Rexes, Rockwell & Radiation - Requesting Recommendations.

[🦊 Hermit]

So despite playing Ark for almost 4.5k hours now, I've never actually faced any of the alpha bosses. However in the coming month or two that is due to change. For a long time now on my solo game I've been breeding tek rexes for mutations, and now have an army with crazy stats, very high def saddles, and even the Antinode mod to boost their melee damage even higher. Frankly I'm probably overpreparing, but I'd rather that than to go in and lose everything because I wasn't ready enough.

I'm fairly confident about the bosses on the Island and SE, plus the official mod maps which I'm planning to do as well, and I'm even hoping this army will be able to put up against Extinction's titans too. But the one thing that has got me concerned is Rockwell...not, as one might expect, the actual fight against him, but rather the radiation my rexes will be exposed to before and after the fight.

Obviously as tek rexes are not native to Abs, I know that they will be vulnerable to the red zone's poison. Repeatedly filling so many creatures with mushroom stew every five minutes while I make preparations for the battle would not really be feasible, and while we could surely take on reapers on the surface to use the obelisks there, I'd be worried that the sun may come out while we're in the arena and they will all be melted to scrap by the time I get back to them. And yet, I'd really prefer not to have to breed up another line of creatures, say spinos or megalosaurs, just for the one battle if I can help it.

So I'm just wondering - has anyone ever tried taking a rex army into the Abs boss battle? And if so, what was your experience with it, and do you have any tips I should be aware of?

[Rotiart]

You're probably gonna have a rough time trying to Solo Rockwell, tenfold if you don't have a transmitter. I strongly, strongly suggest that you acquire the S+ Tek transmitter before you bother with doing Rockwell. What the S+ Transmitter does is allow you to teleport into the boss arenas from anywhere on the map, and the boss arena will teleport you right back to where your transmitter is. Beyond that, solo, the fight is going to be a massive pain in the ass, I suggest you get the Tek Chestpiece tekgram, tek boots, and tek leggings before the boss fight. I also strongly suggest a good shotgun, and a good drake saddle. You'll need to run around the Arena on your rock drake, shooting the tentacles as you go. You're rex Army should be whistled onto Rockwell's heart for when it can be damaged. If you try to have the rexes attack the tentacles, you're in for a rough time because of the stun attack. Speaking of the stun attack, that's where the tek armor comes in, it will allow you to get away from the stun if you drake gets hit, allowing you time to destroy the stunning tentacle. I don't know how much weaker Rockwell is in solo mode, but you're probably gonna need a stellar shotgun to carry you through. Another thing that's especially threatening to solo players is the plasma balls, they can really snowball the fight if nobody is shooting them.

[Chaser the Tiny Hippo]

Doesn't the terminal at the bottom function as an upload/download station?
You could skip most of the rads and just download and instantly feed them the stew if you think you can get them all downloaded and positioned in ~5 minutes. Rad damage isn't massive so you should be fine even if they're hurt for a 15 seconds before you can stew them. After the fight just reupload them, again, rad damage isn't huge so unless they were seriously low after the fight they'll probs be fine.
If you're on a server you could use supply drops to fight it, but those are a bit peculiar to get to sometimes on Ab and it could be hard to get a boss fighting group around one.
Another option is to use an s+ transmitter.
Last option is to use a surface obilisk at 90% night and time the fight so it's night when you come out, but with all the potential time problems of things getting stuck and reapers that's the most dangerous choice.

[🦊 Hermit]

S+ transmitter...y'know I'd completely forgotten about that thing for boss teleportation lol. I was looking forward to getting it for it's dino scan function, but of course it works for the other obelisk functions as well. So when teleported back out of the arena after using a transmitter, it will definitely place you back where you started and not in the depths of the red zone?

And thanks for the other tips too. I am aware of the basic strategy of shoot tentacles > creatures on heart, and I do have a good shotty which will hopefully take care of them pretty quick, but I hadn't thought of the tek armor aspect, that's not a bad idea for if things do go south.

[Chaser the Tiny Hippo]

Originally posted by Hermit:

So when teleported back out of the arena after using a transmitter, it will definitely place you back where you started and not in the depths of the red zone?

Yes. This is by far the safest (and most expensive) way to do it.

[Rotiart]

Also, you'll have to make sure rexes are allowed on Aberration in your game

[🦊 Hermit]

Expense won't be an issue, I got S+ vaults (600 slots) overflowing with resources in my main base on Ragnarok, and I have an element dust gacha plus I'll have the element from the Island and SE bosses once I've done them ;) And yeah, the game is run on my own private server so I have it set up to allow foreign dino downloads onto Abs, even flyers.

Thanks for the tips, both of you^^ Turns out I was being dumb (nothing new there) but the reminders and extra suggestions are most welcome, cheers :D