I'm totally going to tame some of those blue-footed penguins. I went back for another run of organic polymer and they're still there. I failed to bring extra poke-balls, but next time I'll bring enough to take them with me. Oh, I was reading about them some in the ark fandom site and apparently you get a harvesting bonus if you beat them with a club. When I do finally get them, I'll be sure to make some sort of blue footed booby reference. Or at least a booby reference.

Yea, I've heard about the snail taming as well, but making the cakes is just such a pain. I haven't yet put in the sap taps or tamed any bees. The bee taming isn't too bad if you use some tricks, but it still requires some effort. Once you have the bee, though, it's pretty simple... harvest honey, get stung, rinse and repeat. Occasionally throw some more flowers in their hive, but I have tickle chickens and am right next to several swamps, so not a problem.

I have climbed trees with my Thyla, though I don't usually see much of a point. You can climb up walls and cliffs and stuff as well... that I do pretty regularly. Those things are so versatile. In a previous game I made a couple Thyla babies and instead of putting their puts in damage, I put it in speed. Those things can get REALLY fast.... even with default speed, they're faster than an argie (we had some races to verify... even over broken terrain they're faster). With lost of points in speed, they're probably faster than Pteranodons and without the stamina and weight issues.

I really want a spino now. There are several near me, though they tend to be pretty low level. Any tricks on not getting your face eaten off? Pop it with a dart, then run away? Thankfully with a Thyla you can shoot a long neck without dismounting. Your spinos look amazing, and those baby's stats are crazy. And grats on getting the Basil! When I had one earlier, other people had done all the work of finding and taming them. Now I've got to figure out how to tame water creatures myself.

Grats on level 75! I just hit 102. I didn't change the levelling settings, so it must be all the explorer notes, I guess. And the building. Speaking of, I finally built my industrial forge. I put it up on the mountain by my trap and log cabin. I built i on a platform so I could land dinos on it easily and put up walls up where wild creatures might have been able to get onto it. It does well... I spent a while with my anky filling it full of metal. I also ended up grabbing another argy for the added carrying capacity. Finally, I built a chemistry station. So much better than a table with 3 mortars and pestles on it. Next stop is the industrial cooker and I'll have my crafting fully upgraded.

Since I've now got a Thyla of a marginally decent level, I'm seriously considering cooking up some lesser antidote and hitting some of the easier caves. I want a couple dung beetles... they're like composters, but don't require thatch. The only drawback is you have to let them wander, so they'll random escape your pbase from time to time (or fall through the floor). Still, well worth it. Put a ton of points into weight, fill them full of a dozen poops, and no more worrying about fertilizer. There are also really good drops in cave chests, so that's another reason.

BTW, your walls/pens look amazing, but holy cow, that is a really deep wall (into the water). You're aware that you can build a quadruple high wall, right? . It's no cheaper from a mats perspective than normal walls, but it may be worth it just because it's faster to place rapidly. Especially when drowning is a thing. You may also want to consider . It significantly reduces your oxygen consumption. Once you get scuba tanks, what I would do is eat a chowder, then unequip the scuba tank until I was nearly out of oxygen. Then re-equip the tank, wait till my O2 was full again, then take it back off. The reason is because the scuba tanks tend to break really fast. Doing it this way makes them last massively longer.

I like your randomly places generator and fridges. I know it's just a temporary placement, but it's still funny. Wow... sorry for the novel. I must be talkative today.

I will look forward to the booby reference! And feel free to be chatty, I feel like I waffle on far too much in here sometimes.

I am holding off use a sap tap. I've found the small conifers on the edge of the redwoods by my base give sap when you destroy them, so I have maybe 200 just from wood farming with my thorny dragon. It probably isn't much when you start making stuff that needs it. I picked up a purple quetz saddle blueprint today and it needs 4000 of some of the materials! With honey there were loads of nests on the old save file so provided I could survive I just intended to go for the hit and run technique of obtaining it as it sounds like less hassle. I haven't see many on crystal isles, but then again I haven't really been looking and haven't ventured into the redwoods properly yet so it's probably just worth taming one of the bears wandering nearby so I don't get attacked. Mind you if I get a bee I also won't have an issue getting rare flowers. Still no tickle chicken for me yet (though I saw a 140 near the green obelisk that I've just remembered and do intend to tame) but rare flowers and rare mushrooms seem not so rare on this map, coming from most of the normal bushes.

There's probably more point to tree climbing if you're on a pvp server. I did use it once on the other save to escape some rexes when I was low on stamina but that's about it. I need to go hunt for a mate for my thyla. I might have to try boosting one up speed-wise. One of my horses has over 200 speed now and it's great to just zoom around on.

Get a spino! I bred mine again today, got a 214 female. I've attached a pic of my trap that I use for them but they are apparently quite easy to tame without one so I might try it sometime. They don't like to move too far from the water and don't have a big aggro range so you can dart, run a little way, dart, run a little way. They do run like buggery when they're high torpor though. Make sure you have plenty of narcotics; even on my 5x taming I needed 48 narcotics for my 145 ones to keep them down. Supposedly narcoberries are actually more effective due to taking effect over a longer time on them. Of course you need way more berries though. I forgot to mention before, they have 2 modes on land. All fours they're fast but don't hit as hard (still pretty hard though) and also turn in a bigger circle. Bipedal they do more damage and can turn on a dime but move more slowly.

I need to figure out water tames too. I've only done ichthys and the basilo which are passive tames so easy, though frustrating when they swim off. The basilo can be a nuisance as it spawns with mantas around it but if you can lure them away and dispose of them you can feed it in peace. My 'safe' water pen isn't so safe as it's so huge things still spawn in it away from the wall. Works to my benefit though right now as it has spawned a leed! Free fish meat/prime fish meat. Bonus. I seem to have mantas randomly appearing out of the ground in places too though. Crystal Isles is quite buggy in that regard. Some supply drops are always impossible to get as they sink into the ground. I tamed a breeding pair of ichthys today too and bred them once. I think the male was 140 pre-tame and the female was 95 pre-tame. Got a 192 baby female who is currently growing.

102! Nice. You have done a lot of notes plus all the building though. I imagine the bigger machines give a good chunk of exp. The forge looks huge. Sounds like you've got a good production chain set up though now with your extra haulage dinos. Good luck with the cave if you do one. I've heard the drops are good. I've also heard fishing can get some good items so as I have the sap I might give that a go. You reminded me as well that I need some dung beetles. They spawn in the desert on this map (along with the arthropluera so gotta dodge those if I want my armour to survive when flying past).

I had the engram for the 4 high wall on the old file but decided against it this time. I'd already checked it's no cheaper on mats so thought it a waste of engram points since you need the normal one to unlock it. But I might have picked up a blue print for it. It hasn't occurred to me it would mean faster placements so I might just do that. Thankfully the other two inlets are much shallower but I just couldn't face the stone grind again today. That's a great tip on the scuba stuff though, thanks. Once I hit 80 and can make some (or get lucky in a drop) I'll bear that in mind for sure. I'm almost 76 from my random shenanigans today. Another spino spawned next to my base, a red one but only level 25. He wasn't distinct enough colour-wise to be worth a tame so I murdered him to encourage another spawn. There was also a 95 baryonyx so I got that tamed up just before I quit. I'll craft him up a saddle tomorrow and try him out.

hehe glad you like the fridges. I feel they're like a fridge outside a garage for you to grab a drink whilst filling up your car. They've been joined by a random large storage chest to keep my saddles in. My tiny base is a mess as I knew I'd be rearranging it but it means my boxes are impossible to find stuff in so I wanted to at least have all the saddles together. Tomorrow I might get back on some building. The other inlets won't take as long and then I can alternate between my crafting area/house and the land wall.

Edit: quickly popped on this morning and took the bary out for a swim. Spotted a 55 basilo near the water pen so tamed him up. There was definitely no incident where the bary got full of meat from killing the mantas and as a result couldn't surface, causing me to drown. Definitely not.

Nice, you found a purple Quetz saddle! Quetzals are a bit of a pain to catch. The easiest way is with 2 people on a tapejara, but that's obviously not an option. High quality saddles get some pretty insane requirements for mats (at least for the really good ones). For instance, we got some argy saddles that required so many mats you couldn't actually fit them all in a smithy or whatever. So you had to get an argy with a really high weight so you could fill him up and use him instead. I think we had a long neck or assault rifle or something that required so many mats it needed a tek replicator. Totally worth it though. I know we were running around with 700% damage long neck rifles. Makes taming stuff pretty easy. Anyway, quetzals can be very useful. You can use them to transport around mammoths, for instance. I mounted some gun turrets on one, but that was less useful and more just fun.

I did in fact get a spino! It was only level 3, but it was more experimentation as anything. They're kinda funny! I must admin they get a bit scary when they're running at you. Those things are far faster than you would expect. I've got him hanging out in my base right now. Once get gains 20-30 levels I may take him out into the ocean to murder some megalodons and whatnot.

If you figure out any water tame tricks, let me know. I remember experimenting with the tranq spear gun but wasn't very impressed. I think it's better to use a tranq crossbow for the non-passive tames. I also remember trying to tame mantas (which are passive) and getting REALLY annoyed. I don't think I ever managed it, actually. Possibly wearing scuba flippers would make it easier. Regarding things spawning inside your water pen, I ran into that a little bit as well. It's possible plopping down a few foundations would help fix that, but I still had spawns even though I had foundations running under the vast majority of my pool. Nothing huge though, just turtles mostly.

The forge is indeed huge. I need to do another metal run with my anky and supporting dinos. I've gone through a good portion of my metals. Still, I've got all the advanced building except for the grinder. I don't know if I'll bother with that. It's great for power-levelling stuff, but I'm not sure I care about that really.

I made a bunch of medical brew and some lesser antidote in preparation for the cave. Turns out lesser antidote gets made at the chemistry station, not the cooker, but whatever. The cooker is good for the medical brew, all the foods, plus dyes and stuff. Since I'm getting to the point where I'm resource-rich, I may start dying my saddles. I know you can color dinos too, but I never really figured that out well. Prior to having a cooker, making dye is just too big a hassle, but now it's easy. I also forgot how amazing the chemistry station is, especially for making cementing paste. It's incredibly fast... well worth the requirement for power and gasoline.

Like you, I'm looking for a mate for my thyla. I don't want to go into a cave with my only one (plus it's pretty). I think instead I'll try to grab a male and do some breeding in an attempt to keep that coloring. I really dig the red and purple for some reason. I did play around a bit with breeding raptors, but my settings were off. I've now copied most of yours and we'll see how that goes. Thanks again for that!

*edit*
Well, I played some today, but didn't really do a ton. I spent quite a while hunting for a male squirrel (thylacoleo) for breeding purposes. I ended up settling for a level 12 brown one I call Dirt. Thankfully the first offspring of Dirt and Dazzle was both male and had the same coloring as his mom, so I named him Oedipus. There will be some unnatural offspring born of that pair. I also started breeding my raptors in an attempt to get more blue ones. It worked, but all the true blue ones have been male. I hope to eventually get a blue female so I can have a good breeding couple. I think I'm now up to about a dozen raptors, which is a bit excessive. I think once I've got my breeding line set up well, I'll lead a large suicide attack against an alpha raptor that's nearby. Any that survive should get good xp out of the deal.

While hunting to the squirrel daddy, I saw what I thought might be a dimetrodon mostly submerged in the swamp. I was bored enough I grabbed him and he ended up being level 23 or so, so I tamed him. I called him A/C and he's now complimenting my other air conditioners. Apparently if you keep pouring points into melee it bumps up their insulation abilities, so that's what I've been doing.

Nothing much besides that going on. I hope to pop out another pretty female squirrel, and then I'll feel confident to go into the first cave with my original. We shouldn't die, but at least if we do, it doesn't affect that line. I have not yet done another metal run, but it's not critical anyway. I still have quite a few stacks remaining for now.

Oh, one last thing. I'd figured this out last time I played and promptly forgot. It really helps when you're building your base to have a sub-floor... so a 1 block high floor below your actual base. Big enough to walk around in, but just barely, it makes running pipes and electrical cabling much simpler. It also lets you hide all that stuff away really easily. So if you haven't gotten too far in your base construction, I highly recommend considering it. At a minimum I'd suggest leaving the space to add a subfloor later.

I checked the quetz recipe and it's nearly 5000 hide and 4000 something else. Insane. Oh well, if I ever see a quetz and manage to tame it at least I know I can make it a badass saddle. That's crazy that you had some recipes you couldn't even fit in the machine! I do want to grab a quetz, just for the sake of picking up things that argys or crystal wyverns can't. Or perhaps having a taming pen on the back of it for even easier taming than the current "grab it and fly back to base hoping stamina holds out" that I do. Mind you the crystal wyvern that I normally use has 2000 stamina so if I don't sprint he can get pretty much anywhere in one flight.

Well done on the spino! I haven't had one run at me yet but just seeing them chase other stuff down is scary. I actually mean to try taming stuff on my stego. You can't be pulled off them apparently and I've boosted it up to nearly 30k hp, plus it has a decent saddle and you can put it in hardened scales mode so it takes even less damage. Plus you can shoot from them. That or try it on the thyla sometime like you said. My aim is pretty rubbish when I have to do it quickly though.

From what I've seen on underwater tames you're right, it's a good crossbow and tranq arrows. Anything that can come into shallow water, like mantas and megalodons most people seem to try luring them near to the shore so they can stand there and shoot them, not sure if they tend to flee though. The passive ones are annoying as they swim around constantly. I think the deep water ones are a case of just building the usual sort of taming traps but on the bottom of the ocean and using the hatchframes a bit more. Since I haven't ventured out there yet I haven't really looked into it too deeply yet.

Your baby thyla is such a cutie! We'll gloss over the incest. Mine have indulged in plenty of that too. I went searching for a mate in the desert again but there was just another male. I might go into the redwoods tomorrow for a look around. I did spot a female green sabertooth, 140, so tamed her up to go into my battlecat breeding plan. She's also the highest level one I've tamed on this map so that's a bonus. Not bred them yet though, I'll save them for when I'm looking for something to distract me from building.

Speaking of building, that's a good tip about the subfloor, thanks. I haven't actually started on my proper base yet. I keep getting distracted by stuff for the dinos. I looked at some water pen videos today so I got inspired and built a little shack by my water pen. I'll probably add on to it and change my water pen somewhat as well but not yet. For now the shack was enough. I plopped a bed down in it just in case and will put some storage relating to the water dinos in there, such as their saddles and maybe a fridge with lots of fish. And general taming stuff too. I do plan to have multiple bases around the map with the basics like that and then have my more central one where the machines all are (although I'll have forges by metal like you have too). To help with my build today I built my first vault too, those things store so much! The water pen videos helped with some general building tips too so I should be able to go add the extra floors onto my wyvern home now. I was at a bit of a loss how to effectively do it before.

At the end of it all I hit level 76. I also bred the basilos and got a higher level male than the one I tamed out of it, not quite as high level as his mum so... yeah. There's going to be yet more "family relations". He started producing oil as soon as he was born so that's useful to know. I did manage to 100% imprint him too, although it took quite a while as he only imprinted 14% at a time. I think the spinos imprint at 17% a time. The mum is called Olive (because Olive Oil), the dad is Popeye and the son is Bluto.

I'm tempted to get a grinder just to get some mats back from all the random drops I've picked up that aren't much use. Like the wind turbines and a ton of oil pumps that can't be used on crystal isles.

Oh wow, your house looks really good. I really need to put a little more effort into making my stuff look decent. Maybe when I add the flyer area to my base I'll actually try a little harder to make it look decent. I'm amazed you have a stego with 30k health. I never really played with them... for land animals it was pretty much Thylas, Rexes and Tickle Chickens for the normal combat/exploration mounts. Maybe I'll tame one and see how it feels.

I may take a bit of a break on Ark... I put quite a few hours into it getting to where I am and I don't want to totally burn out again. I'm also starting to consider hopping to Crystal Isles to set up a base and pick up some higher level tames. I'm getting a bit tired of getting nothing higher than level 30 to spawn. Having some significantly higher level creatures will definitely kick me along toward doing caves and eventually bosses, if for nothing more than to get the tek recipes.

The house was surprisingly easy to do, but only after I'd watched a video. The building system in Ark is both good and bad. I like the different snap points but it does mean sometimes it's a bugger to get things where you want them unless you know the sneaky tricks. I just googled 'ark water pen build' and I think it was someone called Aaron Longstaff that came up; looks like he does a lot of Ark builds in an easy to follow format. I might have a nosy at some more of his builds just for ideas and see if there are more tricks. I know how to avoid nipples in floor now thanks to that vid!

My dinos might be a bit different to some. When I was fiddling with settings I'm sure I noticed all wild dinos get "1" upon level up in all stats but tamed and bred ones got something like "0.2" in health and possibly one other stat. Not knowing what sort of weighting is put on the stats I just thought sod it, what's the point of an imprint bonus if they're gaining less each level up and put it so that all tamed and bred dinos also gain "1". Which might make things a little more overpowered. I've put most of the stegos points into HP though, with a handful in stam/weight/speed. I was originally building it to be a wood gatherer but he's just so damn slow. It was a level 150 and perfectly tamed to 224 which helps too.

Can't blame you considering a break. The joy of playing singleplayer is that you can do that and not lose anything at least, unlike on servers. I'm still really enjoying it but think I need to calm it down before I get burnt out too. Keep it as more of a couple of times a week game, and have something more story driven going on too. I still have my Oblivion and Skyrim playthroughs to finish as well. I definitely recommend popping over to crystal isles though, after the initial frustration of many deaths I'm really enjoying it and it will certainly help out with dino levels.

I was too lazy to post yesterday but hadn't done a huge amount on Tues. I did go egg thieving. I finally spotted some at the wyvern hive. Killed a few of the heirs that were flying around. If you're the same type of crystal wyvern as the one attacking you, their breath doesn't hurt. They mostly attack with their breath so whenever tropicals were attacking we were basically invincible so I'd just land and bite them whenever they swooped to breathe. The bloods and embers hurt a lot more but being higher level and imprinted, my wyvern could take one at a time easily enough. Same tactic, just land and bite as the turning circles are rubbish and the breath takes up a chunk of stamina. I found and stole 4 blood eggs; not what I wanted but while they were there I thought why not? They're sitting in a fridge now. I did manage to spot 1 ember egg though so I grabbed that and hatched it out, praying for a female. No more embers have spawned yet (that I can find anyway) so I still just have my 3 males. Lo and behold, out pops a female! Only level 30 but at least I can breed them now. So most of yesterday was spent growing her. On the way back from the egg run I did also spot a 140 female thyla in the desert, a lovely orange one. She's pretty, though not as showy as yours. Grabbed her up and got her tamed, then bred her. Got a lower level female out of it so she's fully imprinted now and can be my main run around thyla until I breed more.

Yesterday I finished growing the female ember wyvern and whilst waiting between imprints I spotted a female baryonyx near the base. Level 100 and she's really pretty so she's now tamed and waiting to be bred with one of the males. Other than that I went off and worked on my wyvern home. Or wyvern multistorey carpark should I say! There's a level and a half of tropicals, half a level of bloods and half a level of embers, with room for 4 more still. I might close the ends off with walls but leave the front and back open for easy flying in and out. They're mainly staying there for storage until I breed them anyway, then I'll have the best of each type with me to actually use.

That is a pretty Baryonyx. I never really messed with those either... we were breeding some up for use on boss fights, then ended up using rexes, and eventually switched from that to tickle chickens. Are they any good for running around on, or is the Thyla still better? Your carpark is hilarious. In case you care, cryofridges make storing large numbers of dinos really easy. Plop down a fridge, connect to power, and fill it full of dinos. One fridge can hold 72 cryopods. I think Shiny had 3 fridges to hold all of her children. I can't say much, I think I eventually had 3 also. Still, if you prefer to have them displayed, I can't fault that.

On scorched earth what we eventually did was build a small house out of metal, put a generator in it, then put 4 heavy autocannons on it. We'd aggro the wyverns, drag them to the guns, and the guns would wreck them pretty quickly. That requires a pretty high level and lots of resources, but it was very effective.

Keep posting, I'm curious as to your progress and your tames. I'll probably dabble here and there... I'll post updates when I do anything meaningful. I'm actually wrapping up Assassin's Creed Odyssey... I've put like 176 hours into that game and nearly completed all the quests (including side quests).

Baryonyx is great in water but not so great out of water. It's a mid-range dino probably, not the strongest or the fastest, not the weakest or the slowest. But it's great in water as it gains a tail spin attack that stuns mobs. If you time them for when it runs out (it doesn't stack) you can stun lock things. Not really huge things but mantas and megalodons certainly. They make taming basilos easy as you can stun the huge school of mantas that usually accompany them, kill them off then feed the basilo in peace.

I plan to have a cryofridge to store my 'just for breeding' dinos but I'm a way off being able to build one yet. 77 now and I think it's 88 for those. I'll keep the horses out though. They're arranged right now in their field to try and look natural. I did put them on wandering but they just bunch up in one corner and get stuck on each other.

That sounds like a good way to deal with wyverns! Also big lol at your AC pic. I haven't gotten round to Odyssey yet but it's on my list. Niall spent just short of 200 hours playing through it and all the DLC (and seducing everything that moved in game, though possibly not that statue).

I've done a bit of everything today. First of all was jumping on this morning before work with the intention of just doing a quick meat run to stock up the wyverns. I spotted the 140 female spino that has been floating around since the first few days and scoped her out. She's actually an aberrant spino. This may have led me to flying back to my main base, packing up my spino pen and setting it back up near her. She was such a pain in the arse to get into the pen, but somehow I managed it and 30 minutes later she is mine! I need an aberrant male to be able to breed her though. Supposedly they have less health than the normal ones but do more damage.

This evening I logged in still at my flying island base and grabbed up the spino, my thorny dragon and a few other random dinos to take back to my base (I made some more cryopods so think I have 7 now to move stuff around as needed). I ended up back at the flying island base though for some reason and decided to have a quick look around to see if a male aberrant spino was around. Nothing yet but I spotted a random horse that seemed to show up more against the darkness. Yep. It was a level 77 unicorn. I managed to save him from something, I think a dilo as I couldn't really see what was chasing it and managed to get him tamed up easily. That made up for my 150 male horse that I'd found earlier, taken back to the base to tame and hadn't realised the few remaining dinos were on aggressive so he instantly got chewed into pieces

Back over to the main base and I decided to go make some changes to the water pen now I had the extra spino. Picture included below. After that I bred my two pairs of spinos and the baryonyx's. The spinos I will wait to hatch so they're stored in a fridge now. Once that was done I went on a general run about on the 'baby' thyla, called Priscilla (her parents are Queen and Desert). Killed lots of terror birds, saw a 145 female spino that I may well go to tame and a 150 dire wolf that will also be tamed if I can find it again. I also wandered behind a small waterfall and found another artifact! That's 5 I've found now. Then I wandered behind another waterfall which opened up into some huge cave. I haven't explored it yet and should've taken a picture but was too busy trying to murder the 295 polar bear. Luckily it for some reason didn't attack but kept running round in a circle and getting stuck on rocks so it went down quite easily. A 190 purlovia was no match for us either (Priscilla is 171 now).

After that excitement it was back home where I've hatched a male baryonyx who has inherited the mother's lovely colouring and I'm also waiting on 5 horses to foal (because why not?). One pairing is for the stats, the other 4 are just to see what colours can pop out. I didn't breed all my females as that could get a bit hectic, I think there were at least 4 more I could've bred.

Oh wow, I'm so jealous you have a unicorn! Ultimately I would really love to get a male and female and breed them (assuming that's possible). Having a herd of unicorns would be awesome, especially if you could get some crazy color mutations. I haven't even seen a unicorn on my map yet, so I'm not holding my breath. Thanks for the info on the Baryonyx and using it to help tame basils. Getting a basil is pretty high on my to-do list, since they're so awesome. I did a bit of reading on taming some of the other really big water creatures and it's a bit intimidating. I forget the name, but the huge squid thing basically requires you to hand it a dino to suction in its arms and then sorta-kinda passive feed it black pearls until it's tamed. That's kinda crazy and kinda scary.
Your base is cute btw. The spino collection is a bit insane... but then again, all your dino collections are a bit insane, so it's all good.

Regarding the cave you found... that has to be a dungeon type cave. You don't see levels much higher than 150-170 out in the world, and on the island at least, there are no polar bears except in the ice cave. The fact you found a 295 polar bear really makes me thing that's a dungeon cave. So... be careful, but you could probably find some pretty nice loot in there. The ice cave with polar bears in the island is super cold, though, and the water is deadly. It basically requires really high insulation and the hypothermic food once you're deeper into the cave. Also tons of purlovias, which are very annoying since they knock you off your mount, stun you, and really damage your armor. We ended up bringing multiple sets of armor and setting up a smithy for repairs just outside.

So... you keep finding these artifacts, but there aren't any bosses on crystal isles, right? Are the artifacts just for decoration? I mean, that's cool... you can make some nice chandeliers and stuff with them. Just seems a bit odd.

I haven't played recently, so nothing new to report. Keep at it! Oh, you'd mentioned grinders in an earlier post. If gaining levels is important, something you can do is set up a grinder (or two or three), gather a ton of wood (mammoths are great for that) and then just feed the wood into the grinders. It gets turned into thatch, which you can just throw away, but it generates a significant amount of XP. We used that trick to power-level some of our dinos prior to doing boss fights.

You can indeed breed unicorns but apparently they don't get mutations without mods. Not colour ones anyway. I want a big squid thing! I did read about them too, you can find them beached on crystal isles sometimes so I might tame up a carbonemys just to feed it to one if I find one. I like the fact they can just grab anything more or less.

Bary's... welll they are definitely scary wild dinos. I had 'fun' with one yesterday. Crystal isles has some smaller drops as well as the big sky beam drops that are dotted about the place and also have colours but are higher levelled than the sky beam ones. I spotted a red one yesterday and decided to go for it. I was riding my thyla. The drop was just off the coast, still in shallow-ish water but deep enough the thyla was paddling. I didn't look around, just went for the drop. Big mistake. Bary comes out of nowhere, tail whips me and both dismounts and stuns me. I managed to get a whistle on it and died to the sight of my thyla killing it. Spawned at my water pen, grabbed my sarco I'd just tamed earlier (150, tamed out at 224) and sped over to them. Thyla is still fighting it but getting stunned, otter thankfully was still alive. Lunge in with sarco.... same thing happened again. Dammit! Spawn at the main base, jump on crystal wyvern, fly over it and use water breath on the bastard til he died. After all that... I needed to be level 80 to open the drop and I'm still only 78.

My collections will always get insane haha. You don't want to see how many horses I have. I need to have a cull of the males.

That's good to know about the cave. I was a bit confused about how the bear was such high level. I didn't venture in but might go back once thyla is more levelled up and see what's in there. I guess I got lucky with the purlovia I fought too, it didn't knock me off. I saw it leap out of the ground but it didn't land on me.

There is one boss on crystal isles. Crystal wyvern queen. I need 5 artifacts plus a bunch of crystal talons, alpha crystal talons and something else that I forgot. I think I must have the artifacts now, fairly sure I have 5 different ones.

That's interesting to know about the grinders, I could do that to get up to scuba and cryo fridge levels. I can get a level a day if I have a good building session but it is slow going. Explorer notes followed by alpha killing would greatly help.

I'll end the post on a moment of stupidity. I shall write it in the form that my train of thoughts took.

6 foals to imprint, guess I'll stick around base for a while. Maybe I should stockpile fertiliser. Let's grab some poop. Ok, bins need filling, transfer that fertiliser to my inventory, put more poop in... why hasn't the poop gone into the bin? Uh oh... E and T are close... why is my health at half? Oh shit that's going down fast! Quick, eat meat, heal! Heal dammit! And I'm dead.

As Niall joyfully said after, "Eat shit and die!"

Oh man, I have never died via the accidental eating of poop. That's pretty awesome. We have a friend who accidentally ate broken glass in a different game. Similar effect, as you may imagine. Though he managed to do it on multiple occasions.

Oh man, bad luck with that red drop and the bary. I've gotten myself killed similarly with the jellyfish... got over-confident, went after them in a Thyla, then stun-locked and killed. Never had it happen with a Bary, but that's probably more due to luck than anything. The fact you died twice and then couldn't even open the drop really sucks. At least you didn't lose any dinos or your gear. That's certainly happened to me as well.

Ah, Crystal Wyvern Queen boss, eh? That sounds scary. The easiest boss on the Island, in my opinion, is the monkey boss, though you have to know what you're doing. There's a trick that will keep your dinos from getting knocked off the cliff edge, at which point he becomes pretty simple. I would suggest you start with that one before trying to tackle the crystal wyvern, just so you can get a taste for boss fights. But hey, do what you want. I suspect you'll probably be waiting a bit before taking that particular leap.

Pevil, always pushing the boundaries of stupid Although your friend eating glass multiple times... hmm. That said, I'm sure I've eaten poop before, just not 3 in 1 go!

Crystal wyvern boss does sound scary! I've had a quick look and people say basically just take a load of crystal wyverns or troponagawhateveritissaurus (another flying one basically). So I'll be breeding up my crystals before attempting her anyway.

I've mainly been doing building again today but I did finally grab a dung beetle. Was gonna be 2 but my otter was still on aggressive and bit it when I got close to feed it, causing my newly tamed beetle and my wyvern to go on the attack. Oh well.

Cool, the poop beetles are pretty awesome. My suggestion is to put all their levels into weight, so you can shove more poop into them. Just remember they need to be on wander, so keep an eye out for them getting away. Multiple layers of cages can help, if you feel like working that much.

I did end up playing today. More incremental accomplishments, nothing major. I've bred my thyla a few times... I now have the original mama that's pretty and 3 males. One was an "oops" because I forgot to shut off mating, so no imprinting on that guy. Not sure if I mentioned it, but I also now have a pair of blue breeding raptors. I have an absolutely ridiculous number of raptors now from trying to get a female blue one. There are some alphas about... I may just take a herd of raptors out at some point to clean that problem up. I also went to penguin island and got myself two bluefoots. The report that harvesting them with a club is true... kill them with a quick spear jab or something, then beat them with a club. I ended up getting 20-30 organic polymer per penguin, instead of the 7-12 I had gotten previously. I brought along some mats and also harvested some oil, then went to the blue obelisk and made 20 more cryopods. It's around this time that I did something very dumb.

I was on my argie flapping near some cliffs, because I didn't want to aggro anything while I was calculating how much organic polymer I needed. I realized I should probably get a few more penguins, so I got out of the crafting screen and attempted to fly toward penguin island. Unfortunately, I put my hands on the keyboard wrong and instead of hitting w to go forward, I hit e, jumping off of my in-flight bird. There was enough time for me to yell "no no no no no!" before I hit the bottom of the cliffs and died. So I respawned at my base (all the way across the freaking island), used what pelt I had to make 3 pieces of fur gear, grabbed a couple fria curry just in case, and grabbed another argie to go get my corpse and bird (not to mention the anky and two penguins in cryopods). Thankfully this all went fine, nothing lost.

After the blue obelisk crafting, I went back, realized I still had a ton of organic polymer, so I went to the green obelisk with some more mats and made a bunch more cryopods. Piccies attached as always.

Pretty penguins! Good to know about the clubbing too. Seems slightly harsh though haha. I know the youngsters are supposed to give more too! That is a lot of cryopods :O

My dung beetle is trapped in my greenhouse, wandering amongst the plants. I'd intended to put everything into weight anyway so will do. I took away the compost bins that were outside and popped a trough down with spoilt meat in so he's good.

You did mention your blue raptors before, though I think you were still trying for a male? before. They do look pretty cool with that dark electric blue on. I bet a pack of those will rip things to shreds. Raptors are again in my bad books. Twice on this map I've seen a high level rex I wanted and twice raptors have nipped at its ankles before I could save it. Bastards.

I've done the E thing plenty too on a flier. Usually when reaching for my spyglass (which I always have on 5 so shouldn't get mistaken for it but sometimes it does). Once into rex-infested shallow waters! Thankfully the rex was distracted by other prey so I managed to escape by whistling the flyer to land.

I mainly spent the last couple of evenings finally starting on my actual base. I've got a kitchen and a workshop built plus a generator room. I hope I've left space for an industrial cooker once I unlock that in the kitchen and hoping there's space for the industrial forge in my workshop, although not certain if I'll have one in there as well as off at some metal place or not. There's quite a bit of metal that spawns around my base anyway and I haven't yet noticed any obviously dense metal spawns elsewhere, though I haven't really been scouting for them. I'm currently grinding up the materials for an industrial grinder to fit in there too. I have the crystal, cementing paste and the oil easily. The polymer will have to be made as the organic stuff doesn't stack enough so it won't fit in the fabricator and I'm halfway on the metal ingots. I have 4 forges burning away at the moment but I haven't counted what's in there so not sure if it will be enough or not yet.

I bred my thylas again and got a male that's slightly better than the original male and has his mum's lovely orange colours. I then decided to go for a bit of a fly around. I spotted a 140 female rex that I wanted and near her was a 150 allosaurus male, 145 allo male and 50 allo female. I packed up my rex/spino taming pen and built it up near them. Somehow, god knows how, I managed to kite all 3 allo's into it. I wasn't sure if they'd attack their friends once down so I took out the 50 female first, thinking she's the weakest so didn't matter so much. Down she goes and they ignore her. Then I took out the 150 and started on the 145. I should've had enough darts but for some reason he didn't go down on my remaining ones. By this time the other 2 had tamed up so I cryopodded them and flew them to base, grabbed my crossbow and tranq arrows and got the 145 down and tamed. That's when I went to kite the rex in as I had enough arrows left to get her but the raptors spoiled everything. I did hit the allos that were down a couple of times too when taking out the 145 so he has actually tamed out as my highest one. They're all still decent though.

I haven't really been taking screenshots today, did want to get one with the 3 allos in the pen but it got too hectic so I forgot. So here are some random ones I forgot to post.

I have a tendency of shooting dinos in the eye with tranqs as well. Looks painful, but they still appear to be able to see afterward, so hey, nothing lost. Grats on getting that bunch of Allos, though too bad about accidentally hitting some that were incapped. It happens. I don't usually try to tame more than one at a time since there's so much risk of oopsies, but sometimes you don't have a choice in the matter. Well, good luck with your base building. I hope to get some piccies once you've neared completion. I haven't done any more playing, so nothing to report yet on this end.