Start of Something New on ARK

              Okay, my wife isn't always home when the mood strikes to play ARK and I promised her that I wouldn't do anything on our world when she's gone. She didn't say anything about other servers. So, I went to Reddit last week to look for people running dedicated on a semi regular basis so that I wouldn't have to start fresh every time I played. I finally found one that I quite like.

              I started fresh on Monday morning. Created a new character and began the usual gathering of resources that comes with starting fresh. After a little while, I had a respectable little hut made of thatch and was slowly converting it to wood, when i had a brilliant idea. I thought back to the boat we had created on our own server and thought, "Why not have a mobile boat based on the water." So, I began working at that, and about half way through the day, I had leveled up enough to start building the boat and filling it with all the essentials. Eventually, i had built it up very similar to the one in our world, aside from a few modifications to make it a little less grief-able. Instead of slits in between the ramps to pass into the lower decks. I filled those in with walls and built a hatch that goes from the top to the bottom. I have a few large chests on top full of berries and other things, but most of the important materials and tools are in chests and the smithy below deck. I also have one foundation missing from the middle so that I can drive the boat without going to the outside.

             I really like this set up. I'm mobile, so if I start having trouble with some locals, I can move to another part of the island. I can log off far out at sea and be relatively safe (as safe as anywhere else, I guess), and I can literally bring my base to within a short walk to almost any resource I would need to collect for the time being. Not to mention the benefits to trading with allies if I'm able to get well enough established. I don't know why more people haven't done this, but one way or another, I was going to find out.

              All was going well for a while. I eventually got to a point where I'd need some metal to keep moving forward. I noticed on my map that there were a few mountains closer to the ocean than the others where I could beech myself and run up the mountain for a quick metal as often as I'd need to. I made my first stop at the mountain to the north east. It went really well, ended up making a couple of runs and had roughly 200 pieces of metal in my forge to play with. I was on the fast track to technology with my mobile base. Only about two hours in and I've already got metal tools on the way. It's worth noting that some of the settings are turned up here. None of them are maxed out, but they are set pretty closely to how I have my game set with my wife.

              After getting all my metal tools squared away and a cross-bow made, I still have plenty of metal to spare. The only thing I seem to be lacking is berries to make drugs with. I decide it might be time to grab a low level Trike so I can snag a few stacks of berries each time I make a stop. I start on my way south in the hopes of grabbing something nice and easy, that wont put up too much of a fight. I made a few stops on the way to grab flint and other arrow making materials, as well as narcoberries for keeping the trike knocked out. It was on one of these spots that I made first contact with another human player.

             I was working my way on to a shore to grab more berries when I heard something land and stomp around on my top deck. I'm not too worried about this because I've made my boat specifically with this in mind. It didn't seem like he was trying too hard to get in. So, in my naivety, I open the hatch to take a look and say "hi." I managed to get the hatch closed just before I found myself floating above ground. "This was not what I had in mind." I took this as aggression since I didn't ask to be picked up and taxi'd anywhere. So, I did what anyone would do, and started to prod the bird with my pike. It was a level 102, I noticed, so this wasn't going to end well either way, but I acted on principal. Finally, he let me go, at quite a high altitude. Of course, I died. There wasn't much in my body, just a few tools and such, but I still wanted them back. I had two beds on the boat, and thought, "what the hell. I'll give it a go. Maybe he wont be expecting me to pop right back out again." He was. As soon as I popped out again he swooped in and picked me up and dropped me again. This time, when I spawned, I re-assessed my situation and decided it was time to cut my losses instead of giving him a chance to infiltrate my boat and steal everything.

            I jumped back in the drivers seat and continued south. I could see him chasing me a short way, and I could hear him attacking the walls, but my boat was faster than his base speed, and he had to 'sprint' to keep up. I knew he wouldn't be able to do that forever, so I just kept going in a straight line, and he eventually gave up and went elsewhere. It was not long after I started chatting up a different fellow in the global chat that said he was looking for an alliance. "I could use some friends, for sure." So we eventually decided to meet somewhere and see what he was all about. Admittedly, I approached this with a little more caution given what had just happened.



             Finally, we met at the red obelisk.  We made acquaintances and ended up forming an alliance between our two tribes. It was all around a friendly encounter. Now I have a trading buddy, and he has someone that can ferry him around the island when we need to get something done. After the meeting we both went our separate ways and kept in touch on comes. I rounded the corner in my boat and continued looking for a trike. Just around the corner from where we met, I found one and began to tame it. There was a lot of brush in the area, so I was able to keep it fed. About half way through my tame, my new friend starts shouting on tribe comms that he was captured and that I should run back out to the ocean. I asked him where he was, and he was somewhat close to where I was, but there were several mountains and hills between he and I. My tame was just at the bottom of a steep slope and so, I waited out the tame in a tension. Hoping that they wouldn't find me and ruin it. I stashed most of my tools back in the boat just to be sure. By this time, my cool down had ended on my beds inside. I was willing to take the risk, in order to get the trike completely tamed and on board.

            After what seemed like forever, it finally happened. I called him over to the boat and put him on the top deck and zoomed away. after I had gotten about half way back up the other side of the island, headed north again. I made a saddle for him and began collecting berries. Now I had several stacks of narcos and could make as many tranq arrows as my heart desired. Since the south seemed to be more hostile to outside visitors. I decided that I should stick mostly to the north. From where I was, however, I had only two options to get back there. I could either go the long way around, back the way I came, or soldier through the tundra, and take the shorter route. The shorter way likely meant less grieffing players, but the climate was and environment was generally more dangerous. Going back the way I came, meant going back through enemy territory, but It'd be easier on my food supply, and It'd be warmer. I decided that I'd rather fight the environment than other, more well established players. It might mean less of a target on my back later on.

            I took a little time and crafted up all the hide clothes that I could, and stocked the campfire and Forge with as much wood as they would hold, and went for it. Eventually, I came to the line in the sand where tropical, sandy beeches ended, and frozen, unforgiving arctic began. I crossed over and instantly obtained a little ice cube in my screen telling me I was freezing. So, I lit two fires and my cold got downgraded to a snowflake instead. Since I was still relatively warm, I decided that if I see any mammoths close to the water, I'd harvest some pelt. The tundra could become my favorite place since the whole time I was there, I didn't even see a trace of any player activity. Eventually, I did come across three mammoths ashore just off the water. So, I parked my boat with the loading ramp facing out to sea and shot an arrow at one. HIT! I saw one of them turn around to face me and began walking my way. Then another, then the last one turned. All three were now charging my boat. This is exactly how I wanted it to go. I wore down all of them until I could harvest them. Once I did, I had enough pelt to almost build a whole suit out of it. The only thing I was short of was for the hood. I ended up getting that easily from some wolves that tried to eat me later on. I also found some penguins that gave me some 'organic polymer.' I remembered that it could be used to make a gillie suite that would be useful for my trips to warmer climates. I collected some and crafted what I could right away. I stowed it away in a chest for later. I also grabbed some oil while on my way through, just in case I needed it later for trading or crafting.

              Eventually, I made it through to the other side, and out of the tundra. I was surprised that my trike survived the trip. I thought the cold would have effected him, but he seemed to handle it better than I did. Once on the other side, I could tell that it was getting close to dinner time for me. So, I searched around for a nice quiet space to log off out at sea. Hopefully, I found a space out of the way enough to avoid being grieffed. Hopefully out of the way enough to keep from being discovered. There are rules on this server about offline raiding and passive dino killing, but I'm still always suspicious about whether or not everyone will respect that. The way I figure, anyone that can actually make it out to where I am and do any damage is well established enough that they wouldn't want to risk getting banned.  I hope I'm right about that.