee. That will be enough for gamma Brood and Monkey. Doubt I’ll be trying to run Alpha with her. We’ll see. There is a 168 Tek Rex on the map. Will probably tame that tonight and keep for later. Much prefer the normal rexes though. Childhood dreams come true and all. Tamed male/female 150 Theris as well. There’s many hours of my life I’lll never get back, wish I’d had kibble. Could have waited for the kibble rework but there is a 150 Basil on the map and I want that for her for the underwater caves, so I need the Theris for kibble, just need to go and get some Angler Gel. Zino stats ok, will do for gamma Dragon and the Tek Cave. Imprinted a Tappy and fed it a lot of new born Pteras for levelling so we can finally go and tame a quetz tonight. Also got the Sabers to the point where I’m happy for caves, just want a body colour to go with the bright blue head I got. So I had 25 female lined up all weekend with the one lucky male doing what he does best. About 150 young so far and not a mutated colour in sight. Think he’s deliberately taking his time.. Also got a nice BP for an Asc Thylo saddle, where was that when I was searching high and low on the PS4? Wasn’t going to tame thylos until we got to Rag but thought I’d have a quick scout of the Redwoods. Got half way over the river on my Argy and not one, but 3 Thylos jumped me at the same time. 2 attacking me and one trying to drown my argy. Managed to take then all out. One being a 145, but had no choice. As soon as I killed them a Kapro jumped me. Fun times so far. Another 2 thylos on the ground in the same place, so killed them as well, then spotted a 150 walking nearby. Thought it was time to leave and plan a tame for him later. As I was flying away another Thylo jumped been, and I was practically on the other side of the river. Never seen one jump so far. Repaired my armour..

PC with daughter – the big crash.. Exiting game, PC turned off, loaded back up and no character available. So rolled back 3 hours and all was fine. Put the settings as they should be, but I’d left singleplayer setting ticked when I rebooted. My level 95 character jumped to level 105. Daughter’s 72 jumped to 99. Figured out what I’d done so turned singleplayer settings back to 95. Played for another day and then realised that although my level was back to 95, my XP was at a 105 level, so I hadn’t fixed it. Done a lot in thatday including a couple of high level tame, so decided not to roll back again. Booted up with single player settings, spent my level points and then changed it back again. Weird how the dinos that had levelled up in doing this lost their XP, but I didn’t. Whilst all this was going on I was practicing messing around with singleplayer map transfers so spawned in an S+ tek transmitter. Turned hibernation off and did a dino scan. No intention to use this function until I’ve beat alpha dragon,but I was curious as to what was out there. 7 level 145 Thylos on the island, and 10 level 140s… what! All I ever see is level 10! Sure I’ve got some great breeding stock on PS4, but we got those on Rag. So jumped onto PS4 with mates as we’re on the island too right now and we took our gigas to the redwoods. Combo of hide run and Thylo hunting. After disposing of many Thylos all less then level 40, there it was in all it’s glory, a level 150. Got a stupidly OP 700% damage longneck but I wanted to trap it with a bear trap as a bit of practice for PC with daughter. Set up a U shape of pillar with the bear trap in the middle and aggroed the Thylo. It was heading toward the trap when a Dilo appeared from out of thin air and went into the trap. Thylo did a runner so I just had to take it down in the open. Decent stats, but not an improvement on what we have. Still, good to know they exist on the Island. Jumped back on PC and tamed a couple of high level Sabers on Carno. Got a good health roll on one, and a beastly melee roll on another. So, breeding now until the weekend and will take my daughter to her first cave then. Chitin cave, should be easy enough for her, as long as there’s no Megasoreass in there.

PS4 – we were supposed to be doing the alpha dragon at the weekend but got sidetracked doing some giga and yuty raising. Got some great colour mutations on both. I was looking at the newly acquired zino saddle bp in the vault and set mycontroller down, accidently dropping the bp. By the time I realised it was gone forever! So, my mate spawned in about 200 BPs and we found the one that was closest. Needs an extra 5k hide per saddle so we have some extra grinding to do. oops… PC with my daughter - Unlike PS4, where we have time between mating set to 0.001, I have it set to 0.5 here for more longevity. Been having issues on Herby island where we’re doing our breeding. Dinos forever sinking into the ground, which isn’t the end of the world, I can pick them out with an Argie. Anyway, I had a new breeder male Ank that I’d lost sight of. Took out the S+ euthanizer gun to kill some unwanted young and it turns out my breeder male had sunk under the map exactly where my young were. The gun targeted him instead and he died. Happy days! So, I set the time between mating to 0.01 and spammed out 100 eggs. Got a load of fantastic colour mutations for my troubles. Then set the timer back. Spent a few days farming and farming metal and crystal to finish off our Carno island base, which is now operational other than some of the finer detail. Spent yesterday afternoon there with my daughter. Tamed a bunch of scorpions and she solo tamed her first male and female rex which was sweet. So we will have the eggs for a Quetz tame next weekend. Got a kibble tame on a 145 saber as well with decent stats, just need a mate for it now and we can breed them up so she can do her first cave soon. Hopefully the ark gods will spawn in some high level rexes on carno now. Other than the 115 alpha that is currently roaming around. Need to take some disposable argies into battle with that tonight.

Me and a mate took the Gigas out on the island doing a hide run. Similar to folks that posted above, rare flowers, up and down the river. Up to 135k hide now. Think the Zino saddles are 16k each and we need 18 of them, so nearly half waythere. Jumped on PC. Installed a mod for snails that feed off berries. Previously tamed a bee and 7 snails, but can’t be doing with the vegi cake upkeep. Too much else to do. So, tamed a couple of these berry snails. They produce a lot of CP!Then I stumbled across an alpha snail. These are rideable. Level 660 as well! My max dinos are 150. So, picked it up with the Argie and dropped it in my base. Man that thing can move fast, impossible to shoot. It go itself stuck on an Argies foot so I began hitting it with tranqs. 50 tranq darts and 80 tranq arrows later and it still wasn’t down. Out with the magnifying glass, but the torpor wasn’t showing. Stuff it, forcetame, it’s only a creature that’s there for a laugh. Now back to how ridiculously fast it is. Impossible to control on sprint. Barely manageable at normal speed. So let’s see if it’s a swimmer. Went into the water at herbivore island. Within 5 seconds I’m 75% of the way across the map, I’ve got my deepest depths achievement, I’m stuck on something, and I’m drowned. That was hilarious. Spawned in a dolphin, went and got my gear back, euthanised the dolphin. Think the snail is happy out at sea as it’s not shown up dead in the log. Maybe our paths will cross again sometime. Then did a few metal runs around Herbie whilst imprinting a Ptera, and crafted a load more metal ceilings. I’m recreating a base I used to have on a now expired PS4 nitrado server. On the western tip of Carno island, incorporating a large Rex trapping pen and 2 argie traps. Will relocate there with my daughter once it’s finished and we can begin trapping Sabers and rexes and more argies to improve the breeding stock.

PC play through I’ve recently started with my daughter (she’s been playing since xmas). She wanted a Tapejara badly, so last weekend we tamed male/female Allos for the eggs. During the week I’ve been prepping for her weekend taming. Bred the Allos, got twin females, happy days, eggs a plenty. Did lots of penguin clubbing and crafted us Ghillie armour of at least mastercrafted, installed a few additions to our herbivore island base. - Industrial forge, grinder and cooker. Tamed 7 snails, and a Bee. Cooked up 100 Allo kibble as well. Made a small tree base down the river to use as a scouting position for Tapejara. So, the weekend came. We scouted for about 2 hours but everything was such a low level. Highest we saw was a 100, but that got spooked by a Carno. Eventually I said stuff it, let’s just tame a low level, so she can experience the fun, and I’ll tame something higher level In the week. So we tamed a level 20 purely for it’s colours, and she logged off to go play Fortnite. Took the Tapejara back to Herbie, and switched to PS4 with mates. But also stuck around Herby on PC to raise a Ptera at the same time. Did a quick meat run and hatched the Ptera. Anyway, a while later the red message appeared on screen, your Tapejara has been killed by a Trike. How? Was it on follow when I went on the meat run? No, I’d put it near the front of the base. Went to where it was to see a trike had destroyed the entire front of our base. I must have angered it and not killed it. Base is only wood because I just wanted to build it for aesthetics, I never thought I’d make such a noob mistake as having my sound turned off. Total carnage. I had snails making a slow break for it down the beach, otters running everywhere. Cooker gone, about 6 chests full of materials gone, fabricator, smithy, etc etc, everything inside them.. When I moved to PS4 I’d unplugged my headphones to plug into the PS4 controller, so I had no volume from the PC. If I’d have heard the music I could have simply 1 shot the Trike without any aggro before it even broke a single wall. Rolled back the game 2 hours, problem solved! Not one for cheating, but stuff it, that one was a bit harsh, and I’m grinding on two games! So back to PS4, ran the easy water cave, got a 202 Zino Saddle BP. Exactly what I was after for the new Zino army we’ve raised. Ran swamp cave and upper south cave as well, helping a mate who has just started get the collect all artifacts trophy. Hide grinding now for a few days to make these saddles before Alpha Dragon at the weekend.