Ark: Survival evolved, Story and/or quests?

[WOLFHORS3]

So I've played Ark quite a lot. Online with friends, local MP with my son and I streamed MP a bit. My question is, what is the story or quest line. I mean I know we catch and kill Dinos, build bases, Tame dinos and breed dinos, level up , etc. What do we do to advance the story. Is there a story? What are the goals? How do we find out? How are we supposed to know?
I've only played on the Island and have purchased no DLCs but how do I get started on the story/questline? I mean in all the hours I've played I've come across nothing that points to or indicates I'm supposed to DO anything. I figure I've just gotten distracted with all the other stuff but now I decided to actually start doing the games..what..quests? goals? I have no idea where to even start. I went to the Arks but there's just stuff I can't get into yet.
And Thanks in advance. I know this must seem like the dumbest question ever but even after a web search I haven't really seen anything helpful. And the Ark community seems like where I always get answers.

[Gomer]

The Notes you find in the chests are the story

[Chaser the Tiny Hippo]

The story is pieced together from the various explorer notes that can be found lying around on the ark.
Your 'quest' is to gather the artifacts from the caves and fight the bosses at the giant floating obelisks.

[WOLFHORS3]

Yeah but there are tribute items,and you gotta summon portals or go to arenas to fight bosses. I don't think I've ever even seen a tribute item. I've been all over the island, tamed or killed almost everything and I have no idea how to even start getting a tribute item or where a boss might be.
All the guides I can locate onine are about genisis

[The_Kuervito]

Find the explorer notes/dino dossiers or use wiki/ see youtube

[Aeter Vespernox]

You find the artifacts in the Island's caves. https://ark.gamepedia.com/Caves <-map on that page.

Once you activate an Obelisk, it projects a dome around the platform and a timer for the teleporter. Make sure all your desired tames and friends are in the area before it launches you at the boss or you're end up losing quite a lot of stuff. The usual progression is Green > Blue > Red, as green is tanky, but not too damaging, blue is weak but hurts a lot and red is hard to get to, hard to hit and deals percentage damage over time. If you're playing on vanilla settings, take more big dinos like Rexes, Therozinosaurs and Yutyrannuses than you think are reasonable. However, you can't bring anything too big like a Diplodocus, Bronto or Giganotosaurus. D:

As you beat the bosses of the Island, you'll unlock special Tek engrams including the best armor in the game. The higher the boss level you beat, the more resources you'll get from beating them, all the way up to the final bosses of each map giving you a higher level cap*.

Once you have beaten all three of the island's bosses, you can activate the Tek cave atop the magma pools of the volcano. That will lead you to the final boss of the Island and you'll ascend to the next map, Scorched Earth. SE doesn't have ascension for some reason, so once you beat the boss, you'll have to manually download your character at an Obelisk and go to Aberration. From there it's the normal path of kill boss and ascend to go to Extinction. Then you just download yourself into the Genesis map whenever you want to, really.

For the story, you'll want to hunt down the Explorer Notes all over the map. The Island is absolutely littered with them, so it may take a while. Each time you pick one up, though, you get an exp boost for a few minutes. The boost stacks, too. https://ark.gamepedia.com/Explorer_Map_(The_Island) <- map

Hopefully you can progress easy now :D

*edit for clarification

[Serangel]

Most maps have the artifacts in caves located around the map. You can google "the island artifact locations" for example and it will show you where the caves are. The rest of the tribute stuff is self explanatory, alpha raptor claws drop from alpha raptors ect. You can see what you need for the bosses at the obilisks, also on Google.

[WOLFHORS3]

Thanks guys! I knew I could count on the Ark community. That helps a lot and now i have a basic picture of how things work. And That, is exactly what i wanted.

[Raza Priest]

You defeat the first 3 bosses on the island by getting their respective artifacts and summoning them, thereby unlock Tekgrams (cool high tech craftables). Then you do the Tek Cave. Finishing the cave changes your implant color. You also see the future ARKS on the ending cutscene.

Then you go to Scorched Earth, tame wyverns, ride them like dragons, then use them to kill the manticore. (albeit rexes are still better for boss killing)

Then you travel to Aberration, a subterranean map (everything is ubderground in a huge cave system, inspired by Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth). BUT. You will get stranded here, as the obelisks (which are used for transferring characters and dinos and items from other maps) are located on the surface of aberration. On daytime the surface is scorching hot, killing any living organism that goes out of the subterannean aberration. On night, the heat goes away, but it will be populated with fearsome reapers (scary monsters). So, just a word of advice, if you transfer to aberration, be prepared to start with nothing, because it will take a while until you get the proper gear to be able to do a "surface run" to be able to get all your dinos and items that you farmed from other maps. After that, depending on how you bred your army of dinos, you can start raiding the aberration cave system for their artifacts and begin killing the boss of Aberration (which is a freaking eldritch god) then that's it. You finished Aberration and take pride because you've beaten one of the hardest ARK's. Cutscene also shows the introduction to your next adventure-Extinction.

Now, many hates Extinction. But I loved it. It seems to be inspired by future post apocalyptic scifis. You have this huge abandoned futristic city and a wasteland (Like Mad Max) with some other biomes in between (including another subterranean cave)

Its a very pretty map, and arguably hard if you start without any dinos/wyverns. Here, you start feeling the endgame. You have to beat the King Titan, a godzilla esque creature. But to do that you have to defeat/or tame the three titans (Ice, Desert, Forest). These titans are huuuuuuuuge, larger than anything youve seen. You can tame them as well, and WILL be needed if you want to have a chance of beating Godzilla. You also need to use your Tek gear here (tek armor etc etc) and Element (a precious resource) is very easy to find here to fuel your tek items.

So yeah, that's how me and my friends played ARK. And ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ was it a masterpiece. It felt like a real adventure. Sometimes things go wrong, sometimes you succeed, but that's the best part of ARK, the dynamic stories you are able to tell. Being stranded in Aberration after being seperated from the dinos that I tamed and the items I crafted in my first 100hrs, only to brave depths of the underworld to make a radiation suit so I can go to the surface, to being almost killed by reapers since it turned nighttime as I was running with my tames from the surface X)
Good times.

If you think this is a spoiler, it isnt. There's a LOT of things I left out which is up to you to discover. Anyway, have fun playing Ark with you and your buddies. May you have hours filled with awesomeness and epic moments :)


Just stay out of online servers. Thats a whole different league. That's filled with politics and beginners dont stand a chance. Ciao!

[Raza Priest]

Also, I finished two of the ARKS on singleplayer alone (Island (didnt finish tek cave though) and Scorched, and Halfway through Abb when I restarted because my friends had to join) so yeah, you can finish the game solo (tweak some settings, mine's balanced, 2x)