Gaming

Just realised there's a seperate page on the Ark wiki for the alphas. Let's check those stats...
Normal raptor health: 200
Alpha Raptor health.... nearly four thousand!

There's no way at all I'm killing that. I hope it just... goes away.

Extinction would be nice.

It's just like calling in an airstrike.

Still there...



As you can see, I've landed up here on the top of that tall rock that's next to my raft and that gives me quite a decent view of him clawing away at the place I previously died. I think there's still a crossbow there and some arrows but I'm not interested in them anymore.
Now I have the rifle!
I don't have the scope sadly, I have yet to encounter any crystal anywhere to craft that. The map says there are two deposits on mountains "nearby" but not as near as I'd like. I think I'd be risking my Pteranodon exploring that far from a base. But even without the 3x zoom of the scope I still think I'd be able to hit him from here, assuming I can get off this beast without falling off the rock.

But then there's the issue of its massive health. The wiki says base stats are 3600 so given that it was a level 2 it'd probably be over 4000.
I've tested out the rifle on some friendlies, didn't kill them though, just some single shots for practice.
I switched on the little damage text option in the settings to see how much pain it was inflicting and the best shot I got from distance was 196. Others were 120-150. So some Quick Maffs calculates to about 20 accurate shots at best but much more likely to be double that.

That's a lot of bullets. And once it gets shot and becomes even more aggressive then he'll come a-running. Of course I'm safe up here but that would mean he would come closer to my raft and the supply drop.

Dilemmas.

Sorry for the friendlies.
But I'm not testing out the rifle on the thing that's gonna kill me and make me lose my rifle. It was only the piggy Phiomia things.

I think the rock is fairly safe. It's quite tall and narrow, and the flat sloping bit is only at the peak. The tricky bit is getting off the Pteranodon correctly. The character does leap off in random directions sometimes and knowing my luck she'll leap right off the rock and plummet to her death.

Did you ever find some crystal in your games? If so, you probably got it from caves. I'm still avoiding those.
Oh , but I have got a preserving bin now!
And I forgot to put the sparkpowder in so at first it was just a... bin.

Making bullets is a bit of a chore.
So far I've really enjoyed working in my little metal factory.
Riding my Ankylosaur up the hill, evading the big Brontos, searching for a rock and clubbing it with a heavy tail before dragging the goodies back to the forge. It's all been good fun and even after all my gun/sword/pike making I still have a thousand ingots in my cupboard. It's a productive little place.
But bullet making is not quite as quick. The bottleneck for me seems to be the charcoal. Before now I've only ever been burning thatch, mainly because it doesn't produce waste, but I'm wishing I'd made and kept all that waste. So now I'm only using wood in the forge/campfire but 12 lots of charcoal for just two bullets is leaving me waiting impatiently on the fires. More charcoal. MORE CHARCOAL!

I've decided that I want 50 bullets because I don't trust my aim.
More charcoal!