spiderpk

Glad to hear it was easier, sorry to hear about the dismount and bad save timing I imagine most people playing solo or on servers they control have used cheats at some point - I honestly wouldn't have put thousands of hours into the game if I hadn't been able to use console commands to bypass grind that is useless for a solo player. Tamed dino stuck in mesh? Yep, I'm cheat ghosting. Absurd gauntlet mission requirements that are exponentially harder than the expansion boss and virtually impossible to solo (or require "clever use of game mechanics")? Yep, I'm cheat completing it. Game decides to spawn a titanosaur that wanders on top of my base? Yep, I'm cheat killing it. I'm actually quite happy that Wildcard has made Ark so configurable as well as leaving access to an admin console in the game - we can all tailor the experience to what suits us.

What honestly helped me the most was practicing it - fail, understand where I needed to improve, reload, try again. I probably ran through at least a dozen practice attempts before I felt I had a decent chance at success. Gamma and even Beta can sort of be brute-forced, but solo Alpha requires fairly flawless play - there's so much bad in the second half of the fight, and it can quickly turn into chaos. When doing it solo, I found it a lot easier to bring a handful reapers with - having most of them following really helped keep the focus off of me. Also, bring more than one set of armor - at least two or three. Even though you're watching for orbs, eventually you'll get hit. Using the rock drake camouflage helps a lot as well. You should always be moving - the only time you can really safely stop is between phases. If your drake is going to run out of stam, try to glide to a place far away from enemies so you can get as much back as possible - it helps to be proactive about this where possible (e.g. your drake is at half stam, only 1-2 tentacles left, and no enemies nearby - best to fill up on stam now than wait and have no chance when a ton of enemy reapers spawn) - waiting on stam is also an opportune time to check armor and swap pieces that are low on durability. When the tentacles come up, kill the ones on both sides of the ramp first - that gives you a bit of space to collect yourself and if needed deal with enemy reapers. As far as shotgun damage, assuming by reloads you mean pumps then that sounds about right - enough damage to kill a tentacle without stopping. The electricity is death if you're solo - you'll get stunned off your mount and swarmed by reapers, so no matter what don't go into it - look at the tentacles to see where the next patch of electricity will be and be prepared to slow down, and even turn around if needed. For the orbs, I bring an assault rifle in case I needed to quickly swap weapons. Keep moving, and always make sure you're always checking for orbs - getting hit by one or two here or there isn't a major deal, but getting hit by several at once will probably mean death. I try to just focus on tentacles first, so by the time the last tentacle goes down the orbs are mostly clumped together and most are pretty easy to get rid of. Even doing that, there are times the orbs get too close for comfort and need to be prioritized over tentacles. Make sure you're whistling the megalos and nearby reapers onto the boss each round (or just have them on aggressive) - they tend to stop attacking otherwise. Also make sure you're helping on the boss itself - the megalos do their "pick up" attack and therefore do a measly amount of damage compared to what they could do. Having a reaper devoted to the boss helps a lot. Even with all of that advice, I still think practicing helped the most. I can't remember how many times I glided into electricity or got stuck in a corner and couldn't shoot through reapers to destroy the mass of orbs. I really do feel like alpha is balanced for multiple players, so it's not surprising that's it's hard to solo.