Ark: Survival Evolved

[Myrrmi]

So... I bought Ark yesterday and sank a few hours into it (becoming dino-chow over and over again before I cought up with what it is about and which does what), never knowing how many untill my alarmclock beeper me up It's just the kind of game a Petopian would love, so I'm wondering - is anyone else here playing?

What's the game about:
- it's a survival sandbox MMO on an isle full of dinos and other prehistorical creatures
- you can tame dinos, and even mount some, although it requires some effort
- survival means you have to not starve, not get dehydrated, not get to hot or to cold, not drown, not fall of a cliff, not become dino-chow... those are the ways of passing I've discovered so far, or rather they've discovered me
- your character levels and has stats and learns crafting recipes
- cooperation is the key - from what I've read there's no enough skill points for a single character to learn all of the recipes, so specialization is encouraged, also more people working makes the grind proportionally shorter
- 3 types of servers: PvE, PvP, and mixed
- the world is persistent, and your char stays in-game when you're logged out, so, uhm, build yourself a house and a bed :/ (or tame a watchdog/bodyguard dino, I think this should work nicely as well)
- can be played single-player mode, but your private bubble-server expires when you log-out :/

Some links:
www.playark.com - official site (contains wikia with a list of dinos&co, so you can check what the hell has just chomped you up what have you just spotted and how to tame it
http://www.gameskinny.com/c5is9/getting ... ners-guide - a quick start guide I've read today at work, wish I'd searched for it sooner (wouldn't have so much fun failing, though ), the site also has guides on stat system, recipes and taming.
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/07 ... d-players/ - an article that got me into checking it out The guy spends a few days exploring Ark, especially checking what kind of people he'd meet in such a place - all seam to be friendly, helpful and cooperative. I can't say for myself yet, as I haven't managed to survive long enough to meet another human face-to-face .

This evening, after reading the guide, I'll probably get down to picking some low-pop PvE EU server with nice ping. I'd very much welcome some petopian company if any of you were interested

[TygerDarkstorm]

If you have a Steam account you can download it through Steam as well.

My late husband got this earlier this month and he was very much in love with the game. For anyone looking to try it, keep in mind it is an early access game and is therefore not completed/polished.

[cowmuflage]

I'm waiting for it to come out of early access

[Bowno]

I bought it as well and only played a little bit. I think it is super fun though, even in early access.
However my problem was is that I didnt know I rolled a toon on a PVP server until I hit lvl 10 xD And at that point I was like " :l not sure if want to restart again...."
People love to come rolling up to my newbie butt and slaughtering me. But luckily, since I just kinda act all nice over mic going "Its okay, it's just a game. Have a nice day!" before they kill me, they get bored of it pretty quickly and finally leave me alone xD

But yeah. Pretty fun. Though I could do without wild Spinosaurs dancing on top of my houses >:c

[Myrrmi]

I've got mine of Steam as well My first Steam game, btw, I'm more of a GOG person

I'm in love with Spinos, hopefully I'll be able to tame one, one day. I've seen one when I was building my house, just strolling casually nearby and knocking down trees, making me uncomfortable and having a great time because of it, I think that day I had to logout before I finished the roof, and I was wondering if he won't come to me when I'm offline and won't pick me through the hole Luckily he didn't, and that was the very first time I didn't have to respawn because of "you have been killed by..." upon next login

So I have a house now, a nice little thatch cottage on a beach, but now I need to get myself a bed, so I won't have to swim across a river between the random spawn point and the cottage - more often than not it's got piranhas and sharks in it This means I need a lot of skins, and this means I have to kill a lot of dinos before I die myself. Hopefully I'll be able to get crate recipe next level-up, so I will store them graduately and won't loose all my items on death.
Then, with the meat, I plan on trying to tame myself a Dilo, for a start they're simply adorable :3

[Ana]

Must see screenshots.. Sounds interesting. Its a mmorpg buy to play?

[Myrrmi]

Yes, it's B2P, currently still on Steam's early access:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/346110
It's 28eur, but there's a 20% discount from 30.07 to 3.08 (started just after I bought it and played more than the refundable 3h, figures )

I'll try to make some screenies this night when I play, if I figure out how to do it, never tried before) mind you, I play at the lowest possible settings, so it won't be as pretty as it could be...
There's also a trailer and screenies on Steam's site.

[Divixon]

bought ark 2 days ago, love it but mostly got it to play with my usa friends when im sitting in australia.. friend is trying to get the server up to show to everyone..

if that dosent work its forcing her to pay for a server.. it had better not be a *usa only* thing..

[Kirrandria]

I should have mentioned this sooner, but this game is on sale 40% off for the autumn sale... which ends in 12 hours X_X I'd say this is definitely the sort of game petopians would enjoy. A world full of dinosaurs and other extinct creatures, plus a few surprises, and 90% of the critters are tameable. Taming stuff can be HARD, though, and depending on the creature you want and its level when you try to tame it it could take literal hours of sitting by a creatures side, hand feeding it while making sure it stays just tranquilized enough so that it doesn't get up and run off or kill you. However, some servers (and singleplayer worlds) can also be edited to make tame times considerably faster, so there's that. And thus I set my own world to 10x the taming speed xD

I will say I love how much attention the developers seem to pay towards this game. Think Flight Rising levels of updates, where every week or two another small round of content is added. Looking at info that's out for coming future content, I see they're going to add Wooly Rhinos that can be tamed. Can't wait!

[Lupen202]

I didn't know there was an Ark thread on here but it doesn't seem too active

I've been playing, but I mostly mess around on survival of the fittest and single player at the moment.

I just downloaded the Valhalla and small dragon mods and it is AMAZING. The small dragons mod adds smaller dragons that are about the size of a trex into the game. They can spawn in the wild around mountain tops, are tamable and breed-able. Valhalla on the other hand is a custom map, and it feels ten times larger than the official map ... There are so many different biomes, gorgeous views and neat little secret places including a floating island where I built my base, accessible only by flying Dinos like my dragons. Would like to maybe join a multiplayer server with these two mods if I can find a nice one.

Sorry for the photo spam but here are some screenshots I took while flying around. No pictures of my base as it isn't finished yet, but I did get some pretty scenery shots. And it's worth mentioning that I only have medium settings... There's no way my comp can handle high or epic settings but it still looks nice.























And lastly the place I've dubbed Dragonhome. (FR users will know why.)

[Samskeyti]

Valhalla and dragons look really neat! I've been playing on a friendly pve server called Stadium Arkadium. We recently had a wipe since the save games got corrupted, and now I'm slowly building my base and dino herd back up. I'm not too advanced, never tamed a quetzal myself, but I love the argis and spinos and help looking for "rare" colourways for others, help them tame stuff... it's a nice break from WoW.

[Lupen202]

Single player is only fun for so long so I decided to join an unofficial a few weeks ago.

I play on a server called Defiant rides dragons; here's our info page. I love the people here so much; everyone is so friendly and helpful and active. The admins are always on if you have questions and such; the main admin is very good at keeping things running as best as he can and always patches the server asap whenever a new update is released for Ark.

It's a tighter-knit community but people are always on during the day, and we're growing. We have the small dragons mod installed, after playing around with it in single player it was a must lol. Anyone is welcome to join and we're always thrilled to welcome and help out newbies.

It's an 8x server so it speeds up the leveling/gathering process which I like. It isn't as grindy. I'm so glad I joined...

Not many screenshots yet but I do have one from the other night when I found a gorgeous wild dragon. Loved the black and red combo, but she's low leveled so I'm planning to breed her with a higher level male of mine.



Can;t wait till the game is optimized better so I can run it on higher settings.

[Aleu]

Ah yes. The lovely and addictive ARK. It's like Rust only better. I bought it day one although I couldn't play it until I got a better video card. It certainly is more fun with friends. I used to play with some on an old unoffical server, which was great until one of the newer admins abused their power against use any other tribes on the server. We got our own server after that, but never really seemed to do much. The drama had taken most of our motivation away. A friend and I have another private server we screw around on. We tried using Mods, but sometimes mods with early access games don't always work out well. Once you get admin powers to spawn whatever you want, it can be hard to go back to the older way. XD

I would certainly love to start over with some people again sometime. ;w; I want to get a army of wolves, compys and hyenas when they're released.

[Lupen202]

Well we'd be glad to welcome anyone that wants to join our server. We recently moved to a higher preformance server so it might not show in the server list yet but if you add the IP from that link I posted to your favorite servers via steam, it should show up.

Admins here are really good about their powers and never use them unless necessary or for fun events.

[Aleu]

I'll consider it. I'm hoping to find a server to possibly RP on. I love the idea of being a tribe of friends. See if a couple of my friends would like to play on it as well.

[Lupen202]

Bump? Been having a lot of fun on the server, would love to hear from anyone else that plays!

[Rawr]

Im an admin on a new Ark server http://steamcommunity.com/app/346110/di ... 684147206/ Its called Paddock 9, my friend owns it. Anyways it's been up for a bit but no one has come on so it really is fresh. We run The Center map and a few mods like no collision stuff, extra doors, and other things. If you're interested in playing or think we should add a mod let me know, Im Rin on the server. Also I like changing dino colors

[Rawr]

New updates announced, our server will have the these when they come out.

Redwoods, Treehouses, Titansaurs come out on the 22nd
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qv23Mqknw0Y
Primitive Plus Official Mod Launch - July 28
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHdAebezB98
ARK: Primal Survival Official Trailer!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dha-P6U6lxY

I breed a baby bear, his name is Titan, he's a beast! Here is his baby pick.

[Suzi]

Awesome pictures, Lupen202! And your baby bear is adorable, Rawr! The patch that will bring us Primal Survival looks brilliant. I'm looking forward to more details about that, but it sure looks fun being a bear and going fishing so I'm sure I'll give it a go.

I absolutely love ARK. It doesn't run very well on my computer, but it's one of the best games I've ever played. At the moment I just play single player, but that suits me atm because I can't get on very often. So far I've only played on the default map. I have a wood base that I'm upgrading to stone on the mainland on a Southern beach. I also have a small wood house on the island to the very south-east of the map. Apart from Megalodons, the island only has passive or neutral dinosaurs so it's an ideal spot for early players who want to tame or get resources in relative safety. I flew there by Pteranodon, but a raft is a good way to get there and back too. I recently made a raft, but I'd like to turn it into a bit of a mobile base at some point.

Before I got the game I'd watch YouTube videos about it. One of the things that actually made me go for it was seeing a video of someone flying on a Pteranodon. It reminded me a lot of the freedom in WoW when on a flying mount. I can't always justify the cost of a month of WoW if I won't be able to play much, so ARK makes a nice substitute. It's very different in many ways, but taming, taking care of creatures, and mainly using long range weapons, reminds me a lot of being a WoW hunter. And I absolutely love dinosaurs, so it has that going for it too!

If anyone wants to try it out the game but doesn't want to buy it, there's a PVP F2P version called ARK: Survival of the Fittest. AFAIK, in that mode several things are sped up, such as XP gain and taming. Tames are automatically able to be used as mounts in that too. I've not tried it myself as I'm not a huge PVPer, but I think it's a great way to see some of what the game has to offer, or introduce friends to it.

[Lupen202]

Definitely excited for the redwoods and Primal Survival. Can you form a pack/flock/etc. with other players online? If so that'll be a ton of fun, no clue what dino I'd choose. Argy, bear, spino maybe? Spinos always been a favorite of mine and being semi-aquatic will be great... especially on the Center with all the deep rivers.

Been pretty burnt out on Ark though lately, so while I've been keeping an eye on updates & watching a lot of SoTF streams, I've been on sort of a hiatus. Miss the players on my server but I just can't find anything to do.

Here are all my screenshots though for those that want to take a peak: http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/7656 ... pid=346110