Updates

Kind of got lost there for the last couple weeks.

I'll go through quickly what has been going on, nothing earth shattering, but things move forward.

Things on the server just kept going after the attack on our base.  A couple of the other tribes were attacked as well, and the tribe conducting the attacks eventually admitted to it.  In the end the loses suffered by any attacked tribes were strictly dino-related, so one might argue not a huge deal.

Our base has continued to grow.  Leaps and bounds actually.

First step was increasing the size of the yard.  We'd got a little taming crazy and ended up needing more space to fit everything in.  We increased the size of the yard by something crazy like 6-8x.  It's huge now, very nice.  We were also able to build it up to an elevator that we had built the week before to give access from the lower beach base that Wes and Corwin had been working on.

After that, Ed started work on the defenses for this new yard.  He also suggested creating a tall tower to put turrets on to defend from high-flying attackers, so I got around to designing and building that.  Simple design with a spiral staircase (one of the cooler mods I've seen).

During this time, the new patch was released that introduced breeding to the game.  Keen to be an early adopter and shit, Ed and I set about trying to get eggs, only to have them constantly die during the incubation.  A lot of work was required.  Luckily, Ronin had come across a page that said if you put down 4-6 air conditioners, it pretty much handled everything for the incubation.  From here, I designed a building that could house 2 incubation rooms, with a generator to power both.  Each room had 6 air conditioners and one fridge (to keep eggs when we wouldn't be able to watch them, and also to keep food for when they hatch.

I bred 3 raptors first.  It was a pretty demanding process once they hatched. Their inventories can't hold much, and they eat a lot.  Constantly.  So you have to keep handing them food for the first hour or so.

Those 3 raptors grew up, and we still have them in the yard.

While the breeding process was happening, we realized we had to collect and cook a lot of meat, so we made a small kitchen and patio which we've dubbed "McDonalds" and Ed painted it red and yellow.

Since making the patio, we have used that area to raise our dinos.  Works great, one foundation off the ground is enough to make sure if you have any wandering dinos they're not constantly stepping over the growing baby dinos.

With regard to breeding, here are our rough stats, roughly chronologically :
Sarco egg - died during incubation
Multiple raptor eggs - died during incubation
Raptor egg - hatched, Ed fed this one for like 12 hours, then tried to hand it off to one of the other tribes to care for when he had to sleep, and they said it died shortly after
3 raptor eggs - hatched, alive
Bronto egg - hatched, alive
Pteradon egg - hatched, but died during maturation to hunger
2 wolf pups - born, died because I forgot to feed them (I know, I'm a monster)
2 sabretooth pups - born, died to hunger
Argentavis egg - born, alive
Pteradon egg - born, alive
Rex egg - born, alive
3 big monkeys - born, alive

We're currently taking a break from breeding, because it's a lot of work.

Back to some building though!  We decided to build a new kind of aviary, to house the 2 quetzals we've got now, plus take some of the exising pteradons and argentavis we've got out of the above-house aviary to free up some room.  This led to Ed's creation, the Hive.  This is a 7 foundation wide x 11 foundation long x roughly 15 walls high building with a large metal behemoth door on the two short ends.  This means 2 sides of this building open up almost entirely, to allow for anything to enter.  We then split the floor and built in some shelving/floors to keep the other birds organized.

On top of the Hive, we built a green house.  We're in the final stages of that right now, just gathering fertilizer and what not to get the crops really growing.

Just last night, I built a bridge connecting the Hive to our large yard, and then a bridge connecting our main house to the other bridge, for ease of travel.  That all came together really well and really quickly.

Next project is a barn.

On the taming front, small advances.  Ed and I have now each tamed everything in the dossier except the Plesiosaur.  That and killing the broodmaiden spider summon thing.  That last one is a fair bit out, I imagine.

Well that's gonna be all for now.  I'm sure I've missed a lot that's gone on.  I've definitely left out what the rest of the tribe has been doing, and they haven't just been sitting around either, but I'll let them tell their story.

I've got a myriad of screenshots from the past couple weeks.  If I edit this post later on, I'll try to add the relevant ones in.

Garkim

The Battle Begins!

An auspicious start to the blog!  At least I'll have something to talk about!

We discovered last night, after logging in after work, that someone had attacked one of our dinosaur pens.  This left dead or missing 2 turtles, 4 parasaurs and 2 trikes, and a fairly injured quetzal.  Not overly surprising that this happened 2 days after the Ark team implemented the quetzal, which can lift almost any dino, including some alphas.

Our working theory is that someone on the server tamed themselves a quetzal, and dropped an alpha raptor or carno into the pen, and it proceeded to slaughter dinos in there, until, we assume, our brave quetzal was able to take it down.

Later in the evening, I even had a chance to spot someone conducting what I assume is reconnaissance on Ronin and Payo's base (revered by us often as the 'River Base') from the back of a pteranodon.  When I attempted to get a closer look at them, they quickly flew off.  Since I was on my quetzal, I wasn't able to to keep up, and they lost me weaving in and out of the woods.

Upon inspection, it would seem this person took a number of hits from the turrets which protect the River Base.

We've been almost entirely passive on the server, making moves only to defend the positions we've taken up.  And that's what we do now.  We strengthen our positions in order to defend what we've built.  We prepare for any forthcoming attacks, and contemplate our own offensives, should they become warranted.

First!

So like a month or so ago, Ed (my girlfriend's brother), finally convinced Celina and I to play Ark: Survival Evolved on a Steam Free Play weekend. After that, we were hooked. We settled in on a server (VanArk PvP 10x Tame 5x Gather 5x XP) and started a tribe up called "Los Hermanos".


Over the past month, we've had a bunch of friends join us, and have grown to be (as far as we know) the largest tribe on the server. It doesn't hurt that we're roughly half the player-base for the server though.


Anyway, I'm starting this blog up to kind of share some of the things that happen on there, humorous stories, tragedies (I personally tend to lose birds, apparently) and triumphs. It's also a good reason for me to be writing stuff, which I do tend to enjoy.


I'll be adding in the other tribe members, so they can make posts on here, so hopefully we'll get a lot of different voices going.


Or it'll be like every other blog I start, and it'll be dead in a week. Who knows?