Ark: Survival Evolved - Dinos and Leveling Survival Game

[Ragan]

Thanks Skipper.

There are times that you can’t throw money at a company. If you try to pay them in a way that they’ve not used to, they almost won’t take it.

[Skipper]

@Ragan

There are times that you can’t throw money at a company. If you try to pay them in a way that they’ve not used to, they almost won’t take it.

This is definitely them. By the time we hit ARK 2, we need a new hosting provider.

[Skipper]

Servers are currently down for an update. I’ll post once back up.

[Skipper]

All servers now updated!

Current ARK Official Server Network Servers Version: v352.6

v352.6 - 11/06/2022 - Major version for servers

• Added the Carcharodontosaurus to the game!
• Fixed multiple exploits
• Added icons to Fjordhawk death bag retrieval cooldown

ARK: Carcharodontosaurus Spotlight

[Ragan]

They added the Carcharodontosaurus to all the maps?

Uh, I need to add another layer of turrets to my Fjordur base along with another wall.

[Skipper]

No clue, the videos I’ve seen were on The Island. I wondered the same.

Ragan are you guys experiencing high latency to the servers at all? Like warping/pauses/disconnects?

I have been lately to both Genesis and Fjordur. I don’t know if it’s my connection though, which is entirely possible.

[Ragan]

FYI, I tried to update the servers for the Turkey Trial update but it is not downloading anything. It is almost like the hosting servers cannot find the 354.4 update.

Once anyone’s game is updated (like mine) you won’t be able to get into the servers until they are updated.

[Skipper]

Sometimes they take a day or so to get posted, let’s hope it’s that. I pulled The Island down and will try it and see if/when the update might work.

… and it did update. Let’s let it fully come up and see what it reports as.

[Skipper]

Now it’s showing up with an exclamation on the Update Server selection. Trying again.

[Skipper]

Success. I’ll work on the rest of them, @Ragan.

QT3_ARK_The_Island - (v354.4)

[Ragan]

I’ve updated the rest of the servers.

[Skipper]

Hot damn, you’re on it, Ragan. My apologies man, my wife and I both have COVID right now so I’m extremely slow this week so far. Just hoping it lets up a bit.

[Ragan]

I understand that. The first time I had COVID floored me for about 2 weeks and took me about a month to get my energy levels back.

I got it a second time a couple months back and all I had was some sinus congestion really for about 4 or 5 days. I only knew I had it because I did a self-test.

Ark-wise though, I’ve finished my breeding program for the new Carcharodontosaurus. I like these guys a lot more than Giga’s. A lot better turning radius and can do more damage. I’ll have to post some screen shots, but with max melee mutations, 100% imprint, max kill counter buff, and mate boosted, I’m getting 17,000+ damage attacks.

For reference, the Giga’s the Greywind bred were maxxing out at 10k damage attacks.

The Super Turkey’s don’t stand a chance against me now.

[Skipper]

@Ragan

The Super Turkey’s don’t stand a chance against me now.

But it’s Thanksgiving!!!

[Ragan]

I. AM. WORTHY!!!

And wow, did that take some doing.

The brief journey. I was level 170 and never expected to get any higher. After Wildcard added the ascension cinematic for Scorched Earth, I decided to kill the Manticore again (on alpha). After that I noticed that I started gaining xp. When they added the SE ascension, they added bonus levels (+5 max levels per difficulty, +15 at alpha).

Then I did some figuring and all I need for the remaining 15 levels was to find all 200 runes on Fjordur for +5 more levels (already had about 130) and find all the explorer notes for the remaining +10 levels to get the max level cap to 190. That was an arduous adventure, but I’m on my Christmas vacation, so I had time.

Then I hit a snag when I noticed that I needed the dossier for the Mecha King Titan (alpha). To fight the alpha, you need beta, and to fight beta, you need gamma. Oh joy. But my Ark motto is “Go big or go home”, which birthed this:

That was the alpha King Titan fight. There are 320 (yes, three hundred twenty) giga’s and Carcharodontosaurus down there, all the uber bred OP wrecking machines. My son joined in and we killed the beta King Titan twice so we had 2 mega-mek’s in the fight also.

I used slightly smaller amounts of carc’s and giga’s in the gamma and beta fights (like 100 to 200).

At this point, I think I’ve won Ark. The only two things left for me to do would be defeat Rockwell Alpha on Genesis and Rockwell Beta and Alpha on Genesis 2, but I don’t think I’ll be doing those. Some of the beta missions are near impossible and the alpha ones are impossible imo.

I’ll still putz around in Ark because there are still a few minor things I want to do, like fill out my Egyptian Pantheon of Basiliks:

There are at least 34 basilisk down there, all lvl 140+. I’ve been naming them after the old Egyptian Pantheon of gods, so I’ve got about 20 or so more to go.

[Fozzle]

Dude… just./… duuuuude. Congrats on the hammer. That is ridiculously cool!

[Skipper]

WOW that’s insane. At this point, Ragan, to put up with all that I think you’re nuts as well, but hey, we’re all in that club being thousands of hours into a game of some sort here on the forum. I just can’t drive myself that far in Ark, but I damn sure appreciate what the logistics were to breed multiple lines of dinos to perfection, get equipment to perfection, get supplies to perfection and then perform those fights to win. Mostly just by yourself, with only slight help along the way of any of that.

If you’re looking for a much easier scale co-op, might I suggest Grounded for you and the kids. There’s still some churn and grind there, but very much finish-able without so much pain.

[Skipper]

Can I get a roll call of anyone seeing this if they are still playing on any of the Ark servers at this point.

If so could you please let me know which server(s) you are logging in to?

I’d like to start sunsetting and disabling these servers so consider this a first form of notice for the intention to do that. I’d especially like to do that on the more inactive ones.

Ark 2 is announced for this year but in addition to that, our use of the servers has declined quite a bit as we pass these map releases. They’ve had a good long run at this point. In addition, the company I use for hosting has some strange billing issues whereby they overcharge me, then credit me on a recurring basis. Since they can’t seem to fix that it leaves me worried that at any given time, they are either losing track of the charges, or simply don’t know how to correct issues going forward. I’d rather slowly close these down and avoid potential future issues as well.

I think Ragan is able to FTP to the servers to get backups, I’ve not been successful with that for some time and can’t tell if it is my client or (again) something server side at the hosting partner that isn’t working. I will try to get those and make them publicly available, however.

[Kelan]

I had some good runs, but I am good for now and not concerned if any/all of the worlds go away. Ark is one of my favorite games of all time, and it is because of our community servers. I am not currently playing so however you decide to proceed is good for me. I have a decent setup on Gen 2 and Fjordur, but haven’t logged in for months so all good here.

Thanks so much for keeping these up for so long. I tried for a while, but couldn’t keep it up. You have done us all a great service!

[Skipper]

@Kelan

Thanks so much for keeping these up for so long. I tried for a while, but couldn’t keep it up. You have done us all a great service!

Hell I’d like to thank Ragan for being consistently playing and checking servers enough that he’s the better admin here. But I agree, the servers and cluster really helped me enjoy this game a ton. I’m sad to see it go but perhaps Ark2 might be a good fit. Or at least here’s hoping we have something coming that gives back as much rewards as Ark did.