Juggernaut

The devs should fix windmills. If you use a windmill as primary, and generator as backup, if the windmill turns off due to lack of wind, the generator kicks in, but if the windmill regains wind, the generator will keeps running. Basically defeats the entire purpose of a windmill. Maybe the devs did as a way to make people consume more gas for balance but here they are increasing the fuel storage on generators, and they already lasts weeks with a full tank so it doesn't really matter. Plus gas is super easy to make. The only risk I could potentially see is someone spamming turret towers that are super easy to power with almost no effort but again, windmills are super easy to destroy.

When they had the official no tame pvp servers, there was a lot of survival aspect with the environment constantly, especially with simple farming. You couldn't just fly across the map for materials and avoid any threats, (well with a parachute you sort of could but you had to build a giant ladder first, and anyone who saw you floating made for a fun duck shoot contest, but you get what I mean). You had to most likely travel through supply drops or by boat. Boats were always risky because there were a ton of pirates. Most of the PVP skirmish battles were fun and small because without OP farming dinos, building up took time and was somewhat limiting. There was a decent balance of offense vs defense. Plus it was hard to fob a large attack base, because you could only carry enough material based on your player weight. The game mode felt a lot like Rust except with more PVE threat, and you see how more popular that is than Ark. The thing that killed it was the devs didn't support it or try to balance it anyway as somethings were broken, just like all of their endeavors. Best bet to is to run an unofficial non-tame or small-tame only PVP server with no tek and make the balance changes yourself.

You only need a silver account to play the game and host. You use your gold account to sign into the windows 10 store version, download the game (you don't have to buy it since you bought it already). Sign into the windows xbox app with your silver account, launch the game, and host it.

if you host a PC windows 10 store version it is automatically cross-play enabled meaning both windows 10 store players and xbox players play together. You can't turn this option off. PC steam version is not crossplay with xbox/windows 10 store version though.

You can certainly try. The only bottle-neck in your specs is the CPU which is really old. Your specs meet the requirement to run windows 10. For 2 people with not crazy boosted stats it might be passable on the island map. I wouldn't try to host on Rag/Center/Vag as they are more taxing on the system, eg they have less optimizations than the official ark maps. You can use your gold account to sign-into windows 10 store, download the game so you don't have to buy it twice. Then use a silver xbox account to act as the host account so you can still play with your gold account on your xbox and connect to the silver account hosted server.

I told you how to host and play on the same PC with crossplay that acts a true hosted dedicated server. Follow my directions. The host barrier happens when you are hosting an xbox server from an xbox and trying to play on the same xbox at the same time. The xbox/1x isn't powerful enough to both render your playing game and calculate all the server numbers for the entire map, hence the host barrier. You have these options for hosting: 1. A separate dedicated Xbox console, no host barrier, but requires another xbox/1x that only serves the purpose of hosting (free per month) 2. Host and play on a single xbox console, you will have a host barrier, xbox/1x isn't powerful enough to play and host at same time (free per month) 3. A separate dedicated windows 10 PC, no host barrier, more powerful and configurable than xbox/1x that only serves the purpose of hosting (free per month) 4. A windows 10 PC that you play and host on at the same time. This is accomplished via running the hosted server in a virtual machine on the same PC (which essentially makes another PC inside your PC). No host barrier, more powerful and configurable. (free per month) 5. Rent from nitrado. They do all the hosting for you. (cost per month)

Do all the normal things you would do host an windows store version that supports xbox cross play except run the host account xbox silver account inside a hyper-visor/virtual machine on the same PC you plan to play on. Everyone connects to the xbox silver account that is hosted on the virtual machine. If you are unfamiliar on how to setup a basic windows store xbox hosted server, I made a guide, just search my name in this section of the forum for how to Host an xbox server via the windows 10 store version of the game.

Cross-play is always on. The version mis-match is because you don't have the latest version of ARK installed. Simply update Ark.

ON PC > go to xbox app > network test > make sure you have OPEN NAT and pass all other tests. Also make sure you have the latest version of windows 10 and Ark.

Does your NAT show Open when running network test under the xbox app on your laptop? I would verify that first.

Why are you asking then in the xbox forum? There is a PC section for this and the wiki on server configuration explains how to cluster using steam. https://ark.gamepedia.com/Server_Configuration

Scroll down, click the category you want > click show > Class Name Column.

Know bug with hosting via windows 10. You have to close ark and restart the server.

Don't even attempt to do this with windows 10 version of Ark, it is basically impossible to do it right. Without command startup access you can't cluster. Only the steam version of ark and hosted Nitrado servers can do this.

In excel or google sheets. 1. Go here first https://ark.gamepedia.com/Item_IDs and copy the "Class Name" Ids into column A of excel or google sheets. 2. In column B type this formula: ="ConfigOverrideItemCraftingCosts=(ItemClassString="""&A1&""",BaseCraftingResourceRequirements=((ResourceItemTypeString=""PrimalItemResource_Fibers_C"",BaseResourceRequirement=1.0,bCraftingRequireExactResourceType=false)))" 3. Fill down/copy the formula down for each item you wish to convert to 1 fiber. 4. Copy column B into the game ini file. Extra tip: if you want to change it something else besides fiber or change the quantity just replace the type string with a different Class Name ID from the step 1. To change the quantity required change the baseresourcerequirement from 1.0. ((ResourceItemTypeString="PrimalItemResource_Fibers_C",BaseResourceRequirement=1.0,bCraftingRequireExactResourceType=false))) You can also add more than one crafting item requirement per item by adding more commas and repeating this string ((ResourceItemTypeString="PrimalItemResource_Fibers_C",BaseResourceRequirement=1.0,bCraftingRequireExactResourceType=false))) A simple google search explains all this. https://ark.gamepedia.com/Server_Configuration#ConfigOverrideItemCraftingCosts