Cymas

Busy, busy day today on the Ark. Early in the morning one of my lesser issues became a highly relevant one. Found a 150 female rex, perfect for my needs. Unfortunately when I was trying to kite it into my pen, my own rex had chased a corpse a bit too far down the hill. The rex aggro'd him, then came up the hill and started chomping my base. I had to kill her because even a 150 isn't worth losing my base and tames. Very annoyed about that. So I spent a good part of the day after that building. I also did a run to chitin cave. I'm sorry, I really want to like sabers but I just can't. They're much too fragile. Mission aborted. I ended up taming a bary instead and successfully used it to go to the southern cave and get a beetle. The mastercraft saddle helps, I'm sure. Over 100 armor, found the BP in a drop. Continued hunting for a new rex and came up with a very large problem. An alpha rex popped at carno point. Even if I wanted to challenge it my rex had no saddle at that point, I was too low to craft it. So I warily kept an eye on it and avoided the area as much as possible to avoid it rendering in and wandering up toward the base. I also tamed up a really nice argent and despite the cramped space, I started breeding my birds. A good argent can take an alpha rex, so it seemed the logical solution to the problem. Sure I could admin kill it but that would be against the spirit of the game. It took about 4 generations of breeding but I managed to pop 3 birds with my key stats--48 HP, 54 stamina, 43 weight and 40 melee. Imprinted all 3 since I don't have a proper breeding area or a way to separate them out. The first one, a female, is now my actual mount. The other 2 are a male and female pair that are backups in case something happens to this bird, I can breed another one. Took the new bird out for some levels, then circled back around and took on the alpha. It was a low level thankfully as I only have a primitive saddle so took a lot of damage. But we emerged triumphant, if bloody. I decided my day was as done as it was going to get after that.

Don't be intimidated! Keep in mind that most of us have done this enough times that it's routine. If you read back far enough in this thread I've actually fresh started about 6 times in the past 2 months alone. In the beginning we all do pretty much the same things you do. It's just that I've done it so many times I've learned what I can easily skip to get to where I want to be in game. I also know the map well enough that I generally have an idea of where I want to build before I even spawn my character in, so I'm starting off with a purpose and a game plan. I know where I want to go and what I need to get there, so that's what I do. Even with all of my game experience I love the early game levels for its unpredictability and sometimes I wish I could actually play it more like I used to when I was new, too. Don't worry about what the rest of us are doing, relax and enjoy doing what you're doing now. That part of the Ark experience is special and can't ever be replicated no matter how many times you start over.

@Cythraul @Richman4 is correct, I'm using official difficulty with override on and SP settings turned off so the max level is 150. Taming is at 10x so it takes a lot less time and I can prime/mutton most animals without losing effectiveness, but it still takes the same amount of effort to actually KO anything. I'm also using the game.ini code I linked to a page or so back that equalizes the levels on vanilla maps so high level animals spawn much more frequently because that's a huge QoL issue for these maps. I also have PVE carry on, which is why I built that huge arena thing in the background of my screenshot. I can lure argents/rexes in to dedicated pens, and simply use one of my argents to drop other stuff in the other pens. On official I can only imagine you have to either tame in the wild, use community taming pens (maybe? I've never played on an unofficial server that didn't have those), or utilize something like a taming raft that can be brought to wherever the animal you want to tame is located while still being reusable. I've done all of the above pretty much interchangably, I just vastly prefer the convenience of a taming base build so I can safely tame while doing other things. The other reason is because as I said, I only tame 100+ these days even when just starting out. The only real exception is if I don't have a good level trike around and just need something to farm berries. Sure, weaker animals are easier to tame, but they're also, well, weak. Their use is extremely limited and they should be treated as disposable. I generally treat early game tames that way anyway. Like how I mentioned I sacrificed a trike yesterday to tame an argent. Not the first time I've done something like that. I had a temporary pen for argents and the bird would not get in the trap, it was 100% focused on the trike. So I let it kill the trike while I shot it, then it chased me into the pen and I got it down immediately. It sucked losing the trike, but in the grand scheme of things an argent is 100x more valuable. And I just went and tamed a new one after anyway even though I don't strictly need one anymore. Location does play a big part in this, though. I picked the spot I did precisely because of "carno point", a tiny area of the map that continuously spawns a ton of different animals, mostly carnivores, that are constantly battling each other. Most of the animals that spawn there are things I need to tame. Rexes, argents, allos, ankys, doeds, and I'm close enough to lure a yuty in if I happen across one in the snow. So it made sense to build a pen close to where so many things spawn in. That's how I accumulated so many animals so quickly. I wasn't planning on taming an extra anky or a doed for example, but when I find a high level I take it. Both of them were 145 wild while my original ones were just 100+ to get started. The nice thing about the pen is also that when you find an injured herbivore, they can safely regen inside the pen before you attempt to KO them since they'll usually despawn if you leave render range after moving them.

Single player with heavily customized settings. Exp is default, though. Taming is 10x, breeding is 45x since the game does not progress when I'm not playing, unlike online servers. So I can't just fill a baby/trough with meat and wake up to an adult animal the next day lol. If the icthyornis can't gather prime then no, you'd be better off with a dimo or 3. A flock of high level ones will melt almost anything. As far as gathering prime goes, if you're on foot or have something like a trike sacros are easy enough. If you have a ptera/raft and can travel far enough north, headshot some low level argents.

@Richman4 I have a lot of practice starting from scratch lol. Also I've had the concept of that arena in mind for awhile so the design wasn't as fussy as it could have been. Normally I start out on a raft but I decided this time I would just go where the animals are instead of having to carry them all home. This area is just south of carno point on The Island, where you can find all kinds of things to tame. My basic progression these days is dodo > trike > icthyornis > ptera > argent > doed/anky/wood gatherer/caver > apex predator. It's more or less the order I went in here, although I did sacrifice my first trike to get my first argent, then went and tamed a new trike. I also took time away from building to hunt down an alpha raptor for exp after taming my ptera in order to power level myself up to 62 for the argent saddle. As soon as the arena was built I started collecting my "second gen" of utility animals at much higher levels. I basically don't tame anything under 100 these days even when just starting out; anything less is simply too weak to keep up with the demands I put on it. Now I'm going for top levels in hopes of getting some breedable stats, and since I'm constantly patrolling for high level rexes and yutys close enough to lure in anyway. Then I started to get tired of things attempting to attack my animals and decided to build an actual base, lol. Up until the last half hour of my day my entire base was jammed onto just 8 foundations with everything clustered around it. I have the shell of the house done sans roof and plan to build an attached stable for the utility animals, particularly the birds. I'm not too worried about anything else, especially with that rex around. He was a 150 wild.

@Richman4 The mod was updated...the problem was it either updated again or the update itself failed/was corrupted...either way I lost basically my entire base twice in as many days. Wasn't worth the effort to me to replace it all again. Had a very long day in Ark today. Started out from almost nothing, and ended with this: The taming arena in the background has 5 pens, including one covered one for argents. So far I've had 3 pens in use at the same time.

It's both a new and a very old glitch lol, falling through foundations was a very common early access issue and the reason I kept a logoff box for years. Never knew when you were going to wake up dead, as it were. Anyway, I've been having issues of my own. I logged in last night to find yet again most of my base nonexistent and my animals wandering about. This is the one thing about using modded building pieces--if there's a problem with the mod and those pieces break, when they're gone they're gone. It's why S+ is the only building mod I've been using for years, because it's been stable and never caused me an issue like this for so long. I was so frustrated I went and took my tek rex to the obelisk, uploaded him, and wiped my single player again. Because if most of my base was gone, that means more than 90% of my snow base was also gone and I spent hours on that project. I didn't want to do it all again. I also logged out completely, verified my files, uninstalled and reinstalled S+ before loading back up in a new single player world. Kept no backups of the old one. It doesn't matter since the only backup that would work is from 3 days ago, useless. Started in a different spot this time, West 3. Unfortunately I hit the snow side of that spawn in point. Made it safely out, then got ambushed and eaten by a saber. Respawned in the same spot but avoided the saber a second time. Progressed slightly south to the top of the rise over by that spot that has mainly dodos and started setting up. My logic in starting here is that because of carno point, there is easy access to a lot of animals I'll want to look for, so my starter base will actually be built up into essentially a taming facility. Didn't progress too far due to how long it took to (hopefully) fix all the technical issues. Got a dodo, a tiny open base aka no walls or ceilings, and am just now working on metal tools. We'll see what today brings...

@SnowboundGem Funny you should mention my base... So on Wednesday night after I had posted, I kept thinking about testing the level equalizer code I had set up. So I hopped back in game, did a dino wipe and took my bird out to scout for a little bit. Oh, it worked all right. I am never playing a vanilla map without this code ever again. Luckily files exist for SE, Aberration and Extinction too, not just The Island. One of the first animals I came across? 145 spino. One of the next animals I found was a 140 baryonyx. I carried it home and tamed it since those are short and super easy tames thanks to Gulliver. Then I logged out again, feeling super excited to play again. Then I got home yesterday, logged in and...where is 2/3rds of my base? Almost nothing but the platform and the roofs were left standing. Even my hitching post was gone and my beetles were crawling amok. It turns out there was what is now a very rare S+ update overnight and any save created after about 930 EST was affected...legit the one time in ages I stayed up late to play. Great. The only way to save my base(s) was to roll my Ark back to a previous save. Bye bye breedable baryonyx, spino I was planning to tame, and anything else I saw last night. Sigh. On the other hand if that hadn't worked I would have likely scrapped the whole save and started fresh again, so there's that. But basically everything I did yesterday was wiped since I found absolutely nothing before that bary, that was why I went ahead and put the equalizer in in the first place. Still didn't find any rexes, but I at least came across multiple that were over 100, which is great to see. The nice thing about this code is that unlike the spawners on the DLC maps, it doesn't achieve this by simply removing half the spawn levels, it just makes every level have the same spawn frequency rate. Without it you're 7x more likely to find high levels on DLC maps than vanilla. This to me is inexcusable--either the DLC maps should have launched without that code, or the vanilla maps should have been equalized on their own to match the DLC maps. I did end up finding a 145 argent with 34 melee wild...you bet I tamed that bird. She stood up with 48 melee, a not insignificant increase over my previous 41. So I flew home and spent some time breeding that into my argent line. It's not even really a line, considering I just have the two birds... Granted, high wild stats doesn't necessarily mean it tames out that way. I found another bird with 33 stamina wild, tamed it and only got 45, when my current high roll is 46. Did get slightly higher HP, 36 to my current 34, which I know is still pretty low but it's better than I had so I'm working that in too. It's not really super necessary at this point but since I don't have anything else going on it's fine. @Richman4 Tame a seagull for super easy prime meat, set it to hunt and retrieve and have it attack dodos. Harvest the body when it drops it for you and you'll get prime meat. Also works for fish prime from fish.

Continued the hunt for rexes. I don't know how widely known this is but you can use the getallstate command to see how many are actually active on the map, sort of like a budget S+ transmitter without any useful data. Showed a total of 16 including 1 alpha and 2 tek. Total number of rexes found: 5 and the alpha. Granted I already knew where the alpha was, it was an 85 so I didn't want to mess with it. Note the use of past tense. I was able to craft the ascendant saddle for my bird, only 79 armor but hey better than primitive. So, when I ended up in its territory again I decided to take it on. Worst case I pull up and out if I get too bad. And well, it was a bit dicey towards the end but we successfully downed the alpha. Not bad for an unmutated bird! I bet with a few stacked muts and a better saddle a 150 would be killable. My frustration with the map rising, I decided to take drastic measures. No, I didn't spawn anything in. I did go to reddit and pull up something I remembered seeing recently--a level equalizer, basically someone compiled a whole mess of game code to give the vanilla maps the same spawn levels as Ragnarok/The Center. Works on PC and console, SP and servers, with files for all maps. All you have to do is paste it into the game.ini. Here's the link for anyone else who wants to use it: https://www.reddit.com/r/playark/comments/bbrrul/updated_level_equalizer/ Tomorrow I will do a dino wipe and test it out for myself.

Went out looking for rexes, allos, or an otter to tame. Came up with absolutely nothing. I don't think I even saw a single rex over level 100. The allos were even worse. Did kill an alpha rex surprisingly easily with my bird. Granted it was a low level. I don't even have my ascendant saddle on it, got a BP in a drop and have been gathering mats. Should have enough to craft one now but forgot to check before logging for the day.

@Kodking194 That's an interesting compromise, I don't think I'm quite ready to spawn stuff in just yet though. @SnowboundGem I know Far's Peak very well, that was my go to spot for allos for awhile. There's almost always a giga up over there but it may be worth a shot anyway. @Milsurp I am reminded of how you need a separate removal tool to get rid of McAfee because the program is harder to remove than most of the viruses it claims to protect you from, lol. Spent pretty much my entire day today doing this: Creative mode base build: a "high hide" yuty/snow taming base. Fun fact about yutys, I don't know if they were based on the old rex model or what but they do fit through regular dino gates. I noticed this when mine kept ending up in the space underneath my other base, the openings there are considerably smaller with no gates and they still manage to stick their feathery heads in whenever something wanders in. There are two gates here that open directly into small taming pens. Kite the yuty in (there's room to fly clear on a bird and/or doors to run through on foot) and tame at your leisure. Plenty of ACs for comfort and an elevator that can bring tames up to the middle, open tier while they await transport. The pens will work for anything smaller too. I don't really plan on taming anything but maybe I'll find a good anky or something, who knows. Still plenty of work to do but it should be basically functional, just need to get gas and run wires and all that fun stuff.

Well, today was a grind. No one way to describe it. I got started early, ready to tame and do lots of prep. I tamed an argent. My argent was too heavy carrying my taming pen around and kept the interest of a 145, so I figured why not. It ended up having a decent weight, which is good since my birds have really been struggling to carry my gear. This particular bird I was on was the one I tamed yesterday, much higher melee, hp and stamina than the other birds, but lower weight. And, well, I was really planning on breeding them or anything, but I ended up having to afk and take care of some other stuff for a couple hours so... This is #2. By the time I came back I had close to 40 eggs ready. I got exactly what I wanted on the first hatch...I have a nanny and all that so I raised him and well, we ate all of his would be siblings when he grew up in order to gain levels. He's my main general purpose bird, able to easily handle alphas, fly across the map and carry all of my gear at the same time. This is the second bird I decided to raise at somewhat the last minute, solely for mining and other heavy hauling tasks. After I had my first bird raised I spent the whole afternoon and evening hunting, even took the rex out to clear yuty spawns since the bird can't do those. Came up completely empty. On the bright side killing every alpha we saw netted me a whole collection of crossbows. I'm also high enough level to saddle my yutys and made an industrial forge, which I haven't set up yet because I am considering building a mining outpost on obsidian mountain. Honestly this "high hide" base design gave me a great idea for a snow biome base. I'm considering building it in creative mode mainly as a test. I'm getting to the point where I'm just tired of the mat grind for the types of bases I like to build, and since I already technically cheated this one in...I mean, I am doing everything else legit. We'll see how I feel about it I guess. As far as where to go from here I admit I'm a little lost. I can't move forward without good tames, but The Island spawns have always been painful. It's not just finding high level rexes, it's finding any rexes...I remember when they were basically everywhere and now it takes work to find any at all. It is rather frustrating and this is why so many people like the DLC maps...

This is the story of a rex. I know I said I wouldn't tame any more of them if spinos can do boss fights, but here on what was previously Ultimate Ark, the problem with spinos is their rarity. Finding enough high level ones to build a breeding line will take weeks if not longer. The current plan is to wait until Aberration, basically, and then bring the bloodline back. My current thought is after finishing the story it will basically turn into a standard cluster game. So I started looking for rexes. Unfortunately my argent is far from a battle bird and we just weren't clearing areas fast enough. The best way to farm for rexes is with another apex predator to chew through the wild population. He's no 180, but I knew this tek rex was there because I actually tried to kill him before. My bird wasn't strong enough. He was a 132 wild who owned the volcano. Luckily with so much hunting I had tamed a 145 argent recently and took it out with me, straight to volcano. We proceeded to battle this monster up and down the slopes, going as far up as the crater entrance. I've dealt with a lot of rampant animals in this game, but this rex was one of the squirrelliest ever. He eventually went down high up on the side of the crater itself, I had to actually parachute down to feed him. Broke a crossbow we used so many arrows. Speaking of crossbows, I've had absolutely horrible luck with alpha drops. I tamed that rex fairly early on and was out and about killing every alpha I saw all day. Every single bow we got was a regular bow...until the very last alpha kill of the day, when we got a journeyman crossbow. I've also been raiding every purple and up drop, but no good longneck yet. Taming high level stuff with primitive gear is so painful. Also got two yutys--one female for eggs, one 150 who ended up with 44 stamina, definitely breed quality there. Still need a male, hopefully with better HP. Tamed an otter, lost an otter, tamed another otter. Definitely need a female so I can use bred otters for caves. Need a breeding pair of barys. Need at least one basilo. Need allos for the snow cave. Possibly sabers for the cave the bary can't fit in. Need good saddles for all of them, better weapons, a hatchery...there is honestly so much to do still. I mean I don't have a time limit or anything but so much of this part of the game is new to me after so many fresh starts on servers, sp, etc... Today's plan is basically more hunting. Not sure what to go after first, another yuty or just keep farming for rexes. I know the yuty won't really need a ton of breeding, I just happened to have spotted the 150 while out looking for argents around carno point.

Well, here's my Ark confession. I spent a considerable amount of time and virtually all of my resources last night building platform wedges for phase 1 of my base build last night. It was until I went to go set up that I learned a horrible truth: the snap points on the wedges have been broken since the Homestead update. I didn't know this because I wasn't an active player when that update dropped. There is a second mod built on the open source Platforms+ mod that based on the comments I read has only a 50% chance of actually working. But there is a known, in game workaround solution. Rather than abandon my plan and likely scrap another playthrough entirely, I decided to use creative mode just to build the workaround "base" platform out of foundations...got carried away because it's been a long, long time since I did an actual build. And thanks to turning off foundation support requirements, I was able to have a little fun with the design too. I ended up building the entire outer shell instead of just the platform base. So I guess I can't really say I'm doing the "Ultimate Ark" challenge anymore given the circumstances. I'd say it's more of a "relaxed Ascension" progression. Because life is too short to worry about mistakes made by poor game mechanics. I will say I did not spawn in anything I am not capable of building, so I don't have an industrial forge or anything stashed inside. Honestly it's virtually empty except for my dinos anyway, I haven't even moved everything over from the raft yet. This is not my main base of course, it's just a "temporary" shelter that will eventually be housing just my support/utility dinos instead. Or something. Honestly I've never really worked with platforms before. The glass wedges in particular definitely give me JP Visitors' Center vibes. Love it. I also tamed a few new animals. A pair of dodos for eggs basically so I can build a hatchery, and a beetle I came across while running the volcano cave, which did thankfully respawn.

So basically it still isn't very stable lol. It's a running joke that Microsoft only produces a decent OS every other version. XP was great, 7 is very nice, Vista only worked on beefy machines, 8/Metro was utter trash, and 10 is still unstable? Sounds about right.

@SnowboundGem It was an option yes but at the time the OS was not particularly stable, especially in regards to games. So I basically just ignored the upgrade. This computer was built about 5 years ago and runs Ark surprisingly well, but definitely needs an overhaul. I'm actually using Win7 Ultimate so I can run on 32 GB of ram, for some reason the home version throttles you to only 16...so dumb. In any case I wouldn't be able to use Crossplay because I bought Ark through Steam, not the Windows Store, and I'm not about to buy this again when I have all of the expansions and whatnot already...so basically I don't currently see a reason to upgrade to Win10.

@SnowboundGem Sounds like your time would be better spent relaxing doing other things instead of getting frustrated in game. That's fine, it happens to everyone. Luckily it will all still be here when you get back. I would advise against wiping anything just yet, once you come back you'll find everything you're having an issue with right now is fixable and would have regretted wiping that map. It's fine for me because I've never been fully established on SP, only on servers so I've never deleted more than a few weeks worth of progress. When it comes to mutations, personally I always name those to avoid confusion. So if I have a mutation it's something like "Stamina 1M" or "Melee 3F", denoting the stat, how many muts are stacking, and the gender so I can easily see what I need to do next to progress in the line. I name them as babies but never move out the old adults until the babies have grown up, just in case of accidents.

SP "Ultimate Ark" The Island Started my day off with a metal run, of course. Actually did 2 seeing as I have 3 forges to split production between them all. Not a ton of metal all told but it was just shy of 1300 ingots. Then it was off to find some more needed tames. I brought Gulliver with me, just in case. First tame of the day was a 125 bary. Not breedable really, but that's fine. These are all starter tames just to get me going. I couldn't bring him to a taming pen, he did too much damage to the bird, so we tamed him in the river canyon near Far's Peak. Had to go surprisingly far to find a fish to harvest. As much as I despise wild icthyornis, Gulliver is acquitting himself quite well. I think if I find any high level gulls I'll tame them up for a breeding pair later. With my first cave mount officially tamed, naturally we went caving straight away. Down to the volcano cave to look for beetles. Did not find any, but did run into the annoying respawn bug. It wasn't quite a waste of an hour as I managed to grab several artifacts by making a box at the cave entrance. I needed to do that anyway to hold all the chitin and whatnot, barys don't have the best carry weight. Also had to store my broken set of flak courtesy of way too many microraptors on the way over. Meh. Micros are actually quite strong for their size, just so aggravating wild much like the gulls. Eventually we headed back and I used the argent to carry the bary over to lower south cave. Found a single level 85 beetle, which we tamed. Flew home relieved to have found it at all. I was starting to get tired but decided to make a last ditch attempt to find a beaver. Honestly I would vastly prefer a mammoth but it's too much of a hassle to go into the snow right now. Found a 75 and decided it would be close enough for what I need it for. Flew it home, dropped it in the pen, KO'd and tamed. Spent the end of my night mass crafting, mostly spark and gun powder and lots of cementing paste. And more narcotics of course.

That's a tough one. Maybe you just straight need a break from Ark itself for awhile. I've always thought about doing a no Engram run that would require supply drops/blueprints only for everything. If you really want to challenge yourself, do it without using your stat points either lol... Or maybe taking some inspiration from Pokemon, a "monotype" challenge where you use only one type of creature, in your case "flying types" since you love argents so much. It does mean no bosses, but you could do a primitive challenge at the same time...maybe on hardcore mode if it seems too easy as is. And/or do it on SE so you can get wyverns and still do the manticore.

SP "Ultimate Ark" - The Island Obviously having an argent is only half of the equation--without a saddle, the bird's utility is limited. So my first goal for today was to boost my levels by doing something I confess I've never done before: an alpha hunt. Sure, I've farmed plenty of them, but I've never actually killed one without help from a mount. I usually avoid guns outside of taming because I'm a bad shot. Took the ptera out and was very surprised he could carry me and all of my ammo. Flying around for a bit, finally spotted the alpha glow. A raptor attacking a trike, conveniently close to a rock. We perched, I dismounted and broke out my awesome spyglass to help me. It's a 135, wow. I hope I have enough ammo/durability for it. Spoiler: I did, mostly by learning the value of headshots early on. So this veteran player did something new today. Then I checked my levels and wow, 21 points to spend. I was catapulted up from 43 to 64 and this is on default exp rates too. Amazing. Flew home happy, crafted up my argent saddle and it was straight back to work. We did not go metal mining, however. Instead we flew north to carno point. When I was there last night I had spotted a 110 doed and hoped it was still there. It was, but badly hurt from being in such a savage area. Carried him home and waited an eternity for him to heal up. Tamed and saddled with no issues. Then we went on another mission skirting the edge of the snow. Eventually we acquired our next target, a 130 anky. Carried home, KO'd, tamed. I would have liked to have found a beaver too but I was starting to get tired and the local beaver spawn produced nothing worth the effort. Flew home after raiding the dams and collecting the pelt, upgraded my armor and put everyone to bed for the night. Unfortunately all of this activity does come with a price, I'm already nearly out of metal. I did make 2 more forges just to speed things up a bit and produce more charcoal, so I'll likely be putting them all to work in the very near future. If you're wondering why I'm here and not where I said I would build my base, it's because I know from experience my base is not a safe area to leave tames until I have either a safety perimeter or the outer shell of the main base completed. Alphas occasionally wander in, among other things.

SP, "Ultimate Ark" - The Island A very busy and productive day today. I had debated checking out Valguero but Syntac started a new series on it so I can watch that while doing my best to catch up to him. Obviously having finished The Island map already, he's very, very far ahead of me. But the advantage I have, besides UA being off for 2 weeks, is that I don't have an audience to pander to. He is definitely a good player but he has to play to his audience and that means a lot of wasted time on screen. At least from my observations. Started off at level 30, obviously I want to get airborne as soon as possible so Bull farmed up tons of berries and we mass crafted narcotics. I also pre-fabricated an argent trap, then built a small taming pen up the beach, away from the sarco spawn point. Don't need a dinocroc sneaking up on me while I'm trying to tame, after all. As soon as I hit 38 I crafted a ptera saddle and went hunting for one--got lucky, there was a 110 not too far up the coast from me. This is why I tamed an icthyornis. I KO'd the ptera, found a nearby dodo and used my seagull, Gulliver, to hunt it for prime meat. A nice quick tame. Then a very short trip north just into the edge of the snow to whack one crystal and make an awesome spyglass. Luckily the ptera was just high enough level to carry my taming supplies. With the spyglass acquired we were able to scout for our next target immediately--an argent. At this point I'll take basically 100+ on anything just to get started. Found a 110 on the side of the volcano. Set my trap up over the entrance to the nearby cave, lured it in, KO'd it. Killed a nearby low level argent for prime, tamed the bird up. Dropped off my supplies at the raft, stripped down to the bare minimum of gear, and had the bird follow us north to the volcano. Proceeded to fill the argent with as much metal as it could comfortable carry, then flew home. That net me a working total of about 500 ingots to play with once it's done smelting. Unfortunately, Ark is Ark. The local sarco spawn was up by the time we got back, a level 90 that started attacking Bull as soon as he rendered in. I did my best to defend him with my ptera (the almost overloaded argent was simply too slow to get in on the action), but to no avail. But he gave as good as he got. With his final moments, Bull landed the kill shot on the sarco even as he himself died. My storage boxes were one hit away from breaking. There is a fairly large unbreakable rock ridge not too far from us. After offloading the metal and collecting the sad remains of my trike, I led both ptera and argent up onto the safety of the rocks to sit for now. I parked my raft nearby, much farther away from the sarco spawn. I did scout around for a new, stronger trike, but found nothing to tame. Spoiled a bunch of meat to use up the rest of the narcoberries Bull had farmed for me. His sacrifice is not wasted. Ended my day doing some prep work for the next "episode".

SP, "Ultimate Ark" - The Island So, I did it. I wiped my SP and started over again. Not completely though, I did make a back up of the old save. I also uploaded my cyan argent. Not going to DL him yet or anything but he is kind of my banner bird right now. Set my exp to default rate, then started fresh. Basically I'm doing the same challenge Syntac is, just without the obvious YT specific restrictions. Also still using my upped SP settings because he is doing his solo run on a server so certain things will not progress in the same way for me. Other than that, same basic rules and progression. Official story maps only, starting from The Island progressing through to Extinction map by map. 3 creatures allowed from each previous map on Extinction to start off with, but start each other map with nothing except my character and levels/Engrams. For this challenge I couldn't think of a better spot to start out than what is basically home to me. So I spawned West 3, but ended up a little bit stuck. A chalico and icthyornis flock on one side, a theri on the other. So I waited them out by doing whatever I could in my limited strand of beach. Got to level 16, made a raft and headed across to the peninsula. Tamed a trike and an icthyornis, which I will need for my preferred tames before I have access to good kibble. Tons of seagulls and my bad aim eventually pushed us inland almost to the mouth of the bay. Luckily the local sarco spawn was not up. Already out of primitive tier. Level 30 with plenty of basic supplies. And a lucky tek para find/kill to get an early jump on electronics. My plan is to start here and rebuild the Arkanus yet again. It was my original base on my first unofficial, I was there for about 1.5 years, nearly the life of the server. Situated at around 58 15, it's the two ridges above the bay, the base itself on the upper ridge. The Arkanus 1.0 was a base built in metal before S+, beavers or even frogs/the swamp existed. I built a metal base by grinding all that cementing paste out by hand. Everyone thought I was crazy. Then the giga came out and everyone was freaking out because it was PVE and no one had built proper base defenses against anything...except me, the sole survivor with a metal base on the server. Turned out to not be a big deal, but it was pretty funny watching global blow up while I was safe behind massive metal walls, just two behemoth gates. I still have a video tour of it up on my long defunct YT channel, actually. Those were the days. Arkanus 2.0 was a stone version of the base I started on a relatively fresh official before deciding it was too much grind and leaving the official life behind for good. The Arkanus 3.0 will be essentially the final, fully upgraded version of this base, completely tek and full S+ building improvements, with vastly increased knowledge and experience with the building mechanics. Obviously I won't be starting out that way, but I'll have plenty of time to smooth out the complete overhaul and redesign of this base. It had everything available at the time, but introduction of new items (like the industrial forge, yes I built a metal base without one of those either) forced numerous off the cuff layout changes that left things a bit of a mess. And I know some tek stuff like the replicator and the cloning chamber are huge, so I need to account for that in the new build. I'll also be completely redesigning the original hatchery that was also housed within my territory, in fact I'm thinking of doing 2, possibly 3 cliff platforms. And I can rebuild my spino launch ramp/dock to be a fancy shmancy elevator...honestly I'm pretty hyped up for all of this. But I probably won't do a lot of it until I'm done with the challenge run and have all of the Tekgrams and such at my disposal. For now, I've got a long way to go.

@SnowboundGem I'm not the only one who has suggested it, but every time someone brings it up they freak out. The myth is that breeding multiple females to the same male will increase the mating cooldown timer to each successive female. But that fails a logic check immediately because multiple females can breed with a single male at the same time. It's also a level of coding that would be excessively unnecessary given that there already is a "penalty" for inbreeding in the form of the mutation counter. The cooldown timers do have a range, it's much less noticeable with increased timers but very noticeable on defaults. The cooldown can be 18 hours to 2 days on each female on official settings. I wasn't even asking for crazy short timers, just for them to match the maturation rates on the server so the females are off of cooldown by the time the next generation grows up. Depending on species that's 5-6 hours, even every 12 hours would be fine since most of us work during the week anyway. I have a sneaking suspicion the mating interval is tied to the server longevity--it's a Patreon sponsored server so of course the longer people play and sponsor the server, the more money they get. And most people follow the sunk cost fallacy, so by the time they realize they made a horrible mistake they've already invested too much into the server to stop, even though it's an incredibly frustrating experience. It's definitely not just me, even the server sponsors are in agreement and the admin is flat out refusing to listen to them. What they don't realize is that yes, they keep their sponsors, but it kills the rest of the server community, which is already happening. All of the friends I've made on the server so far have either not been playing recently or moved servers. You will not find any information about that setting in particular anywhere in the Discord and it's not something you would immediately think to look for because if breeding rates are already increased, reasonable assumption is that mating is too... I've started over many, many times so I'm much less invested than most PVE players, I guess. I was actually on an unofficial for about 2 years when the game first released in early access, it was one of the best community experiences I've ever had. It was a big community, dynamic, population was there because it was supported by (but rarely played on) by a YTer. I've made good friends, even got a new job because of this server. But eventually the YTer stopped advertising it, we had some issues requiring a few wipes, and politics eventually killed the server. It was dead long before it was shut down for good. I've been drifting looking for a good server since then, just haven't found anything. I'm very particular about mods and rates so finding a low mod server with relatively low rates is tough. When my friend M is able to play again we plan to play together, but his computer is a potato and can't handle more than 5-6 mods. And we just don't like stuff like the classic/speedy flyers mod which automatically disqualifies a huge number of unofficials. This is actually why I've never finished most of the game content, because I just haven't found anywhere to settle. And I play Ark the way I played Pokemon--if I feel like things are not progressing in an ideal way I will often restart from scratch again and again. It's that midgame grind that gets me every time. I've already been thinking of doing it here on my SP because I don't like the way my redwoods base turned out...

@SnowboundGem That was more or less the admin's argument. My counter argument is that there is a way around the long mating interval timer--by keeping more breeding animals out of cryopods in order to produce more eggs. So what causes more lag, people continually breeding on short timers, but being able to keep fewer animals and cull constantly as their lines improve, or using default timers and forcing players to keep an exponentially greater amount of animals to accomplish their goals in the same timeframe? The admin also believes the myth that breeding multiple animals to the same male increases the timers on each female, but it's always been random. Their other argument is being against instant gratification, which doesn't exist on Ark. I spent literally all day hatching argents between other things and advanced my lines by a total of 4 mutations. Wow, so totally instant right? Because of RNG even small projects could take weeks to accomplish, and they want to argue that it's instant while also allowing the use of the S+ mutator. Unreal. It is however a great way to keep the server population down as people play on unofficial to avoid the official grind, especially breeding. It sucks, I really like the community but this style of adminning just doesn't sit well with me. Which is why I'm back on SP even though I miss the social aspects of the game. Anyway, pretty quiet day today. Mostly argent breeding, farming. Tamed a few things. Got a snail, a bear and a sheep, also made an industrial forge and chem bench. I'm using the Syntac method of leveling so I've been able to progress quite rapidly through levels and also greatly level up my cyan argent, beaver and bary. Most of what I'm doing is prep for building an actual breeding base as I'm currently operating out of essentially my mining outpost. As far as the argents go I am actually doing proper mutation stacking on them, so each stat mutation is a separate line to be combined later on. Working on melee and hp right now. I don't have enough space to do stamina, and I'm holding off on weight until I get at least a 45+ tame to work in. Currently have 2 HP and 2 melee mutations.

@Kodking194 @HenryManson Thanks for the advice. I appreciate it, but believe me I'm no stranger to taming. It was more taking a shot at an opportunity, that argent was flying around by the redwoods outpost I was building and I figured I would try to grab it. Speaking of argents, I did a thing today: I tamed a new argent. In fact, I tamed 4 new argents. One thing that's always kind of bugged me is feeling like I'm playing backwards. That is to say, how we all grind out all kinds of mats and build super fancy bases to breed all of these incredibly strong animals...which we then no longer need, because we already built our mega bases... My mining outpost is naturally a great starting point for higher tech items so I went ahead and built a few things. You can also see the beetle I tamed in the background, took my bary to the volcano cave and basically tamed the first one I saw so I can now freely run my S+ hatchery. And I started breeding the argents I tamed, because why wouldn't I want an early start on one of the most important utility animals in the game? This gorgeous bird is not my final build, he just happened to pop out with a color mutation I loved. Even without my best all of his stats trump my level 90 wild tame, obviously, and he is fully imprinted too. Got lucky, he's a cuddly death machine. I have gotten some other mutations, but I killed those ones off cause they weren't pretty. The currently growing generation of birds should be the last I need to build my final breeding pair before I start working on mutations for real. Honestly I could stand to look around for another high level wild or two, I'm not happy with my weight stat. The bird above actually got a weight mutation, the base stat was 40, very low for a bird. All the other base stats for this line are 45+ with the exception of food and oxygen, which I dropped out of the line entirely with a low level argent mixed in. I also tamed a 145 ptera and left it at my starter base as basically my "rescue ranger" in case the game crashes and I die again, necessitating another retrieval of my body and bird. Which did actually happen again last night. I ended up verifying my files just in case, it's so incredibly rare for me to crash in SP. I'll replace it with a tapejara eventually. Also, I guess this is the argument the admin on the server I play on is making, that people will overbreed and lag out the server. I've got my settings turned way up (obviously) but I'm hardly drowning in argents. At most I have about 7 alive at any given time, well 8 now. The 3 birds of the current generation, the 3 of the next generation, my new main bird and the old one that I'm feeling too sentimental to retire just yet. So yes, clearly I would be flooding the server. ?