DirkInSA

And most important this by @maxplank58 .... don't go the GFI "reallyBadAddRexToWinWith" route - or the game will quickly sour and you will have wasted your money

Hmmm, it depends on where you play. On Official PVP, there ain't no grinding, you are gonna get base wiped (many times) long before you get to having to REALLY grind. Best experience I had here was on small tribes, but that went well pear shaped over a year ago with dudes popping in on a Lvl 450 mana and .... Oh well start again. Official PVE I never got much past a "{walk / swim / avoid the HUGE base at spawn} to try and find a place to build" stage. My view, worse toxic than PVP. On unofficial there are servers (of both kinds) that are pretty cool but you are at the mercy of the guy(s) runni

Exactly - code will never be a significant contributor to Giga Bytes, but textures / images and so on ... The various map (with "near" and "far" copies of regions in the map) files are by far the biggest size hogs and whilst I dunno how the UT engine works at all, I am guessing that those could be compressed considerably. I'm willing to bet that there are multiple invisible or "over painted" layers of stuff in those files.

And it is worth checking if you have space to install it. It is HUGE, dunno about x-box, but a PC install can be like 340 Gbytes for all the paid / free DLC's

https://steamcommunity.com/app/346110/discussions/0/485622866451905220/

I have done this in the past with a Steam Emulator in combination with the UT4 startup switch bIsLanMatch on the Ark executable (undocumented in Ark). However the Devs have altered the way that networking is implemented (or my Emulator got to be too out of date), and I no longer can do this. The change happened just before the epic games version release and was to do with that, so if you have an old "save" of the game (client and server) then you can go there, but clearly not with all the new released content & mechanics. My archives indicate that version 295-108 definitely still worked, b

You need to enable hairpin or loopback NAT on the router that connects to the internet. Without that the client game queries the "internet address" of the router in order to connect to the server, but the router forwards the packets directly to the server on your LAN and there is no correct return path from the server back to the client - so the server does not show up. How to do that (or even if it is possible for you) depends a lot on what router you have.

Something NEW - but as others have said, after several years of running I guess there isn't much "new" to debate.

I pop in and browse quite often - but posts are mostly "same old, same old". Do you lot think the upcoming "Lost Island" will provoke more interesting debate, or is Ark I dead in the water already? (And BTW, when is Lost Island gonna drop?)

Ha Ha - I'm also over 2k hours in game and only done a boss fight like last month: A tip - give it a go in cheat mode on single player 1st - it can be very hectic right up front with no prior experience (Never mind uTube - its well different when you are in it!)

@Arkal : Some stuff to consider: Auto Heal is (in the past, dunno about now) is a little glitched, and can sometimes be set on, but not always work despite food fullness and availability. The food usage of a pig is related to how much health it restores, so if you have one kid x, if you have 10 kids, 10 times x. If you leave a pig on auto heal close to any baby it will ALWAYS do its thing because the baby is always "under spec" and therefore injured. If you have more than one pig close to a baby they will BOTH ALWAYS heal because the baby is always "under spec" and ther

Sure that would work - would have to source one first - I am sat in South Africa where "kit" is not necessarily freely available.

I recently (like a week ago) switched from running a Linux server as my internet gateway to an "all in one" D-Link firewall / ppoe connection/and so on. Before the switch I had IPTables set-up such that any Ark server that I ran on the network was visible for the Internet, AND from the LAN. When the Ark servers were "clustered", I could join any of the servers and once in I could transfer from one to the with no issue. From either the LAN side or the www side. Now I can see the servers from LAN side, and join any one of them, BUT transfer between server when joining from the LAN no long

I run a LAN cluster - and when I do server transfers the "cluster" comes up immediately, with nothing else. Also if the LAN gateway or router has NAT loop back (or under linux, hairpin NAT) enabled then the game connection is local, no game traffic goes to the master server and back. In the old days there was ?bRawSockets and ?bIsLanMatch network settings on the server executable, but that got busted / chopped out a looong time ago. Which was and is a pity!

Attribute Base Value Level Increase Taming Bonus Wild Tamed Additive Multiplicative Health 80000 +40 +0.04% -63000 Stamina 400 +0.2 +1% Oxygen 150 +0.375 +2.5% Food 4000 +10 +2.5% Weight