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I actually have been playing the same as you, where I am not using online resources to find them and there's still several caves on the Island I haven't found yet.
I restarted my playthrough of the Island though, about a week ago, because I felt like the fact I had the "single player" checkbox checked for too much of the start of my first playthrough ruined it.
So that has set me back quite a bit. But I had over 100 hours on it without finding quite a few of the caves, so I think some of them must be hidden pretty well.
If you haven't tamed a dire wolf yet, they can help a bit. They have an ability when mounted to sniff out the explorer's notes, and sometimes those notes show as "under" you, so you know there's a cave down there and can start doing a spiral search pattern to find the entrance.
1. Asking for advice/info on things here is technically not you "doing it by yourself" thus avoiding the wiki intentionally is a bit of an interesting dichotomy....
2. Rex arent gonna fit in the caves sorry. Even if you cryopod the rex they're not going to fit inside the various corridors of the caves if you popped them out. The caves are a gauntlet of spiders, artho, scorp, snakes, bats and more depending on the cave. You're going to want creatures like nicely bred thylo's, bary's etc and some decent quality tier firearms and more for good measure. Based on how you've been approaching the things thus far, I'd also say, prepare for plenty of deaths.
3. There are also water caves with mosa and more too.
4. Unless you're an extremely thorough explorer(which by your 100 hours of play style seem to not indicate, there is a pretty good chance you're going to find finding the caves to be a challenge or impossible. Either let go the aforementioned silliness on avoiding the wiki or vids on how to spelunk the caves to get the artifacts to fight the bosses (done from teleporting from the obelisk) or spend a few more hundred hours carefully exploring.
5. Giving you hints on where they are is pretty much no different than using the wiki. Either do yourself or dont do yourself.
I wonder how it's feel when you did it! Finding something special is always be so satisfying.
Oh thank you for Dire Wolf information. I'll bring them in my exploration!
I did not say I avoid Wiki entirely. I will read them eventually when I will feel I'm just running in circle that I waste too much time. It's gonna be fun exploration on surface. If I can't find them on first trip, I'll just do it again. Until the time I get bored.
Water cave, do you mean it's underwater? So I have not to just explore the land? Underwater exploration is a no no for me cuz I have thalassophobia. So I'll just skip it.
Yes rex just gonna be my buddy on the surface so I'll not be decapitated by predators. I didn't think they're gonna be fit in a hole either.
I will spend 100h for this mission only, if that's not gonna help I'll just give up and look the Wiki. Fun adventure is what I looking for :)
IMO hinting does not give the exact answer, that's the difference. 'I can get pizza there, but I can still smell it from people who get it', I don't know if this is correct sentence, lol.
The ones I've found so far haven't just been "holes in the ground" though, they've been relatively well landscaped entrances. lol I don't want to say more lest it give away locations.
I like building and I like exploring, which is why it's taking me so long to find them all... I get caught up in building projects that take a while, between the construction itself and the gathering of all the materials.
Like right now I'm building a tall glass tower on top of the Elbow Rock on the islet that I call "Retsam's Islet" (cause he's the one that tipped me off to it being a good starting base location). Taking forever to get all the metal and crystal needed for it.
But yes, its a good feeling to find them. And scary as he** going into the first few....they ain't no joke when you're still leveling and gearing up.
I get what you're saying about asking for advice vs. asking someone to pin point on a map. If you're the type of person who enjoys the sense of discovery, it's a very different thing. Some people don't play games for that reason though, so they won't necessarily understand the distinction.
It's like the difference between asking to borrow a compass and asking to borrow a gps device and map when backpacking in the wilderness.
That means underwater caves as well i'm afraid.
Thankfully these are easier to find though, their entrances are pretty large compared to land caves and there are unique environment elements around them which I won't mention specifically that indicate their presence.
I have thalassophobia myself as well which makes playing through Subnautica hell of an experience XD
But honestly there isn't much in ARK that really triggers it.
I get uncomfortable when the foggy weather clouds up the water but overall it's not too bad, there's only one enemy in ARK that triggered it in the past but i've conquered my discomfort of it by taming them and riding them (which is pretty easy once you know how) and they're pretty awesome ^^
1 - 5 rexes are great to protect you, but horrible for exploring because they are so big and slow. My favorite animal to explore The Island was the Thylacoleo. It's a fast runner and a fast swimmer. And it can climb vertical surfaces. It can overpower most enemies and it can out-run anything it can't kill.
2 - I've found more caves from the sky than I did from the land. When you fly high above the land, and look far into the distance, the lay-out of the land renders in faster than the cave entrances. So sometimes, you'll just sort of see a hole in the map, somewhere in the distance. When you come closer you'll always find a cave entrance in the place where the hole was before.
3 - Caves are challenges. They are made to be difficult. Some caves are freezing cold, or the very air you breath is poison, or they are filled with lakes of lava. Be ready for anything, and go in prepared or don't go in at all.
Some entrances are fairly obvious, but some are well hidden and even though I've been there a hundred times I still have issues finding the exact location of the opening.
There are underwater caves, and yes, it's terrifying, and getting back on land feels like having the world lifted off your shoulders. It makes for an thrilling experience though. There are 2 dangerous underwater caves with a hidden treasure at the end but also a lot of other small, safe underwater caves filled with oxygen scattered around the ocean.
There is one cave that has a door and needs a 'key.' The rest of them are all holes with varying degrees of obviousness.
Good luck on your travels, but don't expect to find all of them.
A saber is a great tame to do caves on, they are strong for their size and small enough to fit in any of them. You'll also want to bring several flak sets with you. Arthros will eventually break your armor even when riding. You'll want a gun too, preferably a pump shotgun or a simple pistol. Bring food water and med brews. Make sure your tame has plenty of food too, raw meat heals carnivores when you feed it to them.
For on foot caves it's exactly the same thing only with no tame. Just flak, weapons, supplies. I do recommend mindwiping and putting alot of points into health and movement speed. At 160% movement speed not much can catch you. You'll be able to kite back shooting baddies.
If you intend to access the 3 island bosses(gamma beta and alpha tiers of them) AND the 3 tiers of the overseer boss, you require artifacts found in the artifact caves AND animal part trophies.
Yes there are artifact caves on not just the island but other maps. Some are far under water. Some above ground caves also require traversing watery segments. Worse still Genesis 1 map has a whole quadrant dedicated to play and progression via underwater means.
Also there are underwater animal parts required to access those bosses.
You are thus going to have to use either admin commands to spawn in the artifacts and animal trophies you need to fight bosses or you are going to have to give up level progression beyond 100(you're going to miss almost 50 levels if you make that choice across the dlc maps and island in total.) You also will not be able to access the tek engrams from them either.
Some resources white and black pearls and many others may prove challenging to procure with a fear of water. You can thus also again choose to use alternative methods(mods etc).
Alot of ark is tied to water exploration and resource harvesting so just be aware of those limitations and how you can circumvent them.
Are you trying to give this guy a stroke? Iv spent thousands of hours under the oceans of TheIsland and Thecenter I LIKE the water and its still pretty damn stressful down there. Send someone that is actively afraid of the ocean into something like the caverns of lost hope? Forget it - first time a squid poped out of the wall and a trio of mosas bullrush you, yeah no one in the air has that problem lol.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=847500699
For people like me that find the ocean terrifying, the ocean in Ark is no less intense just because it's in a video game. While it isn't lifelike it's close enough to trigger a strong desire to leave. And despite having thousands of hours here, with a significant amount of time underwater, I also want to say that it has not helped with the fear at all. It's still spooky to jump into the ocean biome where I can see the green name tags of my tames after all this time, and I don't expect it to get better.
That said, the caves were actually a bit easier for my mind than the rest of the ocean. I think it's because you can see the walls floor and ceiling there. By losing the massive openness of the ocean it becomes a bit easier to deal with, though still not nice by any metric.
Of course, it's not like you can really do lost hope normally without first getting some very strong underwater tames that require you doing the normal ocean content first.
I would suggest to go ahead and bookmark the Wiki. Even with the GPS coordinates you are going to find some caves hard to find. There are lots of resources in the caves. Not to mention the loot crates and artifacts.
Sounds like you have been playing for a while. Do yourself a favor and read the Wiki. You will learn more to make the game more fun. You are not going to run out of things to do. There are several free ARKs you can use. Several mods can make your life easier too. Just have fun. Good luck.
Ark is a game where the Devs have put some serious effort into making pretty much everything customizable to suit the player. Short of the fact it doesn't allow you to drain the oceans and lakes, it really isn't necessary at all to do any underwater stuff if you do not wish to.