I must admit, upon our first steps into the cave, we were met with an adversary that neither of us had expected. It through us both for a loop and sent us into instant panic. It was... a lengthy loading screen. Well, It wasn't even a loading screen per-say, the game just froze and the words loading appeared very small in the bottom corner (on my wife's screen, so I didn't immediately become aware of it until a few moments had passed).
We eventually were able to work out that there was a sort of render barrier between the island above ground, and the caves below it. It seemed very strange to me the need to do this, because the world above ground was so vast that it wouldn't seem necessary to break the caves off into separate chunks, but if they did it that way, I'm sure there was a good reason why. Once the initial shock had subsided and we were released once again from the shackles of the loading screen, we explored deeper into the cave.
We had explored far distance without running into anything scary. We even found some crystals along the way and were very excited about bringing them home. We don't come across crystals very often. so it's nice to finally have a decent quantity to make plans for. Inevitably, though, we had come across some resistance in the cave. My wife was aimlessly wondering around one large cavern and saw something sticking out of the ground. I looked around to her to see it too, and when I realized that it was a scorpion, I abruptly shot it with the crossbow. "Well, that wasn't too bad, this cave isn't so tough." I thought. Then suddenly the ground began to swish around, and my wife said to me "what is tha- AHHHH, shit shit shit!!!!" as I saw her character blaze past my screen and behind her I saw 3 giant spiders. Apparently she is as afraid of digital spiders as she is ones in real life. I was able to kill them at range with the cross bow, and had a good laugh just before three snakes came up the rocks at us. This was getting a bit intense, after dealing with the snakes, I seriously considered that "maybe were just not suppose to go that way." however, as any gamer knows, all the good loot is stashed were droves of bad guys come out from. So, we continue on anyway.
Eventually after a few more bends and turns and caverns, we come across this strange, floating, glowing object in the middle of the cave. After fighting off a few more creepy crawlies, we walk up to examine it. It seemed to be a loot crate with a "Hunters Artifact" trophy inside. "We're definitely taking that home." and we were able to grab one for each of us (via logging out and logging back in).
After all that excitement, we found ourselves getting turned around in circles and decided to start back toward the exit. On our way back, we noticed there was a large pool of water that we hadn't noticed on our first pass through, and it looked like there was plenty of crystal at the bottom and on the other side, fearing there was some terrible, unforeseen, cave dwelling water monster that we knew nothing about, we decided to pass on these resources for now. Maybe we will revisit them when I'm more brave about the whole affair. Otherwise, our journey back out of the cave was very uneventful.
When we arrived back at the mouth of the cave with our dinos, It was time to head back. Remembering our annoying time coming through the forest on the way here, I made the executive decision that we would head to a different, closer water way and just rebuild our boat and come around the other side of the island back home. This proved to be the worst decision I think I have ever made in this game, and maybe the best as well.
After the long, boring task of constructing the new boat and loading the dinos on it. I noticed there was a beaver swimming about near where we were. "gathering would is such a pain, and I bet these guys are great at it." I thought, and we decided together to tame it before we left. With a few tranq arrows we knocked it out and began taming it. Luckily we packed a whole stack of narcotics, because we used almost all of them keeping that things asleep. Finally, we completed the tame it after what seemed like an eternity of feeding it narcotics. Load it up on our boat and head down the river.
Of course we named him Woody. Be honest, you would have done the same.
That was the good part of the trip home. Literally, the whole rest of the trip went badly. Soon we came across the swamp lands. We've been fortunate enough to avoid the swamp for the most part up until now, and I can tell you, I would much rather spawn on the beach as a newbie right next to 3 alpha raptors than to try ever navigate the a swamp ever again. I'm making it official. The swamp is the Aids of ARK. It is hell without fire. If you ever find yourself in the swamp by some misfortune, you will literally think that God himself hates you and has a personal vendetta to make you cry. Just trying to get through it is hard enough with the thick trees and waist high water, then you add the snakes, giant crocodiles, and insects that seem to just happen to know the exact right moment to push your shit it. Dying in the swamp will drive someone insane. I had that misfortune, in the water too. The dying part is just like anywhere else in the game, only slower. Snakes will knock you unconscious with there venom, but it doesn't seem like they do a lot of damage. So, you're basically just waiting to die. Then when you re-spawn, it's IMPOSSIBLE to find your things. If you do manage to find your things after dying in the swamp, it's time for you to go play the lottery, fortune favors you. Thankfully I put most of the materials we were mining on the Trike, which survived, but all my tools and everything i was carrying... Gone, forever. We must have spent hours searching and could not find them. I finally called it quits and just moved on home. I had my first and last experience in the swamp. If wild card wants me to ever even think about venturing through there again, they better put some damn shiny loot out there some where.
Finally we made it out of the swamp and made our way home to turn in for the night. It was definitely an adventure, full of firsts (and lasts) for us. Lots of frustration and laughs had, it was a rush in every way. I think I'll avoid that swamp rush though. Definitely not my cup of tea.
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