Ark: Survival Evolved - Dinos and Leveling Survival Game

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Right! v1 installed, game settings massaged so it runs fairly smoothly.

Now what? There’s not much in the way of new user guidance… no manual, no tutorial.

I punched a few trees and built the pick and torch engrams. I have a level up point or something to spend? It says I’m cold but offers no indication how to rectify that. Some form of clothing is somehow available I’m guessing? Potentially involving this thatch I’ve collected?

A torch will help if you are cold, a little. The best thing is to make a campfire or two, drop it on the ground, put some thatch or wood in it and light it, then stand by it and it will add heat to the area and warm you up. Also, don’t stand in the water as that makes you colder.

Clothing helps too when you can make it, and later on points in fortitude help, but I would wait on those for a bit.

Early on the best thing to do is not worry about dying; gather and make some items and get used to the game a bit and once you gain some levels and get comfortable a bit with the game systems, start to think about settling down somewhere. Early on, though, just harvest/craft/explore and don’t worry so much about dying a lot or saving your items.

Let me know if you want to try our new server out. I do want to try some mods soon, though, and that may make things a bit more complicated for new players. With that in mind, I may hold off on most mods for now until we get used to the changes since alpha/beta and then figure out which ones we want to add in later on. That would allow new players a chance to get their feet wet in understanding how ARK works without adding so many new items to confuse them.

Oh and the cloth clothing uses fiber. Collect that by just using your hand on the plants growing around. You will get berries you can eat to restore food/water and fiber. Each armor piece adds a certain factor of cold and heat resistance, so the more you put on, the better you can shield yourself from the elements.

Okay cool, so there’s no death penalty? Should I start again once I start getting the feel for it? How do I learn new crafting recipes, to make a campfire for example?*

Let me know if you want to try our new server out.

Thanks, but for now I’m mainly interested in mucking about in the single player game. :)

*ah I see, spend my xp and then I get to spend points on the engrams.

Well, you lose everything on you, if you cannot find your body (which is likely until you can make a bed to respawn at), but early on I wouldn’t worry about that for the first hour or more. Just concentrate on leveling up and each time you die, harvest and remake tools/armor as all of that gives you experience. But yeah, no death xp penalty that I know of. I just find the start less frustrating if I start that way :). Once you can make a hut and bed, then maybe find a location without the tougher predators around and try to make a little base with storage boxes and a bed to respawn at. Stockpile some starting resources and tools in boxes for when you die/respawn and things like that.

There is no real reason to restart unless you don’t like how you spent your ability points or engrams; and even then you can make a mind wipe potion to respec (although that will take quite a while to learn and craft). I believe most people only restart if they want a new map, or to change character appearance perhaps.

So… now that it is at 1.0, will we have a @tomchick sighting?!

EDIT: If you end up having lots of questions and/or get frustrated with the game, you can always pop on our server (it uses a separate character) and just ask questions and go back. Also, some of the best experiences in game are on a server with friends where you can just take off on a flying mount and go to your buddy’s place to hang out, or band together to try to take down a tough dino tame or to kill an Alpha that is ravaging in the area. After a while each person tends to collect some of the more rare green/blue/purple/mastercraft level recipe/engrams and those get shared a lot. Need an epic crossbow, head over to @kono1134 place and craft yourself one. Stuff like that :).

Thanks, seems pretty straight-forward! I do have two more questions… :)

What are all these electrical effect beacon/tower things I see in the distance?

And what’s a good focus for the first ability points? I’m guessing health is always a good bet. Though is this one of these games where you die overnight without food? Maybe I should put points into food, assuming that makes me less hungry?

My personal opinion is to put points into weight to start with, and then stamina. I hold my own pretty well, but not when weighted down or when I run out of stamina. Health is good too and I have a personal preference to run speed although it seems to give a smaller boost now.

The beacons are loot drops. The color determines what level you need to be to open and loot them. I don’t recall the colors and levels at this point, but they are out there. Pretty sure they go white, green, blue, purple, yellow, red or something similar. White used to be level 1, green 15?, blue 25? something like that.

I don’t put points into food myself. If you log out, you don’t eat food, but if it is night and you don’t think you can go harvest still, just hold onto extra cooked meat and berries from the day, if that is what you are asking about.

Ah of course, inventory capacity. Usually the thing I tend to focus on in RPGs! :)

Any plans to upgrade the server to 267.3 soon?

Kelan or Bez have to do it think.

Don’t believe I have access or knowledge enough to do it safely.

Hopefully soon.

Can you guys not get in because of the .3 minor level patch? Guess I was lucky this morning. In any case, Kelan is on the case. Server looks great, Kelan, let me know if you need help patching.

So many new dinos and features since I last played. Last evening I crafted a boomerang but Kono, who’s higher level than I am, could not. Turns out that’s because I happen to have the Scorched Earth DLC enabled (I’ve never used it). So I guess there could be other features from that DLC enabled as well?

Edit: Note that if you don’t see the server in the game server browser, you can still add it to your steam server browser (view > servers) and join up that way. Could be the server just didn’t appear in the game browser for you.

Doh! Patch already? Will head home soon to look into it and share the remote management info with some of you.

Yeah, it isn’t necessary it seems unless that patch adds something critical. I just got in.

EDIT: Got @barstein added in as an admin and he is going to add @kono1134, I believe. So, we should be in good shape there.

Applied the patch anyway, just to confirm the Steam Update process is working properly. Looks like it is.

Awesome. Thanks!

So v268 is due today?

It looks like 268 may have been released for servers but not for the client yet. Might be best to hold off on updating the Qt3 server until after the game client gets it.

Basing that on (1) people in the steam thread are reporting as much and (2) I don’t see the update in my own Steam client yet.

Is there a way to stop the game from opening my Oculus launcher whenever I start and quit? I don’t want to play it in VR, it doesn’t work too well…

Not using VR so no idea, sorry.