I'm sure this question comes up alot, but I was curious if the single player is worth getting into. I've played other survival games like the forest and really enjoyed it even though i played solo. Just wondering how I get into such a massive game alone ?
Posted Dec 16, 2020, 11:20 PM UTC
Singleplayer on PC with mods? lots of fun.
Singleplayer on console or without mods? Not so much depth. The core game is really designed for multiplayer.
The best way to enjoy the game as it was probably meant to be played is with a small group of friends, either private server or an unofficial that is not a wasteland of structures and griefing children.
I have it on gamepass through xbox so maybe I'll check out an unofficial server.
You cant play on pc servers or use mods on the xbox port, as well as it being the second-worst version of the game after the barely-functional switch port.
Haha I know I figured they wouldnt have mods. But hey at least it's the optimised x/s version.
optimised x/s version.
Lmao.
If only that existed.
I'm going to step out on the minority limb here, and be the guy that tells you to do the opposite of everyone else.
Do not play unofficial. Play official servers, dabble in Hardcore. The friendships you make here will last years, and your paranoia and distrust issues will equally skyrocket. But its worth it. No other game gives you opportunities and experiences that ark can.
Playing unofficial servers is literally living in a bubble with no harm or threat and ruins the entire feel of the game.
This game is the WoW of survival games- no game will ever touch what ark has gave us from the very beginning.
The majority of this sub will tell you official is the devil and hardcore is his asshole but I have to stand up and atleast throw my 2 cents in the fire.
I totally get your view of someone who's in the ark community and enjoys what it has to offer. The game is obviously designed with all of these things in mind. I don't ever mind playing with random people, just sometimes these online games arent for me. I'm very willing to test any servers out of curiosity at the very least.
I didnt even buy the game. I thank game pass for this opportunity haha.
I've only played multiplayer once for 3 hours until a therizonosaur recked my thatch hut. Then I just went back to playing singleplayer. Also FYI I have 800 hours+ in ark so that shows my credentials.
As long as its enjoyable that's all that matters. I'm not big into playing online usually unless it with friends. But I'll check out some servers as well before making the decision.
I have my own server with a few quality of life mods u can join me and my friend if you want, its a genesis server. Ill happily take you on our road to alpha bossfight
I heard bad things about genesis. I appreciate the offer but I'm going to check out the vanilla game before anything.
If you are on steam, and interested in a PVE server with a few mods, I play on a friendly cluster.
I finally got a PC that could handle it, so I'm just getting into SP. It's kind of like starting out in Minecraft (on PC, I think MC on console has a tutorial). It doesn't say punch a tree, gather berries, you're just on your own. It's also one of those games where you spend as much time on the Wiki as you do playing when you're first starting. I love it, but I am feeling kind of overwhelmed by just how much content there is. The good news is, there's no reason to get involved with all the additional maps and expansions for a good long time; and when I'm ready, there's still so much content!
I found RoyaleWithCheese's youtube series on getting started really helpful. It's a lot better than most of it's kind, in that it's organized, doesn't make wild leaps about what you would have to already know to understand what he's saying, and gives you a nice framework to build on. Not sure if that goes against figuring it out on your own, but I thought I'd mention it.
I started it as well, gives me many similar vibes to the forest starting off. I'm enjoying it. I dont love multiplayer games as it is, but I can see myself getting hooked into this game. It wouldve just been better if any of my friends would play Haha.
I have alot of flexible free time outside my job while my friends are married with kids l, so ark is very counterproductive for them hah.
Single player or solo? Single player, just change the settings (damage, health etc...) until you are happy. Solo, depends PVP or PVE, offical or unoffical ...
Sorry single player not solo, I'll check out everything to see what I like best.
I play official PVE, but I showed my kids how to adjust the settings in solo and they take turns punching out rexes now. :)
I'm very into difficult game that dont hold hands. I prefer to play the games how the devs intended.
I've played PVP servers and PVE and Single player. I will say its a good deal of fun for some things in PVE. I prefer it personally.
Playing PvP is Toxic and a headache as its just not my cup of tea. Guess I have enough drama in life and dont look to invite more in.
Solo is very enjoyable. It's a challenge in itself.
I would watch a good number of videos online. Nooblets is good for guides and just fun times. Syntac is fun to watch if you just want to get a feel for the game.
Welcome to the commuity. It's a great game!
From what I’ve seen on YouTube, official pvp is a clusterfuck of sweaty toxic no life’s who play 16+ hours a day, or the chill ones who also play 16+ hours a day
Hi there, welcome to the Ark.
I started on single player like you and then rented a pair of servers with a friend. It's just the two of us and though we're mmo veterans, we were at a time in our life when we wanted to co-op on our own schedule and level of time investment instead of global multiplayer. Ark is great for that because nearly every variable in the game can he adjusted. We're on Steam so we also have access to QoL mods.
Single player or small server can be a lot of fun with a few caveats. Ark is conceived as a persistent world so several time sinks are intended to increase scarcity to balance out the difficulty of acquiring resources and dinosaurs. If you're playing single player, you need to make adjustments because your game stops when you quit playing, so you can't leave things to process overnight for example.
I'll recommend a blend of settings derived from the official small tribes and singleplayer game modes to make the grind reasonable while maintaining the game's intended level of challenge.
Difficulty: 1.0 Difficulty Offset:5 Force Maximum Difficulty: checked
This is the official difficulty settings and will spawn maximum wild dinos at level 150.
XP gain: x 2.5 Harvest: x 2.5 Taming:x 2.5
These are official small tribes game mode settings and therefore the intended targets for solo players and small tribes of upto 6 players.
Egg hatch and baby mature speed: x32 Mating Interval: x0.001 BabyCuddleInterval: x0.037
These are derived from singleplayer ruleset since these cooldowns and timesinks do not run down while you're offline dealing with real life.
If you simply check single player settings, it changes certain other things like player and dino health and damage, that are inconsistent with the official difficulty and therefore I recommend that you turn that off and manually adjust the settings to your liking.
As for progress, Ark doesn't have anything resembling a linear progression so it's easy to feel you don't have a goal or direction. However there is a fantastic story, there's artifacts to discover and finally bosses to conquer and an intended sequence of moving through the Arks. I highly recommend watching Syntac's Ultimate Ark series as a signposting guide to figure out what steps you need to follow to start on the beach and beat the bosses of each Ark at maximum difficulty and ascend to the next map.
Have fun!
Thank you for those options I will start an sp with those slider adjustments.
I can tell the progression is up to me, but I'm going in blind and I really do enjoy figuring these kinds of games out on my own. I started up a game to see what it was like and I already can tell my small goals are getting to those colored towers(that look very similar to the A in Ark)
The only issue is usually these games have some sort of help in the way of menus and stuff. I figured out leveling up,crafting, and basic survival. Only issue is I'm afraid I'll be missing out on portions of the game because I simply wont discover them in the world.
Hi, glad you found the recommendations useful. I'm happy to answer any more questions as you play along, feel free to dm. As a start, here's a set of starting goals to help you get the hang of things.
Make yourself a wooden 2x2x2 with a bed and storage boxes, clothe and arm yourself with stone tools and a spear, then go out gathering meat, hide, narcoberries and your first tames. Most creatures are tamed either passively by giving them a desired treat - go up to a moschops and it should tell you want it wants for example or by knocking out. Knocking out requires 3 basics - trap, tranq and tame. You can use terrain or bolas to trap your first trike or parasaur, use a club or fists to knock them out and feed them mejoberries. For dilos and/or raptors use a bola and feed them meat. Once you have a berry gatherer, gather up some narcoberries and spoiled meat to make narcotics in a mortar and pestle which can be used to craft tranq arrows.
Once you have a pack of 3-5 good level raptors, always tame high level creatures wherever possible, head out deeper into the jungle to explore. Retreat where the threats seem too high and explore a new direction. You'll come across small ruins with boxes and urns that will unlock explorer notes. These are pages from the journals of a group of survivors before you. Nerva and Mei yin notes are not in English but you'll find notes by Helena Walker and Edmund Rockwell, which will unfold the background and answer your basic questions about the story.
Now that you're getting the hang of things, you'll be running into the limitations of your stone tools and foraging. It's time to find a more permanent place to set up a base. Find something with ample space and easily defensible boundaries - like a cliff you can wall off or something with a chokepoint. Make a small house, with storage and kitchen. Make a workshop with a forge, smithy and more storage. Make a walled off fence and set up irrigation to crop plots. Plant advanced crops - rockcarrots, savoroot, longgrass and citronal, and narcoberries as well as others if you want. These are used to make food and kibble. Make a pteranodon saddle and tame your first flyer.
As you'll discover soon, flying is the easiest way to explore and scout for tames and resources but while the ptera is an easy tame, it's got low stamina, health and carry weight. Use it to scout the surrounding territory and spot major threats and opportunities, like potential tames and resources. Grab a few supply drops. Watch a few taming trap videos on YouTube. Captain Fatdog and Kaizer Crete have a series of cheap and affective traps. Gather the resources to make an Argentavis trap and head to the mountains. Taming an Argentavis is your first step to conquest, the argy is to Ark, what the horse was to human civilization. Find a good level argy, lure it, trap and tranq. Make a saddle and take to the skies. You can now make a taming pen near your base and bring back many small and medium creatures with the argy to tame safely and conveniently. Start with an Ankylosaurus which farms metal, flint and obsidian better than anything else and a doedicurus, that can farm stone very efficiently. Castoroides can be argy lifted and does great at wood.
Once you've gotten to this point, you'll have a pretty good grasp of the main game mechanics. Dododex is an android/iPhone app and website most of us use as a reference for taming, required resources and tips and tricks. The Ark gamepedia wiki is another indispensable source. Don't be skittish of looking up information on these sources, the game doesn't explain anything so you need to do your own research.
Again thanks for all of the tips. I guess out of all of them taming is the new idea i have to get used to. It's a shame I will most likely have to look some things up, otherwise taming might be rather tough.
There are a few places that can help a LOT with taming, including calculators for how many tranqs(approximately) you will need and how much food you need
The good part about single player is when you turn it off nothing bad can happen, (getting steam rolled by nearby dinos, having teammates take your crap or ruin it or turn on you etc)
The bad part about single player is when you turn it off nothing good can happen, (cooking metal in the forge, gathering dust from gachas, letting babies raise, etc.
Its a tradeoff.
I get that but ok, I dont really need to have the world constantly going on without me and I can change some sliders around. Thanks for the advice though
If you are going to play singleplayer, I suggest not using singleplayer settings (it’s a checkbox option which makes it easier) Just mess with breeding times, if you don’t, it’s kinda fucked and takes forever to do anything because it’s meant for server timers which run 24/7, meaning a 36 hour breeding timer is only 36 hours on a server and 36 hour timer in singleplayer is however long it takes you to clock 36 hours loaded in
Ahhh I gotcha I actually started a new game with adjusted sliders but I also clicked single player. Should I just start a new game I'm not very far in, made a small house and tamed a pterodactyl somehow haha.
It is definitely possible, but this game will not spare you. It has many things going on and a steep learning curve. Everything might feel overwhelming quite soon and even on pve you can get all your shit killed pretty quick. If you want to look around a bit, there's plenty of pve servers around. Even more stuff to explore and plenty of people to help you around. Official pve is fun, but grindy and probably spammed full with other people's stuff. There's a bunch of unofficial servers out there and I would suggest looking for one of those that suits you.
Thanks for the heads up. I'll check out some unofficial servers. I'm big into games that dont hold your hand. I'll like discovering more than anything so thats not an issue.
In my first playthrough in a while I confused a GIGA with a rex and killed my trike, the game does have a steep learning curve.
Thing is I would give heaps to be able to learn it all again. I have about 1500 hours and know most anything and you find yourself pushing only the good stuff. You miss out on so many hilarious quirky shit, which is kinda sad
yep, since the gamepass version of ARK has all the DLC before genesis, I picked it up again and started doing all the story arks, but I also started at scorched earth instead of the island so it's already broken chronologically and all my saves got deleted after an update(at least on pc) so I dont have any other worlds besides abberation.
I'm gonna go through all the story arks with my gf in a little while, absolutely stoked for a relaxed little pve play trough after the official server mess I've been in for 4 months now