Taming Spree

                 Back on the multiplayer server, everything has been quiet lately. I've been busy this past week collecting metal and cementing paste for converting my boat into a proper metal yacht. I really like the way it turned out. Living the boat life has its perks for sure. I have been pretty much free of any harassment of any kind. Heck, I haven't even seen another player for a while, not even my allies. The server has had a low population while I've been on, and I think most of the big tribes are worried about resources on land to worry too much about an ocean living hermit. The way I position myself whenever I log off, someone would have to invest loads of time looking for me (or get incredibly lucky) to find me while I'm offline, and when I'm online, I'm always on the move. I wouldn't be surprised if most of the people that play on the server are totally unaware of my existence; and yet, I'm fairly far up the tech tree. I have a metal base, several tames already (two sharks, a dolphin, a stego, argent, and frog), metal tools, firearms, and I'm ready to build a fabricator (just need to find the space).

               All the while, every time I'm able  to level up, I've been putting lots of points into my oxygen (hey, if I'm going to live in the ocean, I might as well be able to live in the ocean) and weight. Usually, I find myself gathering resources while listen the 'Pirates of the Caribbean' sound track. Once I felt comfortable enough with my oxygen level, I started diving deeper into the ocean with my dolphin. He seemed to be able to move pretty fast, so I figured he'd be a good get-away if I got into some trouble. I found myself down toward the bottom of the ocean on my dives. I found silica pearls and some oil down there, and.... are those bubbles coming out of that rock? I checked it out and found a nice little under water cave. It wasn't like a traditional cave, it was very small, pretty much all contained in that rock, but a cave nonetheless. It looked pretty much untouched, and most of the other tribes on the island had no marine presents what so ever, so I immediately thought "this will be a great place to put a small outpost with my fabricator. It was pretty well bottle necked. There was only one way in and one way out, and I was doubtful that anyone could get a big nasty dino through the small opening. I felt that it would be pretty easily defended with some plant species X. The toughest part about it is that pretty much any material that I'd need would have to be brought down. There was no place to gather wood, stone, metal, thatch, or fiber. There was plenty of silica, oil, and crystal around, so at least I had that. I could turn this place into a nice little farm if I could get enough fertilizer down. It might be worth taming a couple of Phiomia and leveling up the oxygen to bring it down. Those things poo non stop, so that would have to be a future goal. Before that I'd want a fairly sturdy base, so I'd need to gather some stone and wood.

               Once I came back to the boat, I started heading for east coast. I always see ankylos over there, and they mine flint and metal pretty well. There were also plenty of those smaller heavily armored guys with the spiky tail over there. I was told by an alliance buddy that they gather stone really well. Eventually, I made it to a shore that seemed to have plenty of both of them. There was also an alpha raptor ripping though them. Whenever I have fought one of these before, I've always had Mr. T with me and my wife. I've never tried to fight one solo, and most of the dinos I had were for gathering and not fighting. That is, except for the sharks. So, I took a couple pot shots at it from my boat still out to sea a bit. He came straight for me. This is working better than I expected, but the raptor was also faster in the water than I expected. I pulled him a little further out to sea, and then jumped into the water to fight him. I had my crossbow ready, and whistled the sharks to start going after him, and they did not disappoint. They spent some time tag teaming it, and I'd get a shot it every now and then. It wasn't really putting up much of a fight in the water. Every now and then, it would get lucky and get a hit on one of my sharks as it swam past. None of my sharks took too much damage, though, and finally, the raptor dropped. It had the usual mix of Rockwell recipes and some tools, which I grabbed and headed back for the shore. Once I got there, I began my taming of an ankylo. It wasn't super high level, but then, I didn't need it to be. It'd basically sit on the boat until I needed to harvest some extra flint (and eventually metal when I can find an easy source of some from the ocean). There were also a bunch of those other guys around. I figured I could grab one of them too since I was here. I had plenty of narcotics and my boat was parked on the shore, so, I could run the stego up and down the beech for berries. I tranqed one of those guys too, which was a little trickier because there were alot of them around. Once I had one of them down, the rest of them started charging me. They were slow, so it wasn't a big problem, but it did make the taming process a little more interesting. Eventually I had done enough damage to all of them to pacify them while I finished up the tames.

                Once they both had finished, I loaded them both on the boat and took them down to an area to the south where there were many rocks to mine for everything I would need. I was stuck getting wood on my own. I've been constantly on the look out for beavers to tame, but haven't been able to find any on my recon flights over the island. Stone and flint were not a problem, now that I had these dinos. I made a few trips back and forth, making sure I had enough to keep a small outpost relatively safe from anyone that might venture into the cave. Unless they happened to bring C4 with them, I was comfortable that my stone outpost would be safe. After a while, I had a large chest filled with stone and wood and another with flint, fiber, hide, and Thatch. Time to go back and build it up.

               After a long boat ride to where the cave was, I used the sharks and the dolphin to ferry all the supplies down. It took many, many trips. None of those animals make good water mules. Eventually, I had everything down there and I started setting up some walls. The geometry of the cave was set up so that I only needed two walls to block access off to one little corner where my base would be. The natural bottle neck was another advantage to this space. It would be highly defensible. I had some extra X plant seeds laying around, and it looks like I finally found a use for them. Once I can get a steady supply of fertilizer, I'll be able to have them going at the entrance to the cave, and I'll have even less to worry about. With the walls built up. I started building a couple of foundations in the back corner of the cave. Basically just big enough to fit my crafting stations and a few chests for storage. This was basically going to be my fabricator outpost. I'd use this space to craft anything that needed that machine. I'm pretty happy with how it is so far. My biggest obstacle is going to be getting a few animals down to it for the soul purpose of fertilizer. Although, It would be impressive if I could get some other small predators down for extra protection. So, I'll need to focus my future efforts on grabbing some phiomias or other things and training them for oxygen so I can lower them into the cave. I managed to tame one and tried to run it down without any leveling for O2 and I was pretty close to the base before it ran out. So, I don't think it'd take very long to get one there. The trick is finding a place for them to hang out in the mean time. The top of the boat is getting a bit full since the two new additions.

                When I was on my way back up from my last supply run, I noticed what looked like a wild shark in the distance. I thought "more is always better." and swam in to try and tame it. As I got closer, I realized that it wasn't a shark at all. It was much bigger, and the tail had a funny shape. That didn't discourage me from trying. I had about 25 tranq arrows on me, so I gave it a go. I put the first one into him, he started turning around really slowly, so it seemed I'd be able to out run him on my dolphin. I'm not sure if I was just a terrible shot and missing, or if this guy was just really tough, because I put all 25 arrows into him and he was still going pretty strong. I went back to the boat to grab more arrows and narcotics, just in case. After going back and wrestling with it for a considerable time, it finally went still. I had knocked it out after about 60 arrows. I start the taming process by sticking some meat in the inventory. I had a whole stack of narcotics, but it didn't seem to lose torpor very quickly. I brought the sharks around to guard it, but this was the biggest thing I've seen around this part of the ocean, so we didn't run into any trouble. It didn't take as long to tame as I thought it would, but I did spend some time running back and forth between the surface and back down to drop a narcotic or two. Eventually, without much incident, it finished taming. I learned it was a dunkeo-something, and I also learned that he has a carry weight of almost a thousand pounds. "where was this guy an hour and a half ago?!" I thought to myself. I was happy to have him now, though. This would make supply trips to and from the cave outpost much easier and less time consuming. It also made me wonder what other creatures of the deep ocean were out there waiting to be tamed and become part of my marine based aquatic force. I'm slowly, in my own right, becoming a force to be reckoned with on this server, and I still find it very funny that I've made it this far without even showing up on anyone's radar. I have a few friends, but even they wouldn't know how to find me if I didn't want to be found. Once I get this outpost properly up and going, I feel that I'll be very difficult to completely wipe from this server without an admin command. I always see in the chat other tribes boasting about how many gigas they have and other large dinos and siege weapons and such, and I'm over here like "Good luck getting any of that to where I live Even if you find it."