Cymas

@SnowboundGem Aw, that's a bit sad. I use journals for practically everything. I'm currently using one for work, one for personal, one for language learning, one for my side business, a general gaming journal that got filled and now my Ark journal since I haven't played anything else in ages. Still need one for baking and one for cooking, but for now I just have them both in Evernote. Also want one for writing projects, I prefer to hand write my notes for some reason. Anyway it was a long, somewhat chaotic Ark day for me. It's a very long story that I'd rather forget, but the short of it is I lost my useless ptera, almost lost my argent, died 3 times and almost had to roll my save back to halfway through last night. Luckily I was able to back off slightly and give my situation enough rational thought to recover with a minimum of admin commands. It wasn't even anything I did "wrong", it was a combination of lag, a game crash and an extremely buggy game mechanic. The good news is I gained more than I lost today. I now have a baryonyx and I tamed another high level doed I stumbled across. Unfortunately it didn't give me any new stats, but I can bring him with me as I advance to my next base, which I am currently working on. Base #2 is a redwoods platform at the base of the mountain in that biome. Unfortunately I built the wrong platform so I wasted a lot of materials and need to build a replacement so I don't really have anything to share as far as screenshots tonight. I did also attempt a new argent tame but redwoods. Getting a new bird is definitely high on the priority list.

@SnowboundGem On SP, I did mess with my harvest settings. The issue isn't so much getting the resources, it's carrying them. My ptera has 124 weight and started with about 200 stamina. The platform smithy requires 200 ingots, aka 400 metal. Not happening lol. It's too bad you're on console, I think you'd really enjoy the Castles, Keeps & Forts mods and maybe the eco set of mods, all dedicated to building. Personally I can't play this game without S+, it just fixes way too many issues with this game to go without it. Anyway, after a long grind at work I was happy to come home and grind in Ark instead. Side note I also got my new Ark journal in the mail. I wish there were official licensed ones, blank or dot grid. I'd even buy it if it was Moleskine and I don't like that brand. This one is actually a Jurassic Park journal lol but it's surprisingly decent for the price. Lined though, typical for novelty journals. But now I can keep track of my progress instead of scribbling on the backs of my shopping lists lol. First thing I did was plunk down a wooden taming pen. I know, but it's the style of this base. All wood. Then we geared up and off we flew. I'm not really naming any of my animals right now. Not until they're bred at least. I consider virtually all wild tamed animals disposable because they just don't compare to a good bred one. I was scouting for high level utility animals. Taming is up high enough that I can max tame most things without kibble, although I will still prefer it due to the shorter tame times. But for now I'm working with what I have. I was absolutely shocked and excited when the first one I found was a 145 doed. I don't know why but I have the absolute worst luck with finding doeds specifically, I usually start out with an extremely low level one and have to dedicate a lot of time to finding a new one later. So I am very happy with that. Carried it home and KO'd it, no problem with my MC crossbow. While it was taming I headed back out and found a 150 anky with 30 points in melee. Nice. The pen was occupied so I KO'd it on the beach nearby. Made the saddles while I was waiting, then moved them both up to base when they tamed. The anky has 39 melee now, basically breedable quality. I am pleased. Of course, for every advantage there is a problem. In this case my sticking point ended up being a beaver. No matter how many spawns I cleared I just could not get a decent one to spawn. Settled for a level 70. Tamed, saddled up. By that point it was getting late and I was quite tired, so I logged for the night. So tired I waited until this morning to record my adventures for the day.

@d1nk Actually no, I was sitting on the trike. That's basically camera mode fully zoomed out. @SnowboundGem I cut some down but not all, yeah. I like the natural look. For a smaller base like this it's very doable. Usually I end up with larger animals that knock everything down though, so it makes little difference... After a rough day at work I was quite excited to come home and relax by hopping back into Ark. Yes, I do find parts of this game to be rather relaxing. I mean, I've been building a lot and rarely encounter anything even slightly dangerous on my little island paradise. I was also rather inspired to work on something after watching a YT build. I had thought about using a cliff platform, until I saw the required materials for the platform smithy. Not happening at my current level of resources. So I basically ended up doing a kind of poor man's platform instead for my workshop area. Then I built a gateway and some pillars and traveled down the hill to the spot close to where the beacon drops. A 115 trike had spawned down there and I've been keeping my eye on it, debating if I wanted to tame it or not. Decided I might as well. It didn't quite work as intended but I got my trike. Naturally we went around punting dilos and anything else we could find to get some levels up. During the course of our short foray across the river we killed no less than 3 sarcos in a row, netting quite a lot of prime actually. Are you think what I'm thinking? Yep, I stripped down to only my most necessary gear, loaded up and took the ptera north to carno point. I scouted out the argents and quickly homed in on the highest level, a somewhat respectable 90. It ended up being a rather involved chase but I got the bird down. The actual tame was quite uneventful. Then we flew home, where I ended up grinding narcos for a bit to get the level I needed to make the saddle. Care to guess what I did first with my brand new argent? If you said go find that alpha raptor I saw previously, you would be correct. We hunted it down and killed it for tons of levels, a mastercraft crossbow, mastercraft pike, ramshackle pick and tons of prime that will likely be wasted. What was the second thing I did? Flew to the redwoods mountain and loaded the bird down with crystal and metal. Flew home, made another forge, whacked all the metal in the two of them and made some sparkpowder to light both. Made a trough also since raw metal is no longer a precious commodity. So this is about where I'm at now: Obviously the next step is to build a proper taming pen now that I can do it properly and go after the utility trifecta: anky, beaver and doed, in more or less that order. Yes, I did cull the original trike. And I am keeping the mostly useless ptera, at least for now. I am a firm believer in the rule of 2: always keep 2 of anything that flies or swims, just in case you lose one and need to go and retrieve it.

That's why I always copy long posts before I post them, if you take too long to write them the forum tends to kind of refresh and lost things. Anyway, I have to admit I was pretty excited to hop on today. Didn't really do anything super exciting though, mainly a lot of trial and error as I worked on my base build. A lot of reshuffling, crafting and harvesting. The farthest I went was a brief sojourn across the river on the ptera. Otherwise I was entirely at base. This is what I ended up with:

So, I've been contending with this server admin over the mating timers since day 1, pretty much. New new friend has been chatting with me and brought up the idea of moving servers. I'm open to the idea if I could just find one with the mods and multis I like. The big one for me is flyer mods are a deal breaker, full stop. The flyer nerf was how long ago now and we have griffins and rock drakes and manas and cryopods and tek everywhere, there is 0 need to continue to abuse a massively outdated mechanic. Anyway, he left to go check out a server while I bred my newly grown base bloodline pair. Bred them, 2 day mating cooldown. Popped the egg, male spino. I got him to juvenile and logged because honestly this is ridiculous. What's the point of playing on an unofficial if you're still going to get bottlenecked by official rates? It's so incredibly frustrating. Took a bit of a breather and eventually logged back in...to single player. I wiped all of my data, updated my mods and started fresh. Yes, I have a backup save of my Island map so I didn't lose anything irreplaceable and I'll always have the memories and screenshots anyway. The Island, single player Spawned at Cragg's Island, that hilly area toward the front. I don't care how many times I do this, I really do enjoy the beginning bit, the initial struggle to survive and the sheer unpredictability of early game. Plus, when you first stake your territory and go full Harvest Moon on the rocks and trees and plants, just clearing it all out. I built on the second hill to start, with 2 dodos when one couldn't fit everything. An early raptor kill netted me a pike, which was great. Grinding metal on normal rocks kind of sucks, but I have rates up enough that it's not tear your hair out aggravating. Made my crossbow and immediately tamed a trike. Super low level but it doesn't matter, his only purpose is berry and thatch farming. Got ambushed by a sarco, took it down for some levels and prime meat. Went after a ptera to take advantage of said prime, unfortunately the choices were all low levels. Found a nice 135 but it happened to be near an alpha raptor. No thanks. Took the next highest level, a mere 25. Killed a couple turtles for keratin, made the saddle. Then a slow, dangerous flight to the redwood mountain to collect a small amount of crystal and metal. Success. Left for the afternoon to hang out with a friend. Came back, melted the ingots down. Tamed a seagull mostly on a whim. And through the entire day I was building. One thing I've never built but always wanted to try is one of those huge, sprawling, ridiculously intricate bases with all those crazy things like stables for individual animals and whatnot. My builds are big but not sprawling like that and usually lack a lot of detail work. I'm the type of person who can build a castle but the interior would look like a warehouse, you know? All business. So this time around I'm taking my time to assemble things as I need them and to build all of the interconnected elements together. So it will be a bit haphazard and slapdash and unique to the events of this playthrough. Here's what I've built so far, it's been awhile since I shared any screenshots: Obviously still very much in progress. That huge stairway down to the beach is for my raft, I do have one built and it's only slightly out of the frame. So I still need to build the actual pier at the bottom. The gazebo started out as a temporary hut for the dodos, they're still in there pooping out eggs. Need a proper home for them since that's more of a travel area now. Plan to move the crop plots a bit but first I need more space for the compost bin. Wherever the dodos end up, I'll probably build a kitchen and move the bin to that area. It won't be too far, I want it near the crops. They are indeed empty but I always place them early so they can fill with water by the time I'm ready to plant. Also need to design a better workspace area and material storage. And of course none of my animals or myself really have any dedicated areas to stay. I was going to make a perch where the icthyornis is now but then I decided to do that giant staircase down instead. The most important thing is space for the ptera since it can't defend itself or anything. The trike is pretty weak too and should be protected when not out farming, so he could use a stable. If you're wondering why I'm building in wood, this area isn't all that dangerous for one. And for two, this is not my main base. Since I can build wherever I want I decided to set up here near the obelisk for easy transfers and relative safety. This is essentially the starter base that I will probably abandon or use as an outpost once I've got some better tames. All in all, much happier to be back in control of my Ark experience again. The one thing I don't like about single player is the lack of community, but maybe I can find people to chat with on Discord while playing, who knows.

Well. Today definitely did not go as planned. I was operating under the assumption the rotating weekend event would be the same as the last one so I spent a considerable amount of time early in the morning finishing some prep work. Making kibble, darts, and I went out and tamed a tek stego for more efficient production of narcs. Also did a metal run and made a BP rifle with extremely high damage, another gift from I. Server admin felt otherwise, however. Instead of a taming boon we got...increased 5x loot quality, randomized beacon spawns and 1.5 wild dino damage. Fantastic. RIP to the guys who had organized a King Titan run for this weekend, no point now. Also not much point in taming. So I had to find something else to do. First I spent some time helping out a newer player on the server. Gave him some spare dodo eggs to make a hatchery, one of my thorny dragons and some spare gear I had lying around. Then I headed out to Extinction with my doed in hand to tame gachas. It's been on my to do list for awhile. I got very lucky. Came home with an element dust gacha, also one for black pearls and one for silica pearls, the latter of which is mainly for the production of spino saddles. Wish I had found one with obsidian so I could work on hard poly, but that's for another day. On the way back I also happened to come across a 145 enforcer, got a pretty decent asc bp so that's nice. Transferred home and got to work. I set the gachas up, the two pearlers in the pagoda and the element dust safely tucked away inside my base. Also moved all of my adult yutys to the pagoda so they're very much out of the way now. Then I started doing two things: breeding and culling. I painstakingly went through all of my cryopods and breeding stock and honestly I reduced my total number of animals by about 1/2. There are just so many things I don't need anymore. I cut my argent flock in half, went down to just 3 spinos, culled half my velos and got rid of all of my rexes. I did not cull the ugly Easter rex, but I did give her away for free. Most of the breeding animals I culled I bred first, mainly to see what I would get. None of the argents were worth keeping. The velos didn't give me anything either. Most of the spinos were hopeless except...the final egg I popped gave me a male and female set of twins with perfect stats. All except the 0 speed. This basically "forks" my breeding line into two. The twins are the base of my spino army for bosses. Yes, you read that correctly. The stats I have on this line and the max armor saddles I can make should be enough to take on alpha brood and alpha monkey, if my new new friend is to be believed. And you know what, what is even the point of breeding super strong spinos if I'm not going to use them. Sure, rexes are easier for most people. Not for me. My playstyle has always been built around having spinos as my main mount. So I'm just gonna go for it. My line starts with 55 HP and 46 melee and I have saddles with 352 armor. Plus they are aberrant spinos, sacrificing a bit of survivability in order to maximize their combat potential. I'm just gonna go for it. Anything rexes can do, my spinos can do too. It just might take longer to stack up enough stats to achieve it, is all. The second fork of my spino line is basically the same stats, but dropping that pesky speed stat and possibly food in the future. I can also completely drop weight, food, oxy and stamina on the boss spinos if I really want to, though with this server's settings the need for such a thing is far, far in the future. But anyway. This other line will be my general use mount and will make use of mutations from the army line, but also ones those spinos might not need like stamina and weight and maybe even oxy for a deep sea specialist line. This is why I'm so frustrated with the mating timers on this server, because spinos really benefit from different builds and being able to mutation stack properly really opens up some interesting possibilities for them. But, that is an argument I'm not going to win, sadly. While continuing to raise the yutys and the new spinos, I also popped my snow owl egg, wanted one imprinted to me and also in case of accidents. Also finally got a female thorny dragon with weight so I can work on that a little. Not doing the full line I had envisioned, just enough to get an imprinted utility dino and a backup egg or two. Since my nanny persistently fails to feed babies, I hand fed them all while cleaning up around the base. Underrated feature of gachas, just chucking all the random crap I don't need into them and getting stuff I do need out. That said, it's been a long and adventurous day and with a final meat run to top off the troughs, I'll be done for the night. And likely the weekend as I have plans for tomorrow. If I can spare some time in the morning I want to at least breed my new spino pair and this thorny dragon. And the velos too since I culled the original stat male so definitely need a backup. The loot quality thing isn't all that exciting and I am just so extremely disappointed overall, but I'm making the best of it.

Friday evening breeding shenanigans. So since the server will be on 7x difficulty for the weekend, I probably won't be doing any breeding at all. It made sense to do my final round of breeding for the next few days. Bred my spino pair, the argents who were off cooldown, and my mutated yuty again. First, my spino. Popped a male with every stat except weight and got the 0 speed, plus the perfect color combination possible from this pairing. Amazing. Can't wait for him to grow up to breed with the female. Really wish the current male had gotten the HP stat so I could bring him to Aberration. As much as I want to, I am not going to be bringing my main female over because she's also my main breeder for this line right now. I'll be using my backup spino instead. Next, my argents. Two eggs gave nothing. One egg gave a male with weight, stamina and partial colors. However he got an abysmal HP roll from his dad so I'll definitely breed him back to the female for HP before I start working the stats into the color line. The last egg gave me a perfect color, full white female. Yay! Before I start seriously mixing the stats and colors though, I really need to drop my oxy stat, 60 is ridiculous and useless. Scouted around, didn't find any 0 oxy argents. I won't hunt for that over the weekend, would rather focus on high stats while I have the chance. Finally, the yuty egg. Popped twins...both female. Ok then, guess I'm adding 2 yutys to the flock. Sadly they got entirely the opposite of what I wanted for colors and are rather earthy actually, but that's fine. I also scouted around for either a good bronto or a tek stego. They don't need to be super max levels, I just need something better for narcoberry farming. The theri doesn't do a great job, especially for the quantity I need. No luck on either so will probably hold off on them for now. That was about it really. The yutys are still babies but close enough to juvenile that I don't anticipate any issues with them overnight. They just take forever but I don't really feel like cryopoding them and losing those extra hours of growth.

I don't think it's not liking to trade so much as they just don't want anyone else to have animals as good as theirs. But I mean, I'm sure anyone who does boss fights regularly must have some older gen rexes hanging around, just sell me those. I don't care if they aren't top of the line super rexes, I just want to unlock engrams and farm enough element to run my base on a tek gen. It's not like they've even done tons of breeding to achieve it since this server allows the use of the S+ mutator...the server admin will quibble over the "instant gratification" of adjusting mating to match the maturity rate, but allows the breeding supercheat device. Makes no sense whatsoever. I feel like it's just a way to intentionally bottleneck lower tier players so they can feel superior and play PVE Alpha. Or something. I don't even know. If it wasn't so hard to find a server cluster with the relatively low rates + the minimal mods I prefer, I would have probably moved on by now honestly. Anyway. Logged in and checked on the animals. Most of my breeding timers were exhausted so I couldn't do much. Two of the birds accidentally bred while I was there, then I bred the two newly adult birds. Ended up keeping one new hatchling and culled the 2 accidentally bred birds. They both have red wingtips that I'm trying to breed out of the line. Also on a whim and since I still have that full trough, bred my female velo with the non-stat male I still have. Because he's blue and my line is dull dark brown. Popped out a female with one stat that I can pair with my male. Not super necessary though since if all goes well I'll likely be building a brand new line over the course of the next month or so. But I didn't have too much else to do so... I did breed my female mutated yuty too, didn't get a female. I could breed the others, just hoping to get one with the pink body from mom and red stripe from dad. Made some more kibble--extraordinary, exceptional and regular. Covers about all of my current needs/wants. Made some narcs, honestly I really need a dedicated berry gatherer. And some darts, need to make more though. That was about it for me. I actually was baking while raising the babies so passive time well spent.

Unfortunately another late night at work last night led to me not logging in. Luckily I woke up early and at least checked on all my babies and whatnot. Everything was fine. Logged in tonight, everyone was grown up and ready to breed. Also I had the foresight to throw preserving salts in my troughs so I still had an entire trough of raw meat left after I condensed everything. Didn't need to run meat or anything. Bred the spinos, culled 1 argent, bred the rest. Ended up keeping just 2 argents and nothing else. The new yutys have been quite the boon for eggs. Debating if I want to try for just one more female or not. Either way, made up 20 more kibble. The real bottleneck here is now honey since I only have the one hive. But, if I just make kibble as I get eggs instead of waiting until I need kibble I can stay on top of production. I could also just make another hive, but I don't think it's really necessary for the amount of taming I do. For spinos I'm happy overall with the current base bloodline, mainly I'm now looking for a good melee roll. Current high is 46, I know I can easily get over 50 so I'd really like to aim for that this weekend. I've got 55 HP and 58 stamina to work with, plus I can drop speed out of the line completely too. Argents I know I can get 60+ because they don't dump stats into speed, so I definitely want to aim for high weight and high stamina, already got 50+ on each but I can't see any reason to not push a little higher. This is just for utility, don't care that much about HP or melee though of course I'll keep those in my lines if I've got em. Velos need the most work by far, as I don't have any 7x difficulty tames from 2 weeks ago. HP, stamina and melee are all extremely lackluster, even for standard difficulty. I have the one bred one for caves, but I know I can do a lot better. I'd also like to try for some better colors. I also need to bite the bullet and just tame some rexes, no one on my unofficial is willing to share their boss rex lines for some reason. My friend I is but it's a fresh line of tek rexes, so we'll see. I do appreciate her being so open about sharing stats and bloodlines with me. I really don't understand why some people are so closed to the idea of sharing bloodlines. It's not like I begged for them for free, I'm offering to pay extremely well for 3 eggs. But since a lot of the active members have everything already, I guess they'd rather sit on their eggs...

Yesterday ended up being mainly about breeding. I tamed one more argent for colors first, then collected up as many fertilized eggs as I could make. Got twin female argents with colors, worth keeping. And finally got a velo with all the stats I wanted from the parents. Not a huge accomplishment there since the rotating multipliers make his stats obsolete but this does mean I can finally start doing artifact runs on The Island. Honestly spent much of the day with my character sat on a bench doing other things while the babies grew and collecting up more eggs for kibble. Did find some time to take my mana out for a run, slowly getting used to her. Amazing, even the Ragnarok map feels small when you can traverse it so quickly... Impressed I got home on time today also, so I was able to load up and do my next round of breeding. Did the spinos, the new argents and bred my color mutated low level yuty, hoping for another female for more eggs. Yes I could just tame one but I figure I have almost an entire trough of meat left over from yesterday anyway so... Am pleased to report that having popped all of the eggs, I have a bumper crop of babies after so many failures. Both argent eggs gave me females so while the colors aren't perfect, I can keep them for breeding stock. As for the spinos...I finally got the HP to transfer from friend I's spino gift. Not only did I get HP, I got every other major stat too! You bet I ran to my hive to get honey for my nanny. She will be my main mount on Aberration until my line progress further. I am so excited after so many 0 HP spino babies. I also popped an egg from my 0 speed male and got a 3 stat male, with the 0 speed, stamina and melee rolls. And the 0 HP, classic...but that's fine. He's also a gorgeous color combination, dark grey with a full blue sail. These 2 together will be my main breeding pair until I finish putting together the full line, which means permanently dropping the speed. Finally I popped my one yuty egg and got...twin females. Usually whenever I get twins it's a male and a female, popping 2 sets of female twins in 2 days is unreal to me. And perfect for my needs. I honestly don't know how to handle all this excitement lol. It's been so long since I had any measurable success in this game and this is just win after win after win. Guess I'd better go run some more meat with all these new mouths to feed...

Busy day yesterday. So, according to the server admin the 7x difficulty is a rotating event every other weekend. That's great news for taming. The bad news is it makes hunting for stats pointless 90% of the time. I'll have to spend my time wisely to make the most of it. This being an off weekend, I spent most of the day in base making some significant changes. I cryo'd up most of my animals, especially my breeders. Moving my hatchery area up onto what was previously my wyvern platform. One wyvern has since died and the other one is in the fridge, leaving Norothrax by himself, he doesn't seem to care though. Honestly I could pop one of the higher level eggs I picked up last week but I don't really need another wyvern right now so...yeah. The next one I hatch will be a max level, if anything. Anyway. One of the issues with my hatchery was having a separate generator that was constantly running out of gas because I always forgot to turn it off when I wasn't using it. First I widened the bridge across to my main base so animals can now comfortably traverse it. Then I ran my cabling from my base to the hatchery. Now everything runs from one generator. Can't wait to get a tek gen and remove all those unsightly (but hidden) wires but that's a long way off at this rate. I also finally built the rear corner of my base, turned it into a loft greenhouse. It's pretty small, just 4 plots, but I really shouldn't need more than that. I'll let my temporary plots keep producing until they run out of fertilizer and then remove them, they're right in front of the bridge. I took my theri over to the swamp and did a massive run on rare flowers. Got my payment for the manas sorted, plus enough for the promised rexes and more than enough for myself too. Managed to make 40 extraordinary kibble in preparation for next weekend. It sounds like a lot but it's not enough, not by far. Then I started breeding what I could. Side note, my spino grew up fine but my juvenile thorny dragon starved, not sure how that happened. I just have no luck at all with that line. First thing I bred was my argent, popped a female with all the stats I wanted, basically almost a clone of her mother. Imprinted it's going to have something like 900 base weight. Then I bred my mana pair, got a female, again with all the stats I wanted. Side note babies do still jet into the sky when born. Luckily it didn't fly off the cliff... My new friend also stopped by to pick up the flower and also to give me a female spino with the high HP roll so I can try to breed it into my lines. So I bred that and got...another 0 hp spino. Amazing. Every other stat I wanted transferred. I'll keep it though simply because I can pair it with my 0 speed male and work on dumping that useless 48 points from my line. I didn't have too much else on the docket but chatting about breeding and various past projects has me wanting to work on colors again. So I went out hunting argents with the aim of breeding a full white bird. Once I've got the colors I'll breed it with my stat females until I've got a full white utility bird. Only managed to get 2 birds before I got tired. Stocked up my troughs and logged for the night.

Well, it's been a very rough week at work so I've been putting in extra hours there, which means no time for Ark by the time I get home. Luckily things finally calmed down enough for me to get out at a decent hour. My spino had of course grown up so I went ahead and bred him with my stat-heavy female. I also bred my velos and my thornys. While I did discontinue the latter breeding line, I am still going to at least get my melee and weight rolls on one imprinted animal. Got nothing from the velos, finally got a female thorny with weight I can breed with my melee male. And got a new spino with every stat except HP...inherited the 0 from his father. Ugh. Obviously I can't use him for combat but I can breed with my highest HP female. I also desperately need to breed out the totally wasted 48 speed points in this line, just waiting to do that until after I've got my working stat build because I need a baby from the line as a main mount. Also just realized I totally forgot to breed my new argent, oh well. That pretty much sums up my day. Got my babies to juvenile, collected kibble eggs, stocked the trough and logged. I did find out from the server admins the increased difficulty is every other weekend. I don't know what this weekend's event will be so until I find out, I don't plan to really do much taming in the near future. I still need to work on a new Aberration outpost, I want to reconfigure my current main base again, and I'm thinking about rebuilding the Arkanus on The Island one more time. Also need an Extinction outpost, I have nothing set up there since so far I've only been hunting velos but I need to start preparing for OSDs at the very least. I was very kindly gifted a cryofridge and 50 pods but I lost 2 of them during my failed drake hunt and I'm sure I'll lose more at some point.

Been awhile but life ebbs and flows, and the Ark flows with it. Haven't been on much in the past couple of weeks. But the unofficial I'm on did an event this weekend--all maps set to difficulty 7, max level 210, and taming multi turned down to 3 from the usual 5. Also disabled dino scan so people had to actually hunt for their tames. Honestly it was great. Aside from a few minor issues. Last weekend I logged on to feed everything and reset timers. Well, the server admin ended up having to do a rollback on Rag and I missed the announcement. Logged in on Saturday afternoon to find 4 of my project thornys and my quetz had starved to death because the rollback undid my feeding. So that sucked and was a main contributing factor to me discontinuing the thorny dragon breeding line. Naturally the first thing I did after feeding everyone was run the wyvern trench. Got a couple of ok eggs, 224 and 252. Most of what I did was prep work honestly. Making kibble, darts etc. On Sunday I transferred over to Aberration to find another issue--my outpost had auto decayed after an issue with the timers. That was why Rag had been rolled back. So I had to rebuild at least a bed for the bare minimum. Really threw a wrench into my plans. But anyway. My main goal was to hunt for the best of the best spinos to finally start my bloodline. Unfortunately even with the massive proliferation of aberrant spinos, farming on any map that isn't Ragnarok is quite painful. By the end of the day I had only managed to find one worthy spino who tamed out with an amazing 53 stamina. Of course it didn't help that I wasn't the only one hunting spinos, and my resources were much more limited. But that's ok. Back to it this morning, my new spino hunting friend showed up shortly after I did. It took me quite some time but I managed to get another spino down, with a very promising 37 melee. She stood up with only 46 but I did get 58 stam, crazy. With one solid breeding animal ready, I took a detour to attempt a rock drake run. Long story short, Ark was Ark and I failed miserably. A wrong turn, a run in with a reaper queen, and getting tail swiped off a cliff into the element river put a very premature end to my rock drake run, my spino, my shinehorn, and all of my drake hunting supplies. I really liked that spino too even if I hadn't named her yet. Feeling rather defeated, I went back to spinos. I needed a 0 speed male to breed with my females. My new spino hunting friend, having heard my tale of woe, offered to let my new male breed with their high roll HP female. I accepted of course and gratefully returned to Rag with 2 new spinos and a hopeful egg. Alas, the baby did not get the HP I had hoped for. But, by chance it was a male who inherited the mother's 47 weight, higher than any of mine. So I'm keeping him anyway. Friend also swung by to gift me some pearls and a BP to help replace the asc saddle I lost, and also surprised me with a pair of manas. We had previously agreed to a trade deal, but for only one mana. So that was quite nice. I'll admit I have no idea how manas work, my test jumps have been...shaky, at best. I also took advantage of the higher levels to tame a new argent who single handedly replaced both of my males with both weight and stamina. That's excellent, I'll be sure to breed them to make even more efficient imprinted hauler birds. I was looking around for an anky also, didn't come up with anything. On a whim thought about grabbing a mammoth since I found an asc saddle, my disappointment with the thorny dragons still painfully fresh. Did not find a mammoth. Did find a 210 ice wyvern with a nest and an egg. You better believed I snapped that right up. The tumultuous day mostly repaired by such a lovely find, I decided that was a good way to end my evening. I would have liked to try to hunt some velos but there just wasn't time. I'm hoping the increased difficulty is going to be a regular event rotation, breeding is frustrating enough with the still default mating intervals. This week will mainly be about recovery and prep for next weekend.

Busy weekend on Ark. My original plans ended up falling by the wayside as I made kibble, loaded up my gear and headed out to Extinction to farm for velos. I have definitely been spoiled by Ragnarok and forgot how tedious it is to grind on other maps. It took most of the day to tame just 3 velos when I had brought supplies for 5. Also for anyone who tames by level only, the 150 I tamed actually had the worst stats of the 3, with nothing worth breeding. Honestly the other two have higher but not breed quality stats either, but I can at least get an imprinted baby out of them to start with. The reason is because I've decided to replace barys with them as my go to cave mount, at least on The Island. The watermelon yuty grew up and I bred a couple more sheep. No thornys worth keeping. With the mating intervals set where they are, breeding anything is excruciatingly tedious. Sigh. I may just have to keep my hatchery fully stocked with refertilizer and use set pairings until I get my base bloodlines. Then yesterday I loaded up a different set of gear and off to Aberration to hunt spinos. Side note farming spinos is a great way to get exp, I got 2 levels killing them. Well, them and a ton of sarcos, mantas and karkinos, plus all the fish and the poor otters I kept eating by accident. It took only a couple of hours to pop a 145 female. Getting her down, well that was hard to do out in the open but we managed. Tamed her up, podded her and started to head back. My game crashed just feet away from the safety of the lake. I died upon logging back in, killed by a karkinos before I could even move. Fantastic. I had nothing that could get back to my body. Fortunately I asked in the server Discord and someone was able to quickly log in, retrieve my stuff and drop it off at the public transmitter. I ended up having to transfer back to Ragnarok to make a saddle for the new spino as I have a bp for an ascendant one. Then went back over to retrieve my original spino. Once we got everything sorted, I tamed a new bulbdog and took the new spino down into the blue zone to farm gems, got a shinehorn while I was there. We also collected a ton of gas balls from a public collector. Then we retreated to Ragnarok. I made a couple of wing suits and a set of hazard gear, but spent the rest of the day on Ragnarok. I don't know what it is about Aberration. I played enough on the map previously to have multiple rock drakes and whatnot, no idea why all of a sudden I have a major problem every time I load up the map on this server. Anyway. The rest of the day passed without incident. We ran drops, farmed a little, built a little, nothing substantial after too much excitement. So the final tally is 3 velos, a spino and a shinehorn. I also gave away my 2 Easter pteras as I have absolutely no use for them. I still have one ugly non-Easter ptera left, but I might just cull him. Still haven't fixed the spawn issue in my base. At this rate I may just say heck with it and build a wall between the regions, then move my taming pen over to the other side at the top. Annoying, but I'm tired of the constant attacks and getting pinned by raptors at least once a day.

Pretty low key evening tonight. Popped out my baby yuty to let her continue growing. I'd consider naming her but I really don't bother naming most animals unless they're a main mount, so we'll see. I also retrieved the other female I left in my taming pen last night, already getting a nice flow of eggs. Bred the new generation of thorny dragons, got one to keep. Bred the sheep again, in the first spot I had them. The baby did fall through my foundations but that was fine. Only one baby, no stats I wanted but I'll let it grow up and cryo it for sacrifice later. Did cryo one of the adult sheep that I don't need any more, will be bringing it over to Aberration with me. Collected up some eggs and honestly that's about it.

Funnily enough the first two I bred were on a floor, I moved the female because I didn't want the babies to fall through the foundations. They fell through the map instead...at least I can pick up foundations. Pretty uneventful night last night. I ran ice cave and desert drops, then returned home. Can't breed the sheep again, of course she ended up with an almost 2 day timer. This is the only thing I really dislike about this server, there is no reason whatsoever for official settings on the mating intervals when everything else is boosted. Did breed the thorny dragons, 3 to keep including twins. Still working on my zero stats, it's a slow process. I also culled them, killing off probably 7-8, either non-stats or older generation breeders. I did keep my two Easter thornys, I won't be using them but I'll try to trade/sell them off. I'll probably end up culling them if no one is interested. Also bred my yuty pair, they aren't high level or anything I just want another 2-3 females for eggs. Popped a female...mutation. Thanks Ark. Well it's a nice color so I guess I can't complain too much. I also happened to find another low level female while I was doing a meat run and tamed her too. I actually just realized I never checked to see if she actually tamed up in the pen...I mean I know she did, I just forgot. Oops. Well it's fine, she'll be safe enough in the pen. The baby yuty was taking a lot longer to hit juvenile than I expected, I ended up cryoing her so I could go to bed. So nice to not worry about losing sleep for the sake of pixel pets anymore. And since I talked about it, here she is, looking an awful lot like a watermelon slice:

Another late night at work pushing back my Ark time. My thornys and sheep grew up fine. Sadly I forgot to turn mating off so wasted my timers on a couple, ugh. Got the last yuty egg I needed to repay my ally for two snow owls, dropped those off then gave him a ride to the obelisk so he could transfer to his Extinction outpost. Did an ice cave drop run, nothing exciting. Bred my sheep in hopes of getting my super sheep line started. Got twins..that fell between the map and the ocean underneath. I couldn't do anything but watch them starve to death. Logged off for the night.

Another calm day. I had an issue at work so I didn't leave at my normal time, cutting my Ark time short. Upon logging in I pulled out my cryo'd juvenile ovis and popped it out in front of the trough to see if it was still bugged. Thankfully it is not and now eats and grows normally. Then I went down to my breeding area, bred my thorny dragons and popped 3 eggs, keeping two of the babies. One of them bugged and one did not, making it very visible. They hatched at the same time but one is about 1% behind the other one due to the issue. Cryoing it did not resolve it, but it didn't lag out enough to die fortunately. Moved my forge platform, I didn't like where it was. It's also now connected to my main base building for easier access. Then I started laying a new foundation for my mews, also more typically called an aviary. Honestly I may end up just keeping all of my active, non-breeding animals in there now that I have a cryofridge and enough pods to secure all of my animals and then some. Crazy right, I don't even have 50 animals. I mean I might, but I don't really count the pile of thorny dragons I haven't gotten around to culling yet. I'm also slowly narrowing down the issue with things spawning all over my yard. I believe it may have something to do with my base straddling two regions. All of my buildings are built on one region, but all of the animals spawns are on the other. So I think it's possible that region is not being spawn blocked by my base. It should be less of an issue with the new building going up on that side though. I also need to do double gates at my main entrances, both are on slopes and amassing quite a collection of animals outside them. Seriously annoying, especially as diplos are common in the area. And I realize I haven't really posted any pictures recently, so here's Norothrax, my poison wyvern. I actually haven't bothered naming most of my other animals. He's earned his though, proving to be an able companion in many adventures. I didn't think I'd like poison wyverns that much but I'd legit be upset if I lost him now. Yes that is an exceptionally ugly Easter rex in the background. She had 30 points in HP so I tamed her in hopes of getting an early jump on a bloodline. Nope. She stood up with 31 points in HP. Sigh. So now I'm stuck with that abomination until I get my first bred spino. I just use Noro for everything instead...

Pretty routine day today. Logged in, checked on my thorny dragons. All 3 babies had grown up, so I bred them. None of the other adults were off CD yet, the mating timers on this server are default for some reason. The server admin says it's because they don't want people breeding too many animals but...longer timers only makes people keep more breeding animals, it doesn't make them breed less. It's a silly argument that does not solve the problem. But they did say they were going to test a possible solution. I have a feeling it might be related to maturation rates so people will get mad and not confront them about such silliness. That's basically my only real issue with this server so far but it's a pretty big dealbreaker. I don't know why people think anyone who asks about boosting something wants instant gratification. I'm not looking for that, I just want the logic of being able to complete one breeding cycle of my animals per day for batch breeding and mutation stacking. It's going to take months either way, I'd just really like to not have hundreds more animals than necessary because someone is afraid of overbreeding and ignoring that it causes a tame cap issue. Just get cryopods is imo a poor argument when you have to go set up on an entirely different map just to get them. But this is a dead equus at this point, I doubt anything will come of it. Anyway I put the eggs in the hatchery then ran ice cave and desert drops. Got another nice ascendant yuty saddle, no complaints there. Then somewhat on a whim I bred my sheep again. I bred them once before but the baby died. I stayed with it to juvenile, then farmed some more berries and did some stuff around the base. One very generous person gifted me with a cryofridge and 50 cryopods after I had asked if any were for sale, so that's awesome. I podded up a whole bunch of animals. I finally saw what the issue was with the sheep, too. For some reason its maturation bar randomly froze and its food started dropping crazy fast. If I wasn't standing there and able to force feed it, it would have died 100%. That's ridiculous. Luckily I was able to cryo it when i got tired, I'll just keep it out whenever I'm around the base so I can watch it. I know sheep aren't super necessary on Ragnarok, but I have high HP and food sheep and I can cryo them to bring with me as sacrificial food sources when out taming. Handy. I notice someone appears to be breeding them on Aberration, but I prefer the normal versions for the slightly higher base HP, aka more mutton produced when killed. That was about it really aside from some housekeeping and doing some prep work. Since I don't need to run Extinction for pods for now I'm going to focus on preparing all of my base components for my outpost there. Partly why I was running drops, I need to restock gear and get better blueprints.

Tbh when it comes to event colors I would just tame them regardless of level and breed to high stat parents, often you'll get lucky and the baby will be a color clone of one parent so it's very easy to reproduce a nice event color on a useful stat base. It's mixing colors that's an absolute pain, as I learned with my Indominous Allo project. Had a very busy weekend with a lot of ups and downs. A general summary: I've collected up all of the stats for my thorny dragon line. Not exactly the stats you might expect either. My base bloodline level will be just 84, split between melee (43) and weight (41). Everything else is literally 0. I'm basically just testing "super advanced" breeding techniques that will maximize mutation potential by removing unused stats on the line. I am a little wary of going 0 on HP, but I figure these thornys are just harvesters, I already have a mastercraft saddle to use with them, and they'll have insane melee to kill things quickly so as long as we're not swarmed it should be fine. I started breeding the 0s first because yesterday I tamed a new thorny on a whim and it got 1 point in melee higher than my current best, negating the breeding I already did. So I think I'll breed the 0 side of the line first in case I run across a wild 30+ weight to push my line just a little bit higher. I'm not actively looking for them anymore though, I just sometimes find them when I'm doing desert drops. Did a little more building, did 2/3 of the roof on my base and set up the breeding area. Still having major issues with animals either spawning in my base area or glitching through my gates. Lost an anky and my bear after my recently tamed theri got separated from them. That's my fault for getting lazy about putting animals back when I'm done with them. I have another anky and I don't really need the bear anymore, but still. This server is actually a cluster running The Island, Ragnarok, Aberration and Extinction. I started on The Island and transferred to Ragnarok. Well, I gathered up a bunch of gear and materials and transferred to Aberration. There's a public transmitter set up so getting back out isn't too bad. Unfortunately I died within my first minute of being on Aberration. I don't know why this is but a lot of the player spawns are camped by basilisks, which is what happened to me. Luckily I had my non-aberrant spino cryoed, I managed to pull him out first so he killed the basilisk while I respawned and recovered everything. Not so lucky a little later on while scouting for a base area. The spot I wanted was taken, I took a wrong turn after not being on this map for like a year and died. Lost everything. Someone was kind enough to use a rock drake to get me back to my spino, but it meant starting from absolute scratch. I also lost my only cryopod, which absolutely sucks. Didn't do too badly aside from that. Got some low level farming animals and set up a small camp and most importantly a bed so I don't have to deal with spawn points anymore. I won't be playing over there much this week, in fact probably not until the weekend. Now that I have a bed it will be much, much easier to transfer everything else in. I'm not building a super fancy base, this is just an outpost to raise rock drakes and collect animals for my two main breeding lines, aberrant spinos and baryonyx. Plus featherlights because they are awesome. Debating if I want to do aberrant anky and doed lines to run alongside the thornys since aberrant animals have higher melee and lower hp, would make them that much better for farming. Might just settle for a breeding pair of each to get imprinted babies. Or see about trading my thorny line for existing anky and doed lines if anyone has some. The anky at least I would imagine has active lines somewhere on the cluster cause you'll never not need metal. Maybe I'll do that actually. Just get a pair of doeds to breed and run a new aberrant anky line. I guess that means I'll need to tame a crab so I can carry wild ankys to a taming pen. Anyway. That's about it really, most of what I'm doing is really time consuming so it ends up not feeling like much forward progress. And frankly the thornys aren't at all necessary, it's just a pet project to work on while I do other things. They're very easy to raise, not requiring much meat. It can get a little dicey if the server lags while they're very young because their base HP is quite low, which is the only downside to this particular line.

Pretty busy night last night, good thing I don't really need a lot of sleep... First, my base. I cleaned up the stone foundations, then built the main building in wood. I had to move quite a bit of things around to accommodate the change in space. It's a pretty narrow build. I think I might expand the back of it out a little with triangle foundations to add a dedicated kitchen. I am having some problems with building the roof, I want to do it in a specific way and the snap points are refusing to cooperate. Otherwise I would share a screenshot of it. Still having some issues with wild spawns in my base even though I put some foundations down to stop them. They'll probably keep spawning until I actually start building on that side. With my home now coming together properly, I decided to work on getting levels to finally get the cooker sorted. So I jumped on my highest level lightning wyvern and went to the highlands to grab a sheep in case I found something to tame. While there we decided to visit the wyvern nests and check the eggs. Unfortunately we attracted attention from a pair of wyverns. A lightning and a fire, of course the first one didn't matter but we were having a really hard time with the fire. The new wyvern's stamina was a little low and that ended up dooming us both. When it killed us the message popped up--the fire wyvern was a 180 and mine was a relatively fresh faced 170. Ouch. I jumped on Norothrax, my first raised wyvern a 155 poison with a lot more levels from use, and went back to recover my body. Grumpy with the loss of my wyvern, I decided to go run desert drops instead. Didn't get much of interest but did fight and kill my first deathworm. Scouted for thorny dragons on the way and found one to tame. Grabbed it and carried it all the way home to drop in my pen. On the way home I saw a 160 ice wyvern, so I went back to look for it and maybe pull it over to a nest. Sadly it had despawned already, but I found a wild quetz egg. Did not see the quetz literally right there and she started attacking us. Went hmm and led it over to my taming pen, then started shooting it while it circled around Noro. Of course it ran, we chased and I actually did manage to KO it...in the sandstone cliffs. But we got super lucky, somehow the quetz landed on top of a tree instead of falling all the way down into the canyon. It made it extremely difficult to get into its inventory but we managed. So that was my accidental quetz tame, I hadn't even really planned on getting one since wyverns can carry almost everything. It's female at least so eggs yay. Mostly on a whim we went back to the desert and scouted for more thorny dragons and drops. I ended up taming two more, including one easter one. The last one I tamed ended up with 41 melee to go with my 41 weight. Honestly not sure if it's worth taming a few more to hope for a little higher roll or if I should just go with what I've got. Well, I still need to tame a few more to get the colors I want anyway. I plan to do a natural color morph and I think I'll practice stacking mutations on these. Took Norothrax down into the canyons to go fight alphas, there's a ton down there. I am so close to 89 now but it was getting late and I needed to go to bed. Tonight's plan is to level up, get the cooker, maybe build a grinder, maybe look for more thorny dragons and some general weekend prep. I might scout for another wyvern egg with my griffin, I can't really afford to lose Noro or my surviving lightning wyvern. Honestly I really want a high level ice wyvern, the first wyvern I ever tamed was a gorgeous ice and I just loved him.

Another build heavy day. I finished the basic form of my wall, including a built in large taming pen. Being right on the edge of the snow means it's actually not too hard to kite yutys into my pen for safe, easy taming. I know it works because I tamed two of them, a male and female pair. Junk levels, just need eggs. Now I wonder if it's worth keeping kibble animals at all beyond the yutys and possibly rexes. The S+ nanny eliminates the need for imprint kibble and from what I read babies sometimes even accept higher tier kibble anyway. Luckily I don't have too many tamed for eggs if I decide to cull them later. I also got two other new additions--a pair of snow owls, with a promised trade of yuty eggs whenever I get enough to bring over. I'm a little bit torn about getting them. On the one hand, they are very nice, bred and imprinted twins that will be very useful in the future. On the other, I was planning to go hunt down and breed some for myself and maybe introduce some new stats/colors to the cluster. I know it's a trade and all but I don't currently have any good animals to contribute to the trade economy so it just feels like a handout. I know it's mainly impatience on my part. I've been on the cluster for less than a month, started on a different map and am in the process of moving my base. Of course I'm not going to have anything, I'm not set up yet. I'm just busy imagining what my base and bloodlines will be like in the future when I still have so much set up to do now. Honestly my main priority besides the base right now is leveling up, still 2 shy of the cooker that I so desperately need. It is just so, so painful to manufacture kibble in any quantity without it and that means I have far fewer supplies for taming on hand. I also still want to do at least one more built in taming pen, possibly two--one for birds, as argents are nearby. And one for smaller animals. I think it's also worth my while to wall off the back of the area in case an animal somehow gets loose, it could run off the cliff and straight down into my base. Knowing my luck I'll lose everything except my ugly rex if that happened...

Pretty slow night last night, just working on my one upper perimeter wall. It's not a very large wall or anything but I am stacking foundations because I hate uneven walls, so it's just mass amounts of materials. I actually have a crazy amount of stone from clearing the area with my doed so I won't be running out any time soon, but wood and thatch run low annoyingly fast. Also brought my generator and fridge over from my old base location. Boy was my bird not happy with me hauling that much weight in eggs but we made it. I think I want to try taming snow owls this weekend. Haven't tamed a single Extinction exclusive creature yet.

Far too much has happened to report here, but the short version is I got tired of my base location. It's desolate and highly uninspiring. So, I did the logical thing and scouted out a brand new location that made me want to build there. Staked my claim and am now moving in. All of my animals have been moved, including the 3 wyverns I raised over the weekend. Now I'm just doing a run or two each day to pick up heavier mats like ingots with my hauler argent while I work on setting up with new builds, etc. Here is essentially everything I did last night: Definitely need to paint the pagoda. I was going to put my birds there, but I think it'll be a lot nicer as a guest space. I'll put a transmitter and some basic amenities there, maybe even a cryopod fridge as a charging station, and a trade box. Side note it's been a long time since I did a "butterfly corner" ceiling and it took awhile to remember how to do it properly. If anyone remembers my old kibble pagoda, basically the same design. Would have done a hollow inner roof if I could figure out how without breaking everything. Well I guess I can always renovate it later. The mod pieces are from eco's garden decor. This server only has 6 mods and they're all for building, plus the awesome spyglass which is indeed awesome and I highly recommend it over the older super spyglass. It shows way more information and can be used live to help with tames. Not pictured: the utter dumpster fire that is my quick n dirty box build for just having somewhere to put stuff for now. Terrible. Put it right where my main build is going to be too, did not think that through at all...

Started my day with some ptera taming. Hadn't really planned on keeping any but I decided it would be a good way to get wyvern eggs. Tamed 3 and bred one pair, hatched some eye searing magenta twins cause of the event colors. Got them started then took the griffin out for a long flight. Originally I was going to tame more thornys but I ended up running drops instead. I am lacking so much in gear and good BPs, and especially I was hoping for some good fur. Eventually in my travels I ended up near the scar, which was oddly empty. I don't know if someone did a run previously or what but I rather cautiously flew in and did a short pass. Came out with a 155 poison wyvern egg with absolutely nothing around to aggro. Well. Guess I didn't really need those pteras after all, huh. Feeling a strange mix of triumphant and like I wasted my morning, nonethless I'm happy to have an egg even though I won't be hatching it until next weekend. Posted the pteras for sale along with my beaver, which I don't need with the thornys around anyway. Then we took another long flight out to the desert biome. Over the course of the afternoon and evening we did a total of 4 desert drop runs, picking up some pretty nice stuff including 2 pieces of fur and loads of bps I'll never use. I also found a black 145 sheep wandering out there, of all places. I wasn't going to tame it originally but I had nothing else planned so I actually flew back to base to make a cake and get Raven the argent, then hauled all the way back out, tamed the sheep, and uploaded it at a drop. Then flew to the blue ob, got the sheep, flew it home, and switched back to the griffin. Turned out to be worthwhile, as the sheep tamed with 45 in hp. I'll be able to start my super sheep line right away. I also tested the fur out by doing a run on ice wyvern nests, only found one level 90 egg and no wyverns in sight. I'll probably use it for kibble or give/trade it away honestly, a 90 won't be useful for anything when I can already at least use the 155 to run more eggs. Or the sacrificial pteras. Already thinking about rebuilding my base, honestly. I'm not happy with it and it's too small anyway, I'll have to knock a wall out just to raise the wyvern. Ended the night by grinding and stockpiling more of the usual metal/narcs/sparkpowder/gunpowder and organizing things a bit more.