ARK: Survival Evolved

Spang

Foot Fetisher
Joined
May 31, 2012
Reaction score
6,170
Age
45
This game is currently in early access so it has more bugs than a Merrie Melodies cartoon, but it's still very playable and a lot of fun.

You start out on a deserted island with just a loin cloth and your thoughts, surrounded by dinosaurs. You then need to begin picking berries for food and gathering stone, wood and other resources to build and craft things. Until you gather enough resources to assemble a stone pick, you'll be punching trees for thatch and wood. This does hurt you so be careful not to die. You can gather stone off the ground so you won't have to punch boulders.

You survive and you evolve and eventually you have yourself a little camp that might look something like this:

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The crop plots are growing different types of berries. The compost bin to the right creates fertilizer when you add thatch and feces (everyone poops). I surrounded the camp with wooden spikes to keep carnivorous dinosaurs out. It was mostly effective.

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You will want to tame a dinosaur to help carry the heavy resources and to aid you in battle. My first tamed dinosaur, a phiomia, was named Tubs.

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Tubs got killed so I had to get another Tubs, but it also perished. Now I have Tubs III and he got Violet, another phiomia, pregnant.

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To tame a dinosaur, you need to render it unconscious. In the early stages, this involves punching it over and over. Once unconscious, you need to feed it, ideally its preferred kibble. Otherwise, vegetables and berries for herbivores, and raw/cooked meat for carnivores.

I recently tamed a raptor:

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Her name is Cassandra:

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Dorothy on the right is a triceratops that I tamed previously. She helps carry all the heavy stone and wood I gather.

I left my first camp and setup a new camp on the other side of the island. My farm currently looks like this:

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It has an irrigation system and a lot more compost bins.

I have a raft, too:

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The brontosauruses are quite large:

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If you like dinosaurs and survival games, you'll probably enjoy this. You can play on a server with other people, or you can play by yourself. You can also play on a local area network with friends.
 
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Your initial description sounds like a classic adventure game. Clearly more advanced than that with the 3D and all that. Thanks for sharing.
 
I tamed a mesopithecus.

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These little fellas are tamed without the use of violence. They ride your shoulder, alert you when danger is near and throw feces.
 
I've been playing on an unofficial server that's more of a creative server to build. You level up to 500 instantly so you can learn all the recipes/blueprints... So I've been pretty much focusing on building.

I'll follow your lead with the spoiler tags.

Still a work in progress...

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That looks nice.

With the taming of my latest dinosaur, I have an additional means of travel.

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His name is a Pete, a pteranodon.

Also, Violet is much closer to becoming a mother.

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I need to do more taming. I want to get to the northern part of the island where all the obsidian is. A flying mount would help out with that for sure.
 
Baby Tubs finally popped out.

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The maturation progress bar moves slower than molasses.

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My house is in South zone 1, I've been taking trips to the north on my pterodactyl.... Ugh what a long haul but well work it. There's high yield metal, obsidian, and some crystal in the northern mountains. At this point I need to make a LOT of polymer which requires obsidian.
 
My house is in South zone 1, I've been taking trips to the north on my pterodactyl.... Ugh what a long haul but well work it. There's high yield metal, obsidian, and some crystal in the northern mountains. At this point I need to make a LOT of polymer which requires obsidian.
I need to get up there and harvest some pelts for the fur armor. My camp is on the Western Coast, so not too far, but I can't leave Baby Tubs for too long. His parents are worthless.
 
I need to get up there and harvest some pelts for the fur armor. My camp is on the Western Coast, so not too far, but I can't leave Baby Tubs for too long. His parents are worthless.

I think I'm going to just get completely moved to one of the mountain tops. If you start from the crater of one of the mountain tops and follow the paths that come winding down, on the way you will find metal, obsidian, and crystal. So why not just build up there so that stuff is easy access. Easily enough to fly down from the mountain for wood and stuff like that. The only thing that would be a stretch to do would be to get to a beach where you can get oil, pearls and chitin off the strange creatures that inhabit the beaches. Unless there's another source of oil and pearls that I don't know about?
 
I think I'm going to just get completely moved to one of the mountain tops. If you start from the crater of one of the mountain tops and follow the paths that come winding down, on the way you will find metal, obsidian, and crystal. So why not just build up there so that stuff is easy access. Easily enough to fly down from the mountain for wood and stuff like that. The only thing that would be a stretch to do would be to get to a beach where you can get oil, pearls and chitin off the strange creatures that inhabit the beaches. Unless there's another source of oil and pearls that I don't know about?
I've only gotten oil from trilobites, which are "too dumb to tame". You can also get oil from tamed Dung Beetles. They turn poo into fertilizer and oil.
 
I've only gotten oil from trilobites, which are "too dumb to tame". You can also get oil from tamed Dung Beetles. They turn poo into fertilizer and oil.

Trilobites... That's what I was thinking of but couldn't remember what they were called for the life of me.
 
I finally took a trip to the top of a mountain. Why didn't I do this sooner? There's more metal up there than an old episode of "Headbangers Ball". Also, obsidian and crystal, and I got a rare mushroom.

I've now seen this much of the island:

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And I think I spotted my first Rex:

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I didn't get close enough to confirm.
 
I actually moved to the mountains. The issue I've had with that is coming back online to my tamed animals disappearing. So much wild animal activity up in the mountains it's hard to keep your tamed animals alive, I guess. So what I did was, I expanded my house to include a stable with room to grow the barnyard.

Maybe I'll take some screenshots later.

I also managed to tame a megaledon (shark) and crafted the SCUBA gear. There's a lot of oil, pearls, and angler gel (from the angler fish) down there.
 
I got my electricity going. At least I had my generator outside and some douche nugget stole the gasoline right out of my generator. One thing is for sure, once you get established, build your house and stuff and be sure to keep the doors locked. People will absolutely come in looking to steal your stuff. I learned this the hard way losing tons of gasoline, metal ingots, obsidian, polymer, etc.

S0 after the great gasoline heist I decided to build an enclosure for my generator :D

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The place all lit up with electric omnidirectional lamps. As well as a peak at the refrigerators, air conditioner, and 150 slot metal vault.

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The expansion all finished in my effort to keep my companions from being killed by invading argentavis...

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Continued...

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Lastly, a bit of an aerial view of the place.... While you can't really clearly see it in the picture, I have it all enclosed with behemoth gates padded with wooden spike defense walls so nothing can crawl in under the gates.

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I really can't complain... I'm surrounded by plenty of metal, obsidian, and crystal.
 
That's a cool looking place. I look forward to getting all that fancy stuff. I'm currently in the process of building my new camp further north:

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I don't play on a server, so I don't have to worry about other people.
 
I finally moved everything to the new camp. Instead of ferrying my dinos a couple at a time on the raft, we walked the whole way. We all survived, even Tubs Jr., who is now a juvenile, and Daisy the dodo. It was daylight when we began the journey. During the trek it got dark, then daylight again. We reached our new home just before nightfall.