Ark: Survival Evolved - Dinos and Leveling Survival Game

Games
1602

The swamps in Aberration are death, death, and more death.

Living there will raise your paranoia level to new heights. Yes, I have charge light pets all over my base to get the Nameless away. I also have all my dino’s on neutral just in case. I had to enclose my entire base because stuff was randomly falling in from the cave ceiling or the random rock drake that would wander in. There have been several times I was coming back to my base I saw the camo outline of a rock drake sitting on top of my base.

And for good measure, a basilisk or two will randomly spawn down there. Not often, but long enough to catch you off guard each time.

You will quickly learn to be fully prepared when going outside your base, or die repeatedly.

The lakes down there are terror’s. If I have to go in the water, I take a minimum three spinos as bodyguards. The worst in the water is the jellyfish, which almost stun lock you. Plus the eels which slow/attack speed debuff, the crabs which grab & pound you, and the baryonxy which stun you.

Now that I’ve painted the nastiest picture possible, there are several good advantages.

One, metal, metal, metal. All the metal I ever need is about 30 seconds from my base gates. I’ve taken 3 or 4 anky’s out and had them full in about 5 to 10 minutes.

Two, Stone. When using a pair of doed’s carried by a crab, you harvest the metal nodes for stone and get tons of it also.

Three, ditto for wood, just use roll rats.

Four, Dinos. The likely hood of finding good dino’s is pretty high since there is so much down there that you eventually want to tame. Megalosaurus & crabs especially. My base is right on the edge of a lake and I had to stop taming level 145+ crabs because 5 is enough.

Five, Yes, you are reasonably close to the rad zone for going down for drake eggs. It is still a long hike down for drake eggs.

1603

That sounds like a vacation spot! Joking. I think I’ll pass this along to Skrug (Trip.) He’s antsy to move down but we don’t really have the materials, dino buildup or gear for it yet.

It’s a shame that you can’t transfer non-aberant dino varieties into Aberration that exist there, because we have some VERY nice barrys that Skrug bred on the last server to use as caving mounts. I guess that kind of defeats the purpose of Aberration and it’s difficulty.

So based on this, is there really any better place to pick up blue gems? It sounds like that is the ONLY place.

1604

I highly recommend you make a ton of building materials (walls, ceilings, foundations, etc) so that when you move down into the swamp, you can immediately build your house and dino pen.

There is a ramp/path down into the swamp from the green/safe zone. I can’t tell you exactly where it is because I rarely looked at the map when I used it. But on that path there is a bunch of blue gem deposits. It doesn’t get down into all the craziness of the swamp, still have to contend with some small predator spawns (ravagers/megas/centipedes) and nameless, but is relative easy to get in and out.

Maybe next time we are both online I can transfer over to Aberration and show you the path if you don’t know it already.

edit: speaking of paths, another fyi, there are exit points to all three surface zones that can be accessed from the green zone. The surface is where you get the really good beacon loot, but I highly recommend you wait until you get a rock drake before attempting them. Reaper kings are all over the place up there.

1605

No worries, I think with this info we’ll give it a shot first.

I will say though, listening to you guys in chat yesterday has me wanting to see what the hell is going on with scorched earth. It sounds tough.

1606

I tested out most of the changes yesterday, things looked good, though I don’t remember if I saw the server tag on chat. It’s supposed to tag only other servers, not while talking to those on your own.

We picked up a roll rat yesterday, which helps a ton but it brought up some challenges. What on earth happened to the easy grab of honey? Did they bump up the amount of bees coming out or what? I nearly died and also nearly lost a mount just try to do a grab and go last night. Damn those suckers hurt.

And the roll rat saddle. sigh Seriously? 425 metal ingots and 85 cementing paste? I wanted to throw my mouse at the screen. It’s more mats than a flipping Giga saddle.

1607

There are some hives that don’t spawn any bees when you take honey from them. And there are some that must be the Africanized Killer Bee variety that hate you with a bottomless pit of hatred that will kill you, your family, your pets, and all your neighbors. Think bald faced hornets, these guys make yellow jackets appear tame.

Unfortunately, the killer bee type hives are the ones that have the queen bees. Once you destroy the hive, you can attempt to passively tame (rare flowers, ghilie suit, & bug repellant) the queen bee.

That being said, in one of the TLC passes they changed the dire bear so you don’t get dismounted by the bees. So you can kill them a whole lot faster. Pretty sure there were other bee related changes to the bear, but not getting dismounted is the big one.

Yes, I experienced that the first time also. Just make sure you don’t use the roll ability. The roll rat saddle has durability. When you use the roll ability (like the doed), it loses durability and will break. I don’t think just walking/running around normally effects durability.

1608

I did not even know this and rolled around a lot yesterday. Hey, more mats time!

That is interesting about the bear though. I may have to try one. I also didn’t know there were different hive types. We skipped the whole taming a queen thing last game due to the extreme pain in the ass it was. Instead I just built the S+ domesticated beehive. 50 honey for construction ( plus other mats) and no pain in the rear getting honey when you need it. It’s even powered by rare flowers making it ideal. Then pairing that with a Nanny+ and you’re set for starter breeding/imprinting.

I’m “attempting” to do that again but good lord I need to find a beehive that isn’t Africanized bees.

1609

Once you tame a regular queen bee, you can convert her into a bee hive. The hive is powered by rare flowers and produces honey, but as usual the S+ version is just made to be better.

1610

I think the original benefit of a beehive, at all, was to help water crops in addition to making honey. Which seems absurd considering the difficulty involved. When you need honey, steal it.

But with Structures Plus, they have multiple additions that use things for fuel that drive the need for more obscure resources in game. The nanny using honey for fuel, the gardner using beer, etc. So it makes sense they would add a way to prevent degradation of a hive if you ran out of rare flower, and make it easier to get it in the first place. You guys know all this, I think I saw all of you with the S+ stuff throughout your bases. That mod is just plain awesome.

I like that, but if they ever do absorb S+ into the base game, I could see Wildcard killing that off. Someone with a crazy idea of bee pain went through the trouble to make it hard to get a queen and set up a hive. They won’t give up their crazy idea so easily.

I should add, there is a ton of grind to this game which seems kind of strange. Continual resource grind, dino feed grind, crop grind, etc. I’m so glad that modding and private servers are a thing. I don’t think I could have played on official at all.

1611

Servers down or just need updated?

1612

I just got home from work, they show up now and I see someone on Scorched Earth. Are they okay?

I also notice my CPanel looks very different. I wonder if they were doing upgrades and I missed a notification message on it.

1613

I got in just a bit ago. must of done some server side stuff.

1614

Yep, they have all been rebooted. My apologies, Grembel I have no idea why.

1615

No worries at all. Thanks for checking!

1616

And thanks again for the invite been a blast so far on scortched earth!

1617

Hearing you guys chat about it makes me want to hop over a bit to see what it’s like. We ran up against the resources wall on Aberration, so we’ve slowed due to oil / blue gems. I think we’re both kind of dreading the next step, but we aren’t ready for it via dinos yet. I was hoping we could land a good spino or two and a crab.

Also, who knows, if the rumor is true about the Extinction DLC being this year, I may add it to the cluster when that comes around.

1618

Just a question for you guys on Scorched Earth, how are the drop rates and gameplay over there? Anything out of whack? Anything needed?

1619

For me, everything seems fine. The issues I’m having are related to the map itself, like not having kibble for anky or doed tames. But I fixed that by transferring over to the Island and taming 5 dilo’s and transferring them all back to SE.

As for your blue gem problem, you have S+. Pretty sure you can craft any gems in the S+ Industrial grinder. It takes some dye and a crystal. And the grinder can take any two gems and convert them into crystal.

Barring that, I can hop over to Aberration and show you were tons of blue gems are and are not hard to get to. Just need a charge light pet.

1620

Whaaaaat. I did not know that. We kind of solved the short term oil problem already, and have gas pods for more assistance. Thanks for the tip on the grinder, I think that will get us over the hump. We picked up two very high level male Spinos last night, we just need a female close to breeding level.

Skrug really wants a crab, however.

Hopefully we don’t annoy you guys with our chat. We’re both lazy old men who refuse to make things easy by using voice chat. Also unknown to you guys, I’ve been multiplayer gaming with Skrug (Trip) for 25 years. If you hear us chiding each other, that’s why. If you can’t give crap to your gaming buddy, it just isn’t as fun.

1621

You will find oil is not really needed. In our play through we all freaked out over the lack of oil but I soon realized I could make do with little to no oil.

Having a blast on scorched earth. The kibble is only slightly annoying.

On a related note I have an adventure to replay for you guys. I was over near the red ob looking for an anky…

I spot a 135 clear a few raptors by training them into him then i tame her. Wile she is down I see a morelltops 145. I am like hell yeah so I drop her as well. Shes pretty close to the anky so I can watch both no worries. Morell tame super fast she was one tick away from tamed when out of thin air a 125 rap and a 15 budy eat her dead before I can even get my spear out… This has happened to me twice now AHJAHAHAHAH