Swallowed up by Cave Exploration.

               Another day logging into ARK for me and the wife, We've started opening up our single player game as a non-dedicated server on the Xbox One. If anyone sees it up and wants to join in, I always name it after my gamer-tag (The Cage 88). We're always cool with new people coming in, just be forewarned, you won't be given free access to our Tribe, Dinos, or run of our structures, but we will try and make sure you're reasonably entertained. We're always going on some adventure.

               A Few nights ago, my wife and I had just finished watching the last episode of 'Dexter.' If you're not familiar with that show, It's a brilliant show on Showtime and you should become familiar with it very soon. It's excellent. Anyway, after finishing it, we decided to pay tribute to it when we logged into ARK last night. This is the result.

                We managed to tame two Argents near our base, we named one after Dexter and one Debra Morgan. Then we decided to deploy our new and improved boat 'The Slice of Life' on its maiden voyage of searching for a new cave to mine crystal and metal that we don't have to travel through swamp land to get to. Turns out, there is a cave not too far from our home base. It's just down the river and a brisk walk up a hill. Who knew! We originally found it while taming the Argents and decided to come back with our Trike and Raptors to explore it. So, we loaded up the boat and headed on our way. The new boat design is much better than the last one pictured here. We didn't had any problems with it getting stuck, or the Dinos falling off; and there was even extra space for a few amenities (the boat will be free to use as shelter for anyone that joins our game, it's close enough to our base so that the tether isn't too bothersome)

               Once we had landed on shore, it was just a relatively short hike up the mountain to the mouth of the cave. About half way up, we found ourselves in an epic battle. It was the Trike vs. a Carno, two Raptors, and about 5-6 Saber-tooths. It was a bit of a struggle at the beginning but once our Raptors, Daisy and Jeff, caught up to me with my wife, we dominated them. Going the rest of the way up was no issue and after a bit of navigating around rocks and trees, we reached a clearing and the cave was visible in the distance.

                I examined the opening and it looked quite a bit larger than the other cave we'd gone to before. I decided "Hey, it looks like we might actually be able to fit the Dinos in this one, lets try it." That turned out to be a big mistake. I lead with the Trike, I figured if any of them were going to get stuck, it'd be him. We marched a couple of feet into the cave, muscled through the dreaded loading screen and then........ The Trike with me on it's back, began to plummet. "Oh shit, I've fallen through the terrain and were going to lose the Trike." Then, because of the games tether, my wife got dragged down with me and she began falling as well with her Raptor, Jeff. Then I was preparing for the worst. I thought to myself "Well, fuck, either were going to keep falling forever or we'll eventually hit the "ground" and we're all going to die and lose all three of our Dinos." Then, it finally happened. I saw a surface coming up at us and was preparing for the end and Splat...... No, wait, not splat; Splash! We were alive and under water. Excellent, There is still a chance everything will be fine, all we have to do is swim back to our boat and we should be able to cross back over above land. My wife, not being an avid gamer herself, still had no idea what had happened, what was going on, or where we were. For all she knew, that was just a feature of the cave and we had just fallen into some sort of hellish abyss, from which we could never hope to return. Upon realizing her confusion, I told her just to follow me back to the boat and explained along the way what clipping through the floor was and how everything worked as far as maps and textures, until we finally arrived back on the beach with our boat.

               Back up the mountain, round two. This time up the mountain we found a clearer path with fewer trees, and arrived back at the cave in half the time. This time, when we got there, we left the Trike behind and opted to just take the Raptors in. That was much more successful. We emerged from the loading screen still firmly on the ground in the cave, but admittedly proceeded with far more caution this time. We made our way through this cave with ease, now that it had fully loaded in. We collected chunks of crystal and metal all around. We even found another one of those trophies.

                I was surprised that we didn't meet with any hostiles in the cave. Just the ever present thought that at any moment, one or both of us would come crashing through the floor again and down into the water under the mountain. After we explored it thoroughly and collected everything we could carry (literally, I had to jump off of Daisy because she was overburdened with me on her back). we headed back out of the cave. Just before we could get out, Daisy had gotten snagged on a rock just inside the cave and I couldn't get her to come free of it. So, i ran out of the cave really quickly, stashed all of my loot on the Trike and went back in to ride her out. When I had gotten back into the cave, though, she was gone. No where to be found. I could only think of one place she could be. So, I told my wife to Saddle up and I jumped on the Trike again to ride him into the cave so that we would be pulled through the map again. Sure enough, we fell through. (I've never been so thankful for a reoccurring, duplicate glitch in a game.) Once we hit the water, I whistled for all Dinos to follow and I saw Daisy swimming towards me. "Guess we're swimming back to the boat." All three of us did just that, for the second time. Once we'd gotten back to the shore, we loaded up our boat and headed for home with all our Dinos and loot intact. Another (somewhat) successful trip out. 

                Once we arrived back home again and began putting our stuff away, we noticed there were two fertilized eggs on the ground in our Dino pin. One from the Argents, and one from the Raptors. We noticed that the Raptors egg was incubating, and the Argents was showing "too hot." I watched over the Raptor egg and my wife picked up the Argent egg to move it some place cooler. When she went into the menu to drop the egg, however, she ate it instead by accident. "You monster!" I shouted. "You ate Debra's baby!" Adding to my outbursts, it seemed Debra was now always walking away from my wife when she tried to go near her to apologize for accidentally eating her baby. I couldn't help but to point our how absurd that sounded. "I'm sorry Debra, it was an accident. I didn't mean to consume your child." I mocked, hardly able to contain myself. 

                 Debra eventually forgave my wife for her oversight and the Raptor egg eventually hatched under our supervision. While we were waiting for it, we did a little reading on what to do after it hatched. We've had an egg hatch in the past but the baby Raptor died very rapidly. Almost before I even known it had hatched. Apparently the trick was to feed it in the 15-20 seconds between it hatching and its natural death. This time I was ready, I had three stacks of meat ready (you know, Just in case, it is a baby after all, Three should be good.) and managed to shove some food into its mouth before it died. It didn't die, so far, we were having success. "Cool, its staying alive, and it's going through this meat..... Its really going through this meat...... Umm, babe, I'm half way through my last stack of meat, I'm going to need more, like quick!" She ran quickly to our preserving bin and grabbed every piece of meat we had and tossed it at the raptor and me. I continued to force feed it until it was clear that it was going to eat through all of that meat as well. So, my wife jumped onto Mr. T (our Rex) to go grab some more. When she returned, She must have had over one thousand pieces of meat..... We used ever single piece getting it to juvenile status. At this point it was approaching midnight in real life, and we filled the little guy up one more time just before logging off, hoping that he will be there tomorrow for us. I think I'm right in assuming that the world doesn't persist in single player and non-dedicated servers. I guess we will find out when we log back in if the Raptor is still there.

               All told, it was a pretty successful day on the ARK. We probably won't need to go back to a cave for a while. Looks like the only thing we're short of to get a fabricator going is oil. I'm going to have to do some research on where to find some, but that may be our next big adventure. As always, I'll keep this blog updated. I look forward to sharing our stories of success and peril.