Our First Incursion into the Arctic

                  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. 

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.

           

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. 

Caving Expedition (Part 2)

              When we left last time, We had just discovered a cave that we were going to find some metal and crystals in, but because of real life time constraints we had to put off exploring it until now. We were able to log in as morning broke out side our little cave. All of our Dinos still in place from the night before. it was apparently a quiet night. We were both very excited to begin our dive into the unknown. As I mentioned before. None of our Dinos would fit through the mouth of the cave, so we were on our own. It's been a while since we've been without any protection from our Dinos in this game, but we've leveled up much since then, and unlock many new and shiny things to fight monsters off with. We were ready.

                I must admit, upon our first steps into the cave, we were met with an adversary that neither of us had expected. It through us both for a loop and sent us into instant panic. It was...  a lengthy loading screen. Well, It wasn't even a loading screen per-say, the game just froze and the words loading appeared very small in the bottom corner (on my wife's screen, so I didn't immediately become aware of it until a few moments had passed).

              We eventually were able to work out that there was a sort of render barrier between the island above ground, and the caves below it. It seemed very strange to me the need to do this, because the world above ground was so vast that it wouldn't seem necessary to break the caves off into separate chunks, but if they did it that way, I'm sure there was a good reason why. Once the initial shock had subsided and we were released once again from the shackles of the loading screen, we explored deeper into the cave.

                We had explored far distance without running into anything scary. We even found some crystals along the way and were very excited about bringing them home. We don't come across crystals very often. so it's nice to finally have a decent quantity to make plans for. Inevitably, though, we had come across some resistance in the cave. My wife was aimlessly wondering around one large cavern and saw something sticking out of the ground. I looked around to her to see it too, and when I realized that it was a scorpion, I abruptly shot it with the crossbow. "Well, that wasn't too bad, this cave isn't so tough." I thought. Then suddenly the ground began to swish around, and my wife said to me "what is tha- AHHHH, shit shit shit!!!!" as I saw her character blaze past my screen and behind her I saw 3 giant spiders. Apparently she is as afraid of digital spiders as she is ones in real life. I was able to kill them at range with the cross bow, and had a good laugh just before three snakes came up the rocks at us. This was getting a bit intense, after dealing with the snakes, I seriously considered that "maybe were just not suppose to go that way." however, as any gamer knows, all the good loot is stashed were droves of bad guys come out from. So, we continue on anyway.

             Eventually after a few more bends and turns and caverns, we come across this strange, floating, glowing object in the middle of the cave. After fighting off a few more creepy crawlies, we walk up to examine it. It seemed to be a loot crate with a "Hunters Artifact" trophy inside. "We're definitely taking that home." and we were able to grab one for each of us (via logging out and logging back in).

            After all that excitement, we found ourselves getting turned around in circles and decided to start back toward the exit. On our way back, we noticed there was a large pool of water that we hadn't noticed on our first pass through, and it looked like there was plenty of crystal at the bottom and on the other side, fearing there was some terrible, unforeseen, cave dwelling water monster that we knew nothing about, we decided to pass on these resources for now. Maybe we will revisit them when I'm more brave about the whole affair. Otherwise, our journey back out of the cave was very uneventful.

            When we arrived back at the mouth of the cave with our dinos, It was time to head back. Remembering our annoying time coming through the forest on the way here, I made the executive decision that we would head to a different, closer water way and just rebuild our boat and come around the other side of the island back home. This proved to be the worst decision I think I have ever made in this game, and maybe the best as well.

             After the long, boring task of constructing the new boat and loading the dinos on it. I noticed there was a beaver swimming about near where we were. "gathering would is such a pain, and I bet these guys are great at it." I thought, and we decided together to tame it before we left. With a few tranq arrows we knocked it out and began taming it. Luckily we packed a whole stack of narcotics, because we used almost all of them keeping that things asleep. Finally, we completed the tame it after what seemed like an eternity of feeding it narcotics. Load it up on our boat and head down the river.

Of course we named him Woody. Be honest, you would have done the same.

     

                  That was the good part of the trip home. Literally, the whole rest of the trip went badly. Soon we came across the swamp lands. We've been fortunate enough to avoid the swamp for the most part up until now, and I can tell you, I would much rather spawn on the beach as a newbie right next to 3 alpha raptors than to try ever navigate the a swamp ever again. I'm making it official. The swamp is the Aids of ARK. It is hell without fire. If you ever find yourself in the swamp by some misfortune, you will literally think that God himself hates you and has a personal vendetta to make you cry. Just trying to get through it is hard enough with the thick trees and waist high water, then you add the snakes, giant crocodiles, and insects that seem to just happen to know the exact right moment to push your shit it. Dying in the swamp will drive someone insane. I had that misfortune, in the water too. The dying part is just like anywhere else in the game, only slower. Snakes will knock you unconscious with there venom, but it doesn't seem like they do a lot of damage. So, you're basically just waiting to die. Then when you re-spawn, it's IMPOSSIBLE to find your things. If you do manage to find your things after dying in the swamp, it's time for you to go play the lottery, fortune favors you. Thankfully I put most of the materials we were mining on the Trike, which survived, but all my tools and everything i was carrying... Gone, forever. We must have spent hours searching and could not find them. I finally called it quits and just moved on home. I had my first and last experience in the swamp. If wild card wants me to ever even think about venturing through there again, they better put some damn shiny loot out there some where.

                     Finally we made it out of the swamp and made our way home to turn in for the night. It was definitely an adventure, full of firsts (and lasts) for us. Lots of frustration and laughs had, it was a rush in every way. I think I'll avoid that swamp rush though. Definitely not my cup of tea.
             

Expedition to Find a Cave (Part 1)

              Okay, so we've been living at the base of this mountain for some time, and I've always been able to reasonably rely on a couple of metal rocks spawning not far from our back gate. It wasn't much, but I'd run out there every so often and get anywhere from 70-90 chunks of metal per trip, and I've just been stock piling. well, things are starting to get a little desperate. The last few times I've been out looking for these rocks, they haven't been there. I'm not totally sure how the spawn mechanics work, but I haven't built any structures closer to those rocks since I first started exploiting that spawn. Oh well, ARK giveth and ARK taketh away, isn't that what keeps us coming back for more?

              Needless to say, we are going to have to find a new source of metal. It's adventure time! The river we live near has quieted down a bunch since our rampage with the Rex, so, we decided to build a raft to set off. The Rex wouldn't fit neatly on it so we had to leave him at home. Maybe next time Mr. T. It looked as though he was waving good bye with a tear in his eye when we set off, but I have a feeling that we are far from finished with our adventures on this island, so he will get his chance. Anyway, I'm so far off topic that even the map and compass couldn't get me back. Anyway, after spending some time constructing this raft and making it big enough for the Trike, my wife's raptor, Jeff, and a saber-tooth we found a while back, we set off down the river.

            Navigating the raft was tricky, but thanks to my split-screen navigator (my wife) we cheated a little by having her peak through the window on the front while I steered the raft. Rocks are a problem and more than once we knocked our dinos out into the water. Next time I'll have to build it up a little higher i think.

            Now, I feel I should point out that, while playing ARK, I try to stay off the Wiki as much as possible. Unless I'm truly stuck or I just want to know a little more about something I've just found. I don't go on there. So, when we go searching for metal, we really are taking a shot in the dark. I had read somewhere that it can be found in caves along with crystal. I need some crystal for a fabricator anyway, so we are looking for caves. I looked up a map to give us a general idea where to find caves, but aside from that, we were completely blind. Looked like there was one not too far away from where we started the game, our first spawn point. So, that was our first stop. We made it down the river.... mostly without incident. The place we were going, however, was inland, we had to abandon our raft and set off on foot. We ended up heading through a thick forest. It was really tough getting through it. it seemed every couple of feet we were attacked by something. usually a small thing like a dilo or raptor which was easily dispatched by our entourage, then right after each attack an army of insects came in to loot the kills. It ended up being more of an annoyance than anything, but one I'd like not to repeat. When we finally arrived at our cave. We realized the time and knew we had to turn in for the night. We must have spent about 3 hours on our way through the forest. So, we put down a small house and a couple of sleeping bags and turned in for the night.

           It doesn't look like much from the outside, but I wonder what adventures lay inside. Hopefully nothing too scary as we will have to leave our dinos on the outside. We couldn't get a single one of them to fit through the opening. We will have to brave the cave together, only relying on each other for support.


           We will have to pick up with part two tomorrow, But as neither of us have been in a cave before and have not even so much as seen a video about what to expect, so it should be very interesting. I will, of course, update the blog with details of our adventure. Keep a look out for it.

Got to Start Somewhere...

           Well, I've decided to start putting my thoughts to papper.... erm, I mean, screen. Share some of the highlights of my hobbies. I have no idea where to start, so why not the middle.

           So, last month I picked up ARK: Survival Evolved on the Xbox One preview program, and have been playing with my wife in split screen. So far, our experience has been good over all. Frustrating at times, but good. The game itself is still far from complete and the developers beat the proverbial "dead horse" telling you that; But even in the unfinished state, there is still much fun to have if you are patient enough to put up with the occasional lag spike or crash. The other reason its frustrating is because it's very difficult. The game does allow you the freedom to tweek some of the settings to make it easier. but we have kept most of the default difficulty settings and only upped a few of the harvesting settings to make it a little less grindy. This seems to keep it interesting enough while still providing a challenge.

            We've spent the last few weeks struggling through the game and finally settled on a spot at the base of a mountain to set up a small little cottage.

              We've been based out of that for a while not. It's pretty close to a very dangerous river and a few metal deposits and we've been quite happy with it. Its proximity to that river has caused us some hardship though. We've died many times to the occasional carnivorous wanderer. Last night, though, that all has changed. Just recently we had tamed a T-Rex down by the river, and brought it back to our base. He's protected us close to home whenever something nasty has wondered our way, but taking him out has been a chore since he tends to get stuck on any rocks taller than a human (hoping for a slight fix for that before June). Last night changed everything. I noticed I had a level up and decided to look through my engrams. To my delight I notice that I can learn the Rex Saddle engram and think to myself "that is getting made right now." So, I run to the smithy and craft it up, slap it on our Rex and....

              This is the result. Yes, his name is Mr T, but really, is there any more appropriate name for a T-Rex... is there? So far, I must say, I'm not disappointed in the slightest. There is no feeling greater than when you've been struggling to survive for so long in this world to finally slap a saddle on a T-Rex and go on a leisurely stroll up said dangerous beach with this attitude...

             The only words I can find to describe the feeling is that when Jesus has the second coming and comes to battle Satan in the final battle. If he comes in riding a horse instead of a T-Rex, I will be very disappointed. So, anyway after wrapping up a killing spree that would make Dexter Morgan jealous, we return home, me on the back of the Rex, and my wife with her Raptor, Jeff. Both of us immensely satisfied with our work, we log off in our cottage for the night as it was getting late IRL and we both had to work. But I'm definitely excited to find what the future holds with our new fun friend on our little mountain home. we will see, and I'll continue to update the blog, so check back as often as you can bare the wall of text that will accompany the updates.

             TL:DR T-Rex is the shit. Build saddle for it ASAP. you wont be disappointed.