Gaming

It is, I've tried it. But I think I'd have to start over if I were to tweak settings now. They're actually all set to "1" and then you need to increase or decrease to change spoiling times. But I wasn't sure which.... Like does 0 make it not spoil at all, or spoil in milliseconds? Also I tend to (naively?) think that the default values are set to make a balanced game play which is why I don't like mods that change such settings... In this case, I'm not so sure.

I think Banj's starting to win me over... I looked up the possibility of customising the character face and found a three year old discussion mentioning it would probably be done when the characters got an overhaul - which they obviously haven't yet... My dilo getting stuck in the water seems to have been a bug in 2016 and has theoretically been "fixed" (but in practice, obviously not so much). I think the dinos* are wonderful but this feels like a game in development, not a finished product. It's also very much reared towards hunting and warfare... I want to live in PEACE with the dinos dammit! - and I know from the wiki that there's a story to uncover and that there's lots to find underwater and in caves, but so far I haven't come across a single incentive to go into the water... I guess I can see that people who like playing war can enjoy the PvP but... I'm actually getting a bit bored. (and the painting is SO tedious... Seriously Banj whined about placing walls... he should try painting them.... if he hasn't...)

*except the brontosaurus because the noise when it stomps around nearby, the raptors who kill me all the time and the constant farting of the dodos...

Are any of the other maps a bit more peaceful?
Hmm, I doubt it.
Did you also claim the ModKit for the game?
Don't think I can use it on GFN but there could be some things in that to let you shape the game more to what you want.

I did manage to get my saddle back and skinned it to look stylish...



I was gonna just make a new one but acquiring 80 hides at night by the spawn point is not really possible so I went back on foot and got poisoned and then killed by something, possibly a Troodon? After the respawn the "friendly" Diplodocus then started nuzzling me into space! Well, not quite that high but it did launch me into the water a few times.

It was a bit scary trying to retrieve everything on foot by myself with just an axe but the second attempt was more successful and I worked out how to selectively re-equip myself quickly without over-burdening. It was that T key again! We really do like our tea, don't we?

I now need to make the journey again, without being too "loot-greedy", so I can find somewhere for a small base.
Oh and now that I'm level 15 I eagerly awaited the green supply drop. And it was.... a level 25 BLUE supply drop. :angry:

I haven't reached your level of boredom yet but perhaps that's the plus side of being slower than everyone else.
But I do still wish there was a manual save option.


EDIT: And I checked at the start and my "Spoil Timer" is set to zero. I read some people online saying that 0.8 is better but I don't know.
There was one thing from the settings that I changed mid-game (the option that shows where you are on the map) and it didn't affect the game or force me to restart.

It's weird how we seem to have different options. I'm pretty sure all my spoil thingies were set to 1. Also I can't find the option to mark myself on the map, at all. But yeah I got the mod kit and I might try to make something out of that

I'm not sure how much of the map you've explored but in the "middle south" there's a peninsula that sort of curves back towards the shore making almost a small lake. That peninsula tends to be rather peaceful. I've killed one sarco and seen no other respawn. And some dilos and compys sometimes come running out of the woods, dilos tends to explore further down the beach, compys tend to follow you if you've been close to the woods... But they're fairly easy to dispatch of. There are the occasional angry bird and those pteranodons are kind of stupid. They tend to try to land in weird places. Like my house.... on top of a trapped triceratops... and then they sound angry when they try to take off again, having got their wings entangled in rocks or walls or you...

Anyway, now you're higher level, skip the thatch base altogether. The wood base can't be damaged by angry dinos, so it's better to start with that one straight off.

Charlotte wrote: I think Banj's starting to win me over... I looked up the possibility of customising the character face and found a three year old discussion mentioning it would probably be done when the characters got an overhaul - which they obviously haven't yet... My dilo getting stuck in the water seems to have been a bug in 2016 and has theoretically been "fixed" (but in practice, obviously not so much). I think the dinos* are wonderful but this feels like a game in development, not a finished product. It's also very much reared towards hunting and warfare... I want to live in PEACE with the dinos dammit! - and I know from the wiki that there's a story to uncover and that there's lots to find underwater and in caves, but so far I haven't come across a single incentive to go into the water... I guess I can see that people who like playing war can enjoy the PvP but... I'm actually getting a bit bored. (and the painting is SO tedious... Seriously Banj whined about placing walls... he should try painting them.... if he hasn't...)

*except the brontosaurus because the noise when it stomps around nearby, the raptors who kill me all the time and the constant farting of the dodos...

I haven't painted anything because I stopped playing it (and stuff like decorating is far down my list of things to do in a game).

It seems to me that single player is very much an afterthought. The entire experience is designed around group play and PVP. Without others to interact with there is nothing to incentivise the player to do anything.

The early game in particular suffers a great deal from the way that crafting items are unlocked. Normally you would spend all that time during the night when it's dangerous to go anywhere to craft stuff and upgrade your base, but you can't because you don't have anything to craft or build. There's no motivation to go and collect materials in preparation for when you have unlocked that craftable stuff because the inventory limit is so strict that you can't carry anything, and you can't build storage until you have levelled up. Other games of this type give you a selection of craftable things unlocked at the start (including basic storage) which gives you something to do and a reason to collect stuff. There's no point killing dinosaurs because the meat will spoil in 5 minutes and you can't carry much anyway. There's no motivation to explore because everything can instantly kill you (like the indestructible Alpha Raptor that was sat on my beach eating my corpse for days - and is probably still there even though the body should have despawned a long time ago). I think the air drop things are meant to inspire you to go out and explore, but their contents (at least the half dozen or so that I opened) are not worth the effort.

well, I finally found the mark player on map thing AND it seems I had changed the spoil times already, and probably in the wrong direction. And it also seems I can change the settings and then continue my game, so I'll see if there's any difference now. Hopefully I also changed the pooping frequency to be less often...

EDIT: and while I basically agree with what you say there, Banj, levelling up is so fast early on that you quite soon can build shelter and storage and stuff... (and you level up just by standing around too, so... it's not like you have to explore and put yourself in danger to level up). Oh and you can always just spawn a new survivor and choose a new place to start, instead of going back to that raptor beach...

EDIT 2: well, seems I both upped the amount of poop and the time it stays in the world. THE WORLD WILL END IN POOP!

oops. apparently I left the game without pausing it and had a nap.... and now I'm dead

Oh this is disgusting. My body was still there and I could HARVEST IT FOR MEAT.
(or I could have waited an hour for it to disappear)

OMG
I tried to install that modkit for ARK. It's over 300 Gb! No, I don't have room for that... *grumbles* - My laptop is just over 400 Gb for heaven's sake...

Charlotte wrote: It's over 300 Gb!

300!?!

Whaaaaaat???
That's just not right. It shouldn't be allowed.


Out of all of Banj's criticisms I can certainly agree with the one about single player being an afterthought. The lack of saves, cut scenes, tutorials, all screams PvP. But afterthought single player is better than no single player, I suppose.
I still haven't experienced the other frustrations too much and there's nothing in this game that comes close to the annoyance of Geralt repeatedly putting his sword away during a fight. That really winds me up and happens pretty much every time I play Witcher 3. But I still enjoy that too overall.

As for my own explorations, I still haven't got too far beyond the Footpaw. I was planning to go all round the coast to the Red Obelisk before being spooked by that uncomfortably large collection of birds and my latest saddle shenanigans have been an attempt to go north of Weathertop towards the Redwood forest area. There's a large flat beachy place there that looks good from a distance but I am slightly concerned at the proximity of swamps. Slightly east of there is the place I had my snake worries.

I don't think I'll ever get round to building a single big base (not yet anyway) but I would like to have a series of smaller "Outposts" to make it easier to travel/respawn.

I take it you know all these names from some wiki map?

Also, I take it you haven't tried to fight one of those birdies yet. I found one stuck in a rock - only the wing tip showed - and it STILL managed to knock my axe out of my hand.

I've also decided that I'll probably hatch baby dodos for the actual reason of killing them (for meat and hides). The ease of taming new dodos make breeding rather pointless for anything else. But I've put away ARK and is now playing Banished instead, because I don't really want to kill the baby dodos. Also I need to fix those poop settings...

At least in Banished nobody died yet... (or pooped)