Thanks.. it was a lot of fun to build. Thankfully we're endgame because that thing took a crazy amount of resources to build. Each hedge section was 3 hedges, which are 200 fiber each. We went through 100k's of fiber building that. Thankfully high level sickles makes that not so hard to do, or this would've taken us weeks.

Anyway.. we're wrapping up a yutyrannus breeding spree. Next I plan on mass-breeding some deinonychuses (dedinonychii?), because apparently a large pack of high level ones are really good against bosses. I'm looking forward to running a pack around the islands just murdering everything in sight. More strategically, we're still trying to find better Daeodon saddles and collecting items for the Dragon boss and then the wolf final final boss. That one drops a wolf pet. Then we're done with Fjordur and can move on to a different map (hopefully).

That hedge maze looks great!!

I haven't been on Ark in a while and may wait a few months now. Have you seen the news yet Satis?

Ark 2 has been postponed until the end of 2024 instead of this summer. But we're getting an upgraded version of Ark, called Ark: Survival Ascended, this August (plus delays I'm sure). It's an upgrade to Unreal 5 with a whole bunch of new things due to that. It's going to cost $49.99 but will include Ark 2 when that's released. Initial release will be The Island plus non-story maps (though it said these will be released over time so I guess they're included in the price but won't be out yet) with a whole host of improvements such as better building, better movement and more breedable creatures.

At first I thought it was a bit of a rip off but as that price includes Ark 2 as well I'll probably get it. It also has cross platform play so I could play with Niall if he gets it on PS4. He got Ark free one month for PS Plus but has never actually played it.

Oh, interesting. I saw it was being released, but didn't know all the other details. I recently spun up a new server (Rangarok) for Ark. Since I'm trying to play through all the maps I haven't player (practically all of them) this is kind of exciting.

haha yes I haven't played most either so I do sort of want to go back through them all on regular Ark, but if they will all get added to this newer version I may as well wait. The old one isn't going anywhere at least

Thought it was too good to be true! They've changed it now, Ark: Survival Ascended will cost $60.00 as a standalone game, not including Ark 2. I will not buy it until it's cheap; it does include all the DLC (but launches only with The Island and Scorched Earth) and will release a new real-world creature with each map as it gets released but considering it's basically still just Ark with shinier graphics, I'm not paying $60/£50 for it. I view it like the upgrades to The Witcher 3 or Skyrim; both of which were given for free to PC players. I wouldn't expect free but £10 or even £20 I'd be ok with. Just thought I'd give you the heads up so don't feel you should rush through your current server playthroughs

Thanks for the update. I wouldn't have rushed to buy it anyway... considering all the bugs still in the original Ark, I figured it would be a good idea to wait a bit and let things get fixed.

Regarding Ragnarok, Shiny and I have collected all but 4 of the artifacts on the island, all of which are in the same cave. Unfortunately, that cave looks like an absolutely enormous PITA and requires you run it at least twice to get all 4 artifacts. Since we're currently planning on doing the final boss on all 3 difficulty levels, that's 6 runs of the cave, which sounds amazing (ly terrible). We'll see what happens.

Frankly, Ragnarok is enormous, like 4x the size of the Island, but I'm not seeing a huge reason to spend a bunch of time on it. I do plan on flying around it and looking at all the neat stuff (there's a ruined city I already found), but mostly I just want to finish it and move on to Aberration.

That does sound like a lot of (annoying) work. I want to do quick run throughs of all the story maps, to get the story and engrams etc done, then I will pick a map to settle down on maybe.

I'm jumping back on Ark a little due to the price of Ark: Survival Ascended and the delay to Ark 2, and mainly fueled by finding a custom map that is mainly centred around horses I've also found a fantastic mod that gives some reskinned versions of dinos which look way better.

Lol, Horse Ark! Why am I not shocked?

So Shiny and I have gotten all the artifacts on Ragnarok enough times to run the final boss twice. We beat the final boss once on gamma (easy). Rather than get the one more artifact again so we can do the boss again on Beta and Alpha (medium and hard) we're just going to run on hard and call it a day on this map. Next up is aberration. Only 3 artifacts and one boss on this one, but the map sounds like a bit of a PITA. On the other hand, it's a story map, so beating the boss on alpha gives you 15 levels. This is also the (first/only?) map you can get a reaper on. Should be interesting. Apparently Desmodus are supposed to be immune to radiation... if that ends up being true, it should simplify most of the caves at least. Having desmodus certainly made several of the Ragnarok caves a lot easier.

Is Aberration the one that has two levels, and one is radiated or something? That one sounds horrendous... so enjoy!

Yea, aberration is entirely underground. There's a surface, but it's all flame and death during daylight. Underground there are 3 zones... green (relatively safe not including the spinos and stuff), blue which is dark and you need a light pet or some equivalent to keep from being murdered by nightmares, and then red, which is irradiated. It should be a nice change in pace after the fairly normal Fjordur and Ragnarok maps (and of course the Island a long, long time ago).

That definitely sounds like it will change up the playstyle! I can see me dying lots when I finally get to that map

Last night I tamed my first horse on Caballus. Well two but they were both male so I went running after another to see if it was a female... next thing I know I'm in the water and stunned by a bary. Somehow, god knows how, I got away after 3 or 4 stuns but it killed the first (and prettiest) horse I'd tamed. A lovely black and white patched one. The map has different patterns for the horses to normal Ark. I got away on the other one but I'll never know how. I think the parasaur I'd ridden over there attacked the bary and even though the bary wasn't bloody it started to run. I thought they were too big to be scared by the parasaur ability.

Anyway here are comparison pics of the normal parasaur vs the Paleo Ark parasaur.

Well, that's quite a bit larger and prettier. Nice cloth gear.

You laugh but it's ascendant The loot 'drops' (they're chests that respawn) are fucking mental on this map. I have a 400+ armour hazard gloves and since about level 25ish have been using a 270ish damage crossbow. I'll post some more pics tomorrow. The new horses look really pretty but have a weird thing where they change their skins and colours when you load into the map! Even if they're bred. So pointless going for one you like the look of, just tame/breed for stats.

I tamed a pelagornis yesterday (not enough hide to make a pteranadon saddle) so I could have a little explore and found this amazing castle. Trouble is it's by the wyvern trench. I might still relocate there. I got a maewing after that and did a speedy flight around the entire perimeter. I also managed to grab an anky, doedic, couple of raptors and a sabertooth so I can start getting a bit more aggressive. Loads of argys not far from my current base so I'll tame a couple of those soon (2 more levels until I can make the saddle) and have also seen a rex and some allos. I'll build traps soon and lure those in.

Ark has, as usual, tried to fuck me over the last few times I've played. I managed to get some raptors and a sabertooth so I had some offense. I built a trap near some wolves but modified it slightly from my usual and it didn't work at all. This resulted in me being chased by 3 wolves, then some smilodons (Paleo ark creatures) joined in. They murdered my poor sabertooth from under me then of course came after me. I was running away, occasionally getting hit by a wolf, trying to steer for other creatures so they wolves would attack those instead, saw some dwarf allos (more Paleo creatures) and had to quickly swerve away, then had to swerve around a scorpion... and somehow survived. How the hell I got away I don't know. I was on about a quarter health and ran out of stamina a couple of times, plus I then became dehydrated. Somehow got home ok.

Yesterday I took two raptors out to try and get the final level so I can ride argies. I didn't get the level but I did manage to tame a smilodon. I had to sacrifice one of the raptors to do it though. I also managed to get some more insane loot drops. I've included some example pictures. None of my loot settings are turned up and these are from green and blue treasures. The map is just coded to give insane items, but you don't get air drops; you have little chests you have to run around and find that do replenish, but seem to take a while.

Also I scared myself the other day. I found the HLNA skin in my inventory and equipped it for the first time. Later that day I was swimming in the shallows and had a heart attack when I saw a jellyfish right next to me. Then I realised it was just HLNA