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ARK: Survival Evolved |OT| Early Access to the Land Before Time

Vic_Viper

Member
How is the game running nowadays? I've been interested in getting into Ark but I've always had problems running the game on my PC. Just built a new PC in July and aside from the videocard, which I'm upgrading to a 1070 in a few days, everything is pretty much top of the line. I have 16 gigs of DDR5 Ram and an i5 Skylake processor. Is there any tips to getting to game to run well currently?
 

Hylian7

Member
Do we have a specific PS4 server that everyone is on yet?
Out of curiosity (I play on PC), do unofficial servers exist on consoles?

Officials are super unbalanced right now with the unhindered transferring of dinos and alpha tribes of servers taking the T-Rexes and Gigas and rolling everyone's stuff on every server.
 

TalonJH

Member
Out of curiosity (I play on PC), do unofficial servers exist on consoles?

Officials are super unbalanced right now with the unhindered transferring of dinos and alpha tribes of servers taking the T-Rexes and Gigas and rolling everyone's stuff on every server.

You can host them but you can't rent any yet is my understanding. Not sure if XB1 can rent servers yet.
 

Hylian7

Member
You can host them but you can't rent any yet is my understanding. Not sure if XB1 can rent servers yet.
Ah, well if unofficials are stable, I would recommend playing on those. The server I play on is on the Center and is linked to a Scorched Earth server. They just recently made a server for the Island, and will link it with the other two in a month. Only those 3 servers will be linked, not every server in existence.

Also the Center > The Island IMO, but the Island isn't bad.
 
Don't know much about the game NOW but I was on admin for an alpha tribe on a official server. If you aren't in the big leagues and don't have a connection to the bigger tribes I would expect getting raided as a will happen. Anyways, the bigger group you have the better the experience. I quit around 3 months after The Center came out and I must say that the center is way better many ways to the island. But from what I've been reading people being able to transfer dinos has killed many servers and alpha tribes usually don't take the chance with new guys. At this point I'd join a unofficial server that is popular and well moderated.
 

Hylian7

Member
Don't know much about the game NOW but I was on admin for an alpha tribe on a official server. If you aren't in the big leagues and don't have a connection to the bigger tribes I would expect getting raided as a will happen. Anyways, the bigger group you have the better the experience. I quit around 3 months after The Center came out and I must say that the center is way better many ways to the island. But from what I've been reading people being able to transfer dinos has killed many servers and alpha tribes usually don't take the chance with new guys. At this point I'd join a unofficial server that is popular and well moderated.

Yeah pretty much.

It can get frustrating on officials too that even if you can get defenses or are even an alpha tribe, people wait til you are offline at 3am and raid your shit when you can't defend it and only your dinos and X plants/turrets can.
 
I just got this on Xbox with scorched earth and I'm a little confused. My Son and I play together. Some questions:

1) From what it looks like, a character you create is specific to a server you join?
2) Is there a way he can join a local host (me) with his primary character and keep those traits?
3) If I create a dedi, either of us can play without the other correct?
4) Can characters from a dedi or local host be moved to scorched earth or do you need to start over?
 

Feeroper

Member
I'm considering picking this game up, is it better for pc or consoles? I have a pretty good pc so I assume that is the way to go? How are the populations on consoles vs pc? Is it larger on pc?
 

Hylian7

Member
I'm considering picking this game up, is it better for pc or consoles? I have a pretty good pc so I assume that is the way to go? How are the populations on consoles vs pc? Is it larger on pc?

I can't really speak for console population, but I would say PC. It's likely PC does have a higher population.

Wherever you play though, I would recommend unofficial servers instead of Officials. Officials have unhindered transfers, meaning people can transfer their dinos and characters across servers as they please. Alpha tribes take armies of T-Rexes and Gigas and go trample all the other tribes in every server, and it's pretty unbalanced. The servers I play on are a trio of and Island, Center, and Scorched server that transfers are completely open between. I don't own Scorched Earth, so I only have stuff on the Island and the Center, but I'm still able to transfer between the two. My allies and political relations carry over between the servers though, which is nice because I have a close friendship and alliance with the admin's tribe, the most advanced tribe on the server.

For maps, if you don't own Scorched, in my own and most people's opinions, the Center is the better map, but it also has performance problems and crashes. The Island is an okay map, but it is much more populated since it comes in the game by default and you don't need to go download anything to get it.
 

playXray

Member
Am I doing something wrong or is the game a bit fucked at the moment? I just bought it on XB1 and was enjoying it until I tried to build something - for some reason it seems impossible to get the placement marker to turn green anywhere on the map. As a result, I can't build anything.

Is this a bug or am I doing something I shouldn't be?
 

Hylian7

Member
Am I doing something wrong or is the game a bit fucked at the moment? I just bought it on XB1 and was enjoying it until I tried to build something - for some reason it seems impossible to get the placement marker to turn green anywhere on the map. As a result, I can't build anything.

Is this a bug or am I doing something I shouldn't be?
Ark building can be frustrating sometimes because of bugs, being it snapping on the snap point you want or something else.

Your situation sounds like you might have something wrong though. Are you starting with a foundation, fence foundation, or pillar, almost all structures (I think spike walls are the only exception) have to start with one of those three things. You should be able to place them almost anywhere.

I don't know what level your are, but I would suggest maybe making your initial base on a raft. You can take the engram at level 10 or 15 I think. You can build surprisingly robust structures on rafts. You can use it as your base until you pick a spot you want to build your real base in. Thatch structures are extremely difficult to defend from large predators, and if they hit wood enough, they can break that too, although you can have an extra surrounding wall to buy you time with wood. Water predators won't bother you on a raft, and if of you log out on your raft far out on the ocean, players really have to make an effort to get to you.
 

HeeHo

Member
Your situation sounds like you might have something wrong though. Are you starting with a foundation, fence foundation, or pillar, almost all structures (I think spike walls are the only exception) have to start with one of those three things. You should be able to place them almost anywhere.

.

This is what I'm thinking. You can't just place a fence without building the support underneath it. You also can't just build a wall or a door, or a door frame, if the foundation isn't there either.
 

Hylian7

Member
This is what I'm thinking. You can't just place a fence without building the support underneath it. You also can't just build a wall or a door, or a door frame, if the foundation isn't there either.
Just don't forget about fence foundations. If you are building a temporary taming structure, you can use fence foundations just to get walls up, and put a doorway and door on them.
 

playXray

Member
Ark building can be frustrating sometimes because of bugs, being it snapping on the snap point you want or something else.

Your situation sounds like you might have something wrong though. Are you starting with a foundation, fence foundation, or pillar, almost all structures (I think spike walls are the only exception) have to start with one of those three things. You should be able to place them almost anywhere.

I don't know what level your are, but I would suggest maybe making your initial base on a raft. You can take the engram at level 10 or 15 I think. You can build surprisingly robust structures on rafts. You can use it as your base until you pick a spot you want to build your real base in. Thatch structures are extremely difficult to defend from large predators, and if they hit wood enough, they can break that too, although you can have an extra surrounding wall to buy you time with wood. Water predators won't bother you on a raft, and if of you log out on your raft far out on the ocean, players really have to make an effort to get to you.

I'm just trying to build a bonfire ATM. I also tried laying a foundation and one other thing but none of them let me place the object anywhere. I'm not sure what else to do tbh.
 

Dezzy

Member
There is no gaf server or group right? Just bought this because eh I dunno it was cheap and it's consistently one of the most played steam games. I feel like I gotta try it. Steam id: http://steamcommunity.com/id/plbelanger

I wish there was a gaf server. The official servers I've tried are basically full. all the good land is already built on. The game itself is very enjoyable, but the full servers make it hard to play.
 

Hylian7

Member
It's ~$41 on the US PSN down from ~$55. Worth it?

With the flier nerf the other day, I can give a resounding "Hell no".

If Wildcard gets their shit together and makes fliers actually fun again, then I can recommend it.

Speaking of the flier nerf, no one has talked in here about it yet. I understand that fliers needed a nerf, but Wildcard went TOO far with it. For those that don't know, Wildcard changed the following about fliers:

- 50% base stamina reduction - I had Quetz's with 300 stamina after the nerf, wildcard pls
- quetz's can no longer recover stamina if anyone is standing on the platform
- stamina recovery time is increased
- can no longer level movement speed - Say goodbye to your fast Tapejara or Argent (all points previously put in movement speed are given back for you to redistribute)
- Nerfs overall to other stats
- Passenger dinos are now 100% weight instead of 30% weight. Have fun gathering metal on your Quetz now.

Wildcard demolished fliers completely and made them almost useless. I understand wanting ground dinos to be more attractive, but do something to buff those, not nerf the crap out of fliers like that. I might have been okay with them doing only some of this stuff, not all of it.
 

Patrick S.

Banned
Does nobody care about this game anymore?

Just read that a rise in ARK's price is coming tomorrow for PS4 and Xbox One, and for PC in july. Details to be anounced at E3.

German source.
 

Hylian7

Member
Does nobody care about this game anymore?

Just read that a rise in ARK's price is coming tomorrow for PS4 and Xbox One, and for PC in july. Details to be anounced at E3.

German source.

I haven't seen anyone on GAF care much about it lately. I bought Scorched on the Steam sale they had a week or two ago. I broke my own policy of refusing to buy it, but they did discount it like 60%. It's fun so far, even after I was kind of soured on the main game after the flyer nerf (despite them undoing it to a degree, but the damage was done already).

The rise in price isn't incredibly surprising, standard Early Access fare: Buy now for cheaper, but more unfinished, buy later when the game is more finished, but pay more.

Scorched is difficult to get started, but it only took me a death or two before I got off the ground there. The main thing is just you have to get a shelter up as soon as possible to deal with the weather. Also taming a Jerboa helps. They are all level 1 and can be knocked out easily with fists. I had a small house just for appliances and storage, with a small wall around it to house my wolf. My next objective is expanding my base. I also built an extremely long irrigation pipe system from the nearest oasis to my base. I need to replace those Stone pipes with metal ones.
 

Patrick S.

Banned
I haven't seen anyone on GAF care much about it lately. I bought Scorched on the Steam sale they had a week or two ago. I broke my own policy of refusing to buy it, but they did discount it like 60%. It's fun so far, even after I was kind of soured on the main game after the flyer nerf (despite them undoing it to a degree, but the damage was done already).

The rise in price isn't incredibly surprising, standard Early Access fare: Buy now for cheaper, but more unfinished, buy later when the game is more finished, but pay more.

Scorched is difficult to get started, but it only took me a death or two before I got off the ground there. The main thing is just you have to get a shelter up as soon as possible to deal with the weather. Also taming a Jerboa helps. They are all level 1 and can be knocked out easily with fists. I had a small house just for appliances and storage, with a small wall around it to house my wolf. My next objective is expanding my base. I also built an extremely long irrigation pipe system from the nearest oasis to my base. I need to replace those Stone pipes with metal ones.

I've played a couple of hours of this game. It was a rough start, because 95% of my gaming sessions with ARK ended with a crash back to the desktop or the game just glitching out. To this day, I have a problem where quite a few textures in the game look all funky, sort of like a neon rainbow checker pattern:

yUtHBTy.jpg


I'd love to see that fixed, and play some more. Also, I can only play this on an irregular schedule, and whenever I come back to the game, all my stuff has been destroyed by someone :(
 

Hylian7

Member
I've played a couple of hours of this game. It was a rough start, because 95% of my gaming sessions with ARK ended with a crash back to the desktop or the game just glitching out. To this day, I have a problem where quite a few textures in the game look all funky, sort of like a neon rainbow checker pattern:





I'd love to see that fixed, and play some more. Also, I can only play this on an irregular schedule, and whenever I come back to the game, all my stuff has been destroyed by someone :(

The texture thing is weird, haven't seen that one before.

Are you playing on official servers? I used to play on officials, but honestly I highly recommend unofficials. Official server rates are painfully slow, the servers are often laggy (at least last time I played on them), and of course they are usually full of offline raiders, which can be quite a pain to deal with as there is often nothing you can do unless you can be out the gate with metal fortifications. There's a family of four servers that can all transfer to each other that are unofficial that I play on: Island, Center, Scorched, and Ragnarok. These servers also have, and enforce, a "no offline raiding" rule. However they don't turn offline raid protection on because it's very easy to abuse, such as just logging out when you're being raided and then your stuff is invulnerable.

If you're going to stick to officials anyway, I would suggest just finding somewhere somewhat hidden, upgrading to at least wood as fast as you can, getting a wall around your place, upgrade to stone, and then metal. Also be sure to invest in Plant Species X. They are plants that fire spores at enemies blinding and dealing damage. Getting a lot of them is fairly cheap, you just need large crop plots, Plant Species X seeds (find them in the swamp, and you'll get a ton by the handful), fertilizer, and some way to keep them watered. You can use compost bins for fertilizer, but the better way is to tame a dung beetle. Get autoturrets later on. Plant Species X goes a long way in defending your base though, especially lots of them.
 

Patrick S.

Banned
The texture thing is weird, haven't seen that one before.

Are you playing on official servers? I used to play on officials, but honestly I highly recommend unofficials. Official server rates are painfully slow, the servers are often laggy (at least last time I played on them), and of course they are usually full of offline raiders, which can be quite a pain to deal with as there is often nothing you can do unless you can be out the gate with metal fortifications. There's a family of four servers that can all transfer to each other that are unofficial that I play on: Island, Center, Scorched, and Ragnarok. These servers also have, and enforce, a "no offline raiding" rule. However they don't turn offline raid protection on because it's very easy to abuse, such as just logging out when you're being raided and then your stuff is invulnerable.

If you're going to stick to officials anyway, I would suggest just finding somewhere somewhat hidden, upgrading to at least wood as fast as you can, getting a wall around your place, upgrade to stone, and then metal. Also be sure to invest in Plant Species X. They are plants that fire spores at enemies blinding and dealing damage. Getting a lot of them is fairly cheap, you just need large crop plots, Plant Species X seeds (find them in the swamp, and you'll get a ton by the handful), fertilizer, and some way to keep them watered. You can use compost bins for fertilizer, but the better way is to tame a dung beetle. Get autoturrets later on. Plant Species X goes a long way in defending your base though, especially lots of them.

Nice tips, thank you ;)

I just had Steam verify my installation, and 33 files failed to verify, now it's downloading 125mb. That may be what was causing the weird textures, I hope :)
 

abracadaver

Member
Is there really no way to get out of places where you are stuck without getting killed or killing yourself?

I started playing this last weekend with a few friends on a private server. Our base is on the south east island which seems pretty safe.
But getting stuck on the stone ledges is getting annoying. There are at least 3 "holes" in the stone around our base where you get stuck when you fall into them. Why is stuff like that not fixed after 2 years of early access?

Really no way of getting out there without getting killed?
 

Pjsprojects

Member
After the big update on Xbox today I seem to have started again and cant access 'The center' map.
Also spawning on 'The island' i see hardly any dinos??
Is because its now the release version?
 
Hows performance nowadays on PC? I've got a 1070 and an i5 4690k, and about 6 months back the game ran like absolute ass.

Now its on sale, I'm thinking of buying it. I only played it via Steam Sharing to give it a test. I enjoy Rust for goofing about, but I remember ARK being horrifyingly grindy with trying to tame even the lamest of beasts. I was playing official servers though, so after learning that unofficial communtiies are better via Rust, I'll probably find a nice unofficial to make my ARK home.
 

Pjsprojects

Member
Hows performance nowadays on PC? I've got a 1070 and an i5 4690k, and about 6 months back the game ran like absolute ass.

Now its on sale, I'm thinking of buying it. I only played it via Steam Sharing to give it a test. I enjoy Rust for goofing about, but I remember ARK being horrifyingly grindy with trying to tame even the lamest of beasts. I was playing official servers though, so after learning that unofficial communtiies are better via Rust, I'll probably find a nice unofficial to make my ARK home.

It's still not the most optimized game but it's a lot better than it was, running on Epic/high settings with a 21:9 I get 30-40fps on a R9-290X & FX8350 @4.2

Tbh it's a lot of fun whatever you play it on if your into survival games.
 

Effect

Member
Was thinking of trying this out now that it was on sale on steam as well. Should one go right for the Scorched add on or don't bother with that if they're still starting out and know nothing of the game?
 

Hylian7

Member
Was thinking of trying this out now that it was on sale on steam as well. Should one go right for the Scorched add on or don't bother with that if they're still starting out and know nothing of the game?

Start on the Island or the Center. I can't speak for Ragnarok as I haven't tried it yet. Scorched is incredibly hard to start out, and I can't really recommend it to a new player. You have stuff like Superheat, Sandstorms, the high heat in general plus learning the basics of the game including taming, actually getting your base going, base defense, etc. Plus Scorched is very different from the main game. Many of the dinos in Scorched are exclusive to it, but there are also plenty that are exclusive to The Island/Center/Ragnarok. Especially all the aquatic dinos except maybe the Coel.

Also everything that isn't Scorched has Pteranodons, which can be pretty important starting out. Scorched doesn't really have a starter/go-to flyer early on. The Lymanteria (moth) is the lowest level one, but they they aren't that great and difficult to tame. Only Argents fill that role and even then they fill the same role Argents have on the other maps.

If you're starting out, I think all the spawn areas have a difficulty marker now, but I would say for the Island avoid Swamp, Redwood, Snow, and Carno Island. For Center, avoid the same biomes, but add Tundra and Lava Island. In Center I think the Redwood is a bit easier there too, but that one might be confirmation bias.
 
Is there any servers on PC where you guys play on? Might want to go ham on this game again. Last I played my alpha tribe got wiped by hackers.
 

Effect

Member
Glad I got it on the steam sale when I did. Haven't installed it yet but hopefully should do it tonight to finally check this out.
 

Hylian7

Member
Is there any servers on PC where you guys play on? Might want to go ham on this game again. Last I played my alpha tribe got wiped by hackers.
If enough people are interested, we could start a tribe out of my stuff on the servers I play on. They are unofficial and on PC, but very nice servers. I am allied with the admin and their tribe, so that is a plus. The admin tribe is one of the alphas in the servers, but there are a few other alpha tribes.

Only potential issue I see is needing to build an Outpost away from my Island base: it is in the snow biome and everyone will need fur armor to survive there.

I haven't tended to my bases in a while, so likely my dinos are dead right now and my generators are out of gas, but I think we can build back up.
 

Pjsprojects

Member
Just found out the PS4 version has exclusive content.
I sort of thought this was marketed by Xbox being in early access program and so bought it once on pc very early on,then two copies on Xbox for the family clan.
Seems I should of gone with the PS4 version(like every other game).

Rant over.
 

abracadaver

Member
Switched from AMD to Nvidia last saturday and now my ARK crashes every few minutes with this error:


At first I thought it was my GPU but it seems like a lot of people are getting the same error since the 265 update last week. I basically can't play the game anymore because I'm too scared to leave my base because it's guaranteed to crash after a while.


Haven't seen the developers acknowledging the crashes yet. Hope it will be fixed soon.
 

EGOMON

Member
It would be nice if GAF can rent a server from Nitrado.com to play on with our own rules and moderation
 

kaiju

Member
I've been playing single player mode since the physical release earlier this week.

Fucking awesome game experience. How is this not one of the best games this gen?

This game is freaking incredible. I haven't played online or experienced any of the bugs that seem to cause most of the poor reviews.

But has anyone else seriously given the single player experience a shot? It truly is something to behold.
 

Hylian7

Member
I've been playing single player mode since the physical release earlier this week.

Fucking awesome game experience. How is this not one of the best games this gen?

This game is freaking incredible. I haven't played online or experienced any of the bugs that seem to cause most of the poor reviews.

But has anyone else seriously given the single player experience a shot? It truly is something to behold.
There's plenty of content for the single player to be good, but at the same time it feels like a waste without the multiplayer. I prefer playing on PvP servers because I really enjoy the politics that happens between tribes, and of course going on raids. On the servers I played on, I was good friends with the admin's tribe (also the alpha tribe, and no not by cheating), and had an alliance with them. We didn't aggressively raid anyone, only seeked revenge on very unprovoked attacks or offline raiders.

The experience of raiding is pretty cool just because you have to utilize you dinos effectively. You need a high level turtle with nothing but HP leveled, so you can aggro and drain the autoturrets.
 
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