Moving day (Part 2)

                When I last left off, we had just finished the structure of the house, and had to go to bed. We only had a hand full of dinos with us, basically as body guards, and a beaver for collecting wood. I just finished taming another beaver and a stego for heavy lifting (RIP Trike). Our move, however, is far from over. We still have many resources and dinos that we didn't bring along on our first trip. So, we still needed to collect the remaining dinos, and with them (hopefully) the rest of the materials left behind. Hopefully, with the 'Slice of Life' that all wouldn't be too hard.

                We started our day on ARK with doing some finishing touches on the house, we still hadn't added any crafting stations, and the windows on the front of the house just weren't looking right. We tidied up those things and my wife finished most of the paint job on the outside. It was all looking like a very nice living space and we knew we still had more to add to it. Even with the amount of space in it at the time, I knew we would have it filled up in no time. It seems like no matter how much space you have in this game, you always need more.

                 After that was all said and done, we loaded up the boat. This time, we were only taking back with us two of the raptors and the new beaver. I knew that we had enough materials to make a saddle for the beaver back at our old base. The raptors we brought just for protection. I didn't want to lose another dino. With the boat loaded, we set off back down the river for our old home. We only had a few dinos left over there. The Argents were there, also 2 Pterodactyls, a sabertooth, a phiomia, and a paraceratherium. The paracer was the one I was counting on to carry most of the rest of our materials. I knew it was going to be tricky, we still had many things that needed to come back with us. A lot of it was little odds and ends here and there, but our smithy still needed to be emptied, and a stack of metal ingots was laying around some where.



                 Once we finally arrived back at our old home, we started to divide up the haul. The argents carried most of the small odds and ends, we gave some of the heavier stuff to the phiomia, and as you probably guessed, the paracer carried most of it. We haven't actually done much with the paracer until now, we have managed to get his weight up to about 800, but he has mostly just sat in the pin since we tamed him early on, passively leveling up. Eventually, we had come to a point where we both decided that we had everything that we couldn't live without, and left a few things behind in the interest of getting a fresh start in our new home. My wife began loading the dinos on to the boat while I broke the paracer out of his pin (we never really crafted a gate big enough for him to pass through, that's part of the reason he hasn't been used much.). After getting him free, I walked him down to the boat where I made two troubling discoveries. One of the pterodons was missing. It wasn't a huge concern to me, because I knew he could fly, but it did mean we'd have to come back for him later. Second, the paracer simply would not go up the ramp. Thinking that the other dinos might be in the way, we pulled them all off and tried again. Still nothing. I remembered back when we built the boat for the first time. Originally, the ramp to the top was only one space wide, and we couldn't get the trike up it until we widened the ramp to two spaces. I guessed the paracer was having the same problem and we weren't going to get him on it until we widened the ramp again. This would mean a major modification to the boat's structure in order to add it. So, what did we do? If you guessed that we used the beaver and his new saddle to make the necessary modification to the boat, then you would be wrong. We aren't always sensible enough to go with the obvious and easy solution. What we decided on was much more dangerous and had many more ways to fail than that. We loaded all the rest of the dinos on the boat, and had the birds fly behind it so that I could see over the top. Then my wife jumped on the very slow moving paracer. Our plan was to use the games tether between the split screen players to drag the paracer along behind the boat all the way down the river and back home. It seemed simple and brilliant enough, but there were many problems with this plan. First, the paracer was slow and would have to remain unprotected since we couldn't risk other dinos being yanked out of follow range with the teleport feature. Secondly, what if she had teleported practically on top of a dangerous predator, I was worried we might not have time to coordinate a response (especially in the middle of the water) if she came under attack. In that scenario, our best bet would be for me to rush ahead, leaving her behind, in the hopes of triggering another teleport before she died. Then there was the issue that when we have tried similar strategies in the past, sometimes it wont drag the dino with her, instead, ripping her off the saddle and placing her in the water by herself. Even with all of these possibilities, we were going to give it a go.


               We tested it on our first little stretch of river. I couldn't see anything dangerous in the immediate vicinity. So, I went for it, and sure enough, roughly about 300m out, she was dragged right to my position. I thought for a moment that the game had made our lives a lot simpler by plopping the paracer right on the deck of the boat, but no such luck, this is ARK after all. Otherwise, however, it had worked as intended. My wife, and the dino, were both dragged down to my position with the tether. It was the proof of concept that we needed to keep going, and that's what we did. It was very tricky maneuvering the boat. Normally, I would be driving the boat, and my wife would be standing at the front of it, and I use her screen to see what's ahead of us a little better since my field of vision is obstructed by the walls of the boat. I couldn't rely on her this time. I did replace one of the back walls with a window to make it a little easier to see, but it definitely wasn't as good as having eyes at the front. Getting snagged on rocks was a definite reality for me and the dinos on top, especially if there was a carno or rex on the shore just next to us. Speaking of a rex, I see one now. As I turned the corner I could make out a rex on the beach just next to where we had to go. He was situated right on a narrow bendy part of the water, so there was a chance I could get hung up there. To make matters worse, my wife was coming up on another drag point. This could get interesting.


             I decided to keep moving quickly. If I could get through here without drawing any aggro, maybe my wife would slip through unnoticed as well. As it turned out, I managed to navigate the boat perfectly so that we didn't get snagged on anything. As I was passing by, I noticed also that there were two carnos on the beach along with the rex. This could still go very badly if my wife gets dragged to the wrong spot. I noticed, however that at that point, the river seems to turn back on itself slightly, which meant that my wife would stay within range of the tether for a little while longer than I thought. That means we will be well past these guys before she has to jump again. That's great news.... I thought. After having well passed the rex and carnos, she finally got the drag. She was pretty close to shore and we were just on the other side of some rocks from our new home. We could almost even see it from where we were. As soon as my wife left the water, I started hearing the sounds of combat. It was just a Dilo, so I knew she could handle him. In her attempts to dispatch him, though, she also tagged one of several Dimos that were around and they all started to attack. She was in trouble now. I was confident the paracer could tank the damage for a while, but those Dimos could fly up and hit her on his back, and she didn't have nearly the amount of hit points the paracer had. I turned the boat around and got out just as I could hear her health ticking down to that wishy washy heart beat sound. I knew she didn't have much time now. So, I rushed over to help her with the argents and the pterodon. The birds quickly killed off the dimos while I delt with the now 3-4 dilos that had joined in on the attack.  Once they were all down, we were hit again with insects this time, lots of them. We eventually worked our way through all of them, and not a moment too soon. My wife had a sliver of health left. We paused a while to recover and admire the irony of being so worried about the big predators on the other beach and having the small ones absolutely wreck us. Then we decided that traveling was for the birds and sprinted the rest of the way home.

             We went the rest of the way without much incident, and began unpacking everything. Sorting through it and placing it into specified containers. Before we left, I had crafted a fabricator, and it was finally time for us to find a place to put it down. In our new house we built a corner, upstairs, just for crafting. That seemed as appropriate a place as any to put it. I was excited to finally have it in place, now we have all sorts of fun things to look forward to collecting and building. After looking at some of the requirements, I can see that we have a lot of fun adventures ahead of us.