I wonder what a news report of three castaways whose only knowledge of survival was Ark would look like. One guy would have a hand full of broken bones from punching trees, and the other two would have died from eating poisonous berries and drinking seawater.
I’ve got about 2200 hrs in, every second of it SP (or paused, or waiting to load), so I guess I can field this one.
First thing you’ll need to know is that it’s quite buggy. Moreso than the MP apparently. Drop crates, tames, and wild dinos constantly clip through the map, and for whatever reason, that problem is way worse on the official maps than the expansions. Genesis was the biggest offender on that count, with Extinction and Abberation a distant second, while Ragnarok, Valguero, and CI are mostly fine.
Also, if you go straight single player, the start times are ridiculous. 20 minutes at least from pressing play in Steam to actually playing it. I guess you could get around this a bit by setting your own server-for-one (which I’ve never tried).
But, the maps are quite lovely looking (especially the expansions), and the taming mechanic can be fun, but you’ll really want to crank taming rates all the way up, lest you sit in the hills for hours waiting for a tame to finish. I’d also strongly recommend mods to assist you with your one man show, as this was designed to be a team game. Here’s a few that I use:
Basically lets you craft ‘fast-travel’ points that you can plop down wherever. Also speeds up resource gathering as you can teleport back to base.
These are pretty OP, so I stick with the weakest variant, which still delivers 10x normal narcotic. One shot will down most small & medium creatures, while big ones can still take over a dozen. There might be similar mods with lesser potency.
Useful for finding your beasts when they fall through the ground. You’ll also want to learn your admin codes (“ghost” is one you’ll use a lot, LOL)
Increases carry weight.
I also use a bunch of mods that add more animals, like Additional Creatures, Prehistoric Beasts, and ARK Additions. Mostly for variety as I fill out my dino zoo.
It’s very much a sandbox, so you can make whatever games you want to out of it, and mod/play accordingly.