Ark sarco

I bought ARK recently and decided to start on 'The Island'. Started in the easy zone 1 and was spawn killed 3 times by a pack of acid spiting creature. Was kinda angry so went to easy zone 2 to see if there was easier to start. Got myself 2x2 thatch fundation and got mauled by a 135 Sarco. It wasn't one time unfortunately and I don't know what to do anymore
I guess I could change the difficulty but I don't want to look like a weakling to my friends. I would really appreciate some tips on where and how to start best. Thanks in advance if some of you decide to help 🙏

So after screwing up majorly and falling though the map some how, I deleted my old aberration file and restarted. Right off the bat ark was throwing me max lvl dinos so I was on a taming spree, I was constantly thinking what would my first rock drake egg be?
After my max lvl sarco was cought by my karknos trap I wanted to get a rock drake. I caught 1 145 karknos, then a 135 poped up cought that the a 150 came by with a lvl 90 alpha........ why not...... that was fun.
So I took 1 karknos down to the red zone and came out with 2 alpha karknos claw a lvl 85 rockdrake egg, 30 nameless venom, 1/3 health left on my karknos, reaper queen venom and 16 rock drake feather things. On my first go I feel like I got stuff done but im still shaken from them reapers, (I had 4 on me at one point in time) im bringing an army for when I need the tributes. Damn sorry about this being long but I did it all in 1 hr with one crash, now I have to go to work...

I decided to prepare for my first foray in underwater exploration, on the island map. I had some decent imprinted sarcos, and decided to take a clockwise lap of the island on my best one. When I got to the very north-center, at the reefs by the border of ice and snow, I encountered a trapped leedsichthys. No attacks or anything made it move, and it had a third of the back of its body just trapped in the ground. After using about 30 tranq bolts, I did quick research, to learn it’s untamable. So I decided, I was was gonna Ark Ark for once. So I force tamed it. And now I have this thing. But what should I do with it? It is a terrible mount. Clumsy, slow, with a narrow attack range. Should I keep it to use it’s flesh to fuel a breeding program? Or let my best dino kill it for exp? I’m interested in hearing ideas.

Don't play Ark with your girlfriend.
I know probably common sense but anyone out there thinking this would be a cute idea just don't.
We both learned how the game worked at the same time but I originally took the leading role crafting our first thatch house and making us tools to survive and I actually quite enjoyed it. I kept her safe and put a roof over her head while she picked berries and eventually started gathering wood and thatch.
Good times.
Then I decided we needed to tame our first dinosaur and it had to be the Parasaur, I grew up with horses and it seems the most horse like so I put a few tranq darts into one and hurray our first ever dino! So I put the saddle on there thinking I'll call him Malcolm after our old Gypsy Vanner horse and as I turn around after getting some berries for the road she's on him... and his name is "piggaliscious".
What the fuck is a piggaliscious and why are you on MY Parasaur?!
Anyways I let it go and tame a Moschops called Bert and things are fine.. other than me watching her ride Malc-sorry-"piggaliscious" into the sunset as Bert's chunky legs can't keep up bless him.
Fast forward and we make a start on the Crystal Isles map. She's the host this time and decided to make a log cabin in the burnt forest. She turns into a bossy little bastard and makes me do the hard work while she sits at home playing with her new pride and joy (That I tamed).. a Dire bear. So I decide "screw you!" and I make my own stone two floor house with even an accessible roof for Steven Seagull (my Pelagornis) so I'm finally free... right until Stalin decides that my house is her house and now I frequently have a damn BEAR in my living room stinking up the place. She at least keeps it clean if the bear shits as she storms towards it like Dobbie on crack to put his baked goods on her plants.
The absolute final straw however... and I've not since recovered from it. We decided to go hunt some artifacts (I was actually hoping she'd get eaten on the way to be honest) and some of them are under water. So I decide to tame a frog as I've never had one before and both frog and Steve Seagull actually make a very good team, she demands I risk my life to tame her a Sarco because of course she does and we get ready to go artifact hunting the next night.
The next night I come online and I'm hit by "I played a bit before you came on and I took Steven and the frog for an adventure... they're gone, bear is here though!". My Pelagornis that actually had okay stamina after training it and my amazing frog are gone... not dead, just she left them somewhere and can't find them (I also lost Barbara the Baryonyx because of the little tyrant).
So she's going to be finished I think, how can I raise kids with someone in the future when she'd probably take them to the park and lose them? It may sound harsh but a lot of it I can stomach, getting between me and my frog though was fucking inexcusable especially when I see her and the damn bear waving at me with its shit eating grin.
Anyways... don't make my mistake.

Hello it's been almost a year since i made a post called : every creature in ARK 2 so here i am with an updated version after going thru trailers, concept art and posts.And split it into 4 parts. so here i am.
The trailers
So i will keep it simple the first trailer was shown in 2020 at the game awards and it showed us 5 new dinos : The first one we saw was the little lizard called the CAMELEON FLOWER. the next one is some kind of bird could be an archaeopteryx but probably not. Just then a T-REX comes out of the foliage. As the trailer continues they go in a cave which has some paintings on the rocks but i don't think all of the dinos will be in the game. They walk out and a dinosaur resembling a pterodactyl flies away we also spot a brontosaur in the background. There are only two more dinos in the second trailer being the DODO and RAPTOR.
Concept art
Recently the devs posted 4 photos of concept art being the STEGOSAUR ,ANKYLOSAURUS ,BRONTOSAUR and CARNOTAURUS and he was hunting a raptor or a archaeopteryx or maybe something else. Another photo was posted of a giant spider resembling a broodmother.
Other sources
For the end there wore some tweets about a triceratops and the dilo. And now a theory the monster in the first trailer was wearing a helmet made of a skull from a sabertooth now he might already be dead from the crash of the Genesis ship and they just took the skeleton.
The end
For the end i would like to share which dinos i would like to se in Ark 2 and those are :
the king of ARK the Giga and a Sarco . Let me know which ones you would like to see.
Thanks for reading -Dr.Bloker

We finally figured out that using dinos to gather materials = more materials gathered, who knew? Using our newfound knowledge of dinos, we used Crunk to gather a metric fuck-ton of berries, especially Narcoberries. We made a whole lotta narcotics, and used said narcotics to make a whole lotta tranq darts. Meat finished the houseboat while Smitty started to build a seaside bar. While they were doing that, I set off on Frontal Lobe to tame the Spino that killed me. Conk is Conk, and we never really know what he’s up to. He just does his own thing most of the time.
On the way to where the Spino was, I tamed a female Sarco named Darcy. I went up the wrong river thinking that this is where the Spino was, but instead I found a Beaver dam. The Boys decided they wanted to investigate the Beaver dam, so they loaded up on the house boat and headed towards me. When they got to the beach I was on, Smitty spotted an Otter so we tamed him and named him Gerald. This is also where they met Darcy. After The Boys investigated the Beaver dam, they joined me on my quest to tame the Spino that has been harassing us ever since we moved to our new location. They didn’t want to help me tame it though, they just wanted to watch me fail and die a horrific death, so they all stayed on the house boat like cowards while I flew up onto a cliff with Frontal Lobe so I could fire down on the Spino with my tranq darts. It took 4 darts to make the Spined sumbitch fall asleep, and I tamed that sucker and named him Murder Machine. I also tamed two raptors and named them Alpha and Beta.
While we were in the area, we went back to the cave for more metal and crystals. It was a successful spelunking trip. Near the end of our cave exploring we tamed a scorpion and named it Pointy. Not even 5 seconds later, Conk accidentally killed Pointy. After we left the cave, we loaded everyone except for Frontal Lobe and Murder Machine up the house boat and headed home (I rode FL home and had MM following me). Darcy proved how capable a fighter she was when she fell off the boat and fucked up a Megalodon. She then started fighting a jellyfish because Conk whistled her aggressive on accident. She sadly lost that battle.
We got home and I made saddles for everyone that we could make saddles for. I then decided I wanted to build a Fuck Shack so our dinos could start making babies. While I was doing that and Smitty was finishing up his bar, Conk decided to go on a solo adventure. I don’t know what he was doing or where he went but he died a bunch and Europa got killed. Meat decided he ALSO wanted to go on a solo adventure, separate from Conk’s adventure. I don’t know what HE was doing either but Phrob II somehow got put to sleep underwater and drowned.
After we lost Phrob II, I decided I was going to go out and help Meat recover his things and get some more tames. Meat and I were trying to tame another Sarco. We tamed the Sarco but she didn’t live long enough to get a name, because she was killed by a Baryonyx right after she finished taming. We decided to tame that Baryonyx, and we named him Barry. I was standing on a rock killing some Titanboas and something that was incredibly fast with a naked man on it flew out of the sky, landed in front of me, looked at me, spit some fire, and I instantly died. It was a Zombie Fire Wyvern and it is level 1077. We all freaked out and we looked it up, why tf is this thing on the Island? As far as we know they only spawn in events that ended in 2021 and they’re not even supposed to spawn on The Island. This was when we discovered that Ark was cross-platform, and other people can find and join non-dedicated sessions. We decided on the explanation that someone on PC joined our world, spawned in that Wyvern somehow, and tried to grief us but couldn’t locate our base, so opted for killing me and quitting out instead. Going forward, I will be privatizing and password protecting our sessions. But that leaves the problem of a level 1077 Zombie Fire Wyvern in our world, and we don’t know how to get rid of it.
After the whole Wyvern ordeal, Meat and Conk tamed another male Sarco named Dundee while I tamed another male Otter which we named Jerry Seinfeld. Conk also tamed his very first dino by himself! He tamed a giant frog named Phorg, he was laughing like a giddy schoolgirl while making a saddle for it, and we all erupted into laughter as this man rode his frog away. If only you guys can see what we’ve made our characters look like, you’ll understand why seeing Conk fly around on this frog is the funniest thing we’ve ever seen.
Here is our adventure so far, I hope you guys have been enjoying reading our very first journey, we’re definitely having fun with it and I am enjoying writing these stories for you. We have plans to fight the 3 bosses, and then transfer our dudes to another Ark. Which Ark should we move too after we finish our adventure on The Island?

So i play in singleplayer (with singleplayer setting OFF) on The Island and I had an idea to tame some Sarcos and breed them. After I got the baby I imprinted it and gave it a kinda descent saddle (67 armour) I already knew that you can shoot from the sarcos back, because I have 1.4K hours in ARK, BUT I never realised that the ability to shoot from the sarcos back literally means that I can tame anything underwater with enough points in health for an Example: You only need to circle around a Mosa and shoot it with a descent crossbow and there you go easy Mosa tame with a freaking sarco. You can even tame a Tuso, because a Sarco with most of the points in health can easily tank a Tuso. But this is not it after I tamed all of the best underwater tames, I realised that the sarco is literally the best tame to do all of the underwater caves on The Island. Basically you just need to put again enough points in health, then you can easily speed run the two underwater caves. Even if an Eel catch you, you survive it, because the sarco has a really descent health.
So yeah, what do you guys think?

It’s crazy that a game like ark would have Sarcos but require a mod for deinosuchus to be in the game.

I know this is probably a question that shouldn't even be asked, like it's a joke because when would this game ever be optimized, but hey.
So back then I played on my own and with unofficial/adjusted rates. Didn't really do much boss fights. I played with mods and just loved survival, base building, taming and breeding. Nothing too hardcore. Just a very casual player that had a lot of hours.
I uninstalled and dropped the game for the ridiculous hard drive space it took up. I couldn't justify ARK taking 300gbs of my 1TB SSD anymore. So I dropped it and that was that.
Is it any better now? My system can run the game fine on med-high settings (at least it did around 3 years ago). I've missed the game for awhile now and I'm thinking of trying it out again. My biggest issue is just the optimization and/or hard drive space.
Also I'm entirely out of the loop. I haven't touched the game or the community or anything related to this game in those entire 3 years. So update me if you feel like! :D
EDIT: Just checked what the disk space required is in my library... it's 200 gbs. Aw man. I really don't know how to justify this game but man I miss it at the same time. I do have a portable hard drive that fits my Steam library but I don't want the hassle of moving game files around just to play a different game :P but perhaps that's me being stubborn and lazy.
EDIT 2: horrible news. I downloaded the game and I'm hooked again. I tamed a Sarco, named it Darth Gator bc he has a hint of red, and then slaughtered two alpha megalodons. I've built a home with a wonderful view and I'm furnishing it. It's only been 2 days. The loading screen takes just under 10 minutes. I saw a giant ass turtle underwater when I was using my raft to transport all my dinos to my new home spot and was terrified. Wtf is that thing. I don't care. Me and Darth Gator are safe and have a new home. Holy shit.

I decided to tame a Basilisk last night on Abberation. I hadn't done it in years and figured having a Basilisk around would be fun. The taming went smoothly and I actually did it twice to check if they had enabled breeding yet and also shoot for a better stat roll (they've changed a lot recently in Ark, so I had hopes...) After successfully taming I took it out for a meat run and man I loved it. I'd forgotten how fun and versatile these guys were, and thanks to the crazy carry weight got enough meat to last for a WHILE.
What I'd also forgotten, and what bugs me, is how many things aggro on the Basilisk. The Karkinos and Spinos aggroing didn't surprise me, but RAPTORS!? Titanoboas, Sarcos, and Ravagers too! Basically any carnivore, no matter where it fell on the food chain, targeted the Basilisk.
I mean, this is an end map tame. My taming went smoothly because I was prepared but this is not something I would call a simple tame. Plus the base wild stats speak volumes. I compared it to the Rex, Theri, and Spino (big three that rarely get aggro). I even threw in the Kark because it's another one on Abb that rarely pulls aggro. The Basilisk is better in stats than all of those except the Rex's melee and the food stats in general. Also it's size is HUGE. I'm not sure of its length vs height of the rex, but it's longer than my spinos and drakes by far.
It just feels like this is an Alpha predator on Abb and it's treated aggro wise like a moschops and that really grinds my gears. I want to be able to move about the map on it unhindered.

Was talking with a friend of mine about starting a new Ark server. Typically on our servers we give each person a starting dino that isn't op: think like a raptor, a beezlebuffo, sarco, kangaroo. But I got the idea to give people the choice to choose one small or medium dino, OR choose two random dinos. I'll roll a D20 and choose from a list of dinos I'll have written down. Nat 20 they get to choose from the list. Nat 1 I choose. Discuss

Yeah I tried watching YouTube and reading the Wiki, but still in a pickle...
I'm playing through the story Arks in singleplayer, but trying to keep the experience "real" with settings similiar to those of official servers.
Not new to Ark in general, but I've spent most of my time just fooling around before, so there is still a world to learn.
Aberration surely has put me in my place...
Here I thought that after beating the Island and Scorched Earth bosses, I'd finally truly know my way around this game. Hah!
I mean, I've been completely reduced right back to a maggot that cannot progress the early game at all, because of constantly dying hahahah.
It's frustrating, but also kind of impressive.
However, it's getting old. Any tips on how to push through the beginning?
I'm at a complete loss of what to even try to tame... I figured ravagers at first, but there's no way without something fast enough to lead them to a trap.
Whatever that is.
I have one parasaur for the love of dodo hahah... that I keep having to replace because you know. Basilisks and crabbs and shit.
I love this challange though.
Any tips would still be great.
*Edit: I really didn't expect to get this many tips, thanks everyone! They will be put to good use. I'm falling in love with this crazy map.
Got a base at the river north east now and a pack of raptors to watch my back, so I can get better tames.
It's looking good & can't wait to try this map in multiplayer one day.
Ps. Nevermind I tamed the sarco on foot because I'm just that lazy.

TLDR: a level 25 Rex and a Barry have me pinned in my stone base that has incomplete walls guarding my level 70 Trike. She is my only Dino and I can’t afford for her to die.
I just started playing (single player) a few weeks ago, and it’s been a ride. I’ve realized that I can’t have nice things in ARK. I accidentally bailed off my Pteranodon over the writhing swamps. From my spawn point at the beach, I died multiple times trying to find him, so I finally got my trike and just trudged over there. My trike was actually pretty OP through the whole thing. Killed sarcos and boas and barrys no problem. I couldn’t find Don, so I decided to build a base right on a ridge. When you get lemons, make lemonade, right? I started a pretty cool base, my trike defends me as I get materials, and I finally find Don! But the next day he got killed by a Kapro while I was getting a drink. Level 53, gone just like that. Naturally I was pissed, but I decided to make lemonade and train a Kapro. He was a BAMF and would aggressively kill everything I shot at. Then he jumped through some Bullfrog things and got killed. Then I got another one but he died within a day because of how weak he was (the sarco death toll didn’t help). While I was looking around for another one, I got attacked by another sarco, accidentally tranqed it, and realized how easy they were to tranq. Tranqed and trained a level 18 for a day, which was awesome, and then I see some red across the swamps. It was a level 25 Rex.
It looked like it was guarding an abandoned ruin or something, so I didn’t think to much of it. Couldn’t see it very well. About 20 minutes later, some fog rolls in, my sarco kills a boa right in the swamp, and I suddenly see the giant back end of the Rex. I flip out, run up the hill from the water, and jump on my trike to take her back to my base (we can’t loose Cera!). I look back to see my Sarco had fallen off the side of the ravine, and was attempting to follow me by walking right over to the Rex. He was level 21 at that point but he didn’t last long. I go hide out in my base and hope the Rex doesn’t wander up the hill.
My base sits with the back of it to a ravine edge, where the swamp is below. On either side of the sone building I’ve put a strip of spikes. I’ve planned on building a legit wall sometime, but I’m still working on my second level of my house. To hide my trike, I parked her by the side of my house between it and the spike strips. I built a tall stone wall in front of her and behind her, where the edge of the ravine is. I’ve been running out and gathering materials while the Rex has been playing with the swamp creatures.
I did some research and found a simple Rex trap. I’m at level 70, so I’ll be able to craft a saddle soon. My plan was when the Rex eventually came up the hill I would run past it, agro it, and lead it to the trap. Whilst building the back wall, I noticed a Barry wander up the hill and decide to sit right outside my house. I decided to wait it out but then I check on the Rex from my vantage point in my house and it’s now up the other side of the hill about 60 yards away.
So I’m trapped. If I try to lead the Rex to the trap, the Barry will get me. If I attack the Barry, the Rex might see the commotion and start attacking my base, killing my Trike, my only Dino. Cera is a level 70, but I’m not sure she can take a Rex, even a level 25. If I bust her out, she’ll have to fight both the Barry and the Rex.
What do I do? Do I try to tranq the Barry and then fight the Rex (or trap it, whichever I can do in the moment? Should I just lay low and hope the Rex doesn’t walk around the side of my base and see only a spike wall between her and my trike? Should I fast travel back to my first base, get a new flyer and come back stronger, hoping my distance keeps the problem from rendering?

Hey guys, new to ark what do you think is the best first water tame? I’ve been reading that the sarco is a good one but so is the Meg. I’m currently playing on the center and having a tough time taming in the swamp as well. Any advice would really be appreciated!

Alright, this is going to be a long one, but there will be a tldr at the top for those that CBA to read it all. Hopefully some of this can help newer players if they come across it as well. Lots of lessons learned along the way. I wrote it out in long form because I'm having so much fun, and I know I used to enjoy fresh takes on OSRS after I had put in 1000+ hours. Hopefully you can laugh at my misery and enjoy the read even half as much as I enjoyed playing.
Basic lessons from a beginner:

• Tame early and tame often. Dino tames are pack mules, carnivore distractions and dps increases.
• As a side note, your tames will die.
• You, also, WILL die, a lot. My main contributions are: curiosity, over confidence and reckless exploration.
• Any time you explore new areas, set down a bed/sleeping bag to respawn at.
• Fast traveling leaves any items equipped or in your inventory behind to despawn.
• Carry starter packs in storage containers at spawn points (pick/axe/weapon/food) for when you die.
• Herbivore Island is a haven if you are tired of dying, also has starter metal.
• Tames collect resources (certain ones) better than you can and some have a weight reducing bonus for certain supplies. (see phase 6 for some details)
• Turn your gamma all the way up if you can't see anything on the screen.
• Loot drops are OP, but not worth going in unchartered territory recklessly.
• Organization, even early on, with storage containers is a huge time saver.
• Prime meat does not stack and spoils very quickly.
• Spoiled meat and charcoal are important. SAVE them for narcotics (taming) and gunpowder respectively.

I'll preface by saying I came here from OSRS so I'm not shy to a grind, and I actually decreased the harvesting amount initially because I felt like the "easy" setting gave me too many resources. I also watched a couple videos on "beginners tips and tricks", but went in mostly blind because efficiency is what killed OSRS for me. I wanted a pure gaming experience of just trial, error, repeat.
Phase 1: Starting out as a Beach Bob, terrified of everything that walks. I slapped myself a couple trees to get the starter gear and starting farming supplies. Made myself a spear and slaughtered some dodos, turns out meat satiates hunger waaaaay more than berries. Built a little thatch hut and campsite. Also, discovered loot drops which provided some huge upgrades.
Phase 2: Time to explore and maybe kill something other than a dodo. Got ganked by a dilo but managed to take it down. I have been upgrading melee damage and weight at this point and finally made it to hide armor. Low and behold a loot drop had FULL hide armor in it. Started thinking about hunting these things down, clearly they have some powerful progression locked within. I move further down the beach, closer to resources, but make sure to stay in a zone with mainly herbivores. I build a wood house and tamed a couple of dodo birds because I was lonely. It was about this time I started hunting dilos for fun and killing some parasaurs. Enter dino killing Danny phase and I'm feeling like a badass on the beach.
Phase 3: Over confident Danny saw a video on turning a raft into a mobile base and decided it was time to start hunting loot crates along the coast. It took me significantly longer than I'd like to admit to build the raft base, due to my own incompetence and using an outdated method to lower the foundations into the raft. Finally my raft is built, my dodos "dobby" and "debby" have been killed by a dilo, but I took sweet revenge. Time to adventure up the coast to a loot crate that didn't seem very far away. So I sail down the river and enter a swampy region. My intuition told me that giant friggen croc was a bad sign, but I'd slaughtered up and down my coastal home base and I was mobile.. What could go wrong? Well, I will tell you what went wrong.. I took one step off the raft into the swamp and got ganked by a snake? I think? I don't know but it knocked me out and killed me. So I spent the next hour and a half trying to run back to my mobile base, died 8 times to the Sarcos, before finally building a new raft to run down and get my mobile base, leaving the new raft behind.
Phase 4: Clearly Danny was over-confident and needed humbling. Time to regroup, re-evaluate and set a better goal. Back to being a Bob. I got tranq arrows and decided it was time to tame a bigger dino, research told me a trike was the way to go. I built a little trap for it with stone walls and a ramp, successfully tamed it, saddled it up and started leveling it. This thing SLAPS all the dinos by my homebase, now Danny is back feeling like it's time to step up and explore. Next steps, saddle a pteradon and fly around the map. The only problem is, how the hell do I get chitin? Turns out the turtles are a decent source and my trike, Zebby, is great at taking them on 1v1. I get to farming these turtles and start feeling pretty bold again. I found a nice mountain ridge across the shore and decide that's where my next base is going to be. So I'm carefully exploring and this ant eater looking thing get's attacked by a dilo. Danny is here to save the day. Turns out, if you catch the ant eater in the crossfire it turns on you, spits some weird shit at me, I panic, and die.. again. Goodbye Zebby, but I'm determined and that was just a fluke, right?
Phase 5: I am starting to learn from my deaths and I'm feeling more confident now. I also realize that having tames is a great way to carry a ton of supplies around with me. I tame 3 trikes, build an upper deck on my mobile base and head back to the mountain ridge. I feel a little invincible at this moment and clear out a nice plot for me to settle into. Build a foundation, bed and storage container to start the process. What's that over there? A loot drop within running distance, so I stop my trikes and run over. When I get back, my tames are nowhere to be found. I search around a little, confused but it's ark so I figure I left them on wander by accident. I spot a cute dino that intrigues me, it does not aggro on me from a distance so I feel safe (some of you know where this is going). As I get a bit closer I realize this thing has some gnarly claws, but it hasn't aggro'd so I want to go investigate and see what it is so I can look it up on dododex. Turns out the tickle chicken is NOT friendly. I try to run, and my 3 trikes come out of nowhere to save the day. Turns out this level 6 tickle chicken is not to be trifled with. It slaughters my three trikes and I can't out run it. Dead, again, a theme on this journey. Here I am trying to figure out how to salvage all my gear and supplies with this thing STALKING the coast line. I get crafty, shoot it with a bow, drag it to the ocean and watch it get eaten by megoladons, which took a surprisingly long time.
Phase 6: Turns out I don't know shit about this game and nowhere is safe for my Bob status account. New goal. Farm metal gear and come back into my dino slaying Danny ways. Where the hell do I find that? After some searching online I find my new haven, Herbivore Island. So I set sail to new lands, turns out in the open water whales can come out of nowhere and one almost wrecks my mobile base. So I follow the shallower waters until I get there. I finally feel safe. Now to farm metal, turns out my stone tools do NOT collect metal well, even from the metal nodes on the island. New task, tame an anky and use that! I tame one, but don't have the materials for a saddle yet, what do I do now? Well I got it to follow me, took it near the rock, told it to stop and it whacked the rock! Metal acquired, forge and smithy built, Pike and metal hatchet/pickaxe acquired. Now I'm feeling good and ready to get after the mainland again. I collect a TON of narcoberries with a trike and make some narcotics.
Phase 7: I set sail with a trike and parasaur for defense and a pack mule to collect hide and come back to create all the metal gear I need to thrive. I land on the nearest coast and start to kill some of the lower level dinos, my lvl 68 trike, Sarah is a beast! Perry is getting full and I see some bronto's killing something in the shallows nearby, perfect opportunity to farm some free loot! Except it isn't.. they were not killing anything, rather they were getting killed by a tek t-rex, and you guessed it, my dinos were next. I barely managed to escape and decided it was time to tame some carnivores to bolster my dps.
Phase 8: Find another shore away from the t rex. Start off by grabbing a turtle to tank for me and then a trio of dilos to add a little chaos to the mix. I am much more cautious aobut scanning the horizon before moving anywhere. At this point I don't even bother naming my tames, assuming they will be dino food eventually anyways. I'm trying to tame an iguanadon and have all my tames in the distance to avoid them accidentally murdering it. Side note, a dilo has fallen to friendly fire by this point, while I was harvesting hide. Turns out you can turn friendly fire off! Back to the iguanadon. I knock it out and throw some berries in. Notification that my dilo's have just been eaten by a raptor. A RAPTOR! I sprint down the coast and yeet a bola at the raptor, tame it and another comes out of the woods (turns out they run in packs) I bola this one, and a third! By the time I knock one out the other comes loose and I have to kill it. I end up with a lvl 68 and 22 raptor, surely the 68 is safe so I name it Rachel. I go on a killing SPREE down the coast with my two raptors, letting them go on aggressive and run rampant on the unsuspecting dinos. Danny is BACK! I even venture into the woods and manage to kill a tek raptor. I'm feeling GOOD at this point, like my ark story has finally reached another chapter. I have two raptors, 3 dilos again, an iguanadon and a parasaur. I let them all chill at my raft and go to grab some last minute supplies before heading back to my island home. I decide to take one last hide gathering trip up the coast, with a very vigilant outlook. I see a t rex and a spino in the distance and think to myself, I learned this lesson, RUN. I am making my escape and neither dino has spotted my pack of tames. Then out of NOWHERE a glowing red raptor sprints at me. I panic, BOOK it and make it back to my raft just in time to watch ALL of my tames get slaughtered by this monster. It hops on my raft and kills me too for good measure. At this point there is a spot on my wall in my house I am contemplating putting my fist and/or head through in frustration.
Phase 9: I am determined to get my stuff back. I make a bow and 30 arrows and swim to my raft. The raptor, which turns out is an alpha and VERY dangerous, is glitched trying to eat one of my tames. Perfect opportunity to get back at it. I shoot it with 30 arrows.... nothing happens. I get a bright idea, I'll climb the rock and stab it since it is glitched. I poke it once and it looks at me like I can't be serious. Climbs the rock and kills me. Bobby is back and feeling defeated. I have enough hide in my storage containers to go back and regroup. I grab my body while the alpha is glitched out and sail home, tail between my legs.
Phase 10 (currently here): I go back, saddle up my anky and smash some metal rocks. I make full Flak armor, a crossbow, and make about 100 narcotics. I sail back to the scene of Alpha slaughter. The raptor is still glitched, I make 75 arrows expecting this to take a while but determined to get sweet justice. Turns out my crossbow is filthy and I kill it in 15ish arrows (maybe still damaged from previous encounter?). Now I have an Iguanadon because those things are sick, and I'm staring at a spino, contemplating if I should attempt to trap it without Kibble or prime meat. Undecided, but I feel like it's all part of the adventure and might give it a go. Maybe I should learn how to make kibble first? I'm halfway between Bob and Danny but nowhere near a Cave traversing Chad I hope to be one day.
I hope if you read this far you weren't disappointed. I can't wait to see what the next adventure holds for me on this slaughterhouse of a video game.

I've had my offline solo server for a long time and have built up a decent dino army, best dinos being a sarco, a theri, and an Allo to give an idea of where I'm at. Still at my original base location in the SE on a cliff above the beaches, and have recently had an itch to try and continue into later game and see if I can eventually defeat some bosses before the new ARK 2 comes out. Only problem is I'm scared to venture out because I'm worried I won't do it the right way and lose some valuable tames and/or resources along the way with nobody else to pick up my slack or help me with battles. Anyone who's gone late-game on a solo server, what's the best strategies to use to explore and move deeper towards end-game by yourself? Also best ways to move resources? Any help is appreciated, thanks!

Question about my settings. Sorry if it’s been posted before but I didn’t have time to do a thoughtful search, anyways we’re getting interesting spawns in the “beginner” area in the south spawns on island map.
Earlier we had three troodons and a sarco which kind of made me wonder but just now we had a chalicother and stego and aggro on us. At the easy spawn on the south, right on the beach.
Has ark adjusted its spawn area since I’ve been gone or is my server problematic?
Thanks for any advice

This kid. He's 8 and he's been begging for us to buy him Ark for almost a year now. My wife and I have been playing it a lot lately with friends and he watches sometimes and he just wants it so badly. Well, he got a steam gift card for Christmas and we let him use it to buy the game and all of its dlc while they're on sale.
Today, he's been... vibrating with excitement knowing it's downloading. And I'm not exaggerating, he's literally so excited his whole body is vibrating. While it downloaded he was checking his computer every few minutes to see how much longer it would be.
"Now, kiddo, I need you to understand how difficult this game is. It's a much harder game than you're used to. Why don't I show you how to play on my computer while it's downloading on yours. Here, take this notebook and I want you to make notes about key binds and different animals as you learn about them."
I log in. and less than 30 seconds later a sarco has killed me while I'm showing him the controls. In an easy zone.
My kid "oooohhh... You mean it's that hard."
:D

Hello, ARK. This is my first time posting here, but I've gotten pretty into ARK in the last month or so. I had an odd sequence of events happen today and was just hoping somebody may be able to explain to me what happened/how the mechanics work in terms of raising baby dinos.
I logged into my server around 630 PM EST today. I've been raising two baby dinos the last day or two, an iguanodon and a sarco. When I logged in, I checked the log as usual and saw that the baby sarco had starved to death. It listed him as "adolescent sarco" (I haven't named him yet if that would change what it says), and said he starved to death. As I was going out to my pen to check and see if the body was still there, I got a notification that my iguanodon starved to death as well.
I noticed that the day/time for both events was very close to each other (same ARK day), so I decided to set my server back to roughly 445 PM EST today. This is where the confusion starts. When I checked on the two dinos, there was no longer an "adolescent" designation on either of them, just "sarco" and "iguanodon" over their heads. They both still had an imprinting stat in their inventory if that matters, yet neither seemed to be considered an adolescent anymore.
Just to be sure, I broke a piece of fence and checked the game log to ensure the date/time was before they died in the other save state, and I was indeed two days before that happened (day 777 vs 775 or something like that).
Am I missing something, or shouldn't both dinos still have the "adolescent" designation if they starved to death two ARK days later on the other save state and were listed in the log as "adolescent sarco" and "adolescent iguanodon?" Is there something I'm missing about the dino raising process?? Just very confused, especially considering the sarco had at least 2 almost full stacks of fish meat in his inventory and the iguanodon had ~130 berries in its inventory after I rolled the server back by less than 2 hours. Any insight here is appreciated. Thanks everybody.
Tl;dr - adolescent sarco and iguanodon starved to death, rolled back server ~2 real life hours and neither animal had an "adolescent" designation and both had what seemed to be enough food for 2 hours.

This is gonna be a long read intended to help improve the game with my opinions. I was originally going to post this months ago when I first started playing but my opinions are a bit richer with more experience.
Getting it out of the way early, I really like this game. It has flaws that I am going to put out, but these criticisms are not out of malice but a genuine desire that this game can improve.
I'll start out with the positives of my experiences. This is coming from the perspective of a player who played an Allo all the way to adulthood on official servers, and then massively dabbling with community servers afterwards. (Skip a few paragraphs downwards if you just want to get to my critiques.)
This game for what it offers really captures the journey of a growing animal. I came into this game thinking the growing process was only going to be a small part of the game and that my world would open up as I got to an adult. I was wrong and I'll admit it did frustrate me at first but once I realized I was stuck at a juvi for quite some time I realized I had to watch over my shoulder at EVERY turn. I became nervous about everything. And then I realized how Important SOUND was. Sound was everything, just like with real animals if you hear a threat before you see it, your chances of surviving increased incredibly. If I did encounter someone who wasn't just a murder hobo I had to get physical and audio ques to determine their threat level. The sound wheel is a great tool to send messages. I don't use global/local chat so every interaction I went into it using the game engine to defuse situations. Another praise on the sounds wheel is the interactions with creatures of the same species. Knowing what the heart sound was for allo allowed me to know the intentions of a wild allo I encounter, where as if your unfamiliar with the sounds of another species interpreting intentions is a little more tricky. In a small way it rewards with dabbling with every Dino.
My friends asked me what keeps me playing the game despite my comments about how empty the world feels, and I told them its the interactions with other players. I have a lot of good(And plenty bad) memories of me interacting with other dinos. While not perfect and no where near this game in a vacuum really gets me into the feeling of being a dinosaur. I know some people will say there are a lot of game that do that but a lot of them make dinosaurs out to be killing machine with no down time. Yes, Murder Hobos exist but a lot of the times interactions between dinosaurs are just threat assessment, posturing and calling it even without a fight because neither player wants to risk getting killed.
It's been more then a week and my Allosaurus is an Adult and now things are different. Now Juveniles hide and crouch in fear of me attacking them, and through playing for a week now I understand that fear. I'm not surprised when a baby dino offers me food so that I don't maul them because I literally did all of it when I was them! That moves to my next positive of learned empathy. This does not apply to everyone but many players tend to protect and help the younger players and I think that comes from an learned empathy through shared experience. You understand what they are going through and want to help them. I'm a largely docile person so my perspective is clearly skewed but I now enjoy partying up with smaller dinos and just helping them level.
In collusion, Person to Person gameplay is great and I think that experience is solid when done well. Another praise that I will sing till the end of days is Mod support on Console! Its a great feature that way more games should do and I will continue to say.
(Start here if you just want my criticisms)
Now lets get into the negatives. I like this game but this game has got a lot of them.
Starting up is the map(Panjura). Its a big sandbox full of nuthin. Burrow nodes are far and few between that I did consider attacking a juvi to feed. You can spend hours and the wow factor wears off in about 5 minutes. Entering a new area I tended to just go "Ok, another forest" The landscape is unique but what's within the landscape could bore someone to death. Another thing on the map itself is its lack of important landmarks. Looking at it you got, waygates, Homecaves and your current mission. I know the game is about exploration so you want me to find it yourself but its an issue when people potentially starve to death can be common. Modded maps like Cerulean Islands makes up for that by an increased corpses round the map and its scent mechanic.
I'm not going to say just add the scent mechanic from modded maps as its too simple to use. If you were going to add a kind of smell mechanic(and I think you should), it should be a tool rather then just a fix all radar. How I imagine the smell ability would be something you activate but once you do you would see small light air trails in the air(A fantastic example, Look up the Warwick rework in league of legends, how he can see scent trails.). There could be several trails that come in different colors, Red for a wounded player or corpse, Green for fruits, blue for nearby water, Orange for Adult carnivores. The scent mechanic could have cool interactions like predators or weakened animals masking their scent by rubbing in berry bushes. Rain makes the smell mechanic worse as it washes away smells. Something like this could even be a new stat that some dinos have better ability to pick up longer ranged smells then others!
Continuing on the flaws with the map itself, in unpopulated servers, the world is incredibly lonely and just flat out barren. While I don't want the world to filled with AI creatures, I must admit, having maybe just a sprinkle of AI dinosaurs would increase the rate of notable encounters. Especially Herbivores.(You know what's coming next)
Next point is the lack of viable reason to play as a herbivore. I know Trikes are really good but I've been playing for sometime and I have literally encountered 3 to 5 while my Rex encounters are.. Just a little "bit" higher... I understand why a predator can't team with a Herbivore but I can imagine letting that happen would increase the herbivore rate just a nudge. I can say from getting two friends into the game that if I could team with a Herb, the server would have two more herbs(not me, I'm an allo head till death!)
I'm unsure what incentives one could use to increase the herb rate but I do think that evening the rate of people playing predators and Herbivores will increase the games longevity.
On the opposite side of the lack of Herbs we have the abundance of the Apex's. You know, what everyone says. Spinos, Sarchos and rexes are really good. I don't think they need to be nerfed(Too much) but you need to give us smaller dudes something to keep up. Having more speed literally just gives us an escape not a tool to fight back, unless your an ankle biter.
Another suggestion is to steal from ark with mate or pack boosts. As far as I know gender is pointless and having bonuses of being to opposite gender may help team players more. You can even use it to help smaller classes by having the boost be better the smaller the dino and it wanes the bigger the species is.
I wont touch on Gondwa as I haven't absorbed too much yet to have a solid opinion but making fliers were a mistake. I like flyers, I really do but day one, my girlfriend a random baby and I literally got stalked for 2 hours straight by a group of fliers just getting harrassed. They never put us at risk of dying but I see this will be the new troll build of just annoying the shit out of people. What's worse is that it will make community members angry so just like with rexes are sarcos, baby fliers with get Killed on Sight. and what's worse, just like with Sarcos and rexes the majority of people who are getting KOSed are people who just wanted to play a Dino they liked rather then the annoying players. I don't think fliers need to be nerfed, the damage is done, no matter what ya do now the fliers are gonna harass people and the only answer was to not add them so. Hurray! Were stuck with them...
The last criticism is what I hope the devs don't do. You made Gondwa, don't abandon Panjura. Wildcard does this every time with Ark, instead of fixing problems with older maps they make new maps with quality of life changes but leave past maps still crap. Gondwa seems like a step in the right direction but please keep adjusting Pangura then leaving it in the dust!
​
That's it, its a big read I know but I do like this game and I hope the devs can continue to improve on this game.

I will preface this by saying I’m quite new to ark (only like 10hrs in).
I’m currently building my first base (SW island) but my base is constantly under attack from Sarcos and I’m too weak right now to kill them in melee. Is there any way to keep them away or easy ways to eliminate them???
Also if I do find a way to kill the current ones, how do I keep more from spawning?