Helena Notes...

[TEM187]

What's the whole timeline w/ them? I'd really like to know the story they give. If you know the story of any other survivors, please do tell. :)

[Sam Of Haywood]

Originally posted by Foxtail:

That's mentioned in other notes, but not by Helena herself yet. I haven't gotten to the other explorers yet.

ahh ok it was posted in this thread and i thought it was all helena thus far ;p

[Foxtail]

As absurd as the Death Worms are, they served a purpose as a natural barrier. If the desert is a space station masquerading as a natural ecosystem like the island (spoilers, much?) then it needs a way to keep animals and survivors inside in a way that looks natural, and it accomplishes this with the Death Worms, and in the artificial environment, the worms can be fed and replaced as needed.
Helena latches to her theory that like the island, the desert is actually a space station posing as a natural environment. Assuming that other space stations are similar, she starts to think that the whole thing is some sort of grand-scale experiment with each station functioning as an experimental group. She decides to continue this train of thought later, as she gets news from a scout panicking about living rocks, which sounds idiotic to her...
...Until she came face to face with an angry Rock Elemental. She was so surprised by it that she couldn't even move when it charged, and she swore she was about to die. But then a wyvern swooped in and struck the golem with lightning, allowing her enough time to escape. Unfortunately, she got separated from the caravan, and now she's on her own again.
She remembers that the wyvern had a rider, but they were too covered up to get a good look at them. She thought it might've been Mei-Yin, since it would've been just like her to have tamed something like that so quickly. But she dismissed that as wishful thinking; she didn't even know if Mei-Yin was alive, let alone in the desert with her. The note concludes with Helena mentioning that she's begginning to get lonely.
Helena finds a new friend in the form of a jerboa that she had saved from starvation. Besides being really cute, the female jerboa didn't seem to have any practical use outside of some warmth in the cold desert nights. She supposes that she'll have to give the jerboa a name.
Later on though, she notices her fuzzy companion acting excitedly, and shortly after, it started raining. She brushes it off as a coincidence, but then the jerboa started acting skittish, and Helena decided to seek shelter to be on the safe side. Sure enough, the light shower had swiftly turned into a lightning storm, leading her to come to the conclusion that the jerboa could predict weather patterns. In light of this, Helena decides to name the jerboa "Radar".

[Scheneighnay]

Good to know Helena didn't die in SE. The sudden lack of notes made me think she got killed by a rock golem.

[TEM187]

So we done here?

[Foxtail]

Not yet. Sorry for my absence, I kinda forgot about this.

Helena was fortunate enough to stumble upon a settlement after seeking high ground, and they're willing to let her stay in exchange for work. These were strokes of luck, and factors that she couldn't rely too heavily on. She'll need to learn to survive on her own here.
The hard work she'd been assigned was exhausting, but they seemed to like Radar. Helena laments that she probably wouldn't have to do work if she was as cute as a jerboa. She laments that Rockwell would've been livid about this arangement. She vows to meet up with him again some day.
She's had to parctice her firing skills. Her instructor said that she "wasn't a complete disaster" on the firing range. She states that while she accepts violence as an inevitable part of life, she can't being herself to fire at another human.
She catches word of a swarm of giant mantises heading their way. The villagers say that they have clawed hands that can hold weapons and tools, which sounds crazy, but so does the idea of a mantis swarm in the first place. These mantises must share a distaste for cannibalism like ghost mantises. Nobody is keen on fighting them, but they're too fast to outrun. Hopefully they'll just pass by.
The bad news is that the mantises attacked the village, with everybody fearing for their lives and Helena being to petrified to fight back. The good news is that the wyvern rider from before swooped in and cleared the invading insects with fire and lightning. The villagers chanted a name: Wali al Aswad. The flight of wyverns decimated the mantis swarm and then flew into the horizon. Helena declares that she needs to meet this Wali al Aswad, if only to thank him.
Some villagers attach a religious connotation to Wali, believing him to be a heavenly guardian that appears to the worthy in their time of need. Others think he may be an extraterrestrial. Not content with simple beliefs, Helena decides to seek out this Wali and discover the truth.
The village gifted her with a Morellatops mount and supplies for her journey, and with Radar at her side, she feels more prepared for the desert than before, with predators and golems being the only things she needs to look out for. She also remarks that she's impressed with the shape she's in.

And, that's all I could find in the dev kit. In all likelihood, there are more notes to come (especially since there's going to be at least one more update before the game's finished), so until then, I suppose I'll transcribe some other explorer notes. I might even take a stab at translating some of them.

[DJBtheGamer]

Originally posted by Foxtail:

Not yet. Sorry for my absence, I kinda forgot about this.

Helena was fortunate enough to stumble upon a settlement after seeking high ground, and they're willing to let her stay in exchange for work. These were strokes of luck, and factors that she couldn't rely too heavily on. She'll need to learn to survive on her own here.
The hard work she'd been assigned was exhausting, but they seemed to like Radar. Helena laments that she probably wouldn't have to do work if she was as cute as a jerboa. She laments that Rockwell would've been livid about this arangement. She vows to meet up with him again some day.
She's had to parctice her firing skills. Her instructor said that she "wasn't a complete disaster" on the firing range. She states that while she accepts violence as an inevitable part of life, she can't being herself to fire at another human.
She catches word of a swarm of giant mantises heading their way. The villagers say that they have clawed hands that can hold weapons and tools, which sounds crazy, but so does the idea of a mantis swarm in the first place. These mantises must share a distaste for cannibalism like ghost mantises. Nobody is keen on fighting them, but they're too fast to outrun. Hopefully they'll just pass by.
The bad news is that the mantises attacked the village, with everybody fearing for their lives and Helena being to petrified to fight back. The good news is that the wyvern rider from before swooped in and cleared the invading insects with fire and lightning. The villagers chanted a name: Wali al Aswad. The flight of wyverns decimated the mantis swarm and then flew into the horizon. Helena declares that she needs to meet this Wali al Aswad, if only to thank him.
Some villagers attach a religious connotation to Wali, believing him to be a heavenly guardian that appears to the worthy in their time of need. Others think he may be an extraterrestrial. Not content with simple beliefs, Helena decides to seek out this Wali and discover the truth.
The village gifted her with a Morellatops mount and supplies for her journey, and with Radar at her side, she feels more prepared for the desert than before, with predators and golems being the only things she needs to look out for. She also remarks that she's impressed with the shape she's in.

And, that's all I could find in the dev kit. In all likelihood, there are more notes to come (especially since there's going to be at least one more update before the game's finished), so until then, I suppose I'll transcribe some other explorer notes. I might even take a stab at translating some of them.

Perhaps rockwell?

[Scheneighnay]

hehe. asswad.
I wonder if it translates into something.

[door]

Originally posted by Foxtail:

So, I read Helena's notes in the Dev Kit because I didn't feel like tracking them down in-game and the wiki's list is incomplete, so if I'm missing anything, that's why.

Also, something worth noting is that the preview notes that were posted online prior to the update that added explorer notes are not canon.

Starting from her first note, we learn that Helena has been on the ARK for a while, at least a few hundred days, that she's a biologist hailing from modern-day Australia, and that she has a tamed Argentavis named Athena. She's grateful for the opportunity to observe the creatures of ARK, animals that no biologist has ever had the chance to study before.
She begins to get suspicious of the island's peculiar climate when the winter in the tundra biome doesn't show any signs of stopping. Coupled with how strange it is to see an arctic region on a mostly tropical island, she takes this as a sign to investigate.
A tribe called the Howling Wolves lets Helena tag along in her expedition in the tundra biome, and it's shown that not only does she know Rockwell, another survivor with explorer notes, but that Athena was a gift from him.
As she's putting the finishing touches on the Mammoth dossier, she's surprised to see a Rex charge out of the snow and attack the herd. She's confused at how a Rex manages to survive in this climate and how the introduction of such a top predator doesn't completely throw off the ecosystem, but according to the Howling Wolves, this kind of thing is common. She vows to look further into this.
After doing some research and running experiments, Helena isn't successful at finding any sign of ecological imbalance despite the amount of competition between predators, the contrast between the tundra region and the rest of the island, and the fact that many of the creatures there are millions of years ahead of the dinosaurs. Something's not quite right, that much is clear...

This was a summary of the first five of the twenty six notes that are out at time of writing, not counting her notes in Scorched Earth. I'll do more later.

How exactly did you access the notes from the dev kit? I cant figure it out.

[Foxtail]

Originally posted by HADarbearius:

How exactly did you access the notes from the dev kit? I cant figure it out.

I found the textures for the explorer notes under this path:
PrimalEarth>CoreBlueprints>DinoEntries>Dossiers

I found the explorer notes in this folder along with the dossiers. Alternatively, you could enter the name of the character whose notes you want to see in the search bar on the Content Browser.