Ark: Survival Evolved - Dinos and Leveling Survival Game

Games
1842

Burn out! I’m just getting warmed up! Well, only slightly. I’ve made the switch over to Aberration and have been building my base and taming.

It is so much easier to build down in the swamp when you have the tek level items. I made a tek generator/trough/shield generator/transmitter/replicator on SE and brought them over. The shield generator is the best though. It’s fun making faces at megalosaurus while I stand inside the shield.

I’ve got the element crafting figured out, so I’ve been ramping up that production. Dino taming has been a waiting game for a good rare to spawn. I did tame a rare spino last night (lvl 220) so I will use her as the base for the Rockwell dinos.

I’ve also transferred over more dinos to the Island and setup a Stargate in the volcano so I can take dinos to the tek cave easily. After I did that, I downloaded the Island map, so I can start doing test runs in the tek cave.

Speaking of the Ark servers, I changed Scorched Earth and Aberration servers (the ones I mainly play on right now) to do their daily reboot at 7am. Normally 8am isn’t a problem, except for Sundays when I get online for a small bit right around 8am. Since no one else has been playing, I figured it wouldn’t cause to much disruption.

1843

No disruption at all. Kyle and his friend had asked for a later time for the reboot initially (when it was 4AM Eastern,) I believe, since they were based way out west. I’m not sure if they are still playing, or which server they are on if so.

I’m wondering how the hosting partner handles the expansion map. I’m assuming I have to request they load that map once it is available. I have the server, but will probably trim down the mods a bit within the configuration once it is ready to go. Again, going by their timeline of November 6th, we’re ready server-wise, but not yet ready with a map loaded to play.

1844

My guess is once it is released, you do a server update and then the new map should be available. Then you just have to set the server to use the new map.

While it maybe exciting to play on the new map day 1, I’m not exactly trusting that there won’t be several emergency patches to fix critical issues for the first few days and all the fallout that will come from those updates.

1845

Oh I agree on the patching. I’m 100% sure that will be the case.

I have that server now set with a different map. I may try setting the map option to download and see what happens just to validate the new map will load that way via hosting. It should, but I like to test things.

1846

I’ve been having some game issues playing on Aberration. Roughly every 30 to 60 minutes, Ark will just lock up. Checking the Task Manager shows the ShooterGame.exe (Ark) as “Not Responding”.

Since this hasn’t happened on the Island, SE, or Ragnarok I am going to assume it is mod related. I am going to remove the mods listed below and see if the problem still occurs. If it does not, then I will start adding them back one at a time to hopefully isolate the problem mod.

Edit: I’ll be making a backup copy of the server just in case this destroys something important.

  • Rock Drake Egg Spawn Fixer
  • Earthquake Tweaker
  • Bridge
  • Swim Clear Scuba Mask
  • Stargate Worlds v3.0
  • Oil Compressor
  • Platforms Plus
  • Snappy Saddles & Rafts (Open Source)
  • Dino Aid
  • Armour Stand
  • Pillars Plus
1847

No worries removing mods. Based on the time it was doing so, this was the last mod added and my guess is that it’s this one.

Thanks for the assist, man. I was out of town all weekend.

1848

I recently upgraded my video drivers and the driver info looked weird in the properties (showed Microsoft instead of Nvidia). I did a clean install and installed an older driver and the version looks ok now.

This is just going to be one of those things that takes time. There is no button I can push to make this happen. When I have several multi-hour sessions and Ark doesn’t lock up, I’ll consider it fixed.

1849

My first attempt in the tek cave ended in a disaster.

First off, the door to the tek cave isn’t very big. I had all my therizin’s at the entrance, but they all bunched up and none of them could fit through via the follow whistle. I had to ride them in one at a time, so I only got like 10 or so in. You only get 5 minutes before the door closes and if you are not inside, all your dino’s are killed.

Second, as was mentioned, I was slowly losing my dinos to the lava. One or two here, another there they would veer off into the lava trying to follow me.

Third, there are purolvia’s in there and they can dismount you from a therizin. That trashed a good chunk of my armor. I probably need to take my hazmat suit to the upgrade station and upgrade the armor and durability.

Fourth, there are Yutyrannus in there and they are evil. They do their debuff roar and if you haven’t killed it before it sends your therizin into a panic, you’ve got 15 seconds of your dino running around and possibly jumping into the lava.

Fifth, you have 50 minutes to get to the upload terminal at the end. I don’t think that would be to difficult, but it is something to keep in mind.

What I’ve learned:

I brought a shotgun, but I think I need a sniper rifle for this part. That would help with snipping some of these dinos from a distance.

I think a rock drake would be ideal in there. Especially with the sniper rifle. I wall climb over some lava, snipe a dino and let the whole group charge at me into the lava. I think that is what I will do on a solo run so I can work out all the details.

I need to re-arrange my dinos at the entrance so I can more inside.

I am doing this on my own test server, so I can reset stuff and try again though.

1850

I’ve watched three videos on it but not been in the Tek Cave. It seems hairy even if you’re riding a dino. In one video they had two people, in another, three. Heal pigs seemed to help. And both struggled on the giga and dimorphs most of all. The heat is worst at the Giga, making it very hard at that point.

It sucks that it is instanced in that way making the dinos tougher to get in. Those teams had mixed dino groups but both also had rex’s with tek saddles.

The only solo video I’ve seen was this guy, who apparently staggers his dino train having them follow in row with the exception of a few up from that he fought with. Worth watching, though I’m guessing you saw it already.

1851

The rock drake worked really well last night.

I would snipe dino packs then fly/glide to the wall of a nearby lava pit then watch all the dinos fall in. You still have to watch out for the yuti debuff roar, but with some more practice, that should be avoidable.

Plus it appears that you have 60 minutes to do the entire tek cave.

I cannot imagine trying this for the first time on any official server. You would lose so many dinos and all your gear for each failed attempt.

I wore a hazmat suit, which handled the heat really well. The hazmat suit has really high heat insulation, plus I’ve bumped up the cold insulation as high as it can go (via the Upgrade Station mod). I’m thinking an otter would be just enough to negate both extremes in the cave.

1852

Any issue with the dimorph pack? And did you make it to the boss?

1853

I never encountered a dimorph swawm. I was only doing it on gamma, so maybe they don’t spawn.

I did make it to the boss, but when I was teleported up, my rock drake didn’t come. So I knew I was going to die and I did.

1854

Doh! By design or bug that the drake didn’t make it?

1855

I watched another video and the rock drake didn’t get teleported either, so I assume it is by design. Probably any type of flier would not be teleported.

1856

Makes me wonder if you could just get all your dinos in, then take the drake and clean everything out like you did, return and have the pack follow you back down to the boss path. Sure you lose a drake but you’ll have everything else then (hopefully)

1857

That is my plan. I’ve got quite a few drake eggs, so just need to hatch one and bring it over to the Island.

1858

The Extinction release trailer is out.

Oh wow, I really hope everything in there is as cool as the video makes it out to be.

It starts out with the standard Ark style stuff, then starts showing off the Extinction goodies.

1859

holy cow looks like we are getting some serious tech upgrades lol

1860

First bit, it is really nice to see a video with a person walking beside a rex and the rex not trying to eat or chase them down. And you can see the rex looking to the player for direction/confirmation.

Then the mech drops down. I’m guessing they are end game content because they show up fighting giga’s and titans (later in the video). Also later in the video, they seem to have their own shield bubble, like the tek shield structure.

The interesting part is where they have a mech fighting a corrupted giga. Considering what giga’s can do, I’m assuming the mech’s are capable of tanking one.

Next is the flame thrower scene. It appears that the flame thrower was being used like the whip to keep the rex at bay until another player dropped off one of those Thorny Dragon mk2 dinos. That is a cool feature to have. It would make flame throwers more useful.

Then variable length tek bridges! oh yeah! Placeable anywhere (per WC Chris).

The balloon thing is going to nice as long as you can carry a couple while you are out harvesting/gathering. Build up a stock pile and float it back to the base.

A flying titanosaur with a platform saddle! Mobile base time! There was talking about making a server option to make Extinction titan’s a permanent tame. That would be nice.

Over all, yeah, I’m a bit psyched.

1861

Yeah makes me wanna jump back in for sure. Just hoping its fleshed out.