roadrage

Had an unfortunate incident. Long story short, through a series of foul ups apparently related to 260, my center save had to be wiped, including my character. So now we begin anew. I'm now running the latest stable build of bush people, and have taken out several mods I really never use. So, spawned in jungles south, and did the punching a tree thing. Wasn't long I was building a 2x4x2 wooden house. Tamed a 140 ptera, made some forges and began preparing for the age of metal. Now, where I decided to build is just northwest of skull island, and right to the north is a rich metal spawn, a couple hundred meters or so I'd say. Ended up expanding the bottom floor to 4x4x2, 2x4x2 for the second with an equal size porch, and adding a 2x4x2 third floor for my forge room. 13 forges working at the same time. Also began the conversion to stone. Now, some of the bush people didn't like me flying over their tower to get metal. That's too bad, a few grenades, a quick run through and I came home with several hundred cp, and they have a wrecked tower. Yep, ai sucks but it gives a semblance of other people on here at least. Got a fabricator on a glass catwalk right above my smithy, built a genny, ind grill and now I need pearls to make electronics for fridges. Went on a cp run and brought home a 130 wild rex, and managed a decent dilo, a compy, and a 150 parasaur in the middle of all of this. Build a 3x3x6 on the side, and craft up the ind forge. Had to use the ptera to put the top run of walls and the roof on, but I'm 90% stone construction, and now I can really burn metal. I'm almost as far along with a base in 2 nights as I was in nearly a month with the old save. Also had to build a small pen for the tames on the side. They don't even have a trough as of yet, been way to busy rebuilding my base. But, the pace is slowing again. The conversion to metal slows things down considerably, plus I'm going to need a lot of CP now. I wasn't planning on this being my permanent home, but proximity to most resources except oil, which is not that far out either, along with a good view right up the hill and ocean access means this will probably end up being my primary base. So, this weeks plan is lots of CP, make up some more explosives, begin a metal turret wall, get some crops going, and see if I can creep toward that level 100.

Been a while, not doing much gaming lately. First off, logged into the server to a respawn screen. Not unusual, what was unusual is my bed is gone. It was in the center of my second floor, way away from the reach of anything. Ok, respawn jungles mid. And I spawn at the west end, not the east. Oh well, I'm at 473, just run back. It's all gone. Ok, this is a pve server. Wondered for a bit if I broke some rule or something. Tried to swim over to tropical south, and got killed. Respawn, run around to where the big metal base was. All gone. Run over to where the other player had his raft house. Gone. Hmm, looking like a wipe. Suicide by raptor, respawn at tropical north. Yep, base that was there is gone, check server. Day 7. Yep, wipe. DC. Relog, respawn screen. Hell with it, back to SP, what I was basically playing anyway. Walk out of my base, and my game presents me with a 140 ptera. I shall take that. Tamed it with raw, that's all I had at the time. Threw the saddle on it, and went exploring. West end of jungles mid, a 130 spino presents itself. Oh hell yes. I kick myself for not having the kibble machine mod turned on. Tame it with raw sourced from the dilos hanging around. Ok, now a long travel along the river to home. And it won't fit in my pen. Expand the pen. Go hunting CP, find a cave. Thought I had flyers enabled in caves, but get dismounted, ptera dies, I die from 3^18 spiders and authros that swarm us. Run back, god mode, get my stuff back, accidentally tranq a bronto, 130. This will do. Tame it, spawn in a saddle, and make my way slowly home. Guess what. Yep, won't fit in the pen. Nope, it's too late to start that. Shut down and that's the last I played. Gotta start on a new base but geez that's such a grindy prospect.

Picked out a reasonably central base location with a bay, and am still considering whether or not to spend any more time on a server. On nights my internet refuses to cooperate, it makes my life hell. Otherwise, just more tedium. Now I get to build a moving raft, oh what fun.

Real short one this time. Went and claimed some more mats and built magic crop plots to get my own started. Yeah, real exiting night. Moved my ark install to my ssd this morning as well to shorten load times, which meant moving nearly every other game to one of my hdds. Oh fun.

Not going to be a real long one this time, as it's kinda boring. Hopped on the new server, and finally figured out the difficulty, I think. It's between 16 and 17, probably 16.6ish. I'm seeing 16s and 33s, so that would be the only way the levels make sense. Farmed metal for about 900 more ingots, and decided since my internet is actually behaving I'm going to explore. Flew over to south tropical, and found a huge metal base. Demolish allowed! Hmm genny is running, not been that way long. I'll come back later. Flew up to north tropical, another base, stone. Doors have been demolished, and there's a flying raft belonging to another tribe up for claiming. Ok, so I know for a fact at one point there were 3 tribes on the server, one recent. Off to the floating island, didn't see anything. So I went to the green obi and collected oil. Around to the bridge and the massive waterfall, then to skull island. I don't see any other bases this way. Hmm, odd that the only two bases would be in the easy areas. Even being PvE, I would think moving to better resource areas would be a priority. I need to check out lava island, might be something up there. Back to base, drop off the oil, make some gas, a fabricator, and go electric. Ok, I need CP. Fly up to the lake near my base, raid 5 dams. Net nearly 1500 CP. Nice. Also nearly broke my flak. Go home, finish making my electric stuff, and repair my armor. Farm another round of metal. That abandoned base is bugging me. Go back and check it out. Some nice dinos up for claim, including a rex, bronto, and mosa. Ok, gotta get on a pen. I'm the only one that's been on this server in days besides the admin. Apparently claiming is allowed judging by the other base, but I'm just going to get access, not destroy the whole thing. Check out the greenhouse. Holy mother lode! Knock out the door, and they have resource plots for nearly everything! Yep, I'm having this. Go home, craft a raft and a bunch of metal storages for 100 stacks each, put a trail to the water, and 8 on a raft. Here we go. Hours and hours of work. Metal is stacking to 500 on this server. Make black narcotics from the narcotic plot, go from lvl 130 to 450 in just a few minutes. Carrying 1k at a time takes a while, and since the generator is still running, the plots are making more! I'll be at this for days. Made foundations and walls to build a warehouse for my loot. Tame a 466 raptor. Make more runs. Should break in and claim the bronto, but I spyglassed them and their food is good for now. Trying not to destroy anything major, as I'm trying to be courteous, they might come back and this way the only things that will be destroyed are a few doors, easy to replace, and the plots will refill. I'm going to give it a few days of watching the food while I build a water pen and a more permanent base, and if they don't come back I'm going to claim their dinos. May just keep that genny going for a while, infinite resources ftw. There's a gasoline plot right next to it too. Anyway, figured out a standard raft is not up to the task, so I went to claim that flying one, couldn't get it to fly, so I destroyed it. Yep, midnight and brain didn't engage, didn't hit space. So this morning I logged in, built a floatstone forge to get what I'll need to get another raft. Maybe by tonight I'll have the floatstone so I can just fly up next to the door and transfer stuff much quicker. Life is so much simpler when someone else does the work for you.

Well, discovered a metal deposit right above my base. Yay for me. I still need a bird. Anyway, set out to get a little hide. Chalcio roaming around outside my base, gonna cheese this one. Threw the windows open and started shooting. 80 arrows later I have my hide. Crafted my saddle, and set out on the raptor. Slow going, but go around and up onto the land bridge across to the metal deposit, get all the metal the raptor can carry, which is not much, and walk off the cliff. Dismount right before we hit the ground. 3 hours of that got me several hundred ingots refining. Alright, I need to build a bird nest. So, gathered stone and built a gateway, along with some large walls. Fixed myself a box on top of my house with a landing platform. Ok, now to find a bird. Headed off northwards, found 2 50 pteras. Not even bothering with that crap. Tamed a 333 monkey, and looked for crystal as well. Back to base, nothing worth taming over here. Back to farming metal. Got bored with that, made a six gun and upgraded a few things. Head southward, across the mouth of the river. Wow! A 416 Ptera. One blue arrow, and put some meat in it. Now I need a saddle. I need chitin or keratin. Kill a turtle. Just 6 short. Kill a trike, didn't drop any. Damn. Try to tranq and kill another one, it's high level and runs off. Double damn. I'm out of tranqs. Ptera stands up. Well, let's go home. Don't see anything in the water, so I dive in. Right in the middle of the river, a 450 bary finds me. Yep, died, 4 times trying to get my bird and raptor to follow me across, lost the raptor in the process, along with all my stuff, keratin included. Triple damn. Bary has a long aggro range apparently. Got my bird home, beaten and battered, but alive. Finally fooled around and got it up in the bird loft, getting hit and accidentally taming a pego in the process. Luckily, I keep some stuff in reserve. Made up a new bow, upgraded it, and grabbed the 3 extra blue tranqs, along with the asc stone hatchet and pick I stored. Grabbed the ingots, and whipped up a set of flak. Alright, I'm as armored as I was in the upgraded hide. A turtle and 2 trikes later, I have the mats for the saddle. Yay! Craft it and throw it on my bird. Up the cliff we go, to the metal. Filled the forges with 700ish metal each in about 20 minutes. This is much better. Head off an get some crystal. Yay, I now have a super spyglass, and with the extra CP I made up, crafted myself a water tank. I'm not far from the beach, but it is easier than running pipes for now. Plan is to build a small greenhouse for narcs and veggie cake mats, and go hunting achatinas. Also, now that I have a bird, if my internet will cooperate, I can scout out a new base location. I do not like it here. Got the bird nest roofed, and called it a night.

As most of you know, time consuming doesn't equal difficult. Official rates are tedious and time consuming, this server is frakking difficult. I love it. I just wish my internet would behave. So, I'm used to difficulty 5. That's child's play to me now. I'm still trying to work out the difficulty on this server, but it's at least 3x that. Two nights ago. I want to get off the beach. Log in, and I get hit, inside my house. I die. What the hell? You have been killed by Raptor (266). Oh my. Respawn and get off the bed. Three raptors are chewing on my stuff. This is setting the tone for the night. Grab my buddy to keep him from getting munched, grab my weapons. The two 116s went down fairly easily, the 266, not so easy. Yep, I died. Twice. So did my buddy. Frak. Finally emerged victorious. Ok, I need guns. Lots of guns. The bow is just not going to cut it. The problem is, I'm in a very metal poor area, and I've not seen a single flyer, on the server owned by the author of Classic Flyers. So, after breaking several stone picks and hatchets, I have enough ingots and metal to make an upgrade station, and a metal pick. All the while I'm making all the arrows I can, and getting hit by lvl 200-350ish raptors, troodons, and dilos. And dying a lot. This is difficult. Time to go to bed. Last night. Log in again. I hear something outside my base. Troodon, don't remember the level exactly, but it was over 300. Frak. Ok, stone construction is now a priority. Finally manged to get rid of it. So I began gathering stone. Lots of stone. Ran across a dilo. Hey meat and hide. Well, I need crystal for a spyglass as well. Level 466. Yeah, and it called 3 more, all over 100. Broken bow, broken everything, die, respawn, run to my loot bag, game DC. Frak. Manage to log back in, dead, manage to get my stuff this time. Never mind the stone, time to do upgrades. I now have an ascendant bow, stone hatchet, stone pick, torch, club, and hide armor from JM to asc. I also made getting some more powerful narcs a priority. I need some of the blue ones. This mod adds tiered narcs, very convenient, and more balanced than max torpor. Don't remember the name. So I go back out to gather. Run across a 466 dodo. Try out the new tranqs. Wonderful. This will make my life easier. Wound up replacing my lower walls with window walls, and expanding my base from a 2x2x2 to a 4x4x3. Lots of windows to shoot out of. Now, right as I was about happy with my base expansion, a 116 raptor shows up. Now, on a normal server, that's a great find, here, it's meh. Oh well, I need a fast ground mount, and this is a fast ground mount. One blue arrow, and two cooked meat later, I have a new raptor. Ok, now how am I supposed to get it in my base? Swap out my back door for a double door. Still won't fit. Take down the upper wall, let it in, replace the wall. Check on making a saddle, 16 hide short. Well, not tonight. Hear something. Theres a carno running around the beach now. Oh frakkin great. I'm out. Log off, maybe it'll be gone tonight. I must also adjust my tactics, as I'm afraid the max dino level on this server may be 500 or better.

Where to start. Last night was, interesting, to say the least. Well, all the mods are loaded, but that server is going down regularly. Owner is playing with the mods, so I decide to start a new character in SP on the center, just to see if I want to move my main one over. Selected jungles mid as my spawn point. Spawned in next to a river, some cliffs, and ruins. Took a quick look around, poop, pack of troodons, think I'll take a walk the other way. More troodons. Hmm, the woods look like a good option, poop, dilos. Grab some rocks, fiber and punch a tree that happens to be close, you know the drill. Leveled quick, learned the bow, made arrows. It's frustrating being a beach bob again, but kinda fun. Don't have all the good stuff I've learned to rely on now. Killed a dilo for meat and hide, crafted a campfire, killed more dilos, one a 130, and picked a spot for a temporary base. So far so good. Now that I'm cooking meat, and have clothes, I start to examine my surroundings. I know absolutely nothing about this map. If it were the island, or SE, I'd be going full out by now. Looks like I have two good accesses to the forest from this location, and a relatively flat spot to build. I'll take it for now. I can also see the blue obi just over a ridge. And a pego finds me. It tames from the berries it stole. Wonderful, I have a pet. Build an AA crafting station. I need to spoil some meat and get narcs going. It didn't take too awful long till I manage to get a wood 2x2x2 up, complete with a large storage box, smithy, S+ crafting station, forge, and mortar. Put a couple of extra foundations outside with a compost bin, meat spoiler, egg collector(all from automated ark), and a silica pearl plot. Went on a killing spree, to collect hide, and upgraded to hide armor. Once I got some narcs, and made up a max torpor pike, I went after the lvl 10 trike that is roaming around. I need a mount, this one sucks, but it'll do for now. Tamed him up, made a saddle. All is going too well. Another damned pego tamed itself. Well, whatever. I need crystal for a spyglass. Took off to see if I can locate any. Just into the woods, theri. Hell no, take a left. Another theri. Dilo, 145. More meat and hide. Raptor, 130. Crap, getting low on arrows. Then, after it's dead, I realize all I had to do was hit 5 for the max torpor pike, and dump the meat I got off the dilo and I would have had a nice mount.*Beats head on desk* Think dummy, think. Continue into the woods. Another theri. Nope, head home. Gonna look for a flyer when the sun comes back up. So I make a bunch more arrows, hop on T1(I'm not feeling like naming tonight), and head off. Make it to the east beach, no pteras. Finally found a 70 flapping around the northern river of the isle I'm on. Shot it with a blue tranq dart, it goes down. Dilos again. TE is down to 19. Pump it with some stims I had made. It wakes up, tranq it again. Damn seagull decided to attack. First time that's happened. Well, between T1, the dilos he stirred up, and the seagull, back to 40% TE. Pump stims into the bird again, tranq when she stands up. This time I managed 97%, and she's nearly dead. Stood up at a 103. I'll take it. A monkey comes wandering up. Why not, lvl 5 but who cares. Tame it. So, with my new pet on my shoulder, Ptera1 on follow, and myself on T1, we go home. Get home and a bronto has decided it likes the area, along with 2 more packs of troodons, and a pack of pegos. Oh frakkin wonderful. Clear out the pegos, and park my tames. Go to do some things inside, and hear my ptera being attacked. Dilos again. Kill them, and decide it's time for a wall. I wasn't going to put this much effort into this base, but apparently I'm in a slightly dangerous place. So I farmed mats and built a 4 high wall with dino gate around my base. I also crafted and placed 15 fires to cook all the meat I've collected. Crafted and placed a preserving bin, and stocked it with sparkpowder. Alright things are moving. Leveled up my bird, and took off looking for a bit of crystal. Found metal. Gathered, returned and fired up the forge. Killed some bugs for chitin, learned the engrams, and now I'm in chitin armor. Three metal runs later, no crystal. But I have a longneck, shotty, and a little ammo, along with metal tools. Head off and fly around until I find crystal, not far from where I tamed the bird. Alright! Grabbed it and went home. Crafted up my spyglass and some other stuff. It's getting a little late, but that server hasn't shown a reboot in a hour or so. I'm gonna go try it. Logged in, jungles mid. What the frak! That's what he was doing, testing a new mod. The World Turtle. Looks like the size of an aircraft carrier, and I'm looking at 4 of them. Well, better get started. You know the drill. Max player level is 500 on this server IIRC, so I'm leveling up at a ridiculous pace. Rates are higher than my SP rates. After spending half an hour in the engrams screen, I decided to say screw it and just get crap when I need it. Otherwise I'm leveling up twice in the time it takes to learn one level's engrams. Got my bow and arrows, got my hide, got a campfire cooking meat, time for a wood shack. Server restarts. Log back in. Wait a minute theres a monkey. Ease over, level 200. Ok, wonder what the difficulty on this server is. One mejo and it tames. Wow. Ok, got a companion. Now the derps start. Saw a female dodo, and thought kibble. Tried to club it, lagged into a world turtle. Yep, died without a respawn point. Respawn, back at the location of my base in SP. Great. Server lags and restarts. Went to eat, as it's really getting late. Come back, server is back up. Log in, start to run back amid masses of gigantic turtles. A seagull decided it doesn't like me. I hit the deep water. Finally get away. Get back, my monkey I named goofus is alive, but battered. Turtle and my stuff is gone. Oh well, wasn't much anyway. Gotta get a 2x2 up before I log, so I start on that, and a Chalicotherium decided to walk into my fire, which aggros it. It's a frakkin level 230 something! My buddy helped by throwing poop, and I expended nearly 100 arrows, along with breaking my pick and hatchet to kill the stupid thing. Geez. So I get my base built, with a bed, storage, and preserving bin. Go out to gather mats, get my arrow reserves back up, and somehow aggro another Chalico, a lvl 330 something. Advance to the rear! Run home, it proceed to attempt to disassemble my base while I attempt to turn it into dinner. To be fair, I was right beside my base anyway. Out of arrows, broke my pick and hatchet, again. I haven't gotten to gather metal for advanced tools yet, I've only been on the server maybe 2 hours. Needless to say, I died. Respawned, and grabbed the extra set of tools I had made. Died. Wait. Respawn, at least goofus has taken the aggro. Grab my stuff off my bodies, and manage to kill the darn thing this time. Repaired my home, locked my things up in my storage and logged off. And to top it all off, it's 12:30 am!

I wish I could find a 174 spino. Oh wait, my max level is 150, must be on a difficulty 6 server. Well, I was going to start a character on a center pve server, to test if my craptacular internet will even allow me to play multiplayer. ISP has a bum router, switch, or cable somewhere they can't find, 6 months of pings to google shooting from 30 -1500ms and 2% or so packet loss. Ugh. Anyway, decided on a mod author's test server that's open to the public. There's a few on there I want to check out, and I don't want to put them in my SP game until I know I want them. 2.5GB of mods. Welp, I'm playing Factorio instead of ARK this Memorial Day evening. *Grumbles about slow ass internet, and how there should be a law requiring a minimum of 10Mbps speed up and down.* So, wake up yesterday, start computer, hear a gulp, and air hitting the D5 pump. Oh yeah, I need to check the water level in my cooling loop, haven't done that in a couple of years. 20 oz bottle of water later we're good, slimy and crummy looking, but good. Who says you need to change coolant?(cpu and mobo are 7 years old anyway, so I don't really care) Downloading resumes, surf the net, patch drops, oh wonderful, another 4GB to dl. Ended up being out all day, including 3 hours in a T-storm. Come home soaked, and not in the best of moods, gonna get on that server. WHAT!? Steam has done it again. I checked The Center and Prim + to dl way back when I bought ark, did it dl and install? No. So, I loaded my SP game while Steam did what it was supposed to do months ago. *Beats head on desk* (This is more of a what did I not do in ark today post.) So, what do I want to do on the island in SP tonight? Well, let's organize a bit. Set the hatched raptors I'm not going to breed to a new tame group, Guard Dogs. Yep, I get the occasional dilo inside the fence, among other things. A dozen raptors or so will nip that one. Gonna imprint them as well, the high damage stat ones are popping at 370 melee, and with boosted imprint bonus, they're turning out in the high 600s. Good guard dogs. My 236 breeding male matured. Good. He has my high stats for everything except HP, stam, and oxy. Crap, the pelas are out of fish. Oh well, they'll survive a while, I need to build a barn just for them out of pull range for everything else anyway. Grabbed the 130 female out of the breeding pen, dropped her off in the raptor area, as well as the 224 male, and picked up the 224 female with the 39 oxy stat. Smart breeding helps, but I think it's a little goofy with the breeding plan. I was going to do this with two sets, one with hp, stam and oxy, the other with the rest, then breed them to get them together. Oh well. Throw her in the pen, third egg that popped was a set of 246 twins, male and female, with the crappy purple coloring of their mother, not the nice tan of their father. Crap. Oh well, 248 is max from this pair, and the stat they don't have is going to be bred out anyway. These are keepers I guess. Lead them to the trough, as I've quit raising raptors in the nursery, just not enough room for the dozen I try to pop at once. Swap out the 224 for the 130 wild female I have for the HP stat. Screw smart breeding's plan. Max level for this pair is 256. Well, hours later, she's dropping almost all 194-235s Not a single 256. I have killed untold numbers of babies now, my prime meat reserves are getting so full I'm considering stocking the troughs with it. So i throw the 224 female back in there as well, to see if I can get a 248 or two with tan coloring, not purple and green. Nope. Damn I'm tired what time is, oh poop. 1:40 am. Some nights I wonder how I can do so much to accomplish so little.

Ugh, forum ate my long post analyzing stat specialization. Not redoing all that. So, went to raise my new guard dogs and the one breeding raptor. Friend invited me to ride back with him to his home system in Elite. Why not, haven't played elite in months. After taking the fighter out, buzzing the cockpit, boosting off the cockpit nearly making him spill his food, and other shenanigans, we made it to his home. Didn't get to blow anything up. So, continued the exploration trip I started 10 months ago. At this rate, I might get finished with this around 2025 or so.....

Well, anywhere you can find lots of coel. I fish in the mouth of the river just west of stonehenge, by my current base. Life interferes with ARK, that is a fact. Weather has been nice, and work needs to be done. But, I decided I'd load up the game for an hour or two last night and get something done. First, had to update. It's 9 p,m, Update finishes. Load game. S+ has to update. Sigh. Read changelog for S+. It's 9:30. Finally get to load game, it loads in at about 9:45. Well, there goes nearly an hour. More startup lag than usual, and oh wonderful, the fix for s+ multi-lamps resetting position has changed them all back to auto on/off. Grab the light setter and go about correcting that, and replacing the one lamp that ended up upside down. Well, so much for a productive session. Took a quick look at what needed to be done. Alright, if I don't start on the new base, it will never get done, and I've decided I'm not going to carry all the mats to my base, make the parts, and then carry them all the way to the green obi. I'm going to build a workshop up there, and craft the parts on site. That means I'll need a generator shack, and a place to put the ind. forge as well. So I made up 20 metal foundations, 80 walls, 20 ceilings, and a couple of the new double doors in s+. This will also give me a spawn point by the obi, so I can go back to SE for a bit a relearn the engrams, and fast travel between the bases. I'll use the bronto or a Q as transport, or might just upload/download the stuff. I'll also need to move my achatinas up there. Oh joy. Loaded up an argy with the stuff, and headed north. Well, the plan was working out, until I got almost to the obi. There's a diplo getting munched on by dilos, nothing unusual there. Lvl 80. Nope, don't start or you'll not get even a single foundation down. Raptor runs through the spyglass view. 125 male. Sigh. Fly down, tranq him, check stats. He's specialized, and I have the kibble on me, and am not going to pass up an opportunity for a new high stat. Slap some kibble in him, deal with the dilo that is roaming around, he stands up. Re-check stats. Ok, I'm convinced this is wrong, but I can't find evidence otherwise. He has better than 200 more stamina than my best, and is a 187. 46 levels in stam! He spent nearly half of his bonus levels in stam! That adds a few levels to the pool. Ok, taking him home, right after we deal with the lvl 80 female that just found us. Well, there goes the plan, again. Took him home, and decided to throw him in with my hp specialized female. I need to get the raptor program going again. Did some quick math in my head, and with this new addition, I should be in the 260-270 range once all the high stats are together. I don't even want to look at the time. So I do that, and check smart breeding. It says to throw my other 193 female in with my 225 male. Makes sense. Took one egg, and swapped pairs out in the pen. Egg popped at a 207, and honestly not bad looking colors, will keep him. Not bad for the first run. Messed around the base, letting several eggs drop and hatch. Junk, junk, junk, junk, 236! Yep, got a male with full high rolls, and he managed not to inherit his father's ugly green color. He got his mother's earth color. This is the next step. Just need the other 2 high stats in there. What was I gonna do tonight again? Looked at the time. 12:45 a.m. What happened to an hour or two? Oh yeah, updates and raptors. Today is going to be hell, cause I've stayed up until tomorrow, again.

Currently waiting for my game to update. Crapola internet. Last session was a real exciting one. I went fishing. Gathered 1.2k sap, so why not. I now have several JM and MC bps that I didn't have before. Relaxing but boring, and what else ya gonna do when you've only got about an hour?

For Raptors, run as fast as possible, preferably screaming like a little girl, back to your base that you left the door open on, then hatchet them to death when they get stuck in the door. Alternatively, shotgun to the face. And now for my oh so awesome session. Made sparkpowder and gunpowder. Multiple metric [insert expletive] tons of them. Oh, and took the theri out gathering wood for more charcoal, so I can make a few more metric [insert expletive] tons of gunpowder. Seriously, I think I made over 10k gp last night, from raw stone, flint and charcoal. If my base ever catches on fire, the explosion will raze everything south of the volcano. Tonight, I shall plan the acquisition of a water mount for deep sea drop running. (I'm probably going to get myself killed, in other words.)

Finished my ini and dove back in. Ok, now I have my levels back. And I just noticed I haven't put anything back in fortitude after the mindwipe, so I crammed the six levels in there. It does help in certain situations. Then I went out on the argy looking for another achatina. Headed to the place I've found them reliably, and right around the corner, there's another 25. Snatch it, bear tries its best to get me, I laugh and head home. The argy is excruciatingly slow, but still my preferred taming/small animal hunting bird. Get it back, tame it. Finish the achatina pen, stock it with veggie cakes until I can get a trough set up and throw it in the pen with the other one. Now what to do? Went to my bookshelf and sorted through some bps. Hey, I forgot I had picked up that apprentice anky saddle bp. Craft up 2 for my ankys, and threw the primitive one in the grinder. That's what I'm gonna do for a bit, run beacons. Not taking anything but bps unless it's something I don't have. Think I'll take the speed ptera for this run. After hitting every purple, yellow, and red drop I could find, I had a whole 2 new bps, and an apprentice fab pistol. Really? One yellow double I couldn't access on whitesky, as I couldn't harvest the rock it was in. Loot drops need some serious work. In one instance, there was a purple drop in the swamp. Now, I mostly avoid these because of ambushes. Well, this one had one of the bps in it. Landed, immediately got swarmed by a group of leeches, 2 kapros, and a sarco. Great fun! Whup out the shotty, and several minutes of round and round, everything is dead. My ptera is almost dead. It was on passive, and the sarco had chewed on it pretty badly. Good thing I kited it away in the middle of all that. Don't know how many stims I gulped down in that mess. I love the pump shotty now. Ammo is expensive though. Grabbed the drop, and off we go. Got home, and decided my crafting area in the barn is too cramped, so I moved the upgrade station over to the ramp going to the flyer level. I didn't realize I had so much stuff stored in there, and I just happened to move it just far enough that I couldn't transfer from the bag to the station, so I lost some stuff do to despawning, but not much. Added the blueprint and augment stations to it to have a complete setup. Slapped the fab pistol I picked up in there and turned it into a blueprint. Yep, I can see why a server owner might want to prohibit the blueprint station add-on. It's a nice option though. Don't know if I'll make bps out of my upgraded stuff, or just stick to turning drop items into bps. I'll make that decision later. Put that up, checked on the troughs, and loaded all the charcoal out of the ind forge into the chemistry bench. Yep, made a metric crap ton of gunpowder. Went over to my smithy, loaded the gp in, pulled every ingot out of the ind forge, and set up to make simple bullets 600x. Yep. making a metric crap ton of simple bullets, you probably already know why. Went back to the chemistry bench and pulled all the stimberries I had, made up some more stims. Added 50 gas from storage as it's getting a little low. Hopped on the Tap and took a trip to herbi island. Titan is still there, and had decimated the trees. Looks strange now. No good ankys, or anything else for that matter. Still lots of pelas. I'm afraid that it's time to wipe them, as I think they're going to interfere with other spawns. Head back, stopping at a yellow and purple drop. Nothing of note. Figures. Get home, my bullets are done. Make 200x shotgun shells. This is gonna take a while. Oh, just noticed my lights are finally fixed. Went out to the barn, closed the door and shut off the lights in there. Fired up the fabricator and made a flashlight for my shotty, grabbed the stims, and took inventory of ingots. 36k in storage boxes alone. Now if I just had my paste reserves up, I could start making pieces for my outer wall at the new base location. The green obi is not that dangerous. I could get away with stone, but I want my fence in metal, with a two foundation buffer between the inner and outer walls. Why build a psuedo pvp fence in sp? Titans. I know there's a spawn not far from here. They are my only concern, and the reason for a metal fence, with s+ xl walls which are 12 high, I shouldn't have an issue with them aggroing my dinos. I'm also going to turret my house to help take care of any wilds spawning inside the perimeter. Well, shotty shells are done, I'm tired, so grab 50 more, head to the living quarters and quit for the night. Nice productive session, now just waiting for the game to take a massive dump on me.

Let's see. Friday, did nothing because the patch was late as usual, and my internet is slow, so it was midnight before it downloaded. Saturday, looked at the version number. Decided not to load my game until things had settled in. Finally decided the dust had pretty much settled, so I loaded my game. It usually takes about 10 minutes. Half an hour later, I killed it and tried again. It successfully loaded this time, with much more startup lag than usual. Great. If this gets any worse I'm going to just quit playing. I have lots of other games that don't take so long to load up and get going. Now that I can actually do something, I made sure the troughs still had food in them, and took off on the wyvern to check out the volcano. I was underwhelmed to say the least. So I went back to base. Gotta respec my engrams. Thanks Wildcard, really. I have custom levels as well, just vanilla with double engram points for SP, but still. At 96, that's a lot of engrams to relearn, especially with s+. Oh, and now I've got to go back to SE, just to relearn the engrams. I've had to roll back my save before because s+ messed up and all my structures were gone, and when that happened my engram points were negative until I got the levels back. Now, why couldn't the game just recalculate what I had spent and earned and put the difference up? I guess that would be too complicated. Oh, another thing I found out. If you have a custom levels list, the game now chops the top 15 levels off for ascension. I also had no engram points to spend, they hadn't been refunded, and my max level was 90. I was expecting to respec engrams, but this was just ridiculous. So, I jumped on the argy, opened the hatch, and headed out. Went east of the redwoods, and there's that 135 compy. There's several of them around, so I grab him and head back to base. Taming a compy is not that big of a deal, the problem is trying to kill the rest while sparing that one high level. Check several times to make sure he's still there. He is. Over the hill, pull up over the taming pen, drop him, go inside, he's gone. What the hell? May have scraped him off on a tree or something. Look around the base a bit to make sure I didn't accidentally drop him on the roof. He may be in my dino pen, but probably won't be aggressive, so I dunno. I go back out. Snatched a lvl 25 achatina near the redwoods. Took it home and tamed it. Went to make a metal foundation to keep it on, wait, I can't. I can't make anything. Sigh. I happened to have 2 in storage, so I plopped one down and threw it on that. It crawled off and stopped right under the item collector. Oh well. I'm going to go get some more later, easier than hunting beaver dams. So, I spawned in a mindwipe to get my engram points back. That was over an hour of just clicking trying to get back the building and weapon engrams. I didn't even bother with saddle engrams, as I have to get in my bookshelf and figure out which ones I have bps for. Plus I apparently don't have my double points anymore because I'm running low. I might have enough to relearn the SE engrams. Might. So I closed the game and set in adding 10 levels to my custom list and spreading the xp above 100 out for the top levels. That should allow me to level back to 96, and therefore on up to 100. I've still got to add points for the top 10 levels now, if that even works. As a temporary work around, I just slapped 1k points in at lvl 90, and I'll use that unless I get to rework the rest of my ini around the new patch. It's tomorrow, I've been at this far longer than I wanted, so that was it for the night. I've still got a lot of ini work to do.

Two days and I've done very little. Sleep pattern is screwed, which saps my will to play as well as to live in general. Should get better though, I think it's bottomed out. This has affected my judgment though, as you will see. Dead tired, fire up the game. I don't feel like doing anything, but I've gotta do something. Haven't went looking for deep sea crates. Lets do that. Don the scuba gear, do I take the taming raft or the fishing one? Neither, hell, I'm in scuba gear, I'm gonna swim around the whole map! See what my state of mind was? Rational thought was not possible. By some strange miracle, I managed to not get eaten until I got to the first loot drop location. No crate, but a mosa decided I looked like lunch. Got away, but not before my tank broke. How I got this far I'll never know. Head to the next drop. Oh frak, I'm drowning. Pop up to the surface. Oh yeah, tank is broke dumbass. Oh frak, stamina is almost gone. Head for shore, frak, megalodons. I'm gonna die. Gulp down some jerky and a stim, make it to shore with 25% health. Whew, just some dilos and pteras. Recover stam and health. Do I head home though? Nope, back out we go. I managed to somehow get half way up the west coast by hitting the shore regularly. Not a sign of a crate. Now I figure out this isn't going to work. I'll just use the teleport command! Well, that doesn't work like the wiki says. Now I'm in the air, over land. Crap, god mode. Enemy invisible mode. Turn god mode back off. Where the hell am I? 50,50. Great. Try it again. Apparently you can't put in coords for the teleport command, or I'm just in too much of a sleep deprived stupor to figure it out. I'll just head home. Raptor aggros a bronto, get caught in the tail swipe and thrown, the rest of my scuba breaks. Frak. Don the flak. East of the redwoods, walking along the bluff on that isle, I hear monkeys. Since I'm out here, I've been spyglassing the dinos, looking for good ones to come back for. A 135 female! Tame it. It has crap health, but good stats otherwise, white fur and black skin. Well, that was even a color combo I was looking for! Kill the 5 and 20 that are running around, even though the 20 has colors I want as well. Just around the corner, a 135 compy! Nope, not going back on land with a dino train. Put the spyglass up, find a way down to the swamp and sprint. Manage to not run out of stamina near troodons. Get home, put the monkey up, and remember I'm still in invisible mode. That's why I didn't die! Turn it back off, repair the scuba. This time I take the fishing raft. Oh, and I'm running the moby sausage-less mod that tones down the leeds, so a raft is still viable. Night is falling, we leave at dawn. Ok, am I really seeing this? Hundreds of pelas. They're like flies, lines of them spawning right in front of me. I must be seeing things. Over by cragg's, holy quetz batman. A 145 is even in the mix, along with an all-black low level one. I'm making rex kibble when I get back. Around the west we go. I've never seen so many pelas in my life. I counted 12 Q at cragg's. Geez, what's going on? Get to carno island, not a single crate yet. This frakkin sucks. Gathered 2k silica pearls in an underwater cave. Get between carno and far's peak, a crate! Go to it, and an ascendant giga saddle! Problem is, I don't have a giga. Still a keeper. Night falls again. Oh well, I'm headed to herbi anyway. Sun comes back up about the time I get there. Check out the last 3 drops, there should be one more crate. Nope, must have missed one of the others. 10pm, I'm not going back around again. Get home, dock the raft, check the troughs and shut down. I'll play again when I can actually think, and not do absolutely stupid things like attempt to swim around the map. I just hope the massive pela over-spawn won't kill all the other ones. May have to do a pela wipe. IIRC there is a way to do it.

With this game, it's either feast or famine. Loaded up the game, and put some veggie cake on to cook. I've seen some achatina around, so I'm going prepared. Stored most in the fridge, took 10 just in case. Jumped on the argie, out the hatch we go. Instead of heading to the green obi, I went to Drayo's Cove again. Guess what? Didn't look at the time. Sun goes down. I did catch a glimpse of a rex though. Good thing this is a stamina bird. Just hovered until dawn. I can see the outline of the titan at herbi island. You just keep your ass over there. Sun finally came up. Two rex. Spyglass. Bah, level 12 male, and, level 120 male. How convenient. A rex and raw prime right there together. Land, catch aggro, I love max tranq darts, they're down. Kill the 12 and pump the raw prime into the 120. He tamed to a 175, and is slightly specialized. 29 food, 30 weight, 29 damage. That's 5 more levels in weight, along with a few in food and damage than I had. Not a quantum leap or anything, but an improvement. Still haven't found that elusive 40 level per stat animal. Take the rex home, and set out again. Not seeing anything. Figures. Went to the green obi, there's that 150 oviraptor. Why not. Tranq, tame. Tamed to a 224 with Q eggs. He's specialized, in oxy. Good grief. 38 levels in oxy. WHY? Oh well, he's a 3 level improvement in HP as well. Take him home, come back. Fly the woods. Hear a monkey. Right under me, again. Go to land, get hit. Stupid raptors. Monkey spooks, and it had black fur too, go to shoot raptor. Wait, 130 female. Tranq, argie nearly kills it, hurry to whistle passive. Feed it stims, wake it up, retranq. Wait, my parasaur kibble is at home. WHY?! Screw it, got a little raw prime left, and it's about to spoil. She tamed out a 193, specialized in food and weight. 40 levels in food. WHY GAME, WHY?! Ugh, I'm tired and not in the mood for this. Well, 36 levels in weight is slightly better than what I have. Slightly. Take her home, this time I just loaded up some of every kibble I have. Let's go. Seems the green obi area is spawning high levels right now. Run across that 100 female oviraptor. Hmm, I'll see. Specialized in stamina. 2 level improvement. Eh, got plenty of Q eggs anyway. Tamed to a 149. Take her home. Back at the obi, flying low and slow, 116 female oviraptor. Sigh. Looks slightly specialized in stamina and weight. Tamed up to a 172, with no stats better than what I have. Well, I'll need another utility ovi anyway, and these are cheap. On the way out, I spot a 145 male Dimorph. I need mutton for that. Frak, don't have any, or raw prime. TE will take a huge hit with just plain raw. I know where there was a level 10 ovis just over the hill though. Right next to the beaver spawn at the waterfall. Head out. Still there, holy mutton batman. 130 pieces. Come back. Can't find the blasted thing again. Spot a 135 male. Theri distracts me, it's gone. Sun goes down. Frak. Wait out the night, fighting off low level troodons. Morning comes, the search commences. No sign of either one. I'm really hating this game, it's late, and I'm tired. Sleep pattern if effed up big time and I know I won't sleep anyway. Search continues, sweeping the area with the spyglass, EFF ME! 125 female bronto! And I have 10 turtle kibble! Not sure how, unless I've found that many eggs in the wild, which is likely as much as I've hung around herbi island. I know I've got several bronto eggs, and never had a bronto. That's changing, right now. Check the area, tranq and add kibble. She tamed up to a 187. Check the stats. Specialized in damage and speed. 24 health, 29 stam, 24 oxy, 19 food, 25 weight, 34 damage, 31 speed. Not highly specialized, but I'm happy with her for my first bronto. Got a plan to get her back, be too slow overland and I've already got that oviraptor on my shoulder. I'll take her to the obi, upload her, and pull her back from that beacon near my base. Now, another raptor shows up. Sigh. Another 130 female! I have lots of kibble this time. Tranq and feed. Check stats. Specialized in, HEALTH! Tamed out to a 194. Well, kibble didn't make that much difference over raw prime, but I do have 10x tame set. 11 levels in health over my best raptor, Stanzar, with her 39 levels. And, drumroll please, 38 levels in OXY! What the bloody hell is it with oxy?! This meant every other stat is utter crap. From mid teens to mid twenties. Well, if I can manage to breed these two 130s in successfully, I can get 39 health, 32 stam, 38 oxy, 40 food, 36 weight, 40 damage, and 32 speed. That'll pull things up to a 258. Still a long shot from the 300 mark. Attack music starts playing, my argie is under attack from another raptor. 116 male. Tranq and feed. He'll be junk. Yep, brings nothing to the table except a white belly, black body, and purple feathers. He's security. And there's the 135 male dimorph again. What followed was a royal mess of fighting dilos, the bronto aggroing everything in a 100 meter radius, fighting all that, trying to tranq the dimorph, rinse, repeat. Finally got it down. Fed it, it tamed out to a 202. Specialized in food and speed, with 35 and 39 levels. Ugh. Useless unless you're inflating numbers. Well, I now have a small dino army half the map away from base, with untold amounts of theris between myself and the obi a bit over 100 meters away. It's late, and I'm absolutely not walking these things home, plus my argie is a little worse for the wear now. Poor thing has taken a major beating tonight. Long story short, half an hour, and one raptor down (the 116 wild male) we get to the pad. I swear there were 20 theris in that little stretch from the beach to the obi. Shot a level 5 monkey on the way too. Junk spawns. Oh, and there's yet another 100 male oviraptor running around, and still haven't seen that 140 monkey or 145 dimorph again. Upload everything except the oviraptor that's still on my shoulder, and head home. Drop it off, and the beacon that is normally right there isn't. There's one on the other end of this island though. Even the one at Stonehenge isn't there. It's midnight, and I'm not waiting half an hour for a beacon, and I want to get this done tonight. So, fly out to it, download the dinos, throw the raptor on my shoulder. Not worried about the dimorph, it can fly and is on passive. Set the bronto to neutral, and immediately get swarmed by troodons. Manage to kill them off. Finally get the bronto in the gates at about 12:45 am. Put the argie, raptor and dimorph up and shut down. Geez what a night. What was the plan? A quick scouting run for high level spawns. Now I just need to start breeding all these. It's going to take a long time yet before I'm ready to try the bosses.

Loaded up my game, checked everything, grabbed kibble, and hopped on the wyvern. Looking for high level spawns. Spent a couple of hours with the super spyglass looking for anything worthwhile. Let's put it this way, when I saw a lvl 90, it was reason to rejoice. Evenly distributed stats, so I didn't tame it, and it was a raptor. I have much better stock than that already. I have never seen so many low level junk spawns in my life. Even up north, where things are supposed to be tougher, a level 50 seemed to be the high point. So, I flew over to the green obi to get a better idea for my building plans. Right now, I'm thinking of fencing in all the way around, taking in some of the water right above the fall for an intake pipe. Probably will build my home around that area, with the flyer barn to the south on that flat spot, and leave the land dinos standing around between the barn and the house. Then maybe build a breeding barn to the north. I just want to be a little more central to the map, and have easy access to the obi to move to SE and back. Now, flying low and slow on a wyvern, even without speed, is an exercise in frustration. These handle like a mack truck on ice. They just go where they want, you're hanging on for the ride. Oh, and they don't turn at all unless you're flying forward at the exact same time. I use it because of the speed, but I didn't feel like going back to get my argie. I also have 1650 CP to drop off. So, as I'm painfully flying around surveying the location in detail, I see a dilo after something white. I haven't seen a frakkin white monkey yet, they've all been tan. Land, shoot the dilo, the monkey runs a bit an settles down. Don the ghillie, crouch, sneak up and feed it kibble. Frak, lvl 8. I'll save it just for the white fur. Go to leave, here comes a tan one, chased by 2 dilos. Shoot them, spyglass. A frakkin 140 female! And it has disappeared. Shoot dilos, troodons, and a few raptors in the area. Then I go on a search in the general direction it was running. I know if I find it I'm going to have to choose between them, and the 140 will be my pick. I'd love to breed the white fur in, but I would rather have the better stats right now. I know, they're useless anyway, but this is my fun right now, and the game just isn't cooperating with high levels for anything interesting. I find it! Sneak up, feed it, failed to notice that raptor off in the distance. (To be fair, we are in the jungle now. Lots of trees.) Raptor attacks, monkey runs(I think, little distracted at the moment), raptor dies. Now where did it go this time? Search for a bit, run onto a few snakes and one microraptor(why are these things everywhere when I'm not looking for them, but I can't find one when I want to?), give up and head home. Grab the argie and head back. Aerial search is easier, and the argie fits in the woods, wyvern not so much. Oh, and theris won't bother a wyvern, but will an argie. Yeah, get back and there's a pack of troodons, 3 theris, an iguanadon, another pack of raptors, and enough dilos to fill the lagoon around the obi right where I was at a bit ago, all less than level 40. Good frakkin grief. The theris make it impossible to do a low and slow search, so I kill them and the raptors. The troodons don't seem to be interested at this time, and dilos are a mild annoyance at worst. I wish I could shoot from the back of a argie. The search is fruitless, I'm thinking the raptor may have somehow killed the monkey before I could react, even though I swear I heard it run off behind me. I search a pretty wide area, found a lvl 12 with what appeared to be redish fur farther north, but a dilo got to it before I could kill it. I really think between dilos and pteras, 50% of the spawns are taken, and I still haven't found a 150 of either. Go back to the obi, and fly around a bit. Triple digits pop up. ARE YOU FRAKKIN KIDDING ME?! ANOTHER 150 MALE OVIRAPTOR?! I just left, flew to the east through the woods. It might have had stats I need, but go to hell game. You can spawn 150s in crap dinos like that, but refuse to spawn any 150 brontos, rex, or anything good. A 100 female oviraptor. Sigh. I really wish I could find a way to adjust minimum spawn levels. Head back, nothing. Fly low and slow, listening for anything. This method has been the most successful for me in the past. Cross the river and head south, find what appears to be an old path. Follow it, finding ruins in a couple of places. I hear a monkey, and it's right under me. Fly to the side and land, ambushed by a pack of dilos. Kill dilos, monkey scares and runs off. Got a glimpse of its level, 68. Higher than anything I've got, but not by much. Wait a bit for it to calm down and start the search. Don the ghillie again, as I usually switch back to my flak for the extra protection. 20 minutes of a spiral area search later, the damn thing comes casually strolling back to where I first found it. Near impossible to see, and difficult to hear in the dense jungle, that's their only survival tactic though. Sneak up, feed it a couple times and it tames. Look at my library, it has better stats in everything except weight compared to what I have. According to the smart breeding app, since this tamed out to a 101, I can possibly get a 105 out of it with my weight mutated 63 female. Well, that's a leap better than what I had. Decide to fly high and take it home. Got distracted with a colorful Tap, but he was only level 45. Fly in the behemoth hatch, land, close the hatch, and the game crashes. Go to bed, to hell with it. Woke up this morning, got my coffee, and decided to see where the last autosave was. Right over Drayo's cove. Why the crap can't you stay mounted on DC? I'm falling. Tab, god, hit the ground right in the edge of the water. Monkey lands right in front of me. Whew. Not a fan of cheats really, I do sometimes use them, but always in a case like this. I should have been safely at home. Get ready to use the fly command, and for some strange reason, my argie actually flies down and lands. That's a first. And it even landed fairly close. Crap, troodons incoming. Pick up the monkey, sprint to the argie, jump on and fly home, this time it didn't crash. Now do I go back to check out the two oviraptors, or just do yet another wild dino wipe and hope for better spawns?

Last night, after the 8 hour session during the storm, I didn't feel like doing all that much. Loaded up my game, and tested out the prime meat jerky kibble. It worked fine, made up a dozen oviraptor kibble. Darkwinter had me a little worried there. Thought I might run up to the central cave. It's supposed to be easy, and I don't feel like trying the harder ones. So, jumped on Stanzar and off we went. If I was looking for a microraptor, I would never be able to find one. I'm not looking for one, I get knocked off my mount 5 times before I get through the redwoods. Ended up finding a pack of em right across the river. Finally got up to the cave, and a white/black rex is there. Level 90, bah. Head into the cave, and realize 2 things, I forgot to pick up food, and I forgot to pick up ammo. Run back out, grab a tree, and run back in. Go to craft a campfire, don't have flint. I have raw meat to cook. I found out that the rocks in the cave don't give flint. Commence beating head on desk. Ran the cave, not one creature. This is easier than the lower south one, picked up the artifact, and a JM scorpion saddle from the drop. I guess it was worth the trip. Get out of the cave, and the rex has cleared everything out, and went off somewhere. Headed home, managing to avoid the microraptors this time. Put my stuff up, killed monkeys, and picked up my ammo. S+ grinder inventory is hanging up again. Wasted nearly an hour in total waiting for the menu to unhang trying to turn raw meat into prime. Got that cooked, did some rounds, and jumped on the rex. Went to the east coast, and up through the jungle. Looked at the time. 11:30. I need to get back, haven't seen anything over 100. Look at the map. Good grief, I'm all the way up to far's peak. Took the direct route home. Still didn't see anything. Grumble about all these other people running onto multiple high level spawns when mine seem to be hit and miss, with mostly miss. Got back, slowly made the raw into prime, cooked it, and threw it in the dehydrator. It's 12:30. Good grief. Shut down, game throws and error and crashed. Maybe I didn't loose too much progress. I'm too tired to spend 15 minutes loading it back up to see. Ah the joys of EA.

Finally got some cave runs done, along with getting to bed at 3 a.m. Also had a tornado warning and enough rain to drown a megalodon. The first thing I did after loading up the game was check on the troughs. Then I began gearing up for the caves. Grabbed all the AR ammo I had, which totaled about 700 rounds, and threw a bunch on wood in the ind forge to start making more charcoal. Made up some grappling hooks, and got the asc crossbow out, along with a supply of jerky. I briefly thought about making up some flak, along with upgrading it to ascendant, but I decided not to. Well, that may have been a mistake. Also crafted up a ramshackle pike, again skipped upgrading, which was probably a mistake. Left the sniper rifle in the weapons box, as I figured it would be fairly useless in the cave. I really need to craft a pump shotty, but wasn't thinking as usual. I felt like I have enough oxy points I won't need scuba, maybe. Plus I'm low on CP. Take my best armor, which is the ghillie, which I forgot the beavers damaged last time. Ok, now I'm prepared, lets go. Head to the barn, and decide I'm not taking the rex. Too slow, and won't fit. Same for the spino. Decide to take my old raptor, Stanzar. He's bred, 100% imprinted, with mainly speed and damage leveled. He runs at nearly mach 1, so I have no fears. Sprinting he lags the game. Plus he fits in caves, and I've yet to see a dino he can't take on. I haven't, and won't, put him up against a giga though, that's just suicide. We're off! Along the beach, up the hill, and over to the ravine that contains the entrace to the lower south cave. Met a carno, went through the carno. Stanzar appreciated the meat. Two hits and it was down. I forgot how much I love this guy. Screw going around, just go through, or jump it if you can't. Into the cave we go. I run him down to the split in the path, and leave him there. This one's easy, I'll run it on foot. Three whole spiders later, I've got yet another artifact of the hunter, along with some meat and chitin. Slap the meat and chitin into Stanzar, and check the green drop. Hmm, apprentice cloth shirt. I would leave it, but my gut is telling me not to. I listen to my gut. Out of the cave, we run back to the ravine entrance, and turn north. A quick jog through the swamp, and a couple of dead snakes later, we're on the isle that houses the upper south cave. Now, the only cave I've bothered with is the lower south one, as it's a minute from my base. I pause, and pull up the wiki. Oh, I've chosen well. Easy cave, but it seems it is actually hard. I briefly consider not doing it, but go on. No risk, no reward. Resume playing, looking for the way in. Kill some more snakes, a sarco, and god knows how many raptors stupid enough to go head to head with Stanzar. Finally find the entrance, and head in. Not far into the cave, I run into a bit of a snag. Stanzar won't fit through a spot. I briefly look around, but don't immediately see a way around. So I leave him here. I head downward, and run onto some onycs. One is a 145. I do have some meat, so I try taming it, being I have my ghillie. I quickly realize even with accelerated taming, this is going to take all night. Eh, cheat tame. He takes out the other one. Now, we head downward, brass flying out of the AR at every turn. Good grief, how many of these arthro whatever things(forget the name, and too lazy to look it up) are there? And they spit stuff at you. The snakes are cake compared to these, they're actually pretty tough. I've seen them around the swamps, or was it in SE, just haven't been in close quarters with them yet. Also, they don't normally come in groups of 2 or more on the surface. Well, on down we go, through snakes and stuff. Found a bad spot and got teleported back to the surface. Fought raptors until I got back to the entrance, and headed back down. Managed to get past the spot this time. Hey, ruins, grab the dossier. More ruins. Looks like it's water from here on out. Leave the onyc here. Swap to the pike, and dive in. Holy carnivorous fish batman! Got swarmed immediately. Fought through them with the pike. So, this is supposed to be an EASY cave huh? Yep, wiki was right. No matter, I'll maybe survive. Head down to the blue drop. Got a blueprint for ramshackle gauntlets, hide IIRC. Well, take it. I think I have one already, but I'll compare when I get home. Go up to replenish oxy, and head down. Between the piranha, and sarcos, I'm beginning to wonder if I'll make air again. Really beginning to think I should have upgraded the pike. Get back on dry ground, and more snakes and crawling critters. You probably know the cave, was in and out of the water, fighting piranah and sarcos for a while. How long is this frakkin cave? Surely I'm getting close to the artifact, wait, is that it? Yep. Ok, what's hitting me. Good grief, stuff attacking me from under the map. By the time I got everything to come to the surface and kill it, I'm down to my boots. This is not good. My pike is also down to 50%. This is really not good. Throw on the cloth shirt I picked up earlier. That's why I listen to my gut. It's not much, but it's something. I'm chewing through jerky like mad right now. So I grab the artifact, and debate on going back the way I came, or continuing on. I let myself heal up for a bit. Onward it is. The other cave had two paths to get to the artifact, long and short. If this cave is the same, the other path has to be the short one, right? I hope so. Check my inventory, and my armor is not only broken, but gone. Frak, I forgot about the stack limit. I've got so much meat in there now. Empty the meat out, and continue. I've gotta be smart about it from here on out. Start testing the waters, kiting the sarcos out, and using the AR on them. Same with all the piranha I can get out. My pike breaks. Frak. Next water crossing, i run across a blue drop. A pike! Grab it and start taking out fish again. Hey, I'm back at the start. Finally, I've got backup now. Found the other drop, and picked up apprentice cloth hat. Don it, every bit helps. Now my boots break. Frak. At least they end up back in inventory. I'm down to about 30% health. Not good at all. Set the onyc on aggressive. It's gonna be my saving grace. Brass flying on my way out, we make it back to Stanzar in one piece. I've got about 15% health left. And found a way in for a raptor on my way out. Go figure. Set the onyc back to neutral, munch more jerky and head home. I'm not too worried now, we've been through a lot of crap together, he'll get me home. Holy raptor swarms batman! Geez, how many of these things can the game spawn? Made it back to the swamp, crossed, and managed to get another onyc after me. My new pet took care of the matter. Now I'm back on the home isle, but still got raptors, carnos, and who knows what else to wade through. I decide to go through the woods instead of the beach, less chance of a carno that way. Just into the woods, a raptor aggros the onyc, and a bronto, which aggros the onyc, and I get thrown backwards off a cliff. Good frakkin grief. Force feed Stanzar some meat, he took a hit from that fall. Got the message my onyc has been killed by a bronto. Oh well. Get back on top, and hit sprint. Trying to dodge trees at this speed is impossible. I just start chomping at them. Yep, a raptor can munch trees. Hit the ravine, fall down. Back to the beach, back over the hill, and to my base. Whew! Now that was fun. At this point we're under a tornado warning. I'm watching the storm on radar on the other monitor. So, I now have no ghillie armor, and organic polymer is a pain to obtain on the island. Farming mantis was simple on SE, that's where that armor came from. Grab my chitin, as it helps slightly with the cold, and go to the upgrade station. Brought back enough chitin to upgrade it to ascendant. Great! Craft up a club, upgrade it to ascendant. I'll fly up to whitesky in a bit and hunt penguins. Checked on everything, threw the raw prime out of Stanzar's inventory in the grill, donned my chitin armor, as my fur is just base, and I won't be there long hopefully. Threw a couple more monkeys out in the yard, jumped on the wyvern and headed off at full sprint. Flew between whitesky and winter's mouth, turned left along the coast. First thing I saw was a group of 4 penguins. Land, shoot, club, direwolf attacked. Club it unconscious. Bah, lvl5 female. Kill it. Grab 2 more penguins, and stunned. Frak, purlovia. I'm glad i have upgraded armor. So I can move again, I fill it full of holes. I'm down to 50 rounds of AR ammo. Got the other penguin and took off. I'm cold, but hopefully won't be here much longer. Back in the air, I find a group of 5 just north of whitesky. Jump off and get them without incident, and I head home. Craft up and upgrade my ghillie when I get home. Man it's getting late. Storm has weakened, but now we've got torrential rain, and more storms headed this way. Started 1k AR rounds in the fabricator, and turned my attention to my storage situation. Made up 3 new large storage boxes, and placed them out by the chemistry bench. Sparkpowder, gunpowder and metal ingots 2. Began mass manufacture of gunpowder again. The armrest falls off my chair. Frak. Try to get it back on, but don't have the appropriate tool. Well, that will have to wait until tomorrow, not going out to the shop with all this cloud to ground lightning. Spent the next hour gathering wood and stone to replenish supplies and make charcoal. Grabbed the anky, and went out gathering flint. Came back to mass manufacture sparkpowder. 2 of my boxes fill up, so I start making more gunpowder, and transferring to the fabricator. I'm really tired at this point, it's getting to the wee hours of the morning. Fill up my storage box for stone, empty the quetz into the forge. Got the ind forge and 3 regular ones burning wood for charcoal. I should go out and do something, but it's after 1 a.m., and as soon as this storm passes, I'm going to bed. Look at upgrading my fur, but only have 58 pelt. Well, I need to make another trip to the snow biome I guess. Not tonight, or this morning actually. So I make up a couple more wood ceilings, and some wood rails to expand the landing going up to the barn loft. I've already walked off the edge once. Got that done, so I gathered all the raw meat from my adventure and threw it in th s+ grinder. Made prime out of it. Got the cooked prime out of the grill, and refilled it from the grinder. Put the cooked prime in the fridge, it's full. Put the rest in the dehydrator. Got all that cooked up and put up, it's 2 a.m. Still storming. ugh. Paint some doorways in brick. Not sure I like it. Oh, and my lights are screwed up again. So, now that it's late, I'm tired, and the lights are all messed up, I go switch them off, and realize it's night. So, I go around lighting my wall torches. Placed a couple more where it's dark. I'll just have to use these until the multi-lamps get straightened out. Checked the troughs one more time, went up to the living quarters and shut down. 2:30 am, the storms have moved off to the east, I've been playing ark for over 8 hours, and I'm falling asleep at the keyboard.

Had a productive, if not slightly boring and not what I had planned, session last night. A few pages back, I spoke about the quetz I had spawned in because I needed a mass quantity of metal and the best, and only, one I had at the time was a lvl 8. Well, It was spawned in at level 15k just for laughs. This gave it an initial carry weight in the high 20k range, don't remember exactly what, but by the time I got to the volcano, it had enough levels that I got it up to 34k. Ridiculous, I know, but this is SP, and I wasn't intending to use it but for one run. Well, there was an update, and its carry weight dropped to 7k, so I continued to use it. I don't know if it was a WC update or a classic flyers update, but it dropped. Only the Q was affected, and only weight. Now i have 5 Q, 3 high 100s level, from the CF mod update that made birds lay random eggs. Got some argies, taps, and pelas from that, as well as several wyvern eggs. So I started using the Q train, which is easier than a land train, but they still pile up, especially on descent. Yes, I have one set to follow the other. So, being even bronto weights seem low, I decided it's time to rectify the situation. I bumped the per level scaling multiplier for weight on dinos, tamed and wild, to 5x. This was going to be a trial, with further adjustments to keep some challenge, but allow mass gathering of resources without spending a week of play sessions to do so. I also didn't have access to the platform saddle until two nights ago, when I finally rolled over to lvl 90. Still haven't made one. So, I load up the game, and I thought I saw it blip across the screen that it was updating CF, but I wasn't sure. I shrugged it off, as I had installed super spyglass, inventory cleaner, and a couple of other small QoL mods as well. Went to check the weight on my cheat Q, named ugh, and I about pooped myself. 98k carry weight. What. The. Bloody. Hell. It takes too long to reload the game, so I'm not messing with it, but apparently something was fixed in CF, or these multipliers are multiplying multipliers. I know the level scaling is a percentage, but by putting in a 5x multiplier, it should give me 5x percent per level, like if the scaling is 2% of base per level, that should give 10%. So by logic the increase should be fairly linear, so I clearly don't understand how this works, or something else changed. Maybe the scaling is % of the last level, which would make more sense given the numbers I'm seeing. More experimentation is called for, just not tonight, and I'll have to check some other dinos as well. May just be the game acting funky about this one bird. So, for the rest of the night. As I was scratching my head over the weight thing, I head the monkeys squeak. Probably got a couple newborns. Nope, got 5. Triplets and twins. High 50s and mid 30s. Claimed and fed, led them to the nursery area. Come back in 5 mins to top em off on berries to get them to juvie stage. These look like they'll be yard monkeys. So I set about pulling ugh out of the barn, and got ready to go gather lots of metal. The ind forge is cold, and even though I still have 12k ingots or so, the planned move, along with a few other projects are going to suck up metal and CP like crazy. Now, somewhere in the mix I got distracted, and ended up back in the living quarters where my bed, extra armor, tools, weapons, and ammo are located just in case I goof up and die. I heard a squeak, and it was too high pitched for an adult. Red text saying one of my unnamed monkeys has died. Checked the nursery, and one of the triplets is dead, with 28 mejos left in inventory. Food bug again, as these have 800 food, and the ones with 500 are doing fine. Drag the body onto a metal floor, and harvest it. Set the prime up to cook, and check up on the others. They're all fine. Feeding trough is getting low on berries, so I pull a bunch off the yard monkeys into it. Went back and pulled the cooked prime, then placed it in the designated fridge. Now, I finally get to the volcano. Pretty green lights around it. Land and begin gathering metal, by hand, since I haven't made the platform saddle yet, and didn't feel like fooling with the anky. Two full trips around the volcano, even with 3x gather and 10x faster respawn, this is gonna take a while. I'm not even half full yet. Not only is this bird OP, it's exhausting. Two ingame days at the volcano, and I'm breaking 50k metal. Well, I hit the stack cap at 55k, since I've got some other supplies in the bird just in case. Finally, I've worn out an apprentice pick up here. Back to base. Get home, fill up the forge, and set the monkeys to pop out babies again. Yep, I remembered to turn off wandering before I left, not that it would have mattered anyway. Would've just had a few corpses to clean up. I'm working for high stats out of one female, and high stats plus the color out of the other. Still need some high level ones, just can't be bothered to walk the edges of the jungles looking for one right now. I also could use some achatinas. Made some more metal ceilings, and got the wood ones out of the nursery area, which just happens to hold the 3 regular forges, 3 mortar&pestles, fabricator, 2 fridges for fish and jerky, and a fireplace. It's on the second floor, right between the kitchen on the first, and the living quarters on the third. The greenhouse is through the west door, the second floor of the barn through the east door. Now, I hate metal floors for one reason. Glare. Went to the kitchen and made up lots of black dye, and commenced painting. Yay for a coal black, non-reflective floor. Gotta decide on a color and paint the s+ glass doors and walls I have to stop the glare from them as well. Thinking a grey color would be good. I had a forest green greenhouse made out of the glass tier in SE that I thought looked nice, but I dunno how green on black will look. Might try it, but one thing. I'm out of CP, AGAIN! Well, at this point even a single cave run is looking unlikely. Hop on the wyvern, and head out to the east. Sun is just coming up, so I've got time(haven't I learned not to think that yet?). Stonehenge sails by. Ah the freedom of flight. Land, find two dams. You know the routine. Aggro beavers, kite onto land, tranq, raid. Yep, I did it again. I try to preserve these, as spawns can be funky. I killed two here before the last dino wipe, and they never respawned. One is low on health, so I raid the dams, then come back to him. Dump mejos in his inventory and force feed to bring food up. You have tamed a beaver!. Son of a bitch. Stupid level 16. Brrrap. Your beaver has been killed. Harvest and leave. Head up to the hidden lake, and back down the river. Now, at the fork by the fallen tree bridge at the redwoods, there are typically 3 beavers. I see one dam. One. Stupid. Dam. Damn. Raid it, and head back to the wyvern. Whap! I go flying though a spray of blood, over the wyvern, and into the palms. What the hell?! All three beavers hit me at once. That put a dent in the ghillie, as well as my health. Tranq em, start to fly off, and triple digits pop up. Are you frakkin kidding me?! A perfect 150 male! Welp, I know what I'm taking home. He tamed up to a 223, 29 health, 31 stam, 31 oxy, 26 food, 36 weight, 32 dam, and 37 speed. Not bad. Threw him on my shoulder, and took off. Remember what I was thinking about time? Yep. Sun is getting low, and I'm running 2x day length, 0.5x night length. When it goes down, it goes down in seconds. Right shift time, with two stops to go. One dam at the other redwoods spawn, didn't even have to tranq the beavers. Take off, right shift to the footpaw, grazing the back of a titan at mach 2. One dam, and a snake. Brrrraaaap. Bye snake. I'm running through ammo like water through a tap. That's what I was afraid of. That was a magazine right there. Gonna build that chemistry bench when I get back, I'm gonna need bronto loads of gunpowder with this thing. Don't think I'll be running out of ingots any time soon. (Did I just think that? Frak.) Tranq the beavers and investigate what the snake had killed. Achatina. Harvest it, and head for home. Tally it up, a touch more than 1700 CP. That won't last long. Slapped the CP into the fabricator, and ran up the polymer for a fab sniper. I wish I had a blueprint for a better one, but I don't. Then I made up a chemistry bench, placed it, and threw some hide and oil in the forge. Connected up the new bench with the electric grid, and threw 100 gasoline in. Dumped a bronto load of flint and stone in, and commenced mass production of sparkpowder. Wanna guess what I'm gonna use that for? Grab a couple of newborns. Look like yard monkeys, one might be a keeper. Queue up a fab sniper rifle, and go to the smithy to make a silencer. Go back to the chemistry bench, throw in a bunch of charcoal, and commence gunpowder production. Run back to the smithy and repair my hatchet and pick. Almost forgot that. Polymer and rifle is finished. To the upgrade bench. Upgrade to ramshackle, do I have enough supplies, yep. Try for apprentice, got an efficient double upgrade. Sweet! JM sniper rifle. Do I dare try again? Not enough supplies, about had a heart attack when the amounts needed popped up on screen. Guess what? I'm basically out of CP, again. Run over to the fabricator, and fab up 200 sniper bullets. Went up to the living quarters and placed my apprentice scoped longneck in my weapons box, along with its ammo. I really like the single shot, but my new rifle has 338% damage, vs this ones 148%. Even though it probably evens out somewhat due to the longneck's higher base damage, I'd say the fab sniper is going to be much better. Still got a ramshackle longneck I'm using for tranqs. I need to upgrade these when the forge finishes. It's getting late, so I check up on the monkeys. Got 5 that have matured, all junk but one. Nueter/spay and throw em out in the yard. That makes 26 running around outside. Gonna be another mass murder soon. The higher level female poops out a lvl 63. That's a keeper for sure, the highest level I have so far. Put it in the breeding app. Went around pulling berries from the yard monkeys into the feeding troughs again, grabbed 300ish gasoline from the forge and topped it off with metal. Store the gasoline and set about rearranging some of my storage. Now I've got a spot just for narcs, more room for kibble and eggs, along with room for another fridge. Got two more storage chests to change out, but it's looking better. Ok, so it's almost tomorrow and what was I going to do tonight? Oh yeah, cave runs. Might get that done next session, if the power stays on. Forecast is severe storms.

Nothing interesting happened last night, just the usual staying up until tomorrow not paying attention. Made a bunch of dodo kibble, and dilo kibble, as I was out of the former and low on the latter. Made some argy and ankylo as well. That ran me out of jerky, so now I need to make more AA dehydrators to up my production. I have thousands of pounds of cooked meat anyway. Changed out male monkeys early, neutered the junk one and threw him out in the yard. Got a 61 so far, along with several high 50s. Looking better, but still junk. A junk ptera I'm keeping in the yard just in case I want the colors glitched into a rock, so I had to deal with that. Then I finally set about straightening up lights. Still got 5 more out in the barn to do, but that will require me to use the fly command, and they're not bothering me too much. Game got to really lagging, and textures weren't loading in fully a little bit in. So, I went to the yard, whistled to follow, with the tame group set this time, and mass murdered monkeys. All I left was a 30 and 36. As I was shooting, my rex was munching. Got almost 1k meat out of it, so threw that in the grill to make jerky with. That helped, but the pteras are next on the chopping block. Time to downsize. Now, I had been thinking about my weapon loadout. I don't like automatic weapons, mainly because of the cost of ammo, and the rate they go through it. But, I put the crossbow up, and pulled out the ascendant AR I brought back from SE. Made up 700 rounds of ammo, and it even has a flashlight attachment. We'll see. I predict that I'll be back to the crossbow within the week. That 700 rounds used up all my gunpowder, and I must go on a metal run soon. I need cementing paste again as well. My reasoning is, I can run the south cave solo with just my six gun, but I'm going to hit some of the others, and I feel I may need the firepower. I'll probably switch something out for the crossbow back and make some grappling hooks as well. Well, now I've made a plan, so I know what I'm probably not going to get done.

Very boring one today. The game just doesn't like me right now. First thing, when I loaded in, my lights are all screwed up again. No, I'm not taking them all down and replacing them. I do need to make some more kibble, so I look at the ind cooker again. Need just 60 more polymer, but I'm out of cementing paste other than what is set back for the cooker itself. Well, I know what I'm doing later. So I set in running down my guards and resetting them to neutral. Checked the troughs and such, just routine stuff. Went outside, and decided to check on the yard monkeys. Punched numpad2 for their tame group and whistled follow, and yep, didn't take. Cursed for a while. Now all my animals are piled up in one corner of the barn, and I have a rex breathing in my face. Almost just deleted the save right then and there. I have 62 animals in the smart breeding app, and maybe half of them are accounted for there, probably less. So I clear out the monkey's inventories, just to make sure they don't collect so many narcos and stims they can't eat, and set about the 2 hour task of untangling all the tames. I'm really going to have to cull a bunch of animals, my base is getting so laggy now that I can barely walk down the stairs. After getting all that sorted out, and all the breeder animals set to ignore group whistles, I hop on the wyvern and make the cementing paste rounds. This actually went pretty well. Raid a dam, tranq the beavers, take everything and fly off. Got back to the spawn by the footpaw, and there's a sarco harassing a dam. Tranq it, and now I've got a beaver after me. Tranq it, and notice that it's really low on health, and is a level 96. I give it some berries, not thinking, and raid the dam. Raid the other dam. Now, I come back to the wyvern, and I have tamed a beaver! Ok. Set it up with the pick-up mod, and take it back to base. Might as well. So now I have a male beaver that I have no use for right now, but he tamed to a 143. Mediocre stats, but I guess he can gather wood for me or something. Loaded up the fabricator and made 1k polymer, and an ind cooker. Set it down on a water pipe, and made up some dodo kibble. Also had a few new monkeys born. One lvl46 with a weight mutation died because I was busy untangling tames, and a lvl 11 died to the food bug, but this one would have been a yard monkey anyway. Had some born from lvl 30-41, one weight and one food mutation. Yep, gotta find some high level ones. Then I can kill all these crap ones. Just working with what I can find. Then I went out and picked up that 150 Oviraptor. It tamed out near perfect at 224, highlights are 33 lvls in weight, 40 in damage, and 40 in speed(I know, useless except for torpor). He is full of stone serving the other half of my barn now. Went after the Diplo, and it's gone. Guess it died. Oh well. Oh, look, it's tomorrow again. Shut down. Tonight will probably be used cooking up kibble. I have hundreds of eggs I need to use.

Years ago I learned to not make plans, as they never work out for me. The Q train for metal hasn't happened, other things have. I really hate metal runs anyway, along with any other tedium. First thing, I decided to expand my pen, and throw the extra monkeys I have now out there. Maybe a wild bird will munch on them. I really need a high level one, but finding the dumb things, ugh. Once that was done, I went around grumbling about the update to s+ that messed up my lights and stuff. Did some house keeping, aka throwing a bunch of useless armor, tools, and building materials in the grinder. Installed a couple of keypads for remote control of lights and doors, and made a bunch more narcotics. I was in the greenhouse checking on the crops when I saw something move across the river. Yep, one of the titans came this way. Whistled passive to all my tames. Don't need that getting over here and getting aggro'd. Luckily, it decided to go west, and not east. Decided to build a tree platform and some taps. Need cementing paste. Ugh. Jump on the argie and make the rounds. Come back with about 2k paste. Make what I need, and throw the rest in the fabricator to make polymer. I also need that ind cooker. Flew back out to the redwoods, found a nice spot, placed the platform and taps. Sniped some low level dinos, and went home. Time to quit for the night. Last night, played Factorio experimental for a bit, then fired up Ark. So, I still need high level dinos for my breeding program, and I really hate the tedium of metal runs. Dino hunting it is. Also noticed the update to S+ tonight fixed the lights. YAY! Don't wanna take the rex, too loud. Looked in my armor box, hey there's my set of ascendant ghillie. (That was expensive to upgrade to. Upgrade station mod ) So, I'm going on foot. This is gonna turn out well, it really is. Made my way around Stonehenge, and headed toward a starter base i have on the next island over. Ran across a lvl 44 monkey. Better than what I've got, and finding these things is a pain in the ass. Tame it up, continue on my way. Come up to my old base, heh, I left the door open. Checked the boxes, nope, didn't leave anything but a little wood. Head up the mountain, sneaking around the few raptors and such. Come out on the northeast corner. See a lone troodon. Spyglass it. Level 116. Now, I really don't like to cheat tame, but for a 116, I'll do it this time, especially knowing how these things are tamed. Tranq it, and hit the console. Now I've got a security force that consists of more than a shoulder mounted poop thrower. Now, when things are going this well for me in ARK, I'm looking for the brown clouds, cause a poopstorm is coming my way. I decide that instead of risking going back over the mountain, I'm going around the beach. This was my first mistake. Then I notice the sun is getting low. I wasn't watching the time. This was my second mistake. Then a pack of raptors decide it's time to go get a drink of water. I don't carry automatic weapons. I have a six gun, crossbow, a longneck and of course hatchet and pick. Raptor decided to munch on my troodon, which does not approve. My monkey doesn't either, neither do I. Six gun blazing, the fight is on. Good thing they're all lower levels. I came out fine, my troodon lost about a third of its health. Harvest the raptors and feed my troodon. Once her health gets up, I continue on. By now it's dark, but the moonlight is better for visibility than a useless torch. Two rex on the other side of the river. No biggie, I'm out of aggro range. And then I get hit, and stunned. I hear that distinctive hiss. Troodons. Spam the stims I keep in my hotbar, and draw the six gun again. A whole herd of troodons. I'm glad I invested some points in fortitude now. Start firing into the group, who have somehow lost aggro on me, and switched to my troodon. Start shooting, three of them switch aggro back to me. Running backwards shooting, get hit twice more, spam stims, shoot. About the time the third one goes down, "your troodon has killed troodon, your troodon has been killed by troodon" Son. Of. A. Bitch. That was the most family friendly phrase that came out of my mouth. Run back, only to get hit by two more troodons. Yeah, managed to kill em, and finally got the purple haze out of my vision. And the red out of my real life vision. I was livid. Shoulda went back over the mountain. And the moon gets obscured by clouds. Really? Good grief. Wait until sunrise so I can actually see more than 10 feet. Sunrise comes, and I know immediately why I was attacked. Yep, this spot is always infested with troodons, but at night, I didn't recognize how close I was to it. Such is life in ARK. At least I'm not headed back on the rex to collect my gear. Head around the corner, spyglass an oviraptor. Level 150. Really? What in the hell? Of all the piece of crap dinos, an oviraptor? Note the location. Looks like I'll be breeding oviraptors. Don't have eggs on me though. Got back to base without further incident. Dropped off the monkey to the breeding pen, grabbed more ammo, and the spino. Not going after the oviraptor right now, but toward the east shore. I notice the titan is nowhere to be seen. Small blessings. Headed along the south beach again, notice a raptor harassing a diplo. Spyglass the diplo, 120. Worth saving. Start shooting the raptor, spino sits there drooling. Ok. Raptor goes down. Level 135. /facepalm. Check levels before you shoot dumbass. Beat head on desk. Ease around the corner, usually there are dangerous dinos around here, most commonly a rex or two. Green drop. Check it out, since I'm right here. Double drop, with a MC parasaur saddle bp. I'll take that, rest is junk. Some dilos moving around, draw the six gun. Wait, check levels first. A 140 male. Bang head on desk again. Piece of crap dinos. I swear. Kill the really crap ones, and tame up the 140. Tamed out to a 207. 32 levels in HP, 36 in weight, and 32 in damage. Ok, now if I can find a high level female, I'll have a cheap, disposable, mobile security force. Yeah, right. Chances of that happening are slim to none. Move on around to cross to the east coast. And ran into a carno. Low level, kill it. Kill em all. Oh boy, another rex. Good thing it's occupied with a bronto right now. Decide I'll take the water route. Pop a raptor with tranqs to check level, and get hit by a dilo I didn't see behind a rock. Spino sits there drooling. I kill the dilo. What the hell? Remember when I whistled my tames passive because of the titan? Yeah. Sun is going down again. Sigh. Kill the raptor, hit the water. Stay reasonably close to the coast, and make it home just at sunset without further incident. Make the rounds and shut down. Plan for tonight, set my tame groups and get my guards back on neutral.

Last few days have been a snooze fest here. I did finally get my barn roof as sorted as it will ever get, and got the ind forge built. Also bumped the difficulty up to 1.286 to hopefully get some 150 spawns. A few interesting things have happened though. While collecting dodos for bunny eggs, I noticed not 1, but 2 titans are near my base. Going to have to keep an eye on them. The third one is on Herbi island. Also noticed a lvl 76 spino nearby. Interesting. Anyway, I'm on the hunt for a high level bronto, so I take out one of my crapola argies and go on the hunt. What do I run onto? Not a bronto, but a pair of triple digit rex, male and female in the swamp. 112 male, 116 female. Repeated attempts to kite these out of the swamp proved futile, they kept getting stuck or distracted. Dark fell, so I landed the argie on the top of a cliff to keep an eye on the pair until sunrise. I have had bad experiences trying to kite or tame at night, and I happened to find them at near sunset. Go figure. So, landed on the top of the cliff, about 5 seconds later, whap, dismounted and stunned, argie goes ballistic. Draw the six gun, spinning around ready to shoot anything moving, vision is blurred. Nothing hits me, argie settles down. Still don't know what it was, but my suspicions are a microraptor. Once my vision cleared back up, I got back on my mount and waited in peace for sunrise. The rex are nowhere to be seen. Cue 10 minutes of flying around cursing, at which point I just decided to continue the bronto hunt. Heading around the redwoods, nothing over lvl 40 has been seen. Get around to the fallen tree bridge, and what's this? Pull out the spyglass and a lvl 120 female galli is right there in the open. Good thing I brought lots of narcs. Last one of these I tried to tame was on SE and it was a disaster. This time I was successful, tamed out perfect at lvl 180. 30 HP, 29 stam, and 31 weight levels are the high points. Not bad for my first galli. Throw her on my shoulder(I love that mod, so convenient) and head back to base. Now back to the bronto hunt. Go around the west this time, nothing but crap. Saw so many spinos I'm beginning to wonder if they have blocked everything else. Killed multiple dinos trying to force some new spawns, and found a pair of lvl 72 brontos. Tranq them, and the one stat they're not leveled up in is weight. Crap. Not wasting my time on these. Might have if they had been triple digits, but all stats are crap. Leave them to drain hp for a while, will kill them later, ammo is expensive. So I decided to go collect the bunny eggs and work around the base for a bit. Yep, spino is still there, within sight, eating fish. Decided to add a second level to my barn for the flyers. Half way through, I hear a commotion. Spino has found the dodo pen, great. Tranq it, weight stat sticks out as slightly higher. Tames out to lvl 110, with 23 levels in weight. Not spectacular, but it came to me, so why not. Put it in the barn, another commotion, what now. Sarco is trying to get in the dodo pen. Lvl 20, you're lunch. Now to see if I can finish the flyer level. Nope, nonsensical random no foundation support messages. Screw it, back to the bronto hunt. Oh crap, it's dark again. Collect eggs and wait for sunrise. Sun is up, take off to the west again, around to Whitesky. Might as well collect some oil while I'm here. Still nothing of note. My game hates me sometimes. Decide to head back through the redwoods, nothing particularly interesting. Flying down over the swamp, right out of it, two rex. Can't be, that's only 500 meters from my base. Yep, my pair from earlier, and the sun is getting low. I see a pattern developing here. Screw it, they're busy harassing a trike. Land, they kill the trike, I tranq them. Grab some raw prime from the argie, and slap it in their inventory. Tamed out 165 and 171. Male is higher in HP and weight, female is stam and damage. Yes! Throw the argie onto my shoulder, throw the saddle I put in inventory just in case on the male, whistle the female to follow and back to base we go. Now, last night I decided to take my lowest level rex out for some leveling. Gonna make him my utility rex. So we head up on the mountain. Nothing. Level him by munching on trees. Go almost to the east shore, finally run onto a meso. Lvl 8, bah. Still, hardly ever see one, so I tame him up. Munch on the odd low level ptera, parasaur, pegos, dilos, and whatever else wanders in my path. Still looking for a good bronto. Finally wander back around to where I tranqed the brontos. They're bloody, about ready to kill. So I munch on them, kill the first one, jump off to see if it dropped anything, rex munches on it. You idiot. Well, there's the other one. Munch on it, just as it dies, a white rex rolls out of the woods on me, the spinal scales are black, but the rest is white. Lvl 80, and it munches my bronto, then tries my rex. Ah well, today you die. White rex would be neat, but you've just pissed me off. Take it down, now it's getting dark again. Ride along the river to the swamp, see a load of spinos, not much else. Get home, and begin cooking up a rex load of meat. While the meat is cooking, I decide to use the flock of ichthyornis that hang out over the river as target practice. They're not easy to hit, and a flock of them tends to induce lag. Got them killed, so i started sniping dilos. Then a pego shows up. First shot connects, doesn't die. Ok. Second shot kills it. Lvl 108. Damn it! Female too. That would've went well with my male that was 104 wild, tamed to 155. (Why I'm thinking about breeding up pegos, I have no clue.) Collected the cooked meat, threw it in the dehydrator and shut down. At 1:30am, I can't think to check levels before shooting. Tonight I plan on forming up the Q train and fill up the ind forge, and probably will do a cave run just to mix things up.