Haha, nice, thanks for the stories. Sounds like you're having a pretty hard time with the snow owls. I'm pretty sure I'd be tempted to just keep it safe until I was able to make a bunch of backup eggs. The imperial city is pretty cool.... though a bit smaller than I remember it.

Oh yes, much smaller!

I haven't done much since the last post but I did hatch out 4 snow owl eggs so I have back ups now. I'm planning on moving some to my other maps too. I got a colour mutation on one of them as well, a sort of forest green on parts of it.

There's been a new creature announced for the map in June, a Fjordhawk. I think it's going to be another shoulder pet but one of the things it does is if you die it will try to grab as much of your stuff as it can and will try to fly back to you. Less need to find your corpse.

Oh man, that's pretty awesome. Be even cooler if you could flag the important items. Like weapons and armor... I think those are the things that are the biggest pain to replace. Oh, tools too, I guess. Man, it's been quite a while since I played Ark. I'm starting to forget stuff again.

I popped on Ark last night and managed to get some cryopods made. And lucky I did. I headed over to maewing territory with the intention of getting a couple of decent ones (I think mine was about level 8 wild). Whilst there checking things out I ran into something which I've since discovered is a known bug on the lost island map.

I was flying around on my snow owl and swooping down for some speed; as I pulled back up I was face to face with a rex. Fine. Rex's aren't that scary once you realise they're quite slow and tend to like shouting at you before trying to eat your face. I casually turned and flew away but as I did the level and gender flashed up. Did I see that right? Spyglass out. Level 400. Errr what? I've got the difficulty setting so outside dinos should be no more than 150 or 180 if they're tek. I check again. Yep. Definitely 400. I've recently installed awesome spyglass to help with checking stats of my tames more easily. Used that as well. Says it's tameable. Pull up Dododex to figure out all the arrows and meat I'll need. Why not try this? Headed to base for some gates to trap it, load up on arrows and off we go.

It decided not to get trapped. I think I put the bear trap in the wrong spot so it didn't trigger and I couldn't get the gate down behind it but it also just decided to attack the gates I had placed so I just shot it from afar. Of course it ran when the torpor got low but I used my sinomacrops to fly after it, shooting it all the time and head it off occasionally to keep it in roughly the same area. Finally it dropped and after 22 prime meat and 44 minutes it was my level 598 rex!

Annoyingly 4 ovis spawned near it just after it tamed up. They wouldn't have stopped me losing the 1 level I did but the mutton would've made it 10 minutes faster. Never mind. So now I have a supremely powered rex (in theory; I have looked and supposedly it won't disappear in singleplayer but I haven't gone back in yet to check) and could get another one if I look around. Mine did get a ton of wasted points into food rather than anything useful but just its wild levels are already higher than most people aim for in a bred dino. Pictures attached. And now I'm going in to see if she still exists and if I can find a high level male. Even a low level would do if not though, just make it more effort to get a breeding pair.

I will get round to building/doing more pics of the castle soon.

Wow, holy cow, a level 400. I've only seen levels like that in really high-end dungeons. Cool bug to find! I wonder what that thing is like in combat... that'd be a perfect mount for doing some of the boss fights.

Well she's alive. I took her out earlier for 20 minutes and got about 20 levels. Took her up to 50k hp and I think close to 2000% melee. She hits for about 1.6k on diplos and paracers. Just need to breed up some others and get a good saddle and I'm set for most of the bosses now!

Scared the hell out of me when I realised it was level 400.

Edit: I was very, very lucky last night. I headed back over there today just to see what else was around. Just around the corner were 2 gigas! 1 level 20, 1 level 95, both male. I managed to trap the 95 so I now have a new pet. Can't ride him til 96 though and I'm nearly 88. Better get grinding some levels. I know where a low level female is so she might get a visit once I replenish my tranq arrows and narcotics. I've also just checked my out of game map that tells you what is spawned; there's a 445 male rex so I think I'll be headed for him sometime soon too.

I've been out grabbing wyvern eggs before my hand got dodgy so I think I got 4 fire, 3 poison, 2 lightning and 2 ice. I've hatched all 3 poison, all female. Hatched 2 fire, male and female, and 1 ice and 1 lightning. I've mostly been hatching/breeding this week so been breeding my sinomacrops but not hatching them. I also finally got a cryofridge so the giga and the hatched wyverns are sitting in there until I can be bothered raising them.

But today I had another important job to do. Get the 445 male rex that's been wandering around! Managed to get him trapped in the dino gates which made it much easier and he tamed out at 666 so he's now called Satan. Time to get the 2 bred up. Best possible outcome would be a 687 without mutations. I think I can live with that

Vin Diesel: Dinosaur Rider and Psuedo-Jesus! Coming soon.

Oooh next year. Should probably kill at least 1 boss on Ark before then... maybe...

Shiny and I (and some of our friends that Peltz has met and Pevil has been in proximity to) have started playing on the newly released free map, the one that used to be a mod (fjordur or whatever). It's fun. We've all played before except one guy. Making decent progress, but no Thylacoleos yet. Shiny did manage to nab a 168 tech rex, so that's pretty badass. We have a few rexes between us all and I recently built an industrial forge. Chemistry station coming as soon as I can get enough cementing paste together. Two more levels until cryo fridges, and then the real fun begins. Taming speed is increased, but not baby-raising speed, so raising dino offspring is a real PITA. I'm waiting until the cryo fridge so I can leave them out while playing, then pop em in the fridge when I want to log out.

I was going to wait until I'd completed one of my other maps (Crystal Isles or Lost Island) before starting on Fjordur... then yesterday I jumped on Fjordur Not done much yet, just tamed a couple of parasaurs, pteranadons and dilos. Oh and my first moschops! I've found a tropeonagthus flying right above where I spawned; been looking for those forever in CI with no luck. I also found Fjordhawks, got to about 25% tamed with 1 then got ambushed and murdered by troodons and raptors. Good times

I noticed with the Fjordhawks that though they'll eat your dino kills, it doesn't seem to tame them. I spent a bunch of time murdering things with a crossbow and got one to about 88%.... then it decided to fly in front of me while I was firing, I hit it with a crossbow bolt, and it went back to 0%. It probably goes without saying that I'm a little soured on taming them.

If you're on a dino you have to get off while it eats, otherwise you don't gain %. Seems a bit silly to me. I got pissed off earlier after trying 4 or 5 times, getting the damn thing to 25ish % (I'm still really only able to kill weak things, though carbos were working quite well) then it would fly in front of me and get hit. I gave up and forcetamed it. Which is a bloody feat in itself to try and target it! Also, don't die near them. They will grab your bag and take your stuff. I don't know if you get it back if you tame or kill it. There's also a bug where you can't always access their inventory, though restarting the game fixed it for me.

I had a fly around on my pteranadon earlier and have uncovered most of the map, barring the really cold or really hot spots. I should probably start a base somewhere... right now I have 1 thatch foundation with a bed, 2 storage boxes (the bigger ones), a campfire and a mortar and pestle.

Edit: thanks to a drop I now have a 1x1 wooden hut. Luxury! I may also have found some awesome coloured argys as I still have the Easter event active. My addiction begins again. There's an amazing coloured snow owl too if I can ever find it again to tame.

We only recently discovered that Snow Owls can heal another dino by hugging it. They also have night vision, and a plunging ice attack of some sort. They lack some of the advantages of argies though, so not a replacement. I'm currently raising one to become healing specific... healing takes stamina, so I'll be putting all my points in stam.

Shiny and I managed to get a breeding pair of thylacoleos, so that breeding program has begun. We've also unlocked cryo fridges, so now we're taming lots of various creatures. Got a roll rat recently. Also got a maewing. There's a 140 Quetzal flying around near the red woods, but we'll need to get a 2-person bird before we can make that happen. And probably a long rifle schematic. Still, things are coming along. I'll try to take more pics.