So what is there to do?

[Randy]

games pretty ♥♥♥♥♥♥ empty, u guys seriously just killing the same 20 monsters for 100 hours?

[Pontianak Tamer]

Minecraft exists and dominate for a good period, so it shouldn't be a surprise

[Deceiver9811]

Things like Cookie Clicker are popular because progression alone is enough of a goal for many people.

[Fowllacy]

There's the progression aspect of just getting stronger and catching new pals, but there's also tower bosses that are challenges, base building, and lore notes to find. It's has the same things to do that Ark does.

[Itz Da Booty Invadahs]

Make a post on this forum about non existent issues that are irrelevant.

[Real Hawk]

Dude why tf are you killing the same 20 monsters in the first place? Haven't you made a palbox to see how to upgrade it? If you play this game like a normal person you notice how fast the time flies because there is so much to do.
So basicly you want to level your palbox to the max by collecting resources, create the buildings you need to level it up, collect pals, explore the world to discover loot, dungeons and beat bosses.

[Mannyrue]

And yet people play FPS or racing games and never complain they are empty or grind based games where it is the same task over and over again!

[magenight]

Build something

[Randy]

just saying it seems empty, u tame the soldiers and they don't even use the breedery for cross species

[CandyBonz]

you need to build a base or are you just staring at an empty lot and being like "Ayo this is empty AF" press B FFS

[the poopshitter]

If you want strict progression that the game directly tells you there's a couple:
- See what you need to build in order to level up your base. It's a good general pointer to get some autonomous resource farms going.
- Beat the syndicate tower boss if you haven't already, the tutorial directs you to it. There's a couple bosses scattered around the map in towers
- Beat overworld bosses, you get ancient technology points for this too as well as the human bosses. And you can capture them.
- Explore the map for fast-travel points and random dungeons. There's waaaaay more than 20 monsters in this game, just that far from all of them spawn in the starting biome.
- If you see what seems like a black wall that goes nowhere inside a cave entrance, that's a random dungeon. Approach it.
It has goodies and a random Pal as a boss at the end, which means you can get any Pal in the game as a larger version of itself if you really want to, and some Pals only spawn in that cave tileset.
- Look for Lifmunk Effigies, preferably at night since they're really easy to see from miles away that way, to upgrade your capture rate so you eventually don't need better/rarer spheres for larger monsters. Logs fall under this too imo, but it's not for everyone. I like them though, they're a fun read and help with some worldbuilding.

That's just off the top of my head, but the thing about sandbox games like this is you often just have fun doing your own thing and making your own objectives rather than following any of this.
I'm having a lot of fun just building stupid houses and making my base as comfy as I can make it for my Pals, and having my favourite ones out with me during exploration, feeding and petting them regularly for every job well done. It's not really progressing anything, but I'm having fun every time I do it. Right now my personal objective is scouting out a really pretty, large empty spot up on high elevation to set up my second base and move everything there, to really make a ranch/farmstead paradise for my Pals.
Earlier on I just wanted a flying mount, so I caught a Nitewing and unlocked the saddle for it, and gathered the resources needed.

[Yikes]

This is early access and the map itself is HUGE, the building and farming is probably a priority for most. There was a good 5+ hours where I was just straight up flying around and picking stuff up.

[Dracoco OwO]

Originally posted by Yikes:

This is early access and the map itself is HUGE, the building and farming is probably a priority for most. There was a good 5+ hours where I was just straight up flying around and picking stuff up.

If they do stuff like Ark and Pokémon i feel they will probs add new maps with an entire different Pokémon/Pal pools like new pokémon games, that's an expectation i have lol.

[Zaltys]

The map is huge but empty. If you don't count random loot (which is 99% useless by time you hit level 30 — I never found a single useable blueprint for instance), and heavy eggs that slow down exploration by making you return to base constantly.