I do not believe force feeding is currently implemented. Violated is a pretty broad term, so I don’t know what he meant. You can’t, like, do anything creepy or sexual to other players if you think that’s what he was implying. I think people just might have said weird things to him that made him uncomfortable.
You can build a hut and attempt to sleep in it when you log out, but the starting building material (thatch) is very easy to destroy. Literally every thatch house I come across has been broken into and the owner killed. The second level houses (wood) cannot be destroyed by starting weapons and tools - you must have metal items, which are much more difficult to harvest and create. Having said that, though, at this point there are probably many people with metal items and it is also a risk.
The island is very big, though, so it is possible that you can hide from other players. I have actually had a lot of success on PvP servers by finding a random, out of the way place and just logging off in some nook or crannie. There are PvE servers though, so if you are not interested in fighting other players at all you can play on one of those (which is what I’m currently doing).
Taming dinos takes a while and you need to be a certain level before you can ride certain ones. Riding the scorpions is about halfway into the level tree. Also they are jerks, they poison you which knocks you unconscious then slowly eat you. It’s always best to take them on with a pal or six.
And yeah, the character creation tools are really weird. You can make some freaky looking “people” if you push certain sliders in certain directions.
So I fired this up and I’m having a blast. It can be punishing in the beginning as you get your bearings, but it’s worth persevering. In my case, I first spawned during the nighttime cycle, and I couldn’t see a damn thing and died very quickly. I died several times after that as I continued to figure things out, and sometimes lost a bunch of hard-won items along the way. But it was worth it, and now I finally have a great little base with a bed that guarantees a spawn point, provided no one finds it. It’s on a little isle populated only by herbivores and surrounded by megaladons. Which reminds me of this little snippet of dialog that took place after I gushed about it in chat:
Another player: If you keep talking, all the griefers will come.
Me: You mean, don’t advertise where I am on the map if it’s a good spot?
Another player: Indeed, typically not a good idea.
Me: Well fortunately, I haven’t a clue where I am anyway.
Another player: Ah, but I know exactly where you are by what you said.
So yeah, if you find a good spot, try to not draw attention to it. In fact, I may want to move my house away from this cliff edge.
One early game tip: Gather berries from bushes using the E key. I didn’t realize that this is a great source of nutrition to draw from, before you’re ready to kill dinos and dodos.
Edit: I dubbed it Herb Isle because it’s populated by herbivores (but surrounded by megaladon jerks).
There is a special boss monster called The Broodmother which is a giant spider. She requires rare materials and artifacts to even summon, then is very difficult to kill. I could see a server coming together to attempt to slay her. According to the developers, they plan to implement some sort of “end game” that will loop indefinitely, always increasing in difficulty.
There is single player and the ability to set up private servers for friends only. And yes, I am always spamming E while running around to grab berries and fiber and all other stuff. If you tame and saddle one of the larger dinos you can have them attack bushes and you will gain a huge amount of berries per smack.
Yep, there sure is. There’s a “Host/Local” button on the launcher:
On the server I picked, everyone seems to be doing their own thing, but there are a couple of tribes established and I’ve seen a few huge, enclosed bases. Could be the tribes are busy with projects and such. (There is Global and Tribe chat.)
Rudy, I learned a little about transferring characters. Apparently you have to walk up to an obelisk and invoke something on it. This feature may or may not be enabled, though. I’ll probably give it a shot at some point.
It’s fun to hear people in chat warning other people about T-Rex sightings in their area. Apparently T-Rex’s are not the biggest nuisance in the game. I haven’t even seen one yet. Brontosaurus’ win that prize, as they don’t care what they walk on.
Here’s what Engrams looked like to me after leveling to 10 last night:
If you find a cave, do not attempt to settle in it unless you are prepared to be driven out and have all your stuff taken from you. Folks on my server view caves that are not extremely well defended as being, er, community property or something. I still haven’t seen a cave but that issue came up in chat last night.
I don’t think my machine is up to snuff for hosting, otherwise I’d totally start a server. I’m down to join whatever server someone else here creates.
Normally I like to do the lone wolf in MMOs, but after doing a bit of PVP I think this is a game where teaming up could be critical unless you’re really clever.
Patch Notes 173.0 - WELCOME TO JURASSIC ARK!
Current Version:
173.0
Spinosaurus! Fear the beast!
New Structures: Spike Wall (great for defending against incoming tribe dino attacks) and Food Preservation Bin items, and Beef Jerky!!! (Sparkpowder+Oil+Cooked Meat or Cooked Prime Meat+hour wait == SUPER LONG LASTING FOOOOOD!)
General GPU optimizations plus new graphics configuration options: Mesh LOD slider, High Quality Materials checkbox (disabling this and restarting will have tremendous perf savings at the cost of less detailed terrain materials), Subsurface Scattering Checkbox (disabling this will make plants and skin material look a little less good, but also save a lot of perf)
After login you now get a message indicating how you died if your character was killed when you were logged out (needs more details added)
Pteras now land better when out of stamina, won’t eject you as soon
You and dinos can attack when no stamina now, however doing so will increase your torpidity
Slight purple overlay when torpidity is increasing
Spoiling timer exploits fixed
Various ways to teleport into people’s houses seemingly fixed
Grenades rebalanced, ~60% damage reduction vs structures and now also require oil to craft
PvE structures that haven’t had a Tribe/Creator nearby in one week are now auto demolished. Can be disabled on player-run servers.
Structure Limit now configurable for player-run servers
Non-Tribe Flyer Carrying now an option for PvE servers
Added Rich Metal and Regular Metal Mountain Rocks
Metal Tools’ durabilities fixed
Character bodytype presets
“Find Mods” button added to Host Game Menu
Rare Limited-Edition Cosmetic Item Skin drops: Nerdry’s Glasses (from the bellies of Dilo’s) and Rex Bone Helmet
Land dinos now lose stamina when swimming while mounted, Amphibious dinos (turtle, sarco, etc) now regain stamina much more quickly in water
Unconscious dinos being tamed no longer can be harmed by non-tribe players in PvE
Fixed bug where Generator with cables attached could not get its inventory accessed
Tribe ID’s and Player ID’s are now guaranteed to be unique. Should eliminate future cases of player/tribe body snatchers.
Realtime time and current map now indicated on pause menu
Downloading mods at the Host Game screen now indicates download progress, mods that have been updated on Steam Workshop will now redownload
Broodmother will now give Dossier and Steam Achievement correctly when defeated
You can now set the temperature scale to Fahrenheit in the Options menu
Upped bullet damages by about 20%
Your current Biome/Temperature now updates correctly when riding a mount
“Transfer Tribe Ownership” button is now clickable properly
Things that didn’t make it into 173.0 'cause they need more testing:
Tribe Governance Options: Communism (current), Capitalism, Libertarianism (presets), and everything in between (total customizable settings): ETA this weekend probably
I was gifted this game today by my brother, but unfortunately it doesn’t seem to like my gaming laptop. I’m getting a constant 15 fps whenever I join a server. On the lowest settings, I still get an unplayable FPS plus the graphics look 10 years old. Really hope they optimize this better, it looks like such a cool game.
Apparently optimizations are getting added during each patch, so hopefully you’ll find it playable soon!
This is my first cliff-side, semi-safe 2x2 wood base. The idea was to make it compact and stealthy, but I think I may move it as someone from an opposite cliff could detect it via spyglass.
I am loving the game so far, although I am just playing locally. I have no desire to do PvP, the world is so deadly on it’s own I don’t need other players. My first base I got attacked by a level 23 sabre tooth and it just tore me to shreds. I had a small thatch shack set up and was simply combing the beach for some resources when he came out of nowhere.
So I respawned and headed back to try and see if the cat was gone so I could get my gear but ran in to a small meat eater, not sure what type it was, about 100 yards out from my shack. I punched as much as I could and managed to knock it unconscious just as I dropped…so I respawned and figured I was in the clear. I slowly approached my camp, I could see the fire burning when out of the woods came a freaking T-Rex. It ate the unconscious dino and then proceeded to stomp and munch my tiny little shack.
It was glorious, but I would love to get in some collaborative play with non random folks.
Well, I seem to have committed myself to OfficialServer307. If anyone wants to find me I’d be game to team up.
That sounds awesome. I normally don’t care for PVP or even playing on PVP-enabled servers in this kind of game, but I find the challenge of hiding my base and keeping its location a secret to be lots of fun, so far. This morning when the sun rose, I headed out to forage and ran into someone almost right away. We regarded each other for a moment, and then went our separate ways, but after a few feet I stopped and turned around. Crawling on my belly, I tailed him and my heart sped up as he headed right in the direction of my house. I continued following the guy as he gathered wood and stone, and breathed a sigh of relief when he veered off in another direction. I think advantage of placing a house so close to the edge of a cliff is, people are less likely to walk through the area unless they have a specific reason to do so.
Now every time I leave my base to go do something, I veer out of my way so that they can’t see where I came from.
