riceandvegetable

Spent way too much time on The Eärrion again. We've brought our base into the Tek age and secured new parts of the structure we've built on. All that cost lots of metal and element, so we needed to restock a bit. Lampposts in the Extinction city tend to spawn double, I'm not complaining and neither is my doedic. I restarted my rex breeding when I found a really good female. With mutagen being as cheap as it is on this map, she's become the mother to the best boss rexes I ever had, which is something I wasn't expecting. I already had a good saddle blueprint. Slowly the Alpha Eärrion Megapithecus doesn't seem so threatening anymore. (Or I'm going to eat these words soon.) We went over to the Autumn of Civilization island for loot but instead found huge plantations of all azulberry bushes. At first, my partner took a swing at them with the bronto. It instantly capped out and almost crashed my PC, too. So we used them instead to level our unicorn and equus, wasting millions of azulberries in the process. I'd also kept my eyes open for better R-velonas. They spawn together with stegos which they attack as soon as they appear and mostly get wasted immediately, but this time I was lucky. We could upgrade our velonas significantly. So it was time for some more violence, rexes needed their levels too, after all. We ushered them all into the jungle. The one with the 0.8% bee chance. There was a bee. We needed rare flowers quickly. So the bronto came out and swung. This time my PC couldn't handle it and crashed. When we reappeared, no more bee. We took our disappointment out on some amargasaurus, cleaned up our stuff and logged out for today.

(The Eärrion Sponsored Mod Map) Boss fight time. In the end I got not one, but two stego blueprints, so I saddled up my army, grabbed my partner and off we went. Usually, the single player settings make bosses very doable, but the Eärrion Megapithecus was a big unknown. There really isn't much info about it, other than it's a buffed version of the Island Megapithecus and you can bring up to 30 tames. We wanted to try Gamma first. I watched the video again to memorize the straightest path through the turrets into the actual bossfight part of the arena, which is basically straight ahead from the downed spaceship with the ramps. We had one Yuti with mostly HP pumped to survive the barrage, two sinos, 17 stegos with saddles from 45 to 73 armor and 20k HP, and my partner brought his velonasaur. That was a mistake, since the tek turrets pushed him around and took away any control of his dino. He had to pod it and change to a stego. The doorway we had to find was where I thought it would be but the stegos split up a few times and I had to dismount to get some around a corner. All in all, the Yuti took some significant damage from the turrets but could soak them when needed. The boss resisted for a long time, which is unusual for a Gamma with SP settings enabled, and some of our stegos were at half health by the time we were done. The knockback and the way they got shoved around by the monkey minions made the fight pretty dicey, without the Yuti buff maybe we'd have lost some. Alpha seems not doable with the current army. The rewards for the Gamma victory were 94 or so element and some custom tekgrams like exo-mek, dedicated storage, trough and sleeping pod. Honey production is at a crawl, but I'll try to grind out more veggie cakes, raise a few tanky rexes and hopefully be ready for the Alpha soon.

Isn't that the truth... But I gotta be fair, the loot drops on that map are really above average compared to official Ark. And there's a special type of red loot drop that you can only open as a low level. I used my leveled The Island survivor for this, so I'll probably never know.

Making some half-serious preparations for the Eärrion boss fight. It's definitely going to be a tek stego army. A youtuber posted her second attempt at the boss and she was being shot non-stop by tek turrets inside the arena. The turrets can be destroyed if you can get behind them, so we wondered if we could use a two seated dino or sinos (which are unrestricted in the arena) to do this. However I think that just forcing our way forward could have the best chances. If I die as the host, that would be it for my client player as well, so I want to minimze risk. Stegos would need veggie cakes and saddles. There are no harvestable honey deposits on The Eärrion at all. Bee Queens have a 0,8% chance of spawning in some small areas of the "deep jungle", an open air aberration area basically. I got jumped by an R-Reaper Queen without my lightpet equipped, so I escaped through the sea onto an island, threw out a featherlight, set down my sino - which zoomed off and attacked the queen. It was so small however that it semi-clipped into her belly and I could save it. Still, that was a little shock. Getting a bee to spawn was tedious. I gave up after over an hour. The mod maker has a statement on his discord that bees are currently too rare which he intends to fix. I hated killing off any more bulbdogs, glowbugs and dimorphs as well as other peaceful spawns, so I took that as a permission to spawn in a wild bee and tame that. We then spent the rest of the evening hunting drops and farming the loot labyrinth intensively in search of a stego saddle blueprint. 2000 pounds of loot later, still no dice. I got one single saddle, and if nothing else helps I guess I could still use S+ to create a blueprint and sacrifice the item. I also completely underestimated the voracity of growing tek stegos trying to compensate for 10.000 missing healthpoints. Three troughs were being constantly emptied by only 8 stego babies, used my snow owl to take the edge off. My partner finally came to my rescue with his bronto.

Did an extra long session on the Eärrion and found lots of hidden things. Taming went terribly, though. At first I got lucky with a max level sino, but then a blood stalker despawned mid-tame and stryder taming seems downright broken on this map. We discovered the only mutagel spawn, though. It's a ruined building that seemed to have had a whole mutagenic explosion in it. Blobs of the stuff ooze off the walls, and you get thousands easily by harvesting the stained grass outside. There was a low level giga on Fairy Island which we used to level our very average velonasaurs. Also acquired scout blueprints and element dust in the empty city. I poked my head into a random basement and suddenly saw a narrow, fleshy tunnel opening. After squeezing past several eyeballs, the light became blinding white. Gamma adjustment revealed the Artifact of the Devourer hovering over a crude pentagram scrawled in blood, surrounded by a couple of skinless corpses. You know, just something that screams "Bring me home and put me up in your base. Btw, I'm also radioactive." Which the chamber was, and which I did. Finally we went back to the volcanic chasm with the velonasaurs and a shadowmane. We killed off as many wyverns as possible, then I snuck past the magmasaurs in stealth mode. The way they spawn there borders on overspawn, about 40 to a room. I crept through the cave until I reached the deepest level which was blocked off by a giant gate. Maybe something will be added there in the future? Meanwhile, my partner kept shooting at the never ending advancing wall of magmasaurs climbing over each other. I'm glad it didn't crash my PC but looked impressive as hell. And good thing their projectile attack seemed to be disabled. We retreated and used mutagen on the one good egg this yielded.

Eh, you're absolutely right. Sorry!

There should be a whole dungeon cave with an artifact in there. You need to drop down into a deep pit with water at the bottom and you'll immediately be greeted by enemies. And one way on down there is hidden behind a breakable rock, too.

On The Eärrion, I finally got a breeding pair of R-procoptodon. While I'm still super happy with the megaloceros, which fought its way out of a pack of 5 allos, I think the kangaroos could do the same things but better if I only got a higher quality saddle. We earned some experience for the roos, went back to the wyvern pit and returned with another mid level egg, since the dozens of wyverns that appeared on the dino tracker seemed to be inside the walls or otherwise unable to come after us. Added another tek stego to the collection, then we went after shadowmanes. My partner has figured out how to swoop down on Mantis with a glider suit and feed them during the fly-by, which is insane, but the cats were trickier. They spawn on top of a large pillar in a group of four or more, then migrate wherever available prey draws them. They're also all kelp green. I had been collecting fish in cryopods whenever I could, so it was just a game of patience before we got a good pair. Breeding them up takes time, though. -- Disaster befell another game on the same map we had recently started with a friend. We had logged out safely in a freshly built outpost with our sturdiest dinos next to us or in our inventories. When she logged in to host, she found herself at 50/50 in the middle of the ocean with sharks coming after her. She was also the only one to keep her inventory, the rest of us didn't even leave bags. Our stego was teleported with us and drowned, my shoulder dimorph kept itself alive, the rest is just gone. The bed on the outpost doesn't seem to exist anymore. We tried to return to the island and see what was left, but without equipment were unsuccessful, instead got chased around by a 185 poison wyvern, troodons and a giga. I saw no signs of the outpost while frantically running around and waiting to die from thirst or dinosaurs. We rebuilt pretty well, though. Replacement equipment could be found in wooden crates scattered across the Redwood Island, and I got a high level bigfoot to help me gather stuff. Since the underwater domes were just off the coast we settled on, our last idea for the day was to get equus, which spawn in huge herds down there. Only one of us got killed by a karkinos, which we then dispatched with flame arrows. So we could add a great pair of horses to our inventory. The question is if the next time we log in, they'll still be there or if aliens teleport us into the middle of space again.

(The Eärrion sponsored mod map) Explored the desert ruins, the sulfur wells and the tek pyramid. I got lucky and caught a beautiful blue and gray X-Yuty and another tek stego. I've watched a video on the boss fight and there are tek turrets inside the arena, so I can't start early enough to collect potential breeding stegos. SO hopped into the game again and after a bit of breeding utility dinos like mantis and morellatops, we swam over to Fairy Island. Interestingly, the Artifact of the Depths spawns in multiples all over the ruined city there. We dodged a purple R-giga and collected several Enforcer blueprints while making our way towards, and then up the trunk of the giant element tree. Poison wyverns nest in the top branches, which resulted in a few amazing looking fights by night that left us half dead and flaming wyvern corpses plummeting down past us, towards the now distant lights of the city. To my great amazement, we also found the Artifact of the Skylord up here in a little temple, which is the third and last needed for the boss. We decided to explore the giant dome another day, collected a beautiful diplo and a better featherlight and went home.

(The Eärrion sponsored mod map) Solo again. I prepared my return to the Cursed Caverns and finally went back for the artifact. First, I needed a Featherlight, which spawn on the Redwood Island (along with Ravagers and Shadowmanes). Then, while looking for a mate for my plesi, I saw a 150 unicorn just paddling through the coral reef. When Ark does something nice for you, you don't ask questions, you just take it! Afterwards I produced a plesiosaur baby and raised it, another dino that I wouldn't have used if not for the unique makeup of the map. Finally got a better crossbow and even a better longneck when two loot crates spawned inside of each other. The bitter flipside of today's loot run was that I had to destroy four underwater loot crates that were inaccessible in the ground. Back to the cursed cave and its red glow, hoping that my tiny featherlight wouldn't go out at the wrong moment. All the traumatic memories of Nameless on the actual Aberration map coming back. I stayed in their spawn for far too long, wondering if the Artifact of the Strong that was supposedly in this cave just hadn't spawned in, as they sometimes do on Single Player. Finally I went on. No sign of an Artifact elsewhere in the cave either -- when I spotted a little doorway hidden in a pitch black passageway. It led to a loot labyrinth! No traps either! Just Xmas come early. And after a short grapple upwards I found myself in the Artifact room and in the possession of 2/3 Artifacts needed for the beefed up Megapithecus variant who is at this point the map's only boss.

(The Eärrion sponsored mod map) Turns out Megaloceros cannot harvest meat from corpses, but pick up items instantly. So my dead deer did kill those carnivores! Tamed a plesi, since they hang out in the shallows on this map and don't fight back. After so much frugality on Burned Island, my SO then hoped onto my game and brought his Gasbags. We explored the nearby archipelago. The Eärrion does not have a confined spawn for Shadowmanes, in many areas they are a normal part of the fauna, which can make things "interesting". We improvised and tamed a lone one with bright red and blue colors. We also snuck by the angry Karkinos that guarded the entrance to the "Atlantis" world. I loved that. Two spacious underwater domes with equus and stegos and finally useful loot drops! Last but not least, we found a cave entrance near the Redwoods which turned out to be "the Cursed Cave". Seemed eerie, but safe. We affronted the Ark gods by demanding they show us the Curse, then hightailed it out of there when Nameless spawned all around us.

(The Eärrion sponsored mod map) Wörk, wörk, wörk! I still haven't left Burned Island but I also really dig the atmosphere there. However, good levels are hard to come by, you kinda have to use the animals that the game lets you have - no good equus, so the deer stays in use. Supply drops are also ultra rare. I imprinted a new megatherium and while levelling it, decided to build a metal outpost. Afterwards, I emptied my oil pump for the first time, I'm glad I even found that one lone oil well. I'm still holding off on taming a flyer, enjoing the ground based gameplay a lot. After I'd hauled resources back to base and only now crafted my first longneck, I decided to tempt fate and head toward an area that I believed to be the entrance to the "Hell" biome. Plenty of insects on the way down, so I figured I'd be fine with the megatherium. When I arrived, the entrance was basically clogged with Fire Wyverns. But while I wondered how I could deal with them, they kind of dispersed. I did a test fight against a mere lv 5, which was much dicier than I'd have liked. With the entrance now free, I waltzed through just like I'd hoped. Then I noticed the huge holes in one of the walls, which opened up into a gigantic round chasm with Fire Wyvern nests in the walls and Magmasaurs on the bottom. I thought I could pull the wyverns one by one while I was still on bug crack, which was a horrible idea, and my megatherium only survived because there were only three wyverns inside. The last was a 145 and nearly did us in. Then I almost killed my survivor with fall damage, but was rewarded with an Artifact and my first wyvern egg. Only a lv. 90, but it could've been worse. Could have been a 25. Steered my poor tattered cookie monster blue megatherium back to base and let it rest.

(The Eärrion sponsored mod map) Started a few days ago at a "hard" spawn (Burned Island). So far I had a megaloceros to run around with and a tek stego in my pocket as backup. Also in my pocket were the components for a trap, since I planned to get a megatherium next. Instead, I ran into a pack of R-Allos and decided to get at least one of those. They refused. After much ridiculousness and my survivor getting de-pantsed, one aggroed on the structure long enough to get the torpor up a decent amount, then I chased it around with a boomerang after I ran out of tranq arrows. It dropped, but Argies had eaten the cadavers I'd saved to feed it with. I got on my deer and went looking for something meaty and weak, and there was a lv 10 spino by a pond. I'd killed worse with the deer, so we attacked. We kept hitting the spino - when suddenly something else started hitting it from the rear. A wild bary. It ate the entire spino, stunned me off my deer, and by the time we'd dealt with that, a Yutyrannus gang had joined in. The deer got feared, mad clicking ensued while three carnos and their boss piled onto me. For a moment, I panicked and completely forgot how to Ark, trying to use a pike against them while they ripped through my flak gear. When I got to my senses, I pulled out the tek stego, switched mounts and continued clicking. I expeced this would turn the tide, but nope. Slowly but surely, we got melted. Then finally I seemed to have the carnos under control, dared to breathe - and behold, a megatherium on crack threw itself into the battle. I knew we were doomed then. Bye bye, shiny new tek stego. I kept fighting until my mount died, then ran away and whistled passive and follow all, just in case the deer was still around. A second later, it died as well. I finally risked a look back. At least with all the carnage, my mounts, the yuty and its mates all scattered dead on the ground, I could now take my pick what to feed the R-Allo with. When I went to retrieve the saddles, I also saw that my deer had a spino sail and an allo brain in its inventory. I probably put these in since it can't harvest corpses, but in that moment, I was moved nonetheless. I finished taming up the Allo, walked it back to base and built two gravestones. Nothing like early game!

(Caballus mod map) Explored the map on my Deinonychus to see if I'd missed any newly added mini caves. Instead the dino tracker mod indicated a nearly max level Bloodstalker in a tree. I never had one, so I very clumsily tamed it. I was ready to love it. I think the creature design is one of Ark's best, with the pneumatic legs and whatnot. But up close like that I really don't feel comfortable around it. It's too big and too twitchy and I have an irrational bad feeling leaving it around my passive tames. Did you also notice it pokes its proboscis into your neck while you're 'riding' it? What's up with that?!

(Caballus mod map) I re-did the Frozen Hotsprings cave since I wanted another artifact. With the notes from my first run, this one went very smoothly. The cave needs to be completed on foot and cryos don't work inside, all I had was a shoulder dimorph. The overleveled wolves and bears somehow were unable to destroy it, but just barely. I then picked up my Glowtail project, which was not much fun. In the end I got good looking, strong ones in black and medium blue, but I made the mistake of going back to their spawn zone while the parents produced eggs. Of course I caught one that has one better stat but looks like dried leaves. I put it in the enclosure with the others but will pretend I didn't see that stat for now. On the way back from the Glowtail spawn I swung by the Wyvern trench to pass the time and noticed a nest that was reachable on foot. It had a decent level egg, which in the incubator showed blackish purple and red-orange colors. Intrigued, I let it incubate. Then accidently cracked it. I debated with myself for a few moments if I should accept this fail, but then curiosity got the better of me and I killed Shootergame and went back a minute before the accident. And I'm glad I did. Turned out to be the most beautiful Fire Wyvern I ever had, with gorgeous contrast. I'm a weakling and a cheat, but in love.

(Caballus mod map) Finally had time to keep exploring the newly added caves. Went into the jungle/pirate themed one and got lost in there for three hours. It's mostly about reading clues, finding switches and completing a few skill tests. I got thoroughly confused and wasted so many grapples, but in the end did reach the artifact. Then realized the doors had closed behind me and I was locked in. Spent another hour or so going over each riddle again until I finally found a way back out. With the Artifact of Growth I could finally craft the ritual BP to summon one of the three God Horses. These need to be tamed with map-specific diamonds. The plant themed horse appeared inside my fenced-in base and immediately spooked, then ran off a cliff and into a heavily predator infested valley at preternatural speed. Thankfully it calmed down before anything hungry saw it, and was tamed quickly. My nerves.

My favourite mod map Caballus has been updated with four new artifact caves. The author just didn't post any coordinates yet. One was said to have an underwater entrance, so I grabbed my Shadowmane and did laps around the map. I found at least ten amazing looking caves I didn't know existed, but not the artifact one. Another was said to be in the ice biome, and I spent another hour or so trying to find that. Frustrated that I couldn't spot it despite all my efforts, I finally went under the mesh and spent an equal amount of time trying to locate the cave, which was mostly invisible from the outside view. After an eternity I finally pinpointed the entrance, and when I did I didn't feel bad about cheating anymore. The entrance was at the very back end of a boring looking, foggy resource cave, completely hidden between rocks, through a tiny puddle like there are hundreds on the map. I wouldn't have found this even if I had looked for a week. The cave itself though was fantastic, both in terms of looks and the puzzles inside, and pretty challenging. I made it out with the artifact and a healthy dose of respect, but need to grind for a bit before I can afford to go in again and look at the unexplored parts.

I'm just here to pay tribute to Beach Party Mammoth on your official art. It's a genius idea. Love all the fan art as well!

Re: Abortion ruling -- I'm not from the US, but thank you for taking a strong, humanist stance in this matter. I'm grateful and feel a lot of respect for you speaking up. I'll be linking this article to friends as well. While my own country is currently taking steps to further de-mystify and decriminalize reproductive issues, it's terrifying to see what's happening over there. So again, thank you. I can assure you that this sentiment is shared by a lot of people from my circle who are not active commenters. Re: Wiki -- I'd like to help, am just not tech savvy. Can one just become an editor and improve articles here and there casually, e.g. adding spawn links when missing? Great to see so much active effort going into the wiki. I'd like to fully switch to the official wiki but so far I've had to resort to the fandom one relaitvely often.

Aberration: Had a very chaotic fight against Beta Rockwell. We completed Gamma 'the proper way' a few months back and it was a hot mess. The Beta seemed totally out of reach, but... I wound up needing some extra levels and people assured me the fight would be easy if we only went in with no tames, cactus broth and shotguns. Oh boy. I only had the resources for one attempt, so my partner and I hopped back on Non-Dedicated and prepared. Multiple fantastic pump guns, 900 - 1000 bullets each, multiple armor sets. My nerves were already raw when we teleported in, since the last time was such a near disaster. In the beginning, everything even seemed to work. There were very few of the dreaded plasma balls, and we did fine until the reapers spawned in... Once again, my partner aggroed one, got stunned by it and then eaten. He'd just get pulled back into the arena via the tether mechanic. But of course he respawned without the cactus broth buff, and this meant that Rockwell unleashed the full amount of plasma balls, and these will find you no matter if you have cactus broth on or not. I kept losing armor because even with multiple weapons, catching every single ball before having to reload is impossible. In the distance I saw my partner run around trailed by multiple reaper kings, dying again and again, and each time meant more plasma balls. I just tried to hold out until he got his inventory back, and the boss was finally on his last tentacle and last sliver of health, but I was under the impression that I had to keep stalling. At this point I was legit hysterically begging for my mate to hurry up, since when I, the host, died, everything would be over. And I could not survive like this any longer. I was almost out of armor and bullets. My mate on the other hand mistakenly thought that it was I who had to get my inventory somehow and did not understand the urgency related to him! Finally I had to make the call and finish the boss off. I was totally rattled. Hands shaking, feeling twitchy and as if I'd aged a few years. We cleared up our communication f*ckup, and I realized I'd fired upwards of 800 rounds. Oof. Even with Single Player settings on, even with all the additional experience, this fight was once again a reality check. My respect for all the more skilled players who make this look like a breeze!

Happy Anniversary! All the art and screenshots you posted for this one are great, and the fan picks as well. Keep rocking!

(Glacius) Final 'episode'. Had another go at the Cave of the Pack. There are no maps and the few youtubers who tried it all had to resort to admin mode and got confused themselves. All agree that the cave is extremely difficult. I brought five therizinos with prim saddles, a pair of bears with good saddles, three saddled steppe bison and my shoulder dimorph. The strategy was to whistle this group ahead of me to take care of the purlovia. I'd use my bison Thor to assist with the fighting as much as possible, and he turned out to be an excellent cave mount. He was never in any real danger, but the other bison took crazy damage. I have no idea why they performed so badly. One died and I had to cryo the other. Then I noticed the female bear never made it into the cave. Tribelog says I froze her, and that was the last I saw of her. Something must've happened to her cryopod, which I never found again. That was an unnecessary waste of time and a good saddle...! The other bear was without a mate that way and I had to constantly worry about him until I was finally forced to cryo him as well. The theris however proved to be extremely viable in the cave, even with primitive saddles. We fought our way through tunnels stuffed full with ravagers, allos, wolves, dimorphs and purlovia and the occasinal kapro mixed in. It just never ended. I was in there for hours and didn't find the terminal, and I also lost half my theries bit by bit from them getting stuck on icicles. Everything in the cave is designed to confuse and get you turned around. Finally I went back to the beginning and found all my theris again, then tried the whole thing once over. By this point my hands were cramped and I just wanted the damn cave to end. We finally reached the terminal. I still had Thor and all five theris, one of which was close to dying. I threw down my dimorph to aid in the upcoming fight, then summoned the Tek Ravager boss. We defeated it without problems but I was almost too tired to care, also the loot it gave was really bad. It barely replaced the dire bear saddle I'd lost with the female. I picked up two blue drops on the way out which also weren't overwhelming, but more importantly several stacks of plant species Omega. Back at base I planted the seeds, which grew into humongous thistles that actually look really beautiful and whose juices will help tremendously with surviving the planned super-cold zones. But until that update is ready to be distributed, I'll give the map a rest. I feel I've achieved the main goals that are currently available and it's been lots of fun. I'd recommend the map to anyone who's looking for an Aberration-style challenge and hope the creator doesn't lose his fun working on this project. It certainly left me with a lot of admiration for the ambiton and creativity that went into it!

(Glacius) Today began normal and then turned rather ridiculous. I have a cryofridge now and spawned myself a chibi basilisk to kinda motivate myself to face my fears, since the ice basiliks were rather scary. Also, the Harrowing Steppes are riddled with alpha rexes and I need the extra levels. Decided to kill yutys and make a good fur blueprint that I've been sitting on. I took Thor (bison) for killing and a theri for harvesting but nearly gave up when a bunch of allos and purlovias handed my ass to me before I had even arrived at my destination. After that, everything turned a bit funny. First off, the bison are too large to aggro purlovia, which is nice to know, because cave. Then, their secondary attack deals even more torpor and wherever we went, I knocked out low level animals which I then decided to keep and drag around with me. Soon our group had grown by two ice rexes, a small daeodon, a random wolf and an ice velonasaur. I felt f*ing unstoppable. The formerly terrifying steppes were our playground now. Mounted the argy to grab a drop real quick - turned around, and my whole pack was gone. Swallowed by the fog, and it took me 20 minutes to find them again. Note to self: the GPS doesn't just exist to make my inventory heavier. In the end, we killed enough yutys and several alphas, and only one of the rexes died. I got a dino leash from a drop, leashed the Loser Pack and built them a feeding trough, then went home and made the new fur piece. Maybe I'll soon make another attempt with the cave. But I have a bit mixed feelings. On one hand, I love the concept of the map. The progression reminds me of Aberration more than anything, which is completely awesome. On the other hand, I've been playing really much because RL allowed for it, and things are still going very slowly. The mod maker also revealed that the next cave boss will be at the end of a revamp of the Elemental Vault, dismount the player and kill gigas within seconds. Right now I don't think I'll be up to the task. Guess if I saw a Youtuber do it first, I'd know it could be done.

(Glacius) Otters, bison and seals I had a very lucky moment when my parasaurus indicated an enemy in the water and I felt like checking. It was an X-otter! I dropped everything I was doing and tamed it. Otters are extremely rare on Glacius by design. Actually, this one is so precious I'll probably never take it out from fear of losing it. I bred my bison and got a couple of good calves. I named one Thor and crafted a saddle for him, which is hella expensive. I've also imprinted a female to get a little battle herd going. Then I procrastinated by clearing a nearby plateau and walling it in, still no idea what to put up there. To get myself going again, I decided to ride Thor the bison towards the penguin colonies, level him, see what he was capable of and probably tame an acrophoca this time. Bisons are gigantic, feels like riding a tank. I squashed so many poor jerboas who were hidden in the grass walking over them. The bison's attack is ridiculous in how much torpor it deals. To experiment, I began headbutting carbonemys and trikes. Unleveled, Thor knocked out a lv 65 trike with 1500+ torpor in one hit! He probably dealt even more but then I ran into predators and began leveling. It was amazing and hilarious to see 6 ice allos scramble like mad and get stuck on each other trying to get away from the bison, like the scene in The Lion King where Mufasa runs off the three hyenas. I made it into the outskirts of the Harrowing Steppes and didn't find any good seals but realized I wasn't cold. The bison insulates like a basilo or ferox does, how handy. I did see a 130 quetzal and had to tear myself away. Maybe another day. We checked the icebergs again, and there I finally found acrophoca with a decent level, meaning, they took two instead of one bison headbutt to knock out. They can be ridden without a saddle, so back at base I made some scuba and went out with the female seal to gather some fish for her and her mate. Damage wasn't overwhelming but she could hold her own, and she heals crazy fast from eating fish. They also have the insulation buff. On the same trip, I accidently aggroed the manta swarm around a lv 90 X-basilo so I seized the opportunity. Unfortunately a smack of cnidaria caught up with us. I got dismounted, but the seal did not get stunned and killed all jellies that attacked her. Not bad! Ended the day by breeding a seal pup with the good stats on the first try. Next I'll probably make a cryofridge at last, if I don't get distracted again.

(Glacius) I needed to get a new jerboa, it seemed foolish not to have a weather radar in the freezing zone. So I went all the way back and got one, and good thing I did. Next, I wanted to see what I'm up against with the bison. I put down sleeping bags, put on a full suit of ghillie and took cactus broth, then approached a herd to see if I could get close enough to feed one. Nope, it oneshot me immediately. I then farmed up the materials for a trap in the freezing hellscape of rexes, basilisks and yuties and collected more drops with my argent. I reached the southern coast and set up my trap near a herd of bison with two lv 110+. On the way there I had to kill not one, but two alpha rexes, good xp for the argy, though. Temperatures were at -37°C during daytime, and even with over 60 fortitude and fria curry on, changing into ghillie made my health meter drop rapidly. I still got both bison, and it was a breeding pair, too! Felt super thrilled, heart pounding and all. On the flight back, I got the blueprint for unstable element (yay!) when my jerboa started growling. It was what I had dreaded. I would never make it back to the quetzal in time before the weather hit. So I immediately found a safe spot and put down a sleeping bag and my tent. Thankfully, that was enough to survive the -59°C, but by now it was night and the blue fog was so thick you couldn't see a thing. When I sat in the tent, suddenly I heard the footsteps. Then the roar. Rex. I rushed out of the tent, and out of the icy mist emerged a tek rex, eyes and lights blazing white. I killed it with my argent, but that's going to be one of my favourite Ark memories ever. Thank the Ark gods I had the jerboa or the supercold would've hit while I was in mid-air, and that the rex didn't arrive while I was AFK. When the extreme cold wore off, I continued on towards my flying base and arrived in swirling snow with the worst visibility yet. I waited out the night and put as much of my loot on the argent as I could, then left the quetzal there and flew back to my starter base. Next up is bison breeding and getting the saddle.