Solo tips for beginner?

[Alucard †]

Not going to lie.
I am getting brutalized.

Can't explore much without getting instantly murdered by something i can't fight or outrun.

Even the safe little beach spot i secured gets occassionally compromised by very dangerous dinos.

Any dino i tame dies to something after few minutes even in my base. Like the Pterodon I've put in a spike pen got attacked by a big raptor looking dino and flew away just to get murdered by something else away from the base.

[Liralen]

Think ancient castle design for building your base.

Put your pteranodon's on the roof of your house. Of course, you have place stairs to get to it.

If you're playing on the Island, build a raft, use it to get to the far southeast portion of the map, which players call Herbivore Island. Nothing will harm you there, unless you harm them first. You will be able to harvest metal and crystal there, which begins your trek to end game resource gathering abilities. You can tame anklyosaurus there, which gathers them both in greater quantities than you can.

Even if you don't do any of the above, you are getting exp, which you can use to learn engrams that will improve your ability to make things that will improve your ability to survive, while at the same time, you can improve your ability to run.

Edited Note: Ark's crowning point is that what your real life brain knows is more important than your character's brawn. There are a ton of videos that will inform your real life brain.

[🦊 Hermit]

I don't know what level you have reached yet, but here's a few tips I often give to people who ask for suggestions on this forum - I hope some of them may assist you too:

If you haven't already, try to fence out a 'safe zone' to store all your stuff, even if it's just out of thatch foundations and walls. You can upgrade it to a proper wooden wall with fence foundations/supports later. Just so long as the wall around it is high enough to block line-of-sight from surrounding dinos, nothing should attack, and practically nothing can climb over a three-high wall so nothing will wander in either.

Unlock the slingshot as soon as possible, that's the key to starting to tame things. With it you can knock out the dilophosaurs, which are weak on their own, but get a pack of them and they can be surprisingly strong. I've had dilos save me from an argentavis when their spit slowed the bird down, allowing me to get some distance and use ranged attacks on it. And a large army of them can even take down a low level rex...higher level if you have a mount yourself to tank while they hit it. And if all else fails they're easy to replace, so you can leave them to fight while you make your escape.

Bolas are also invaluable, as they can stop a small creature in it's tracks. Get some on your hotbar as soon as you can, and keep them there even up to endgame. When you get a bola, you can start supplementing your dilo pack with some raptors for extra damage.

Parasaurs and phiomia are also susceptible to bolas, and can make a nice mount to ride on/weight carrying mule early game. Or if you get the chance, tame a trike - can't be bola'd, but sometimes you can find them trapped in trees, or stand on top of a cliff where they can't reach you. Aim for their body rather than their armoured head. Trikes in particular are fantastic as they are very tanky, and do decent knockback, so if you time your attacks right you can avoid getting hit by predators completely. A good trike can even take down alpha raptors, and perhaps alpha carnos.

Predators will always go for the easy meal, so if you pump a bit of stamina so you can run for longer, then run past a herbivore, likely the pred will turn to attack that other animal and leave you free to make your escape. And if you stick to the beaches at first, where you have a good line of sight in all directions, you can generally see and avoid threats before they spot you. Use dino pathing to your advantage too - they aren't clever at avoiding obstacles, so if you run between trees and duck and weave around rocks you can slow them or perhaps even get them stuck.

Water can also be your friend. Most land dinos will give up chasing you pretty quick if you dive into the ocean. Just watch out for megalodons or piranhas.

[Alucard †]

Thanks for all the tips.
Currently i'm 56 level. (Increased the xp rates a bit aswell as taming rates for my first ever world)

Getting a bit overwhelmed with the crafts and materials.
Hence why i tried to explore further just to die horribly.

Most of my deaths were to Sarcos and Raptors it seems.
They are really fast and stunlock me easily.

About Parasaur mounts.
I found this mechanized thing wandering the beach recently:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2932251661
Is this one rare? I'm kind of hesitant to even use it as a mount given my luck with tamable dinos getting killed shortly after.

[Alucard †]

This game does not want me to tame a Pterodon .. another one lost to ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. It got attacked in my base while i was making renovations and flew away never to be seen again.

[DarkFred666]

Make Bolas my friend there will help you explore the map a lot and a grapplinghook crossbow+parachute and a low lvl trike as starter tame is always good, a trike has a knockback attack so if you time it right a Raptor for example cant reach you.

[Alucard †]

Originally posted by DarkFred666:

Make Bolas my friend there will help you explore the map a lot and a grapplinghook crossbow+parachute and a low lvl trike as starter tame is always good, a trike has a knockback attack so if you time it right a Raptor for example cant reach you.

I have bolas and they are ineffective against bigger dinos that can instantly stunlock and murder me.

[Alucard †]

Gonna try the crossbow shute tho.

[Q̴̡̼̽̒̕u̸̘̪̾͊̚͜e̴]

Originally posted by ⎛ Alucard ⎞ ✟:

.. another one lost to ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. It got attacked in my base while i was making renovations and flew away never to be seen again.

Set it to Passive and it wont flee or attack anything.

[steventirey]

Originally posted by ⎛ Alucard ⎞ ✟:

About Parasaur mounts.
I found this mechanized thing wandering the beach recently:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2932251661
Is this one rare? I'm kind of hesitant to even use it as a mount given my luck with tamable dinos getting killed shortly after.

Rarer than a normal parasaur, but they aren't all that rare. You will find tek dinos all over the place.

[ShadyMania]

i started playing like 2/3 weeks ago and i already have 80 hours in the game. i suggest you start using some mods like structures plus, death inventory keeper, dino tracker and spyglass v2. One of the most important things early game is to tame an argentavis(you can look up traps on youtube) and use some cheats when u die like -fly and -walk if you dont want to waste lots of time going back for your items/tames. Increase the quality for supply crates to like 1.5(at the normal rate which is 1 you will most likely find ♥♥♥♥ drops in legendary supply crates) and thats about it.

[Sicksadpanda]

In Ark, your mounts are essential to survival. It's not just a fun to ride thing, it's going to do about 80% of your tasks.

Taming an army of dino is also a great idea. Even if they're dilos, they will obilerate a lot of beach threats in seconds. Then you just need to upgrade the pack to raptors, then better. Eventually, once you get to taming Rexes or similar, you won't need an army.

There's no shame in boosting weight and resource gathering rates. That's what I typically always do since the grind can get boring fast. And you'll be able to build bases faster and effectively.

Additionally, I'd just max out your engram points or have an auto engram learner. I see no reason to limit your engram points in single player since the purpose of engram point is to let your team manage what they learned and contribute to the team. Increasing engram points per level and/or having an auto learn isn't something you'll find in single player settings though...you'll need to adjust configs or install a mod for it.

Ark is a very steep learning curve, but once you get the basic down, it'll come to you naturally for how you should survive.

[Shinzor]

Originally posted by ⎛ Alucard ⎞ ✟:

Originally posted by DarkFred666:

Make Bolas my friend there will help you explore the map a lot and a grapplinghook crossbow+parachute and a low lvl trike as starter tame is always good, a trike has a knockback attack so if you time it right a Raptor for example cant reach you.

I have bolas and they are ineffective against bigger dinos that can instantly stunlock and murder me.

Make more Bolas and knock out/tame your self a pack of raptors and watch them jump/push stuff away from you, and always keep some extras on you when you run into higher level ones so you can tame them as you find them, when i first started out and had the same problems I always walked around with 3+ raptors to save my butt while farming with other Dinos, be mindful of Alphas as they will wreck your low level tames even in a pack if they are not leveled enough, I lost many to alphas early on lol

[123]

Watch some youtube guides. These are good enough for starter https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Hh7VQqY1vI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O07ecL6PoNE
Use mods if you are playing on singleplayer. I use them because i don't have time anymore to play on official setting.

[123]

I use these mods on singleplayer:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1645346094
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=609425335
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2182894352
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=751991809
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1428596566
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1404697612
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=889745138
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1609138312
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1999447172
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1967741708
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=821530042

[Alucard †]

Thanks but i will refrain from using mods at least for now.

My PC is pretty mid and i don't want to bloat the game any further.