Ganelon

Fine. The answer is... I don't know... google cheats. Or run them again, anyway. Whatever.

Why not just do them anyway?

This morning, I abandoned the base I have on the Island. The server(404) is so grossly over-built that it is just not to even putter around on. I demoed the TP pad and Tek Gen to recover the hard poly... then said goodbye.

Yesterday I took my son and friend on an alpha Broodmother. It ended up being a cluster, as the Yuti spawned in the crowd and I didn't have time to control it... and I neglected to set it on auto roar. The end result is the yuti died and the rexes took far more damage than they should have. Even so, we killed her and they got the engrams. This was a last hoorah, as I will be dismantling the base and leaving the server, which is insanely filled with huge box tribe bases. It's ARK sprawl to the max, even though there are no more than 10 players on at a time. Shame that, as the Winterfell Keep I built was excellent and in a great spot.

I painted my bases on GenTwo. Set up colored lighting and such. Breeding Astrodelphis. My son is busy taming a Shadowmane.

Setup a new base on Gen2! I can't express how much fun it is to have so much element. It feels so ... decadent ... to always runthe Tek Gen at max radius. I built the new base in Tek in the Rockwell side at the far end of the trench. It's my second base on this map, with the main crafting base on the Eden side. We lost our Tek Skiff to a space crash/rollback. The bed on it showed in the respawn map, but when respawning it could not be found. So we said "them's the breaks" and made a new skiff. But, the next day, my buddy respawned and saw the skiff... and was able to recover it. So... 2 skiffs. We keep one at each base now. I also tamed two space dolphins, which was far easier than I anticipated. However, even though I have the saddles from a drop... I am not the level needed to use the coolio jet on them... so they are just for the pretty. I'll get there. I really need to power through some missions. After a very rocky start, I'm pretty satisfied with the server I chose. Yes, ARK gotta be ARK... but I can live with it. I'll be letting my Island base go this week. And I intend on downsizing the extinction base to just the Skiff and a landing pad with a transmitter. Gen2 and Crystal are now my mains.

Re: server 998... I think they killed the original 998 and installed the backup on another IP. Yesterday, I was voice chatting with my tribemate who said he has to manually lookup 998, and then he finds it and it is up... he logged in to refresh. He also said Battlemetrics shows 2 998s... one live and one dead. I tested that in the server lookup screen, and sure enough... it was there... even though it shows as down on my favorites and survivor lookups. Take this with a grain of salt, as I did not personally login and play on the server. But, I can say I got different results yesterday when I did the lookup under official server and 998. If this turns out to be true, other people with 'dead' servers should try it.

Well, this was last night... but I'll end with today. Last night I joined a group for a run on the Gen 1 Controller. Met 3 good chaps and BS'd between setup and run. I strongly encourage you to play with a mic. It really makes the social of the game. And if you are of age... drink your preferred libation. This morning, after getting the boss engrams and ascending, I built my first Hover Skiff. If you have the element to feed it, and be smart on how you run it, it is such a great tool.

Cuz you can't unless you have the finished code to submit to that package distro(PS4, PS5, Xbox, etc...) Then... each update to that code needs re-certification. At least, that is my understanding if it from other devs.

Fun story... It had been ages since I played on Ab, and so I set myself to branch out a base on what looked like a decent server. I transmitted myself to the AB server with a full set of desert gear, a wing suit, a spare transmitter, the fixings for a starter base, a magmasaur, and a rock drake. My goal was to setup and farm a squad of Rock Drakes, as I only had the one that I had traded for. I was circling fert lake to see if there was a good spot, and I rode into a patch of shrooms and got poisoned. I had forgotten which mushroom would counter it and died, leaving all this and the drake on a high bridge that is not accessible on foot. The level of anguish was exquisite. I was fortunate enough to get help from an outstanding player (Towel of Tegrity) who used his skiff help me to fully recover. I offered my magmasaur as a gift for his kindness, and he declined... and even gave me a full evo suit to protect me from future foibles of that kind. I promptly headed by to my home server to better plan, but with community players like that, I will definitely make that server my home. (fun fact, we discovered that I had died right outside his tek base!!!) We both had a good chuckle out of the whole thing... as even an experienced player cannot let his guard down in the 'safest' areas of that map.

I had tested out a Island servers to find one stable enough to base on, then run some boss fights. The first I tested seemed to have a decent community, however it is plagued with server side lag. I decided to try another and did in fact find one that is(after a week of testing) quite good in gameplay (but weaker in community). So, I returned to the older less-stable one, demoed the tree platform and transmitter, and am moving the keeper materials back to my main base. I will then head back to the new island server, and move the temp base to a more useful spot to build up.

Fixed.

I bailed on that server a few weeks ago after I had 3 client disconnects in 13 hours of establishing a base and transmitter. Server didn't crash.... but the save was harsh and booted me and my tribemate off at the same time. We lost several allos and I had to abandon a strong thyla that got bog lost. Wasn't a consistently stable enough connection to risk bringing in the important stuff. Dunno what the story with it is, but clearly not all servers are equal in the Eyes The Lord. My other maps almost never give me disconnects (though two have occasional crashes.) Shame, cuz I think the active chat community was uncommonly friendly... though they did warn about certain tribes bring the server down.

Crystal Isle - Found a 195 Blood Wyvern egg. Groovy. Transferred tons of eggs from by Extinction base to CI and made lots of kibble. Extinction - Dropped some deony fert eggs in preparation of the Valday event to a breeding line. Also did some prep work for branching a another map.

I'd give it a try, but I doubt it will happen in ARK 1. The games I currently play in VR(that are not VR exclusives): No Man's Sky (just a spectacular port) The Forest (very good port) Fallout4 VR (decent port. Inventory management is a chore) Skyrim VR (same as above... decent port) Subnautica ( so so port. visually excellent, but controls are poor)