MirageUK

Very busy weekend after ending Friday night trying to grab a male Mantis for our girl to boost the eggs for imprint kibble only to lose my RAFT and the only 2 deathworm horns I had for the Mantis to be killed immediately by an alpha raptor from nowhere soon as it tamed!! Did some more community building. Helped out a tribe from the Netherlands by giving him a lift home after he died and lost his bird and did some trading with our Welsh player - very good team player and really active in helping others out on the server. Only simple trades - we live in The Bay (Pirate Bay, Ragnarok, Unofficial) and with our Basil have ridiculously easy access to Sillica Pearls from the underwater cave by the Sunken Ship so swapped for some Obsidian (he lives nearer Volcano). Saturday I mainly concentrated on completing the breeding platform/hatchery that Hep started and working on base breeders for our tames. So far we have managed to get a guaranteed base level 233 REX and 232 Pteranadon. Did more trades of Pteranadon eggs for Allosaur eggs (only low level but we need a girl for kibble) and our Pterano eggs were cheap Sunday I scouted for a spot and built a Wyvern trap and realised that my Ptera needs a LOT more stamina to run from the Wyverns after an egg snatch!!! Sooo close to getting me, managed to do one last barrel roll through a tight gap finally losing them before dropping to the floor out of stamina!! soooo close! The plan is to hatch some of these Wyvern eggs next weekend and hope they don't ask for Mantis kibble to imprint. We now have a collection: 1 x 95 Poison, 1 x 100 Fire, 2 x 170 Fire, 1 x 165 Lightnin, 1 x 175 Lightnin and 1 x 180 Lightning.

Quiet and short one last night. Mainly collecting metal and obsidian and making polymer to keep my chainsaw repaired and collect more wood to continue the cave build. Used all our cement paste reserves so tonight I need to go chomp some beavers and raid their homes before setting out on my mission to go get a couple of Morrelatops for imprint kibble. I also picked up some new Wyvern eggs which was interesting - first one I didn't get any aggro but this time EVERYTHING aggro'd me and it was a nightmare escaping. Came home after 2 runs with 3 new eggs though - 100 Fire, 165 Lightnin, 175 Lightnin. Once we have all the imprint kibble creatures we can think about trapping a couple for milk and raising our eggs.

Mainly spent the evening last night on our Ragnarok PVE unofficial showing another player around the sillica pearl water tunnel under the water in Pirate Bay. I also spent some time trying my hardest to get back from the desert alive carrying a thorny dragon with my argentavis - not fun! It would aggro and spike my bird when picked and I had to ride it out a few seconds without sprinting but continue to fly as soon as I stalled mid-air it would attack again. To add to the problem the spikes are poisonous so not only was it dealing damage it also increasing my birds torpor - luckily got it back without it getting too bad and knocking my bird out. I also got some pictures of the progress so far on my public cave: That's my modest home with the remains of my breeding "tower" / start of my workshop to the right/behind my home. Picture showing the walls above my cave to stop Carnos and the like wandering in for a swim and light snack on my dung beetle and lystro. My relaxing/fishing area to the side of my home overlooking the waterfall coming in from above. My dock and bridge across to the other smaller island - more salmon in the waters there so gonna setup a couple of small fishing huts. Still have to finish the workshop and make a start on the stables and eatery/public bar.

Picked up a non BP Ascendant REX saddle on Ragnarok the other day. Think it was a double red drop on the ice mountain just in from pirate bay.

Helped out others on the server mainly and then continued working on my Pirate Cave public build. Funniest moment was flying down to the desert on Ragnarok to pick a Kangaroo with with my Argy to take for another tribe to tame up after selling him on the idea of using the fast, mega jumping Kanga for berries instead of a slow Trike. I got to the desert, took quite some time finding a low level Kanga - all seem to be 130-150 and don't think the guy has time to tame up a high level so wanted to grab a lower one for him. I eventually spot a level 60 and go in for the pick after resting to regen my birds stamina and once picked up I start heading north over the desert/mountains and back towards the volcano area to drop it off for him... ahhh ohh, ahh ohh, ahh ohh.. darn I didn't bring a canteen and I'm slowly dying from dehydration. My mind throws me back to Scorched Earth and I head towards the mountains, keeping my health topped up with a couple health brews I have but still miles from water - I let the guy know I might not make it as dehydrated and the response is calm and well thought - "Why don't you fly towards the shore?".. doh! of course the desert on Ragnarok is surrounded by a coastline. I bow my head in shame and sling a right turn towards the coast where I take a drink and continue my journey. I ended the evening building fences around the top of my cave so that I don't get anymore surprise visitors dropping in (Carno nearly wrecked me and the other guy on one visit dropping from the land above). I was then going to pull down my breeding "tower" (behemo gate height box) and make a workshop and stables but got distracted and instead bridged the islands in the cave to start working on my fishing deck area. Will try and get some pictures together when it is more complete.

Been a while since I updated - don't think I added anything for our Scorched adventures after Aberration (wrong order I know) but we're now over on a new Ragnarok map. Not my usual game style on this one. I'm in no rush to build up and as such although we're a small tribe of 3 this time I decided to go it alone to start off with. Leaving my tribe members to start off on their own whilst I took a more leisurely approach to the map. I'm 3 days in and still haven't got walls or a ceiling on my house but ended up settling in a nice looking cave in the north of the map - which I later learned to be called Pirate Cave. Last night was my first night trying to tame anything and it was absolutely mental. I had planned on taming an argy and ended up chasing down .. and running from a level 130 REX instead. No traps and only a crossbow with tranq arrows the chase was long and exciting - sooo many places on ragnarok where you can get a decent vantage point and shoot from above but I found the AI much improved with the REX tracking around rocks and up hills to get at me. Luckily it is easily distracted so I kept running between other lesser animals which would catch it's attention whilst I got away, re-loaded and re-positioned. No kibble so tamed over a number of hours using what meat I could kill and harvest on the beach nearby - managing to get a couple of bits of prime here and there from Argentavis but mainly just normal raw meat. It was an experience doing it solo and without my typical boat trap... or any trap for that matter. Just need to catch myself a berry gatherer now as I have ALL the meat I could possibly need to spoil and craft into narcotics.

Got our boy rex a new girlfriend - wild 150 mutton tamed out at 220. Entered wrong details into Dododex and arrived and started feeding the KO girl rex 15 minutes before it was due (had it set to kibble but only had mutton to tame it). Spotted low level female vulture whilst waiting, threw a tent around it and tamed it up before finding and doing the same with a nearby male. Heading home after the tames I spot a low level Gallimimus - half expected it not to work I try throw a tent around it.. and to my shock it is trapped. Glitched between my tent and some rocks, but trapped. Wait until after the thunderstorm for our long neck rifles to work again we take it down and take it home once tamed - just need to get a boyfriend for it now so I head out looking, sandstorms, heatwaves preventing much visibility I decide I've had enough and log off for the evening. Next on the list is a boy Gallimimus to help the girl lay some eggs and a mated pair of Mantis so we then have all the required "imprint" kibbles to start breeding with full imprints.

Its been an interesting few days back to early-game starting out on Scorched Earth. We had some issues finding each other to start off with but then got a small base established with a bed and I logged out leaving the other guys to it. I had the following night off and returned the night after to find that we now had a small yard containing a Morrelatop, Thorny Dragon, a few Jerboas and a Doedicurus. A new house made out of adobe with storage chests, a bed, a forge, mortar & pestles, smithy, fabricator and a water well. The guys had been busy on my night off and I was impressed in what they had achieved. Message from Hep over steam as he wasn't online as early as me "Not sure what the next plan is here, argy or anky or both". I decided both - got a low level anky tamed up after a loooong taming period on berries and then moved on to get myself an Argy. Tamed using raw meat it tamed out at a level 35 - poor but it's a start and allows me to explore the map a little better. I jump on my argy all excited and head out exploring, find water in a partially dried out river and head down to be taken off my argy by a Kapro! I panic and somehow end up equipping a whip I collected from a drop, one hit and the Kapro releases me. I jump back on my Argy and notice it's not a bad level and decide to tame it. I position myself on a large rock and fire down my crappy tranq arrows using a primitive crossbow... it takes a few shots but finally goes down. I spent some time trying to gather meat but this argy is really poor at battling - most meat collected from a kill is eaten by the argy as it's stam is drained and it heals. I start robbing the meat to put in my own inventory and eventually have enough to tame up the Kapro - tamed out at level 158. The other guys join and we spend some time harvesting and trying to get Argy's for the other members. Managed to KO a max level 150 near base in Heps "green" colour but disappointingly got attacked by wolves and killed pre-tame. I use my argy to then go and pick up some wolves, hovering over my tribe mates they shoot tranq darts and KO them and I leave them to tame whilst I look out for more. ... few days in ... I go explore the desert, decide I want a REX, fail miserably at grabbing a 140 Fire Wyvern egg. I finally find some bee nests (only 2 on the map afaik) and spent some time fighting them for honey until deciding to go hunt Mantis and make up some Ghillie and bug spray which makes it MUCH easier Finally after a couple days I collect enough to make the S+ Domesticated hive. In the meantime Hep sorts out his starter farm and we begin the long journey towards kibble production. .. couple days more .. I capture and tame out our first REX - tamed out at level 134 and then I decide to go looking for Deathworms. I find one, it nearly destroys my REX - v.bloody but it just died before my rex did. Gonna need better REX!! I spent AGES healing it up and continue. I stop at 6 death worms killed and log for the evening. .. last night.. I'm alone again, two nights now - not sure what other guys are doing but I want a better REX so don't have to heal as much between each deathworm kill to allow me to spend more time farming the horns. I find a level 145 rex out in the eastern desert so head back home to pre-fab a quick trap. Load up my argentivis with trap materials, make up some tranq darts and head out to the location. Moving a little away so I don't draw aggro I set the trap up, standard "box" 3 x 4, ramps up the front, middle walls missing at the back. I have to fight off a couple of Mantis which are bothering me whilst I build but get it done and then kite the rex over, up the ramp and dropped into the box. I land my argy behind the box and unload my longneck shooting the rex through the single column missing wall until it's KO. Remembering that we have crops and knowing that I've been collecting scorpion eggs I head home to make up the required kibble - 7 kibble and lots of water jars later (forgot how painful kibble is in a standard cooking pot) I can make no more.. out of jerky. This rex will apparently need 16 kibble - 7 ain't gonna cut it. I load up Dododex and check what levels I will miss if I use a sheep instead - 3 levels less than kibble tame will have to do. I grab one of the sheep I caught and tamed earlier and fly it to the rex trap where I wait.. and wait.. .and wait.. Dododex tells me it's time to feed so I slaughter my sheep, whip out the chainsaw and hack away picking up more than 200 mutton from a low level sheep. I throw it in the REX, tame it up and walk him home. Tonight I need to find him a girlfriend if possible - or continue hunting for the other "imprint kibble" dinosaurs that we are still missing (Mantis, Gallimimus, Vulture).

Finished Aberration, started Scorched Earth.. further updates once established somewhere.

Beat the alpha Rockwell boss on Aberration - 2 man, both on Bigfoot, 20 cakes, 400-550 ascendant shotguns and 4 Reapers. Now a long week of grinding to get the resources to get the rest of the tribe through it too then I don't know, maybe move server over to Scorched to cover the story elements we missed jumping from Island to Aberration.

Solo'd the Beta Rockwell boss.. then after many attempts finally got all of us through it too. Not sure if it scales based on number of players entering but the other guys seemed to be having a real hard time of it. I just stuck with my normal run and gun tactic circling the arena on my monkeys shoulders pumping shotgun shells into the tentacles, running from or jumping over nameless and reapers. Just trying to get some members levelled up now so that we can have a go at the Alpha.

Following the successful Rockwell Gamma defeat "test" which we rolled back on Wednesday evening and whilst wandering around base on my new monkey I had a realisation that when armed with a shotgun and mounted on a monkey I had the PERFECT positioning to run and gun. With this realisation I decided I wanted to give the gamma boss another go but this time instead of being mounted on a Drake to use my monkey instead. I suggested we do more science with full intent on rolling back again - due to not having all main tribe members on - only upon connecting to Discord the tribe member we were waiting on to do the boss for real logged in too. I was going to go in light, very light in fact with plans on taking in just my asc shotgun, armor and lots of ammo plus my monkey, his glowtail and my bulbdog. Plans changed - with the main tribe members now online we added some megalosaurs and 2-3 reapers to the mix and decided to go at it for real. Spawned into the arena, instantly forgot to pick my monkeys glowtail up before setting off on my laps around Rockwell. The 2 guys on reapers taking out anything that spawned, Hep on his drake trying to control the fireballs and myself running around doing laps on my monkeys shoulders taking out the tentacles with a couple shots of my asc pump shotgun. Megalos all parked on the ramp to take on Rockwell once I have cleared the tentacles each time. Could have been better organised but it worked out well - the reapers were a little damaged and we lost 2 glowtails but all other pets and all survivors (4 of us) made it. The monkey PoV and control in 1st person is awesome, my previous attempt on Drake I had to go side on to shoot as the Drakes head would get in the way. At times I was hit with reaper acid which slowed me down a little but managed to avoid any direct fights - jumping over the nameless and running from the reapers. The monkey took a little damage from nameless when stopping to regen stamina but they're veggies - a couple cakes and jobs a good'un.

Beat Gamma Rockwell. Started as a 3 man effort, one player (Khep) crashed out just as starting so ended up doing it 2 man, both on Drakes with Megalos and Reapers on aggressive following. Drakes + Ascendant shotgun FTW. Hep was equipped with AR and I had an Ascendant Pump Shotgun - 1st person, Shotgun in hand, running around on my drake ignoring everything and killing each tentacle with 2-3 shotgun shells with Hep trying to keep things off my back - gas balls, nameless, reapers. My drake was literally on it's last legs, very little hp remaining and believe Heps to be the same but managed to defeat it just before our drakes died. Rolled back and intend on doing it for real with the full tribe at the weekend.

Did some science and had a go at the Aberration boss - with intention of rolling back regardless of outcome as an experience to work out what tactics/mounts etc. we might end up using. Lost the battle twice, 4 man team each with a mount and a bulb pet. First attempt on Megalos we got pretty far but ultimately lost our glow pets to the heat seeking "gas" balls before the Reaper Kings spawned and then without assistance from a light debuff we were unable to kill the reapers and continue with the boss tentacle/heart routine. 2nd attempt we went in with Megalos for 2 of us and other 2 were on Drake and Reaper King - lost again. Again losing pets to the gas balls - must get better organised and take care of these things quicker or maybe take in a charge lantern for when we lose our bulbs and Reapers spawn. Rest of the weekend I mainly just hatched hundreds of glowtail eggs and got some pretty exotic looking ones - lots of blue/green/yellow combinations, some basic reds. I also did a couple of metal runs and breeding of our Valentines bigfoots - nice red highlights to them after breeding out the bright pink that the original had.

Last night I managed to get a ceiling on the 2nd floor (living space) of community house and started working on the 3rd floor - our little greenhouse. 17 x 8 foundations 4 rows (4 x 8) contain medium plots for each of the crops – 8 plots per crop. Remaining (13 x 8) have 4 small plots to one foundation – 416 small plots for berries. Probably have a row divided for each of the normal berries (8 plots per berry) then a row for stimberries (32 plots) and rest for narcoberries (352 plots). At one point whilst our re-gathering more wood to grind down to thatch Hep suddenly dropped connection - a few minutes pass before he returns with an unexpected but highly comical reason for his departure. "Sorry, lost internet as Cat decided to try and sleep on router!" - that alone made my day. Hep noted from the tribe logs that our best wild tamed Anky had been killed - but it was safe in our cliff edge base in the NW surface entrance cave?!?!? Map data is downloaded and scraped and we find that the other Anky that was with her is now at 50/50 on the map!! It would seem the game decided to teleport them 2 from NW surface cave to 50/50 - and as this is under the skeleton by the drake pit one of them had already been killed. Guessing part of the previous patch/fix. Managed to download a backup, restore to single player, find the Ankys - teleport them to an obelisk, upload and download back to our server.

It helps having active tribe members to help out. I'm currently using all resources and spending all my time in base building whilst Kiki works on harvesting and keeping me stocked up and Hep works on breeding. I generally play between 18:00-22:00 and the other guys play a little later covering 20:00-02:00... although last night I got hooked and was on myself until almost 1am.

Last night I mainly claimed a new baby Drake (s+ mutator enabled) at base level 231 no idea its stats as I wasn't expecting it and was busy at the time exploring the building options of S+. Hep shouted whilst I was building the new community house "If you come claim this new baby I will take care of the rest!" so I did just that. I then completely lost track of time when making up the 4 corner "cicular" towers - front ones with S+ ramps, changed to stairs to create a custom spiral staircase with vault storage and the rear 2 housing Industrial Forges. Base floor will be the main crafting/storage area with the 2nd floor working as a personnel area with beds, furniture (what little exists in ARK) and some storage for personal items such as armor/weapons/food and viewing balconies on each side made with glass walls to look out over the yard. Tonight I plan on finishing the 2nd staircase and starting to organise the base floor before adding a ceiling to 2nd to make a start on the 3rd greenhouse/drake storage floor. Pictures to follow when it's more complete but I'm liking the s+ stuff so far.

Mainly this weekend we all got pregnant and had baby Reaper Kings.. Hep was the first "victim" - our spectating area has since been modified for a better view.

Quiet night. I'm a little at a loss at the moment after finishing my surface build man-cave but literally outside our base on fertile lake was a 125 male Karkinos - looking up the map scrape data I see it has 31 points in melee pre tame and decide to take it down. I jump on my rock drake, dino gateways equipped in hotbar and take aggro from the Karkinos - get it to follow me next to one of the "steps" of land where I stay mounted and surround it in gateways before jumping out of the way to setup the catapult. Catapult set on the hill it looks like it's in a good position and I begin... whoosh, smash, whoosh, smash, whoosh, smash... I stop, it is looking very colourful as blood seeps from most of its body so I dismount and pull out my magnifying glass to check. Ooops - only 2k Torp but down to 343 HP. The catapult hits for 250 each shot so one more would have likely killed it but I'm still 3.5k short on the torpor to KO it. I leave the area in hopes that it will heal quickly - no such luck. I return and torpor nearly empty but only got 1.5k HP. I decide that it might heal if it eats something so return my drake over the base wall and come out on our existing Karkinos - Christine Cringle. I pick up a couple of dodos in each claw and smash them into the ground to kill them off where I then jump off, grab a corpse and try get it to the trapped Karkinos. The Karkinos gets angry, smashes the ground taking the dodo fro my hands and picking me too - I manage to "glide" and escape from its clutches. Re-checking this with the magnifying glass its HP is going up rapidly this time whilst its torpor is nearly almost empty. I wait for it to fully heal and re-mount my catapult to try again. Same again, it's HP nearly fully drained but Torpor still 2k short of my target to KO. I grab another dodo, kill it and drag to the Karkinos - it eats and HP heals fast and upon fully healing the torp is still 2.5k!!... I re-mount, 3rd time lucky and it goes down with 1.5k hp left!! I wait until its ready, stuff turtle kibble down its throat and saddle it to jump the wall into base. After gaining some levels it's now almost 9k hp, better weight than our existing and hits for 301 points when mate boosted.

It was the full weekend and by full I mean literally 8+ hours a day for the full weekend, including Friday but last weekend I made a surface man-cave. Loving the S+ "glass" structures and the tinting ability and the half tiles (railings) work well too. Essentially started off with a single metal cliff platform which ended up being expanded to 4 with lowered stone foundations to square it all off to the surface ledge before pillaring down to line up the elevator entrance at the bottom. (from the surface looking down on it - looks tiny from this angle) (Inside looking out across the main room. open tinted windows showing views to surface and cave) (viewing balcony with sleeping area around the other side, doors to access the roof and sloped hatch frames to allow quick auto-opening escape for Drakes running from any Reaper Kings on surface) (water tanks on the roof - no rain but seem to collect enough water with so many placed) (elevator from the cave up to the surface base) (separate entrance with a platform to fly up on drakes instead of using elevator) (me, sitting, resting, admiring the views) (.. and of course my beautiful open fireplace during the day)

The "crosshair" boost glide? - Doesn't work on all surfaces but have to be within a certain distance and either already gliding or "climbing" - no need to "jump" just left click when the crosshairs come up near targets - can even be used to glide vertically up if close enough to the cliff edge etc. Generally I just use normal jump, hold shift when wanting to glide and keep eye on the "claw" icon indicating if I'm clinging to something - right click to swap between latched and not latched - only unlatched will your stamina regen. The hardest thing is getting disoriented when going upside down in 1st person - 3rd person much easier imo.

Quiet night last night. I found an alpha basilisk - level 80 - in the "easiest spawn" Portal area and after having to fully heal my drake twice it finally fell and the trophy was mine. I did a few runs to the drake pits and got myself another decent level egg - 185 - hatched, printed and grown. He came out with better bsae melee than our others but doesn't have the best stats in other areas. Points were allocated as follows: HP-26, STAM-29, MELEE-34, WEIGHT-33, FOOD-26, OXY-36 Out next highest with melee had 31 base points but was more rounded with similar stats in HP and STAM. I then logged for the night to pick the wife up from college.

I have never got prime fish from Salmon with a pick and always use Sickle to harvest for prime fish meat.

Had a couple days off last week due to my car not being able to ice skate so was a lot of time in ARK on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I started off spending a lot of time doing drake egg runs - got a few 150, 165, 170, 175 a 180 and finally a 190!! Spent some time hatching and raising my 190 which came out with good weight/hp but not the best with stamina or melee - welcome to the family RYU! Got a couple of Basilisks and made up a storage outpost at the NE surface cave to store an Ankylo, a couple of Ravs (bags) and a vault to store raw metal - running over with a pack of ravs to empty and return to base when the vault was full. Realising the potential for harvesting metal then spent some time collecting resources to expand our industrialisation - we're now up to 8 chemistry benches and a few fridges for our XP narcotics runs. We also expanded the metal processing by adding 2 more industrial forges to our existing forge to make up 3. Logged at weekend to find whilst I had a break the night before one of our tribe members decided to expand my 2nd floor of the community house by walling it up - placing walls purposely to wind me up with some having wood on inside, some on out.... spent some time fixing his "mistakes" grrrrrr. OCD triggers!! Sunday after watching various videos and reading up I decided to upgrade both our servers to include the S+ mod. Spent the next hour or two converting all our equipment to S+ so have better storage capacity and locks on everything now.

Well last night we spotted a level 145 Basilisk by the display on the hill just before heading down into the blue zone and decided to try and tame it. I'm sure that I read on here somewhere that it will aggro on drake eggs instead of you - wrong!! Drake egg I dropped was ignored and it proceeded to eat me.. and my bulbdog but wasn't bothering my Drake. I respawned at base at Fertile Lake, jumped on my spare Drake and headed back to grab my gear. Upon returning it had re-burrowed a small distance from my body bag and jumping of my spare drake to grab it I noticed that it was far enough away to not aggro me and jump out of its hole. Hep mentioned the standard "Giga Trap" - dinosaur gates - and so I returned home, made up 4 stone dinosaur gateways and leaving my spare drake home returned on my following main Drake. I walked up to the mound mounted on my Drake and it didn't aggro and jump out which caught my curiosity. Mounted on the Drake you can still place structures and I wasn't sure if it would work but I surrounded the Basilisks burrow snapping all gates together in a square around it. I jumped off of my drake and it sprung to action - unsure if it was trapped I tried to get it to follow me whilst avoiding it's acid spits.... it appears to work, this thing although glitchy appears to be trapped. I walk my drake up a nearby rock and accessing my inventory from its back I drop a drake egg... the Basilisk eats it Hep then gathers more eggs from base and makes his way to my location. It eats 3 more eggs but then seems to stop and glitch out not locking on with aggro or eating further eggs - with only 1 egg to go before tamed. I jump off my drake and try to get close to pick the dropped eggs back up (3 dropped as didn't take 1st so wasn't sure if close enough). I re-drop 1 egg, it aggros and eats the egg becoming our new pet. I ride my drake home to pickup our other tribe mate who has made up the saddle ready then we all ride home together. Before trying this tame I went to get more drake eggs from the pit - I swear I could have continued all night if we weren't taming a Basilisk. The same nest re-spawned new eggs every time I nabbed one, returned to our midpoint base (45/45) to drop the eggs in a cupboard and then returned to the same nest - no more than 3 minutes max between trips. I got really good at dive bombing on my drake, turning invisible and landing in that nest, grabbing an egg and getting back up before taking any hits.