I realized I had not actually seen either the Ragnarok map/changes, nor the Aberration changes. These both look fun!
Aberration is super fun. Very unforgiving but fun none the less.
Helped Skipper with Ragnarok stuff, attempting to help him on Aberration now!
I made it to the Ab server, and promptly died within about 30 seconds. I should have gotten a record for that!
The issue with me connecting was the port number. When you go to the link site:
https://arkservers.net/1/name/asc/?term=Qt3ARK
It tells you 8077. But when you hover over the link, it gives me 27315, which does work. I’m not sure what the first port number is, perhaps it’s a load balanced port or passthrough. Either way, I think I’m good now.
I can’t find the server via the in-game browser, but if I click the connect link on the server status page and let it broker the connection through to Steam, it works. I have spent precisely 15 minutes wandering around looking at dinosaurs wondering what to do next. And dying from falling. And cold. And hunger. Not necessarily in that order and even possibly all three at once.
Don’t feel bad. I have several YouTube lists to go through so I understand what I’m doing at this point. It’s easy enough to get started, but between the two servers there looks like a ton of differences.
Yeah, it can be very unforgiving at first. My very early plans for starting ARK are:
Don’t worry about dying at first.
Try to settle near water if possible to allow you to counter thirst easily (stand in water and hit E to drink)
Use E on plants to gather berries. Use these for hunger at the start, but don’t eat the white or black ones ;).
Get a pick and hatchet as top priority. Pick gets flint from stone, thatch from trees. Hatchet gets stone from stone, wood from trees.
Each time you die, do the same things. Gather some berries, drink water if close to it, make a pick then a hatchet. If you live long enough, look at what you can make next. Make some spears and use them to melee some easy starting dinos like the Lystrosaurus or Dodo. Equip a pick or hatchet and chop them up to get raw meat and hides. Make a campfire and put the meat and some wood in there and light it to make cooked meat you can eat (restores 20 food at a time and makes it much easier to manage).
Think about making a thatch hut with a bed (which allows you to respawn at it upon death) if it looks like a decent starting area without bad predators. Even if you die in the middle, just making the thatch building pieces nets you good experience and allows you to progress up the tech tree (better and better engrams).
As soon as you can get a bola, learn it and use the hide to make bolas. Equip one and hold down the right mouse button to wind them up, then release when pointing at a dino to tie it up for a decent time. For things like raptors and other early smaller predators, these are great to allow you to tie them up and then walk up beside them and repeatedly poke them with a spear til they die. You can use them on Parasaur too to prevent them from running so you can kill them and harvest larger amounts of hide and meat.
I normally don’t worry too much about a base or permanent temporary place to hang out until I reach near level 20. I find it takes a lot of the frustration out of the game if I just let myself die early on and focus on just gaining experience harvesting and making early tools and items over and over each time until I gain some levels and can start to think about a more stable position.
Great advice. So much pain on the Aberration server though. No water that I’ve found, just the aquatic mushrooms. Can’t place anything in that portal zone that I’ve found, including boxes, fires, thatch hut, etc. Can’t avoid raptors and/or that giant basilisk thing. I mean you can, if you can see them, but I swear to god I had one pop out at me as though it was underground.
So I edge around trying to avoid anything like a predator, try not to move at night, and am in continual out of water state. I’ve leveled a bit, dropped everything, leveled more, etc.
Did you guys stay in that portal zone or just leave it? Should I spawn elsewhere? Can you actually build in there, but I just haven’t found where yet?
You can build on both sides of it? I haven’t tried on the portal itself, but I’ve tried on both sides, and that works just fine.
I started out trying to hang out there, but started spawning at the other easy locations almost right away as they had water near.
Spawn near the lake its probably the easiest place to get a foot hold.
egg stage
Just hatched
Juv very close to done
And if you ever wondered what the surface looks like during the day
That’s a big egg!
If you folks see HghVltg3, fear not, that’s my trusty ARK grognard, coworker. He would like to join us in our journey, he has not yet played Abarration.
Speaking of, I’m currently trying not to deconstruct Kono/Berz’s old outpost near the clear lake up north. It is a MUCH better starting point than the actual noob zone, for some reason.
@Kelan , you pay for the servers, correct? If so, or if not, can someone PM me the email for who does, I’d like to pitch in via Paypal.
Grats on egg. Been very sick last few days and have had zero desire to sit at the computer.
Hopefully get back to it soon.
Thanks! And hope you get to feeling better soon.
Made my first score on a blue beacon on the surface. JM paracer saddle bp and a lance. Breeding ravagers for it. Also the drakes are fast enough to out run pretty much everything up there. They will probably be the ones to use if your not trying to fight reaver kings.
In more subdued news I finally made my first stone taming pen. Any ideas if this is sound? Stone Walls, reinforced gate, and a rope ladder to climb out. I do have to manually shut the gates, unless that can be automated once they are trapped?
Also, thanks for all the answered questions so far, guys.
That looks good. It’ll work with smaller and medium sized dinos for sure. Might want to use S+ gates instead of standard ones, and set them on auto as you run through.
Yep, they all told me to use S+ whenever possible. If I set the gates for auto, does it close and prevent dinos from going through? In other words, is it only auto for people?
I got a raptor with this earlier, but bola’d him to keep him there while I shut the gates. I realize I won’t have that option on some of the bigger dinos.