Cheers Satis.

I was getting confused on the kibble stuff. First time I read that page I thought it said you don't need recipes. Then I tried making some. I waiting over a minute but nothing happened and I definitely had all the ingredients in the cooking pot. Maybe I need to be more patient. I've found some other recipes, such as cailian? soup, mindwipe tonic, I think some kind of energy something... got about 5 or 6 anyway. Including multiple jerky recipes which you don't even need anyway as the preserving bin just does it on its own. That's good to know about the daodons though. I know they heal others and take a lot of food to do it, but haven't bothered taming any yet as I'm not looking at bosses yet. Definitely one to keep in mind though. I've been gathering up eggs and storing them so I have quite a few of the different sizes. Definitely need to grab an oviraptor or two though.

I'm very aware of unicorns being a thing! I saw one on day one of playing. Or maybe day two. Basically as soon as I tamed my first parasaur I ran to the hill next to where I spawned and spotted a white horse. Knowing they run away I didn't go near it. Later that day I got a pteranadon so I flew over to get a look. Niall said "is that a unicorn?" as I got closer and yes, it was! I didn't realise flying over it would spook it as well though so it ran off down towards the beach. Later in the day I got my first iguanadon and an equus saddle (hadn't realised you don't need saddles to ride them) and went looking for it. I saw it again but there was something trying to attack it. It ran off to the east, towards the swamp I chased after it and got savaged by my first sarcos and baryonyxs. Died, ran back, got murdered by titanoboas. Lost everything that day! Never seen so many predators around that area again. I've done a lot of laps of the island looking for a) that same unicorn or b) the replacement assuming it died. Never seen one. Rarely even see horses, on my map they seem almost as rare as the unicorns! I think I've seen 3 in the wild and tamed 2 of them. I've tried killing lots of things in the areas they spawn too but no luck. So I got annoyed the other day and spawned two random ones in, just for the sake of it. A level 5 male and an 83 female (after taming). I probably won't use them knowing they're spawned. I hear they're more common to find on Ragnarock; still only 1 at a time but seem to pop up more quickly after being tamed or killed.

I'll look at the ini stuff, 9000 should be plenty of time to pick stuff up I guess! Worth a try anyway, worst thing is I'll just have to set it back to 30.

I do indeed always have my water jar equipped, I've done it from the start though used to get caught out a lot before I could protect myself from the heat and still only used a skin. Now I always have my jar on me and it seems to rain often enough I rarely need to drink from it anyway, plus I often have my otter scarf on Good to know about the snow, makes sense but I hadn't realised that. I've seen that mammoths can also store a 'drink' in their trunk and shower you with it.

Building up a nice zoo there Satis. RIP to your many dead ones but that's the way of Ark I guess. Spyglass is so good, I found one in a crate and it makes life so much easier instead of hoping you can get close enough to see on a herbivore and having no chance with a carnivore. I keep meaning to make a magnifying glass, I suspect that means you can see some of the stats before knocking it out?

There's some crystal on the hill where I made my base, plus lots of metal. I suspect that's where you were before, you said you were south central too? It took me ages to realise the metal-specific rocks on the beach, and didn't ever figure out those smooth river ones were good for metal, so that's handy to know too, though I have the large metal bits on that hill now anyway. But if I just want a little it's closer for me to grab some river ones. I definitely need some more bases dotted about.

I have all the expansions so maybe we could get a different map going if we ever all jump on a server together, so it's something different (not SE I'm guessing )

So, just so you know, the ini setting of StructurePickupTimeAfterPlacement=9000.000000 does indeed work. Turns out 9,000 seconds is 2 1/2 hours. I might bump that up a few more orders of magnitude so it's essentially forever.

Lots of things have died and been tamed for me at this point. I recently added a doei to my collection. Oh man, those are so good. I need an anky, an argie, and a squirrel (thylacoleo). And a beaver for wood probably. I did manage to get some crystal, but only by flying my pteranadon to that mountain you're talking about. My first base was actually down the hill from there, so I'm quite familiar with the metal and crystal there... also familiar with all the really mean stuff that spawns in that area. Still, it's a good source of crystal.

I'm probably going to hang at my current base for a bit, then migrate over to the east coast for a more permanent location. All my creatures are really low level, so taming new ones and letting these... err... "go free" isn't the end of the world. Carno island is also a great place to harvest chitin for when cementing paste becomes really important.

My current goal is to make an industrial grill. I still need to accumulate another 80 or so metal and like 20 oil. The oil is pretty easy if I can find some tek parasaurs. The metal is just more bashing on rocks.

Ooh great Satis, thanks! I completely forgot to go edit it earlier. Luckily I wasn't planning on building stuff anyway. Mind you, things never do go as planned (and I just saw a steam pop up for you playing Ark ) I didn't end up playing on Sunday as we accidentally stayed at our friend's until 2am so I was far too exhausted to do much of anything. This continued through Monday as well.

I think I forgot to mention I bred my green horse but just got a boring brown one out. Another female with identical stats though so she can add to my breeding rotation. I'd logged out with her as a newborn so the first half hour or so today was spent watching to imprint her and flying my argy over the nearby swamp for the odd level. Once she was fully grown I resisted the temptation to breed her straight away and headed back to the main base. I had every intention of following through on my cave diving but wanted to take a thyla in with me and I only have the 3 low level ones. So I grabbed the worst female (the one I'd tamed) and left the breeding pair there. I took her (she's called Mercy) out for a levelling session. I think she tamed at 29 and I've got her into the 50s today. I did that by heading over to the redwoods and just generally wandering around. We killed plenty of snakes and a few raptors. Saw my first allosaurus but we were low on stamina and night was closing in so I headed up a tree to wait for morning. The allo had disappeared by then though. A level 4 thyla was on the floor already so we munched on that. I saw lots of vivid coloured dinos; even though the summer bash event is over my game still seems to be enjoying spawning reds, blues, greens and oranges everywhere.

I ended up over at the north east corner of the redwoods and decided to head out over the plains to the east. As we climbed out I spotted a bright red male megaloceros. I've been considering taming one for a while so I can gather thatch more easily and to tick it off the achievement list. So I idly put my spyglass over it. Level 112. Why not? It looks quite cool and it's a good level. Ran Mercy back to base, grabbed my argy and found the stag easily. Flew it back to my taming pen near base and grabbed my frog to see how it works with knocking them out. Mainly because I just had enough tranq darts to do it and didn't want to go craft more just yet. It actually worked quite well but I think I did it with too few spaces between lickings as it was getting very bloody. I stopped in the end and used one tranq dart on it to finish the job. Tamed him up and called him Tropico because of the colours.

Back on Mercy and we headed off again but this time up north of you Satis. As we hit the edge of the snow I saw some more allos, three of them. I remember reading they can be painful in a pack so being on a not-so-good tame I steered clear. As I head round the corner I see a flash of red. Well this is fate, I can't let this pass by. A 108 female megaloceros. I had no intention of taming a female but this was too much of a coincidence. So we ran back to base again, grabbed the argy, flew up there... couldn't see her at first. It was a fairly open snowy area so she should've stood out and I was convinced she'd been made into lunch. But just as I land on an explorer's note there she is. Got her back to base, tamed her up using the frog only this time, waiting between licks, and called her Deirdre because Niall is hilarious and said to.

My night finished with a "well let's breed them quickly" idea. I did and got a male with dad's body colours and mum's antler colour (which I thought was a mutation at first as the females don't have antlers but Smart Breeding shows me it's the same). He inherited the best stats from both parents too so he's level 175. I'm going to spam deer pictures now as I really love the looks of them and also the female gets ridiculously huge during pregnancy. The baby is also rather ridiculous when born. Huge antlers (poor mum!) and a huge head on a spindly neck. Niall again named him. He suggested "My Fucking Vagina" so he got called MFV, but spelt out to Emefvee.

I'll definitely be heading back up towards the allos at some point to try and tame one/a few up. I still need rexes too but the highest I've seen recently has been 68. I've also seen a metric buttload of terror birds today; something I've never seen before in-game so will probably nab one at some point. Fairly sure that's on the achievement list.

To do:
Tame a breeding pair of normal rexes
Tame a dire bear
Tame allos
Set up a mutton farm
Get a basilo
Finish making a bigger water pen

Haha, those are awesome. I love your deer or moose or whatever. You're getting some pretty great spawn levels for wild dinos.

My game is progressing. I built an industrial grill, grinding out the metal from mostly river rocks and getting oil by hunting tek parasaurs. I have a pack of 5 low level raptors now that I use for hunting and protection. I also built two canteens using organic polymer I harvested from hesperornises that spawned nearby, so that was pretty awesome. Unfortunately I think building the grill bumped up the difficultly level, as I'm now seeing alpha raptors and carnotaurs and stuff. I'm also getting more piranhas and ichthyornises are now stealing crap from me. So that sucks, but whatever.

I'm thinking it may be time for me to start migrating to a new place, something close to a good source for metals and crystal, as well as near water so I can start farming. I know where an island full of penguins is (for easy access to organic polymer), but it's near where I've been before so I'd rather not. I wish I knew where more were to the north /north-east. I guess I can always just mass-produce regular polymer eventually. So anyway, I think that's my next goal, pick up my grill and fabricator, then grab all my dinos and migrate east.

I was unable to pick up the grill or fabricator. I'm not sure if the timer automatically expires when I quit my single-player game or not. I'm going to experiment some more with game settings.

I did however move my base, or am in the process. I grabbed my 2 tickle chickens, 6 raptors, and my doedicurus and trekked east. I ended up very close to the green obelisk, where I'm starting to build a base over the water there, near a waterfall. I left my stego, two carnos, pteranadon, parasaur, and triceratops at my old base. There's enough food in the trough and in their inventory they should be good for awhile. I plan on taming another pteranadon (or hopefully an argy) and heading back to grab more stuff. We'll see.

Adding some pics of my base location and my dinos.

I know that area, it's very pretty by that waterfall. I've been tempted to have a base around there myself. I'm looking forward to seeing what you build. If you're (un)lucky you'll get rex and spino spawns to tame up/murder as you desire. There are some really beautiful areas on the map. I found a little hidden pool in the redwoods the other day, I've obviously just managed to skirt round it every time previously. I love how natural the map looks, no obvious lines where it goes from ice to grass.

Odd about not being able to pick those up. Everything else seems to pause the timer when you exit a singleplayer game. I think there is a mod you can get to make it infinite pick up (might be part of S+?) but I'm not really interested in downloading a whole mod just for one perk of it. Though I know S+ does a lot of stuff and many people use it.

I'm getting more picky on my spawn levels now. Now I've got a few tricks down for trapping and taming and am just generally more durable. That's not to say I don't run away from a lot of things though! I think you've surpassed me in levels now, I looked for the industrial cooker the other day and I think I need one more level before I can unlock it.

I'm taking a week off from Ark roughly. Mainly because last night I decided I wanted to install Sims 4 again so I figured I'd move Ark over to my main SSD as it's currently on my old, non-SSD drive. So uninstalled it, started Sims downloading, went to do Ark... I have a 500Gb SSD and is 225Gb spare, only have Windows, a very old MMO on there that takes up maybe 2Gb and RDR2 which is not being uninstalled. Of course Ark wants something like 275Gb. So I finally got around to ordering a new second drive. I got a good deal actually. A 2TB SSD (Sata connection) for £166. It was on offer and it actually only cost me £16 as I recently hit 10 years in my current job and got a £150 voucher, the kind you can split between different stores. So that should arrive within 3-5 days and I can then pop Ark and Sims on there plus any thing else I'm playing. It's about time I did it, my old 500Gb non-SSD must be at least 10 years old.

Oh congrats. I actually upgraded my desktop's m.2 SSD from 512GB for 2TB a few months ago...and my laptop from 256GB to 2TB a week to two ago. It's amazing what a bunch of extra space does. I think I'm around level 86 now.... I'm surprised you're lower level than me. I haven't turned up any settings on leveling.

Anyway, I figured out the setting needed. Open that GameUserSettings.ini file (at C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\ARK\ShooterGame\Saved\Config\WindowsNoEditor in my case) and under [ServerSettings] add this line: AlwaysAllowStructurePickup=True. I can now pick up any structure I want for as long as I want. I went back to my base with 3 raptors and a terry and picked up my grill, smithy and fabricator. My new base is still formative... I finally have a stone behemoth gate and enough surface area for my dinos and crafting stations, but I have nowhere near to a real base yet. I'll get there, sooner or later.

I used the S+ (and a bunch of other) mods when playing before. I don't like S+. It's really over-powered. Some of it is fine, like increased storage capacity on containers and some of the structures and stuff, but some stuff is just way too much. For instance, when crafting you can automatically pull materials from nearby chests. That may sound fine, but it makes some things far too easy. Also you can do stuff like power grills with electricity instead of gas, which again doesn't sound like a huge deal, but it totally changes the gameplay. Anyway, I will not be installing that, but by all means, feel free. We had some mod that shows your location on the map when you pull it up... I miss that one. Nothing like getting lost in a swamp.

I think I'm 88 and I'm sure industrial cooker said 90 to unlock. Unless I was being a moron and looking at points to unlock instead of the level next to it. Very possible!

I can't wait to have more space tbh, I've been whining for years about my xbone 'only' having 100Gb then sitting here with a self-imposed 500gb on my pc My m2 is only a 500Gb too but as it was new just over a year ago it can wait.

Yay well done for finding that setting! That's going to make life so much easier. I don't mind wasting a few stone walls here and there but behemoth gates/fabricators etc are annoying to have to keep remaking when you decide to have a move around.

I looked at S+ mainly with regards to the building stuff but the fact it puts in extras of everything put me off. It would be a much cleaner mod if it just made the changes to the regular stone wall rather than giving you an S+ stone wall as well. Odds are if you've installed it for the building side of things you're not going to want to use the standard one. And then as you say the other stuff put me off a lot; I'm all for minimising down time for some of the tasks, like not waiting 3 days for a rex to grow up, but if you take away the majority of the gathering and crafting stuff it's going to be a very hollow game. Find high level dino, tame it, level it, murder things. Game over.

You can see the location on the map to an extent, there's a setting that says something like 'show GPS on map' I think. Might be in the advanced settings. I switched that on quite a while ago. Not hugely accurate as the arrow is quite large compared to the map you're holding but gives a rough idea at least.

Anyway, regale me with many hilarious and exciting adventures until my SSD arrives! It's been dispatched so fingers crossed it won't be too long

Edit: SSD is here and installed. Now for 3 years of downloading and it's back to Ark for me

I did a dumb.

Because I have cloud saves active on Ark I assumed it was backed up. It was not, Ark doesn't use it apparently. So bye bye green horse, red deer, amazing argys

That said I'm using this as a chance to go start on one of the non-story maps when they finally install. I'm going to start on Crystal Isles (I couldn't decide so used a randomiser to do it) then jump over to the story ones when I want to actually go do the caves and bosses. I'm looking forward to it but very gutted to have lost my dinos. This time around I'll be a bit more picky with what I tame from the offset though.

Do you not still have your original SSD? In my case I bought an SSD enclosure and connected it via USB... I cloned my computer onto the m.2 SSD using the enclosure, then swapped drives out. For some magical reason the clone didn't work on my laptop, but then I still had my old drive so I could copy stuff I wanted to keep off the old one. Anyway, if you still have the old drive and haven't wiped it, consider picking up an enclosure. If nothing else it makes for a really fast USB drive (at least if you use USB-C and have USB 3.2 or whatever the magic number is now).

Here's the one I got. It's like $28 in the US. Which, after VAT and "being too British" tax is probably like $60. bloody m.2. And if you did permanently lose your stuff, I'm sorry, that really stucks. I've been through that as well. It's very discouraging.

Shiny and I took a 4 day vacation to San Antonio and due to being busy and lack of cloud saves (seriously, just figured that out as well), I didn't play Ark this weekend. I played some yesterday. I've widened my base's platform and started putting up some walls. I've also started the bare basics of getting water working... I've got an intake, a 4-way branch and a water fountain in my base so I can drink and refill my canteens without having to jump into the river. I'm not sure yet where to get chitin/keratin easily... mostly I've been roaming around riding my higher-level tickle chicken with 3-4 raptors following me and beating up anything I find that has horns... stegos, carnos, etc. If I could find a nice place with a bunch of scorpions I'd be set. I've also been murdering alpha raptors and carnos when I find them. Those get tough... even with a pack of 5 raptors and my tickle chicken, I still have some of my guys getting knocked down to about half health.

Yesterday I got a knew Pteranodon, so I can resume hunting loot drops. I forgot how murdering carnivores can grants some decent loot drops. I picked up a blue crossbow and some marginally upgraded cloth armor. Nothing great, but it's a start. I really need to find me some blueprints for upgraded gear... that should come with time.

Oh... did I say earlier I got an industrial cooker? I haven't unlocked that yet. I think I'm level 88 or 86 or something. I built the grill, which lets me cook meat. It requires gasoline, but hides are easy and I can get enough oil from tek creatures to keep myself good enough. I filled my one preserving bin with cooked meat, fish and prime meat. I may need to make a second preserving bin, but I dunno. It may make more sense to hold off and get electricity and fridges up and running. For that I'll need polymer, and for that I probably need to get me an argy. So, yea, I really need an argy and an anky. I did see a thylacaleo, but I'm a little intimidated by those. I don't want to kill it, but I sure don't want it to eat my face either. I may wait to nab one of those until I get an argy and a taming pen set up.

So, sorry, nothing super interesting. Either I'm going to hunt me down an argy, or I'm going to work on improving my base and setting up some plant defenses.

No, me being the smart person I am formatted the hdd before I took it out Mainly because it's quite rubbish (the old one isn't an SSD, just an old HDD) so I figured I *might* sell it. I doubt I'll keep it to use as I have a 4TB external for backup/pictures/music so another 500Gb won't be much. So I have a 500Gb m.2 SSD as my C drive and now my 2Tb sata SSD as my E drive. That's handy to know about the m.2 enclosures though, I might bear that in mind for future purchases. Weird to think you can fit so much on such tiny drives these days! Hope you and Shiny had a good break

Sorry I misread, didn't realise there was a grill as well as an industrial cooker so just assumed grill = industrial cooker. So no we were probably more or less level before my stupidity. Sounds like you're making good progress with the base there, starting out your garden and everything. And having fun murdering things with your raptors and battle chicken What levels are they? Best thing I found so far for chitin was trilobytes. The shore is usually covered in them except for when you need the chitin of course. I think carbonemys are good too. There are scorpions up towards/on the mountain near carno island, so not too far north of your base.

As we have established I've lost my stuff, I started out on Crystal Isles as mentioned above. It doesn't give a difficulty rating when choosing spawn points like it does on The Island so I just went for east. I spawned in a super pretty area and it's apparently a map that generally has higher level dinos so you don't have loads of level 5s running around. Sure enough I ran almost instantly into a level 90ish kangaroo. A few more steps and I had run into 3 lystro's(? the ones that you can pet and they boost exp) all spawned on top of each other. Levels 15, 20 and 85! Tamed them up straight away in case I needed distractions/bait and set out exploring. I got a tiny 1 foundation base built but there was no water anywhere. There was a swamp at the bottom of a cliff and that was it. I tried finding an easy way down the cliff... and died. Respawn, luckily had put down a sleeping bag so back at base. Ran out again to find water, this time found a ramp down to the swamp. Got water, headed back to base... alpha raptor munched on my face. Respawn without bag this time but not far from base. Started to run back, it's max heat, I died as I reached base. Getting annoyed now. Respawn again, further away from base, die of heat long before I get back. Respawn again and I'm in a different area. A cooler area. With a lovely little pool (I forgot to get a pic of this, will tomorrow). Fish in the pool, nothing trying to eat my face instantly and what's that? A horse nearby! I got a little hut set up and set out exploring. No hides, need them for a bed. There's nothing low level and easy nearby except parasaurs but I don't have hides to make bolas and hadn't got anything ranged unlocked yet. Tried to get involved in taking out a carbonemys. It all went very wrong and I died. Respawn... somewhere. Nearby but no clue where. Exploring, trying to find my way back to base, constantly eating berries to stave off dehydration... sodding raptor noms me again.

By this time I'm getting very pissed off. If I just had a bed to respawn at I wouldn't mind. I respawn and cheat. God mode and fly mode on, whizz around to find my last two corpses and find my base. Spawn in a bed. Cheats off now. I finally unlocked the bow. Took out a low level parasaur for hides. Hooray! Bolas made, time to get a parasaur. There's a 130 male roaming nearby but I couldn't knock him out and I wasted all my bolas chasing him around. Made some more and went for a lower level one. Found a level 30 tek parasaur. She'll do. I feel better now I have a dino. I had a quick scout around before I logged off. There's a pool nearby with a 100+ spino in it so avoiding that for a while. I've seen 3x more horses so far than I ever did on The Island. Including a 145 male. There's a 90 argy by my base, a 100 phiomia and a 140 bronto. Plus a few tapejaras, a few high level stegos, some trikes (didn't check the levels on those) and a couple of decent pteranadons.

I just hit level 19 as I logged out. If I can get stone buildings unlocked and tranq arrows I'll be able to grab the argy and then it's game on (not that I'll be able to ride it for ages, but I'll be able to set it on things! I need to unlock medium crop plots too so I can get some rockarrots growing for the horses around here.

The dumb continues. A kentro decided it hated me so I kited it around whilst on my tek parasaur until it (I thought) fell off a cliff. Returned to that area later and decided, on foot, to check if it had fallen or just got stuck somewhere. Couldn't see it so figured it had fallen. Then realised my tek parasaur was on follow and had therefore fallen (it was a really narrow walkway). When I got back to the base the damn kentro was there!

I didn't get much done today. Started the tiniest part of a base on a really nice flat section, had a good run around looking at what there is to tame. Saw a 130 female otter but the one bit of water that is 'nearby' (as in at least 1 minute run from her due to her apparently being up on some random plateau) had no fish in it anyway. I did tame a level 20 equus just so I had something to ride. Took nearly 40 mejoberries but I can't build a medium crop plot to grow rockarrots yet.

Nice... I never played on that map, just the island and the burning one, whatever it's called. I'm kinda looking forward to branching out, but I know I want to get some decent dinos and stuff first. Sorry to hear you had such a frustrating time... I don't really like starting out new in Ark. It can get frustrating getting murdered constantly until you finally tame some stuff that can fight back. Still, sounds like you're making it work, so kudos.

My dinos are pretty low level. My highest level raptor is around 50, with most somewhere between 13 and 45 or so. One of my tickle chickens is in the teens, while the main one I ride is in the 30s or 40s I think. So nothing spectacular. After taming that Pteranodon the other day I flew back to my base and saw a nice red one. The one I was riding was level 33 and that was 21, so I figured there was a really good chance the red one would be better. I managed to get it, got back to base, and my original one was like level 43 or something already, so pretty far superior. I just grabbed all 3 and went back to my base, after making sure my dinos in my old base had plenty of food still.

Oh... another trick. If you have issues with raw meat going bad constantly and having to take a lot of time to hunt to feed your critters, you can instead cook the meat. They'll still eat it, you can still put it in feeding troughs, but it lasts significantly longer. So less upkeep, which is always nice. Besides that I'm still building my base... i've gotten parts of my walls up around my gate. I think I'm basically safe from anything coming onto my base platform and eating me or my dinos. I just need to keep building that out. I also still need to make a trek out to a nearby mountain in search of an argy.

So, no major development, just slow progress. I'm level 87 now I believe. My guess of me being level 86 or 88 was right (I was 86). And though we may have been the same level, you had a far better selection of dinos at your disposal.

I hit level 88, but that's not really important yet. Still lacking the next tier or dinos, but I'm continuing my new base expansion. I realized today I never built a bed at my new base... after I died, of course. That was awkward. Thankfully I was able to run from my old base to my new base without dying... at night, no less. I'm actually really surprised. But hey, that's good! Go levelling.

Adding a pic of the current state of my base. Things are going well. I plan on adding a second gate opposite the first, fencing everything in, adding water and defensive plants on all 4 corners, and then eventually adding a second level somewhere for fliers and a greenhouse. It'll be easy!

It was mainly frustrating because I have no clue what to expect. On the island I'd know roughly what each area is like and get to a better one quickly but on this map all seemed fine until it was suddenly fiery hot and I was dead. Dinos killing me I'm fine with, it happens, but the bloody weather?! And so fast too Also although I know the mechanics now you don't realise how 'easy' you have it at level 87 with dinos around so suddenly being level 1 with no dinos and no clothes and very little you can make is a huge difference.

I like how it's overhanging the water, very beach house I also like your red ptera. Always good to have backup dinos for those days when it all just goes horribly wrong, even if they're not great ones. I've heard about these defensive plants and keep getting really suspicious of new, weird looking plants on crystal isles, in case they're going to suddenly snap me up! I only had better dinos because I get distracted with breeding. A downfall of mine in any game that allows it, and the main reason I wanted Ark really.

I'll bear that in mind with cooked meat. I had a ton cooked up and in my preserving bin, slowly turning to jerky, on the old map but also had a ton of raw. Tbh I ended up throwing loads away whenever I'd been hunting as I have the spoil timer increased so on a dino or in a trough it lasts a couple of hours anyway. Even prime lasts about 45 mins on a dino (15 on me). Oh, I forgot to add last night I got to the stage I can make tranq arrows and stone walls so some traps and taming should be a bit easier now.

Edit: Finally remembered to edit the .ini so I now have movable buildings too.

I had a lucky escape earlier. I was running round on my horse and remembered the trapped bronto nearby, stuck under a cliff. I went to gather poo to help with the rockarrot growing, as I unlocked the medium plots today so have 2 patches of them going. All was going well, we got there, the bronto pooped, I grabbed it... and a bloody icthyornis appeared from out of the cliff! Stupidly I punched it which made the horse attack it and of course the bronto got kicked as well. Next thing I know my corpse is flying across the screen. God knows how but the bronto must've killed the bird with that swipe and my horse got knocked back, survived with no visible hp on the interface and, as I was dead, went passive.

After that I spent most of the day running around building up my base a bit. We're back to ugly base whilst I figure out where exactly I want to stay and can harvest other materials more quickly but it works for now. I tried taking on a 135 paracer that was also trapped under a cliff. I checked dododex, doesn't damage stone. Great. Put up extra barriers made from stone to make sure it stayed trapped. I barely had enough arrows to tranq it, with 5 spare perhaps. Well it was a disaster. I brought 2 bows. The first broke after 50 arrows. Trouble is I still needed another 75 to knock it out. I tried repairing it quickly but didn't have the materials with me and as I went to a tree it was just that bit close to the paracer. Not enough for it to hit me but enough for it to stop standing there just taking the arrows and to start attacking the barriers. And it bloody broke them. So I had to leap on the horse and gallop away.

After that I found some rockarrots had grown so I headed out to a level 90 female I'd seen. Only took 2 or 3 rockarrots and she was mine! All the high level males have disappeared now though. There's a 25 one wandering around so I might have to tame him just to get some breeding going. Whilst I'd been looking for where the 90 female had gotten to though I went a little further afield than I had previously and saw an argy (because of course the one near my base has disappeared now I can craft all the bits to trap one) and some pteranadons. I built up a trap near my base and went to get the argy but it had gone over a valley. I managed to tame a level 15 pteranadon though so I have some air travel capacity now. There's a 90 female around too so I will try to track her down tomorrow.

Once I got the ptera I realised I could go get the otter. I saw her earlier today so knew she was still there. Except of course she wasn't now. Disappointed I headed back to base, preparing to go look for the higher level ptera. Randomly I decided to put my parasaur on turret mode and it started saying there were enemies in the pond next to the base. I figured they were piranhas so though I'd go in to stab them. Nope. Otters! 4 of them! 3 male, 1 female. 2 of the males were around 25ish, the female was 125ish and one male is about 150ish. I tamed one of the low males just to see how slow it would be and it was actually pretty quick, just 2 fish. They're big fish though, even if they're just ceolocanths. So I tamed the female too. But it's late and I shouldn't keep taming so I will grab the high level male tomorrow. I've put 3 points into fortitude so can lay off that for a while now I've got my otters back

I'll get pics tomorrow, too sleepy now.

Edit 2: Good day today. I had to be up early to attempt to get a doctor's appointment so I got a few hours in before work. The first thing I did was tame the high level male otter. Aberrant otters are so pretty! Once I'd got him I went to tame up the low level male horse too. I also managed to hunt down and tame a level 60 (88 after taming) pteranadon, bred it with my low level one and got a mid-level one. I took the baby out for a quick ride when he'd grown up and went over to where the original female otter had been. And she was nearby so of course I gave in and grabbed her. My thatch base up here has no roof so she was easy to drop in then feed with the huge fish in the pool next to it. I'm glad I did too as the female I had tamed was a much lower level. I think the high level male tamed out at about 214 and she was around 197, the other female was only 140 after taming. The low level female looks like a skunk though so she might be used to breed in her colours. Same with my low level male who only tamed at 28 but is very pretty.

After work I did a couple of bits of crafting. Got a forge, smithy, compost bin and preserving bin made but not much else done there. I took my pteranadon out for an explore and spotted a 145 female! She tamed out at 214 and I immediately bred her with the 88 male. I don't know what their offspring was going to be though as I went out to get some meat after I'd picked up the egg and ran into an icthyornis; first and only thing it stole was the fertilised egg. I also bred my high level female horse and got a mid level female out of it. In between egg laying, births and imprinting I went out for short exploratory flights. I spotted another level 90 female and decided to grab her. Good job I did. The original one has high stats in HP and damage. This new one has high stats in stamina, weight and speed and the same stat in damage. So with some luck and tweaking through the line I should be able to breed a couple of decent mounts.

I spotted loads more horses, including a level 100 male and a 150 female but they're off on an island that will require an argy to air lift them off it so I've left them be for now and made a mental note of where they are. I am level 50 now so only 11 away from riding my argy. I did find a level 60 female argy that I tried to tame but accidentally killed her. I spotted a higher level one on my last flight out though so might get her tomorrow. Think she was around 90.

I took a few pictures whilst out flying. This map is so pretty and I've barely uncovered any of it. I did try to fly back down to my original spawn point to grab the lystro's with my ptera but even with my low level otter round my neck it was max heat so I need to get high level, imprinted, levelled up otter to stand a chance I think.