"And then I knew I was the monster...." Ark Survival Evolved

[Kid Jake]

I feel pretty confident in saying that anybody that's played Ark for more than a day or two is a monster. Oh, we didn't start out that way and for most of us the realization struck long after it was too late to do anything about it, but there's something about the game that forces you to embrace the worst side of yourself to flourish. My tribemates and I just spent the night reminiscing about the moments in our gaming lives that made us realize that WE were the bad guys all along and I thought someone might get a kick out of my personal confessions.





Several of us had decided to explore the frozen north and bring back its bounty and we were not disappointed. Pearls, oil, crystal and even a smidgen of metal made the trip quite profitable...at least until we got greedy. We spotted a herd of woolly rhinos grazing across a patch of land and the thought occurred to us that a few rhino horns and a chest full of pelt would make our outing perfect.

We failed to notice the 120 beast among them.

Most of my men were killed, only myself and two others escaped, our raft was nearly shattered; storage boxes kept too close to the walls burst open and spilled their contents across the sea... We had to abandon the gear of the dead, our wounds were too great and it was all we could do save a small portion of our hard won spoils. A small portion that was in constant danger every second our battered raft was left exposed to the elements.

With our fireplace destroyed in the attack, we huddled around a small campfire for its meager warmth. It did little to dispel the chill of the north and we watched our health drain before our very eyes, cursing the loss of our preserving bins with every breath. The pilot brought us close to land and slowed to a crawl, I asked him what he was doing and demanded he take us south as fast as possible.

He insisted that if we didn't find something to kill and eat soon that we would all die and none of us would make it home with our gear or materials. I hated to admit it.....but he was right....

Neither of my shipmates could ready their weapons fast enough to prevent my attack. I'd already filled my belly with their meager remains and resumed my journey home before their betrayed curses even had a chance to fade.


As the last story demonstrated, the north can be an unforgiving place for the unprepared and for my own part I'd decided that it would be for the best not to go back if I didn't have to, and to that end I found alternate ways to collect its vast resources. Most could be circumvented easily enough, but organic polymer still proved to be a nuisance. Or at least it was....until I embraced my true nature.

Everyone knows that organic polymer comes from penguins, so that part at least isn't shocking. Unpleasant, for the penguins at least, but not shocking. However my own tribe disassembled my production facility once they realized how I came upon so much polymer so often. Once they realized what the significance was of that awful noise behind my locked door.

The design was simple: Penguins on ramps. As many penguins as I could lay my hands on, crammed onto as many ramps as I could fit in the corner of my base as unobtrusively as possible. Each penguin was filled with stone and left on wander. Pretty reliably, they would produce a fertilized egg which would fall to the floor below; the floor which had a number of AC units making it the perfect egg-hatching temperature.

"But how do you get the polymer unless you spend all of your time waiting for it?" you might ask if you're anything like my tribe.

"Magic!" I would invariably answer unhelpfully.

Until one day, when their curiosity got the better of them, and they knocked down my door to peer behind the curtain. They found almost a dozen eggs waiting to hatch and one pudgy little Pelagornis sitting in the center of the room. It took them a moment to realize what I was doing, but as the first eggs hatched and the hungry water bird began swallowing the terrified babies whole they decided then and there to shut me down.

The Chute was demolished, the penguins put out of their misery and the Pelagornis was never looked at the same way again.

For obvious reasons, it's became my personal mount.


At this point in my Ark career I have all of my needs and most of my wants met with little to no effort, so I can afford to be generous, however that wasn't always the case. Before I'd built my first base I was effectively a 'boat person', just floating from place to place and carrying my belongings with me wherever I'd go. Occasionally I would stop and talk to people on the beaches, or dock overnight along a river to gather certain supplies; but I spent most of my early days drifting.

Needless to say, I didn't have much. So imagine my tribe's surprise when I took an interest in a newbie camped at my favorite metal spawn instead of chasing him off with a pike as was our custom.

After talking with him for a few moments I explained to him the importance of metal and how if he wanted to stand a chance in the end game he needed to start hoarding the stuff NOW. Despite my tribe's protests, I gave him a suit of flak armor; a full set of metal tools and a smithy to repair them with and told him to let me know if he needed ANYTHING.

Every so often I'd stop in to kill an alpha raptor or replace a lost tool and stress that I wouldn't always be able to save him so he'd need to put up a metal base as fast as he could. It was quite touching in its way....

Then one day he asks me how to get cementing paste. Explains that he can FINALLY make metal walls and he's going to take my advice.

I tell him that's wonderful and that I'll bring him some over right away.

He was so excited when I stepped off of my tribe's boat, he didn't even question why it would take five of us to deliver a little cementing paste... I killed him before he could ask, and by the time he had a chance to respawn we'd blown a way into his base and broke all of his beds. As I'd stressed, he'd spent weeks gathering metal for a truly marvelous base....just not his own.

We stripped the place bare in a matter of minutes and as we turned to leave I saw his body in our path. His custom painted flak armor that I walked him through coloring, his journeyman tools I gave him from an alpha we killed together, his half-broken pike that he always waited until the last second to repair because he didn't want to waste metal....and I threw them on the ground.

The harvest was over after all, and I had no more need of them.

[Draconi Redfir]

I don't play ark myself. But those are some fine good stories mate. A++.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

Those stories make me wanna play this game...

[Destro_Yersul]

These stories convince me that Howard Taylor is right, and this game is best played on a private server with people you know.

[Kid Jake]

I don't play ark myself. But those are some fine good stories mate. A++.

Thankya, I've got a few more that I'll type up later. Might also include a few from the tribe if they don't mind. Anyone else that feels like sharing their misdeeds is also welcome to post a few.



Those stories make me wanna play this game...

You should. It's the most immersive game I've ever played and you never know which moment is going to replace your last one as the greatest thing to ever happen to you in a video game. :smallbiggrin:


These stories convince me that Howard Taylor is right, and this game is best played on a private server with people you know.

Maybe....although my most a**holeish moments probably come from interacting with people I know personally. Case in point:

For Christmas, one of our tribemates purchased an Xbox One and a copy of Ark for his 15 y/o brother in law. We offered to bring the kid into the fold but our friend insisted that before he could be allowed into the tribe, he'd have to go through the same kind of crap that we'd endured.

He asked none of us to step in to help the kid out with raids or tames and to only help him with materials if he gathered the majority of them himself. I thought that sounded like a fine way to build character, so outside of the occasional showing off on my 800% melee hand raised pteranodon to take care of the occasional rex or alpha that popped up near his base, I just ignored his presence near us.

A few days into his Ark career, he talked his best friend into joining the server with him and the two of them formed a tribe of their own. We continued to let them fend for themselves, only occasionally throwing them some sparse assistance, when my own best friend suggested we set them up with some equipment.

I told him that that didn't really fit the spirit of the whole 'self reliance' philosophy that our tribe mate was trying to teach them, but my friend insisted that they'd earn their keep. He announced a grand game!

We arrived at their home to give them the good news. We were going to give them armor easily capable of withstanding a rex! Mastercraft weapons which would slay raptors and other common predators with a single blow! Tools and accouterments that would completely reinvent the way they played!

They were quite excited...at least until we clarified that we would be giving ONE of them all of these fabulous prizes.

Before they could decide whether or not it was worth it, we clubbed them unconscious and added their own belongings to the purse. Partially to add some incentive and partially so that neither of them would have an unfair advantage over the other in the competition. Then we announced the rules:

Rule Number 1: The winner gets to collect everything in the bag.
Rule Number 2: The loser gets eaten by the winner.
Rule Number 3: Anything not covered by Rule Number 1 or Rule Number 2 is open to interpretation.

They didn't like these rules, so we added a fourth.

Rule Number 4: Every time we count to ten until the game has commenced we will execute another tame.

It was a mad dash as each friend sprinted towards the other one, armed with nothing more than their bare hands and desperation. They scrambled about, punching and spinning in a wild panic. Their voices were unsteady and you could hear actual fear at losing all their hard work over nothing more than our own personal amusement.

It seemed like it took forever, but in actuality it was over in seconds. The brother's friend knocked him unconscious and at our insistence proceeded to finish him off and devour his corpse. For his trouble, their tames were spared and we gave him all that we promised and more.

The brother however was angry. He was the tribe leader! He'd been playing longer! His brother was one of my right hand men!

Rather than the two of them sharing the spoils, the brother insisted on getting the prize for himself. He posited that he was smarter and more skilled than his friend and that the contest came down to simple luck. His friend disagreed.

The brother threatened to kill his friend the moment he respawned. The friend believed that he would and was scared....at least until we pointed out that HE had the power now.

So he waited by the brother's bed and stabbed him the moment he awoke.

The brother was livid! The next time he respawned he did so in a location that his friend didn't know about, grabbing a spear and attempting an ambush. The friend batted him away laughing.

The brother became truly enraged! In a moment of weakness and anger he banished his friend from the tribe and brought their treasured Trike against him in the name of vengeance. However our arms and armor proved too much, and disgusted by the brother's betrayal the friend slew the tame they had worked so hard on. He slew their dodos and their dilos, he smashed their storage cabinets and their beds and everything else he had fought to protect mere moments ago. In the end the two swore that the next time they met, whether in game or at school....it would be as enemies.

The tribe member arrived shortly after they had went their separate ways and his brother in law explained the entire situation to him. He was disgusted. He was disappointed. He was angry...

He couldn't believe we'd hosted The Game without him.

[snowblizz]

These stories convince me that Howard Taylor is right, and this game is best played on a private server with people you know.

Quite. Reading the bugreport forum has confirmed what I suspect from day 1. Single player. Don't boter with the rest. Run around and have fun in your own private wildlife preserve. That's what I've been doing since I got it. The technical glitches are annoying enough without people actively exploiting them.


All these stories from Kid Jake has only firmed my belief that people cannot be trusted with freedom.

[Kid Jake]

Quite. Reading the bugreport forum has confirmed what I suspect from day 1. Single player. Don't boter with the rest. Run around and have fun in your own private wildlife preserve. That's what I've been doing since I got it. The technical glitches are annoying enough without people actively exploiting them.


All these stories from Kid Jake has only firmed my belief that people cannot be trusted with freedom.

You're missing out man. I started in singleplayer and only grudgingly allowed myself to get sucked into the multiplayer element after a few friends already had and it's a completely different game. The first 70 levels or so you just have to embrace the anarchy and expect to lose everything you own at least once a week. After a certain threshold though you'll realize you gain more than you lost in your first two months of playing in an hour of moderate activity and realize how silly it was to get bent out of shape over a few exploding foundations.

I still occasionally start from scratch just because of how exciting it is to actually try to survive the legions of d***s crawling all over the island armed with clubs and tranq darts. One of my all time favorite gaming moments was hiding in a tiny little crevice between two stones while six pantsless guys combed the area to try and eat me. Even though I did pretty much nothing during the entire event, the whole thing was so freaking exciting I was actually shaking when I finally saw my opportunity and slipped away behind them.

Just save taming until you've got some levels under your belt and can build a decent base staffed with friends, because it IS unbelievably horrible when someone stabs a 5 hour tame to death for the lulz, and you'll wonder how you ever put up with singleplayer.

[Destro_Yersul]

You're missing out man. I started in singleplayer and only grudgingly allowed myself to get sucked into the multiplayer element after a few friends already had and it's a completely different game. The first 70 levels or so you just have to embrace the anarchy and expect to lose everything you own at least once a week. After a certain threshold though you'll realize you gain more than you lost in your first two months of playing in an hour of moderate activity and realize how silly it was to get bent out of shape over a few exploding foundations.

I still occasionally start from scratch just because of how exciting it is to actually try to survive the legions of d***s crawling all over the island armed with clubs and tranq darts. One of my all time favorite gaming moments was hiding in a tiny little crevice between two stones while six pantsless guys combed the area to try and eat me. Even though I did pretty much nothing during the entire event, the whole thing was so freaking exciting I was actually shaking when I finally saw my opportunity and slipped away behind them.

Just save taming until you've got some levels under your belt and can build a decent base staffed with friends, because it IS unbelievably horrible when someone stabs a 5 hour tame to death for the lulz, and you'll wonder how you ever put up with singleplayer.

None of that sounds like missing out to me. Might just be me, though. I mean, I play singleplayer Minecraft on peaceful. I also tend to hate multiplayer at the best of times, and your description of your adventures does not make it sound like something I want to be involved in.

[Starwulf]

None of that sounds like missing out to me. Might just be me, though. I mean, I play singleplayer Minecraft on peaceful. I also tend to hate multiplayer at the best of times, and your description of your adventures does not make it sound like something I want to be involved in.

I absolutely agree with your sentiment. My best friend plays this game and loves it, has a solid group even, but after reading these stories, it absolutely confirms my belief that playing games with open PvP allowed at all levels are something to be avoided like the plague. I remember Asheron's Call back when it first started out was horrendous because of people like that, and any game that involves the ability for high levels to pick on low levels is just not a game I'm interested in, no matter how fun it may be.

[Kris Strife]

I seem to recall, early on at least, the game had a much more cooperative player base.

I don't know if it's the increased population allowing in more *******s by percentage, or that people have gotten far enough that dealing with the environment and wild dinos are no longer a concern, so they choose to entertain themselves at the expense of others.

[Kish]

Yeah, this seriously sounds like the complete opposite of fun. Like, being forced to play this game sounds like a form of torture to me.

[Kid Jake]

In my experience at least, it's the low levels you've got to look out for. High level players may occasionally amuse themselves by hunting newbs on the beach, but it rarely goes beyond minor annoyance because they have to spend so much of their time grinding to maintain their defenses against other high level players.

The deadliest PVP weapon in the game however, the club, is available pretty much from the start. So if you see a guy in flak, riding a dragon he'll usually be on his way to do something productive; might even throw you some food or supplies so he can feel like a big shot.

You see a naked level 5 guy? He's going to try and mug you because he's got nothing to lose.

At the highest levels of the game diplomacy and reputation means more than bullets and manpower. Since we've become the second biggest tribe on our server, we spend most of our time chasing griefers away from our neighbors and mediating between our smaller allies to avoid letting our quiet little area devolve into a warzone.

Sure, we occasionally still breed battle dodos, dope them up on combat drugs and sic them on beach newbs for laughs; but that just means we're human.

[Lord Fullbladder, Master of Goblins]

Sounds like a very medieval form of evil. "Oh yea, yon kings up in their high fortress is goodly folks they is, always keeping order amongst all the real bastards out there. Sure they hunts the poor and the weak for sport but everyone needs hobbies."

Good to see you're well on your way to a true simulated society.

[Kid Jake]

Sounds like a very medieval form of evil. "Oh yea, yon kings up in their high fortress is goodly folks they is, always keeping order amongst all the real bastards out there. Sure they hunts the poor and the weak for sport but everyone needs hobbies."

Good to see you're well on your way to a true simulated society.

Pretty much. :smalltongue:

On the server I'm on players and their belongings are generally considered fair game. It's pvp after all and death is relatively cheap. Kick in a door, rummage around and take what you want and nobody really cares. I mean, the peasants usually only have their shiny toys because one of us gave it to them to begin with and it'll invariably wind back up in one of their hands the next time someone starts organizing their storage boxes.


It's when people, especially new faces with no history or connections, just start killing tames (anything bigger than a dilo or that's set on passive) or burning entire bases to the ground for laughs that the big boys step in to keep order. Otherwise the server dies and the only people you've got left to interact with are the bloodthirsty bastards that killed it.

To keep with the feudalism example, we actually do have a couple of vassal tribes that we allow to live inside our gates and keep equipped in exchange for military assistance (usually defensive, but occasionally we put rockets in their hands and point them at a troublemaker) and help in grinding certain high cost items faster.

They huddle behind us for safety, but in doing so often bring enemies with them, so we've become somewhat overzealous in our defense of our territory. Which actually segue-ways nicely with my next 'confession'.

With so many people moving about, it's hard to tell friend from foe sometimes. The other day one of my tribe mates admitted that he was down by our dock working on his boat when he saw a man in leather armor approaching from across the river. Being without his spyglass, but armed with his longrifle he drew a bead on him with the scope to see if he recognized the man or his colors. The guy stopped what he was doing and waved. So naturally my tribe mate put a bullet through his skull.

When asked why, he simply responded "The fastest way to see if he was friendly was to shoot him and check his corpse."

[Sholos]

I fail to see how not knowing whether any given player is going to randomly murder you for kicks is fun. You say death is cheap, but I'm assuming when you die, you just run up to your stash that your buddies have kept safe for you. I'm assuming they don't force you out of everything you had every time you die and make you earn it all again. Let me know if it's still fun if every time you die you have to start completely from scratch. This sounds like an awful experience if you're not one of self-styled elite players.

I also love how the only time this tribe seems to care about griefers is if they're the ones being attacked. "Waaah waaah! They killed our animals!!!! Only we're allowed to do that!11!11!"

[Siosilvar]

It's a tension thing I guess? Not my cup of tea, but it certainly sounds plausibly fun to me.

Then again, I play plenty of games with permadeath, so I'm absolutely a bit closer to the kind of person who would enjoy that than most.

[Kid Jake]

As I already said, expect to lose everything pretty much every time you log in when you start. It's irritating to begin with but when you accept it's going to happen and decide to roll with it then yes, it's still a blast. It took us several months to go from 'struggling to survive the day' to 'do what we want', so I speak from experience when I say that repeatedly starting from scratch in the early to mid game is no big deal and that the people that don't understand that aren't destined to play the game long.

Hell, most of the major setbacks you encounter aren't even player related; just stupid glitches that erase weeks of work with no way of defending against it. Like the alpha raptor that spawned in my boat overnight, eating the raft and sinking the supplies we'd been gathering for our first base. Or the carno that spawned in our dino pen, eating weeks worth of tames before we even realized what was happening. Or the vault full of materials that just disappeared with no record of being destroyed or demolished in the tribe log. Or when I replaced a pillar in our base and somehow demolished 800+ metal ceilings and around 30 turrets (which to be fair actually made me physically ill when it happened) above it that apparently ignored all the other supports we'd placed around them.

If you're the kind of person that gets hung up on loss, then this game will do little more than give you an ulcer and I'd suggest avoiding it like the plague. But if you can shrug your shoulders, take a breath and get back to work you'll find that the only difference between the, as you put it, 'elite players' and the scrubs is that one of them blows their top and leaves the game when they encounter a setback and the other rebuilds and moves on. You can tell who they're going to be too. When you see a tribe get wiped a couple of times and they're still laughing in global chat, it's safe to assume that however green they are they're going to be a major player once the dust's settled and their enemies have rage quit over something stupid yet unavoidable.





I'm also going to ignore your antagonistic tone and point out that it's not my animals that have to be watched out for, it's the servers as a whole. The big tribes have their stuff protected by solid walls, high level tames and everything else that their players can throw at a problem so it rarely comes up and is obviously dealt with harshly by the offended party and its allies. When the little guy on the beach gets his parasaur piked though, at least on our server, it's expected that the largest tribe in the area will head over and unleash hell on the tame killers so they don't get bolder than they already are and move on to bigger tames. You get a reputation for killing passives out of spite and nobody is too interested in letting you walk around free for long. It's ultimately self serving, but by protecting the little guys we protect ourselves.

Maybe we're a little loose or even hypocritical on the enforcement of the server rules at times, specifically with low value tames that can be replaced about as quickly as they can be killed, but this is a video game and nobody paid $29.99 for the chance to babysit people.





It's a tension thing I guess? Not my cup of tea, but it certainly sounds plausibly fun to me.

Then again, I play plenty of games with permadeath, so I'm absolutely a bit closer to the kind of person who would enjoy that than most.

Basically. It's like a haunted house or a roller coaster; you get so invested in the world around you and your own little projects that when you're forced to defend them you get an unbelievable adrenaline rush. Without the constant risk it'd just be CoD with dinosaurs...which wouldn't be bad necessarily, but definitely doesn't fill the same niche.

[NeoVid]

Those stories are epic. Until this thread, I had no idea that Ark was the prehistoric version of EVE Online.

[Forum Explorer]

That honestly does sound like fun. I just lack the dedication to a single video game that would allow me to actually invest that much time into a game.

[Fri]

Yeah, it's same with pbp rpg, it depends on the expectation as you start the game. I'm not into these kind of things but if you start the game with the premise of getting screwed and die for laugh all the time, it'd be fun, but if you start the game with expectation of serious rp or building or something, I bet it's much less fun.

[Kid Jake]

Those stories are epic. Until this thread, I had no idea that Ark was the prehistoric version of EVE Online.

Heh, thank ya.



That honestly does sound like fun. I just lack the dedication to a single video game that would allow me to actually invest that much time into a game.

Yeah, one of my tribe mates once said (without a hint of sarcasm) "I feel like I keep falling behind, I can only play this game for like 40 hours a week."

It's fun as hell, but it can drain all your time if you don't watch yourself.





Yeah, it's same with pbp rpg, it depends on the expectation as you start the game. I'm not into these kind of things but if you start the game with the premise of getting screwed and die for laugh all the time, it'd be fun, but if you start the game with expectation of serious rp or building or something, I bet it's much less fun.

Oh definitely, it takes a while for most people to get into the right mindset for pvp. It's ridiculously disheartening when you lose your first base or dino, but after a few dozen you either plan for losses or stop playing. There are a few dedicated rp servers, but they're private for obvious reasons and I'd have to imagine that the mods would have to be pretty much 24/7 to keep them stable.

Surprisingly, it's not that hard to complete sizable building projects in the late game, you've just got to have the right dinos, a little know how and either protect it well or make it look unprofitable to raid. The early game is very much a survival game and even in singleplayer you're usually scrambling for food and safety in that stage.







There used to be a younger tribe on our server that had a handful of tweens attempting to make it big. Most people that i know of have a strict 'no squeaker' policy where they instantly kill a conversation once it involves anyone whose voice hasn't dropped. Myself? Resources are resources and kids are usually willing to spend resources on things they could easily do themselves if they weren't so impatient; so naturally I'm a fan.

I got hooked up with this tribe when they wanted a platform saddle for their brontosaurus and they paid in pearls, which at the time was a fairly rare resource, so any time they needed something I was right there to get my cut. They had a beef with another tribe, so they came to me for a sizable order of crop plots and Plant X (a sort of bio turret that spits poison at your enemies) to keep them at bay. I suggested that they should upgrade to the superior, and far more expensive, auto-turret. They replied that they didn't think it would be necessary, but would let me know if they changed their minds.

Now, naturally I wanted them pearls, and if they didn't want my wares....I'd just have to create a demand for them.

That night I took a hardy bird and wrecked a handful of their new plots. As expected, they showed up the next day needing more; but still didn't think auto-turrets were necessary. So the next night, I took my bird back and managed to snatch a couple of their tames; dropping them into their enemy's base so that it would show that they had killed them.

They were pretty mad about that, so they came back and bought some grenades and firearms to avenge their fallen dinos; but still didn't think that turrets were necessary. So, I approached their base with a rocket launcher and blew a hole through their plants and into the side of their base; went inside and lifted as much stuff as I could.

They came back to me the next night, needing turrets and explosives to escalate things further. My prices had of course increased due to an unexpected jump in demand, but they were desperate enough to pay. I wished them luck and told them to come back if they needed anything.

Then of course I sent a message to their rivals, letting them know that I was open for business. Just in case they needed anything.




This one wasn't me, but a friend of mine described the moment he knew he was a monster.

He was roughly mid level by this point and knew what it was like to huddle, frightened and hungry in the dark. Too weak and scared to venture beyond the light of the campfire, but too hungry not to... So when he heard the faint cry of a newb in the dark, begging for food he went to him and assured him that everything was going to be alright.

He talked to the newb for a moment, let him know that not everyone in the game is an a-hole and even hinted that he might be able to find a place in his tribe. The newb was grateful, but again asked for food before his character died. My friend laughed, and said of course; then reached into his pack for his spare stack of meat....only to discover he didn't have it.

In fact he had only a single piece and he himself was getting hungry... So he apologized to the newb, explained his side of the situation as best he could and then promptly cooked him over his own fire.

[Leon]

That moment when you think your ready to take on the world and a Prime Alpha comes along and eats everything you ever knew and cared about. That or when you spawn on a Sarco.

[Epinephrine_Syn]

Okay, I'll say a few things. One, these stories are lovely and I adore hearing about them. Two, I could "never" play this game, but not because of this, even if I do like not losing things I have (when they matte to me).

If you're the kind of person that gets hung up on loss, then this game will do little more than give you an ulcer and I'd suggest avoiding it like the plague. But if you can shrug your shoulders, take a breath and get back to work you'll find that the only difference between the, as you put it, 'elite players' and the scrubs is that one of them blows their top and leaves the game when they encounter a setback and the other rebuilds and moves on.
but more because I could be 'building up' things in other games and climbing different totem poles, where I also don't get raked over the coals constantly. Admittedly it sounds like that what your advice is "literally everything but your Level and your Social Relationships is meaningless, until you hit level 75 or so. Your Social Network and your Level are your only two concrete belongings".



Three, this is a pretty good quote to take out of context.


Sure, we occasionally still breed battle dodos, dope them up on combat drugs and sic them on beach newbs for laughs; but that just means we're human.

[Kid Jake]

That moment when you think your ready to take on the world and a Prime Alpha comes along and eats everything you ever knew and cared about. That or when you spawn on a Sarco.

After you get about 300% Melee Damage you can usually just punch the sarco to sleep. :smalltongue:

Your point about Alphas always stands though. I don't know how many patches they've released saying they stopped dinos from spawning in bases, but I still occasionally find them trapped in a freaking closet eating my blueprints or egg layers.




Okay, I'll say a few things. One, these stories are lovely and I adore hearing about them. Two, I could "never" play this game, but not because of this, even if I do like not losing things I have (when they matte to me).

but more because I could be 'building up' things in other games and climbing different totem poles, where I also don't get raked over the coals constantly. Admittedly it sounds like that what your advice is "literally everything but your Level and your Social Relationships is meaningless, until you hit level 75 or so. Your Social Network and your Level are your only two concrete belongings".



Three, this is a pretty good quote to take out of context.

One/Three, thankya. I strive to amuse. :smallbiggrin:

For the second point, that's sort of my advice but only because of how meaningless you can make the process of rebuilding after a certain level. In your early days you struggle for days or sometimes even weeks gathering enough stone, wood and thatch to make enough walls and ceilings to house a handful of dinos and your stuff. You about feel lucky to collect a few hundred materials an hour and you're always on edge because all it takes is a couple of rockets or a pissed off gigantosaurus to completely destroy your entire stone base. Hell, if your base is made of wood then all it takes is an irritable trike to bring the whole thing down.

HOWEVER! If instead of focusing on painstakingly building a base wall by wall you just try to level up, sail around the map killing stuff; making useless items over and over for xp; exploring; etc...., then you could probably hit level 50 in a day or two. Now you can make a saddle for a doedicurus and/or a mammoth. Track down these bad boys and instead of it taking an hour to gather 600 stone or wood it literally takes about three minutes.

High level ones are definitely worth the time it could take to tame them, but even a 30 minute trash tame will pretty much outclass you wielding metal tools any day of the week and doesn't even need to be repaired when you're done!

Tracking these things down and taming them are a set of hazards all of their own, but once you've used them to build a nice base with as many defenses as you can fit within your walls you can go and tame birds; including a Quetzal which allows you to pick up all but the largest creatures and drag them all the way back to your base for easy, stress free taming that you barely have to pay attention to.

Once you've got an argentavis or a quetzal, or just a relatively safe source of metal, then you can begin reinforcing your stone structures with metal ones. Supplementing your vicious plants with actual autoturrets and swapping out spears and slingshots for pikes, swords and even assault weapons.

The person that spends weeks of his life building huts on the beach and hoping for the best is completely wasting his time and probably getting increasingly irritated with the game. The guy that stops slinking around in the bushes thinking of it as a survival game, but looks at all the dinos with their individual niches and thinks to himself 'Finally, a Flintstones simulator!' is going to explode past his terrified cave-dwelling neighbors and never look back.

The reason I say that everything but level and reputation is meaningless is because pretty much as soon as you hit certain milestones; everything you've built up to that point becomes useless to you. As soon as you can build wood, then your thatch house is just something in your way. As soon as you get stone, you wonder how you EVER thought wood was a good idea. Once you get metal, you still might occasionally use stone since it's easy to collect, but NOTHING of importance is going to be kept behind anything less than steel. Once you get a spear you abandon your fist, once you get a pike you abandon your spear, once you get a carno you abandon your pike and once you get a rex you abandon your carno, etc...

Your expectations and capabilities change drastically as you level up, so long as you're playing smart, and once you hit level 70 or so (which can be done overnight if you're devoted/crazy enough) you basically realize that EVERYTHING you've owned up until that point was laughably worthless and you kind of wonder why you ever worried about something so easily replaceable. I remember how proud my tribe was the first time we scored about 600 metal in a single haul; we felt like the cat that ate the canary! Fast forward to where we are today and if we don't pull a MINIMUM of 7,000 metal during a 15 minute run we feel like we've wasted our time and energy.

It used to take us days to farm up a scant handful of rockets to avenge ourselves with. Earlier this week I handed a random kid that was being harassed 3 advanced launchers and 50+ rockets (that somebody had put in a random pig for some reason) and told him to go have fun at their expense. There's just a certain tipping point where everything you want/need comes so easily, assuming you've focused on increasingly efficient gathering methods, that it might as well just materialize as you need it. If you rush towards that point, instead of struggling with the day to day stuff like you're 'supposed to', then it plays like a completely different game.

Where we're at, we've actually got a couple of large building projects that we've invested ourselves in. The first being a series of bridges meant to connect the various islands to the mainland. They're mostly decorative and the guy that's put them up is doing it just to prove he can. They're relatively safe because there's obviously no value in targeting them since they have no valuables attached to them and they're available for public use, so most people that are aware of them use them to move tames on and off shore. But even if the bridges were completely wiped, since he's already got the design in place he could most likely generate the materials necessary to completely replace every portion of it in about 10 minutes.

Our second project is our HQ which we've dubbed The Citadel, which is exactly as scary as it sounds :smallbiggrin:. It's a four story metal castle shaped like a Star Destroyer that's hit the 8,000 piece structure build limit in 3 different zones. It holds dozens of dinosaurs of every kind, is loaded down with turrets on every side and is so gigantic it requires a series of elevators to get around it. I'd consider it one of the safest areas in the game because of it's formidable defenses, and I can pretty much guarantee that anyone that's ever attacked it feels the same way. It's surrounded by hundreds of vicious plants, numerous high level tames, batteries of turrets every few feet and our most trusted allies who we allow to live within our layers of outer walls (our presence protects them from low level threats that would otherwise harass them, and their combined presence within our defenses lets the higher level tribes know that we've got bodies backing us up in a fight.) In all the times people have tried to raid us, the only damage ever done to the base itself came from the splash damage when I was rocketing a group of raiders mounts to death.

Now I'm not bragging, although I'm sure it sounds like I am. We aren't the scariest tribe on the server (although we have become friendly with them) and we aren't one of these gigantic, monolithic mega tribes that you hear about. At our largest we numbered somewhere between 15 and 18, but we realized that most of those were noobs or friends of friends who didn't contribute much and weakened our reputation by being too whiny/vocal, too vicious/opportunistic, or just too easy a target to pass up. So, we trimmed ourselves down to a lean five members; though you'll rarely find more than three of us on at a time and we're considerably stronger for it.

If you can find two people to play with that are patient, focused and easy to get along with, then you've pretty much got the keys to the kingdom; in fact most of the more powerful tribes I know of are just a small handful of people who are willing to grind a weekend here and there to get what they want. In fact in my experience it seems like the larger the tribe, the more likely that each member feels like it's 'not their place' to do the little, piddling jobs that ultimately separate the haves from the have-nots.

Basically, just don't let my rambling halfassed advice/rant dissuade you from giving the game a try. There's really nothing quite like it and the longer I play it the more I love even the crappy parts I used to dread starting out. You just have to keep in mind sometimes that it's a game and you're supposed to be having fun with it; so if you aren't....make sure to fix that.










My tribe likes projects. Some people build structural wonders, other people attempt to breed the perfect beast, we elevate smaller tribes into something we can use. Now there are a couple of stories I could relate in this vein, but they're boring and end happily ever after, so nobody wants to hear them. I only bring this up, because that's how this story begins.

My allies had been supplying a small, struggling tribe with materials for a few days. They'd drop off food, tools, weapons and even the occasional suit of armor or dino kibble to help this tribe get better situated. All was well and good, until the little tribe began reporting being stalked and robbed of the very goods we'd been giving them.

Now stealing supplies that we drop off is almost as bad as stealing from us, so we set out to put an end to this. They kept reporting a naked man on a red pteranadon landing just outside of bow range, shooting them with a tranq dart from a longrifle and then robbing them blind. It didn't take my allies long to find the man and 'lo and behold, he did the same to them.

Now I'm not a violent man by nature, there's no profit to be had by wasting resources on every petty squabble that comes your way, but they had lost valuable equipment to this thief and if I didn't want him operating inside my territory I knew I was going to have to stop him myself. So I hopped on my warbird, which I had hand raised from an egg and had grown strong enough to kill the average triceratops with a single blow, and flew out to find this man.

I found him overlooking the carnage he'd caused and attacked without so much as a word. His mount must have been something spectacular, because it survived and quickly outpaced me (though my own was more suitable to killing than chasing.)

Now that could have been the end. In fact, that SHOULD have been the end. He'd escaped with his life and the life of his bird, he should have considered himself lucky and taken the hint that he wasn't welcome within sight of my walls. However, instead of retreating gracefully he decided to call me out in the global chat.

He played innocent, as though he didn't know what we were talking about and proceeded to refer to me as 'punk'.

Now as I've said before, I don't like wasting resources. I don't like wasting metal to repair armor. I don't like wasting bullets to repel invaders. I don't like wasting rockets to breach a base. But most of all, I don't like seeing our brand diminished by petty insults....

So naturally I offered a bounty of 1,000 cementing paste for anyone that could tell me where this man and his tribe kept the things they loved most in this world.

Now we have a certain reputation, and it's been one that I've carefully cultivated. We have only a single response to ANY action taken against us. If you kill our animals? If you break our walls? If you steal from us? We destroy you. Every wall, every foundation, every pet you own, every errant CAMPFIRE, it simply disappears.

This is an expensive response, but we've only had to use it a handful of times as long as we've been playing. People hear about our violent overreactions and they simply avoid us. I remember the first time we did it, we had a tribe personally apologize for demolishing an unowned structure simply near us, just to make sure we weren't upset with them over it.

So I let everybody know that if I didn't get a response, I would assume that their neighbors were standing with them in this matter.

I had co-ordinates within minutes.

After confirming the location myself, I described the bases defenses and the tames I saw there to let them know that they were no longer anonymous.

The bandit replied that he knew of our reputation for violence but that all he'd said was 'punk', which he considered more humorous than insulting, and argued that such a minor infraction was hardly worth the work that he and his tribemates had put into building their home and raising their animals.

I replied that I'd heard him say punk, but I never heard him say "Sorry."

He laughed, still playing innocent, and said "So you attack me, and I'm supposed to apologize?"

His outer gates disappeared in a literal flash. 20 some behemoth gates fell within seconds. Three rexes, a pack of wolves, a pair of sabrecats and a host of other tames flooded out to meet me. The mini-gun mounted to the shoulder of my quetzal spat led into the charging horde, cutting them down as fast as my tribe mate could take note of them. Those too tough for the gun were eaten by the quetzal, or simply plucked off the ground and tossed into the ocean to drown.

The defender's own turrets chased us across the sky, though the second they opened the door to engage us directly my second tribe mate clubbed them over the head; knocking them unconscious. He slipped inside and simply turned their generator off while they were forced to look on in horror.

It was at this point, I simply replied to them "Yes."

The rest of the base lasted seconds without its defenses. We ate them before they could wake back up and burned the rest down. I ordered my men not to take anything. Not a single trophy, not a single bullet, not even to search and see what they might have had. I wanted to make sure they knew that this wasn't about material possessions. That it wasn't a raid, and I didn't want their meager supplies. This was an execution, and I simply wanted to erase any part of them that might have existed.

All told we used 40 rockets, hundreds of rounds of ammo, broke several high quality and thus expensive suits of armor, nearly lost our prized quetzal to turret fire and walked away without a single scrap of anything to show for it.

However...the next time I told a tribe to apologize over global chat, three others I'd never even heard of did as well.

Just to be safe.

[Sightsear]

Oh dear lord, Ark DOES turn you into a Feudal Lord! It's horrible, yet hilarious!

This almost makes me consider playing, but I think I'd rather hunt down a youtube series and live vicariously through them. Pretty cool that it's the small, dedicated groups that really thrive though!

I hope to hear more adventures of Darth Jake, and his merry band of mighty misfits, trolling newbs and destroying their enemies! So much schadenfreude.

[Beleriphon]

My tribe likes projects. Some people build structural wonders, other people attempt to breed the perfect beast, we elevate smaller tribes into something we can use. Now there are a couple of stories I could relate in this vein, but they're boring and end happily ever after, so nobody wants to hear them. I only bring this up, because that's how this story begins.

My allies had been supplying a small, struggling tribe with materials for a few days. They'd drop off food, tools, weapons and even the occasional suit of armor or dino kibble to help this tribe get better situated. All was well and good, until the little tribe began reporting being stalked and robbed of the very goods we'd been giving them.

Now stealing supplies that we drop off is almost as bad as stealing from us, so we set out to put an end to this. They kept reporting a naked man on a red pteranadon landing just outside of bow range, shooting them with a tranq dart from a longrifle and then robbing them blind. It didn't take my allies long to find the man and 'lo and behold, he did the same to them.

Now I'm not a violent man by nature, there's no profit to be had by wasting resources on every petty squabble that comes your way, but they had lost valuable equipment to this thief and if I didn't want him operating inside my territory I knew I was going to have to stop him myself. So I hopped on my warbird, which I had hand raised from an egg and had grown strong enough to kill the average triceratops with a single blow, and flew out to find this man.

I found him overlooking the carnage he'd caused and attacked without so much as a word. His mount must have been something spectacular, because it survived and quickly outpaced me (though my own was more suitable to killing than chasing.)

Now that could have been the end. In fact, that SHOULD have been the end. He'd escaped with his life and the life of his bird, he should have considered himself lucky and taken the hint that he wasn't welcome within sight of my walls. However, instead of retreating gracefully he decided to call me out in the global chat.

He played innocent, as though he didn't know what we were talking about and proceeded to refer to me as 'punk'.

Now as I've said before, I don't like wasting resources. I don't like wasting metal to repair armor. I don't like wasting bullets to repel invaders. I don't like wasting rockets to breach a base. But most of all, I don't like seeing our brand diminished by petty insults....

So naturally I offered a bounty of 1,000 cementing paste for anyone that could tell me where this man and his tribe kept the things they loved most in this world.

Now we have a certain reputation, and it's been one that I've carefully cultivated. We have only a single response to ANY action taken against us. If you kill our animals? If you break our walls? If you steal from us? We destroy you. Every wall, every foundation, every pet you own, every errant CAMPFIRE, it simply disappears.

This is an expensive response, but we've only had to use it a handful of times as long as we've been playing. People hear about our violent overreactions and they simply avoid us. I remember the first time we did it, we had a tribe personally apologize for demolishing an unowned structure simply near us, just to make sure we weren't upset with them over it.

So I let everybody know that if I didn't get a response, I would assume that their neighbors were standing with them in this matter.

I had co-ordinates within minutes.

After confirming the location myself, I described the bases defenses and the tames I saw there to let them know that they were no longer anonymous.

The bandit replied that he knew of our reputation for violence but that all he'd said was 'punk', which he considered more humorous than insulting, and argued that such a minor infraction was hardly worth the work that he and his tribemates had put into building their home and raising their animals.

I replied that I'd heard him say punk, but I never heard him say "Sorry."

He laughed, still playing innocent, and said "So you attack me, and I'm supposed to apologize?"

His outer gates disappeared in a literal flash. 20 some behemoth gates fell within seconds. Three rexes, a pack of wolves, a pair of sabrecats and a host of other tames flooded out to meet me. The mini-gun mounted to the shoulder of my quetzal spat led into the charging horde, cutting them down as fast as my tribe mate could take note of them. Those too tough for the gun were eaten by the quetzal, or simply plucked off the ground and tossed into the ocean to drown.

The defender's own turrets chased us across the sky, though the second they opened the door to engage us directly my second tribe mate clubbed them over the head; knocking them unconscious. He slipped inside and simply turned their generator off while they were forced to look on in horror.

It was at this point, I simply replied to them "Yes."

The rest of the base lasted seconds without its defenses. We ate them before they could wake back up and burned the rest down. I ordered my men not to take anything. Not a single trophy, not a single bullet, not even to search and see what they might have had. I wanted to make sure they knew that this wasn't about material possessions. That it wasn't a raid, and I didn't want their meager supplies. This was an execution, and I simply wanted to erase any part of them that might have existed.

All told we used 40 rockets, hundreds of rounds of ammo, broke several high quality and thus expensive suits of armor, nearly lost our prized quetzal to turret fire and walked away without a single scrap of anything to show for it.

However...the next time I told a tribe to apologize over global chat, three others I'd never even heard of did as well.

Just to be safe.



Is there a reason your tribe hasn't named you Emperor Jake, Lord of Ark Island and All He Can See?