Got on Ark, had a base at the hidden lake, had an argy ptera and a stego for wood gathering. Alpha raptor spawned in, I decided to kill it while it decided to start eating a beaver corpse. Got extremely lucky and found an ascendant metal hatchet in its body. harvested the prime meat and hit the beach with my pteranodon to find some carnivores. Unluckily they found me first. Alpha raptor and carnotaur teamed up and killed my and my ptera. Was sad, but understood this is how ark works, got back to base and regained my stuff by using my argy. later my argy was killed because I forgot it was on follow and it flew into some spiked walls. then suddenly ALPHA CARNO spawns in hidden lake much to my dismay. I keep on dodging it as I'm afraid to die and have my loot pinned under its mouth for like 30 min. I lure it to one of the crevasse passages and build two barriers of spiked walls to keep it out, thought that should the trick. 5 minutes later, after some generic harvesting of resources I spot the alpha carno roaming the lake again. checked on my 14 spiked walls, all but one was destroyed. One of my tribe mates was there at the time so we teamed up and shot down the alpha with 150+ arrows while it tried to eat a corpse. he got a journeyman bloody crossbow and I got some boots, I didn't argue with him since I had the ascendant metal hatchet, but I mean come on as soon as he saw it he just dibs'ed it like we weren't a communist tribe. You think that's all unlucky ay? well guess again, because I tamed a carno at that time and was harvesting the alpha carno when my tribe mate said he found another, much higher level carno on the beach. I decided to use my carno to transport me there. I put it on passive as I dismounted and fired some bolts into the carno, but it wouldn't go down. my tribe mate from before tried to help me but got killed by some sneaky evil raptors, and I was slain. Then I rushed from the nearest bed to try and collect my stuff, and the notice saying my carno died from a level 20 raptor popped up, realising now the consequences of putting tames on passive. AND I WAS LITERALLY LIKE 5 METERS AWAY WHEN IT DIED. And then it was another 20 minutes of trying to get my stuff. nope. raptors were too bloody common to let me do that. Oh and there was an alpha rex on that beach too, so that makes it equally as fun. Despite all that I'm still continuing, I know what ark can be like, my tame kill count is much too high for me to expect anything else. I still have decent stuff, and my stego is surprisingly alive, so I think I'll be taming an iguanodon to take a trip to the mountains with my mates. I'm sure there will be more ups and downs, and erratically but slowly, I am making progress.
Thanks for reading
Be strong survivors, you can do this