So, when I last left this blog, we had just returned from our caving trip with some crystal. We should have enough of that for a decent little while. The only thing left on our check list for the fabricator is oil. Now, so far in our game, I haven't even so much as collected a drop of oil. So, I cheated a little bit and peaked at the Wiki. I read that the best places to find oil were deep, underwater caves and some fountains out in the ocean. I also read that a small amount of oil could be collected in the arctic if we weren't very water savvy. With the 'Slice of Life' finally constructed, I was feeling confident we could find some in either case.
With that in mind, we said our final good byes, filled our child raptor up with some meat and collected some things to load on the boat. We decided the Argents would be best to take with us in our mobile, water based command center, to help us spot any oil slicks on the surface of the water. Finally, with everything loaded up we set off down the river. I noticed on the map that there was an outlet to the north ocean that we could get to from where we were. My hope is that we wouldn't have to pass through the swamp to get there. But if so, then that's where the Argents come in. We made it about half way and realized how tricky this was going to be. There wasn't any swamp, which was good, but some of the water ways leading to the ocean were about an inch wide. Some how with a bit of wiggling about we managed to get our massive boat through. Some times narrowly dodging a Rex or Spino on the way. The Terror birds seemed to know exactly how to make it onto our boat though. Every time they came around we had to stop and fight them off. Eventually, we did make it all the way through to the north shore and began our search for some oil.
We weren't sure exactly what we were looking for at this point. I had only done enough reading on the Wiki to know generally where to look. I was careful not to catch any pictures on what to look for. I think it spoils some of the fun of exploring and figuring out the game. I figure, it probably makes these blogs a little more interesting to read that way. Now that we are in open ocean, I have my Wife take off with Dexter (one of the Argents), since I no longer needed her screen for navigating the boat through the small creeks of smugglers pass, and she began to look for anything that might be oil floating up to the surface. We went like this up and down the north shore for quite some time and all we could see was ocean and sharks and ocean. Eventually, we did come across an underwater mountain that just barely didn't break the surface of the water. We stopped there as it was getting dark and difficult to see. We held up for the night, cooking meat on our mobile fire and putting together some hide clothes since it was colder out on the ocean than it was in our river side home. I attempted (very foolishly) to dive as deep as I could to see if I could reach the bottom from where we were. I couldn't and was very close to running out of air before getting back to the top of the water. Thankfully, I wasn't attacked by any sort of deep sea monster. I have an actual fear of deep ocean in real life, and I could definitely feel that primal fear being translated through the game world. Knowing that at any moment something could come out of the deep blue and have me for breakfast.
We had been at the search for over an hour now, and still nothing that looked like oil or anything fun. Having crafted some hide clothing though, I thought we might be able to make short trips into the Arctic to see if we could find some. We started that way and along the way spotted something in the water. It didn't look like a shark, it looked like a.... dolphin almost. Whatever it was, my wife had fallen in love with it. It was 'cute' so naturally I was going to tame it for her. We followed it along, and when it swam in close to shore, I ceased the opportunity. It was a nonviolent tame, and it seemed to like meat, naturally, I can't think of where it would have found berries in the ocean. after a few passes, it was ours. We now own a dolphin. My wife was so happy with it that I immediately made a saddle. We have yet to think of a name for it, but I"m open to suggestions, leave some in the comments below.
After all that excitement, we continued to the tundra. It wasn't too far off of where we chased the dolphin. We parked our boat on the edge of the tundra, and walked over to see what it was all about. Of course, instantly as we planted our feet on the snow, we went from being overheated to freezing. 80 degrees one step backwards and 20 degrees here; Only in ARK. Anyway, we continued walking around. Looking for anything oily. We came across some pearls, thinking they looked oily enough, but no luck. We decided to bring them back anyway.
We were attacked by wolves a couple of times as we wondered around. And I was running low on flint and arrows. Time to smack some rocks. I moved around, collecting flint here and there. I got to one rock in particular and started getting lots of stone and the... oil. "What..." I thought. I looked around and saw that we were basically surrounded by these big black rocks. We have a saying in the mid-west of the United States. It goes "If it were a snake, it would have bit me." If these rocks had been snakes, there would have been a feeding frenzy over our corpses. Anyway, we had found the black gold that we set out for, and we were grabbing up all of it that we could and running back to the boat before freezing. Once safely aboard, we stashed away our oil, which ended up being a considerable amount. I can't wait to see what you can get from the ocean sources if what we brought back was considered to be a "small amount."
On our way back with our two birds and new dolphin friend, we ended up getting attacked. I heard what sounded like someone taking damage, but our Argents were fine. Then I remembered, the dolphin! I jumped down and looked into the water but couldn't see him on the loading ramp side of our boat, so I took a plunge in. There was a shark attacking him. I swam his way as my wife jumped back onto Dexter for some recon. As I got to them to assist, I hear my wife shout out, "There is another shark coming in.... and another one." So, now there are three sharks vs our dolphin and myself. The sharks seemed to be focusing on the dolphin which seemed to be able to out maneuver them. I got out my cross bow, which was still loaded with tranq arrows from me thinking that I'd need to tranq the dolphin to tame him. and shot a few at two of the sharks and knocked them unconscious. The third shark (which also the one with with the dolphin aggro) turned his attention to me, and began swimming directly at me. I got out my pike and started a panicked spam of the melee button hoping for a miracle as my head went into the sharks mouth. I survived one chomp and by the grace of God, the dolphin finally finished him off.
In the aftermath of the attack, we had two sharks unconscious and one dead one. I decided to take care the initiative and harvest the dead shark for meat to tame the other two. Thankfully, it was peaceful for the next little bit and we ended up with two tamed sharks and a dolphin for our first major trip to the high seas. I can't complain about that. All of that is not even to mention all the oil we would be bringing back. I was confident that our new sea friends would not make it through some of the tight streams that we needed to travel through to get back to our river. So we left them behind in the open ocean on neutral aggression. Hopefully, between the three of them, they can fend off whatever comes there way in the shallow water. We then headed in to the mouth of the river and back to our home.
The trip back up smugglers pass was even less exciting than the trip out. It seemed like we went straight through without having to wiggle as much and ended up back on the main river that we more commonly travel. On the way back, there was a waterfall that caught my Wife's eye that we didn't notice before. It was very lovely and we may even be building a new house out in that area. We will see what happens.
When we arrived back, we found that our juvenile raptor had matured into an adolescent raptor and still had most of the meat that we gave her before we set off. It was hard to notice before but I could tell now that she was getting physically bigger as well, which was very cool. It won't be long before we can start taking our three raptors out on hunting trips and leveling up our happy new addition.
Pretty good story:)
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DeleteAll is well that ends well. Thanks for stopping by for the read.