What is your favourite Ark map and why?

[Konachibi]

As title. I've been playing Ark for a couple of weeks recently due to now having a computer capable of running it well. When returning I started on Scorched Earth, and then moved to The Island. Now I'm working on Aberration, with the intention eventually being to play through all of the official DLC maps.
There was only one issue. Prior to doing a new run on The Island, I'd forgotten how bad that map was. It's far too cramped with all of the different species which causes complete chaos no matter where I go, the caves are poorly designed and horribly unbalanced, and the lead-up to the final boss is just terribly implemented. My entire time on Scorched Earth was really fun, and I never considered anything in that expansion map as bad or poorly designed. It was a showcase of how good Ark could be, while The Island felt like the opposite.

Thus comes the topic of this thread. I'm looking for a map I can relax on, something similar to Scorched Earth but with more biome and creature variety, and preferably one that avoids having to deal with water-based creatures and water caves so I don't have to try and fight my thalassophobia in order to progress. I have all of the maps on the store page installed, so any of them are an option, or if there's a good one in the workshop those are also an option (if they're still there, the maps section of the workshop shows as empty for me right now)

[CrusherFabio]

Gen2 and Fjordur. The first for Tek Stryders and Tek gear, great spawn, great dinos, funny missions, lots and lots of resources in the space biome, especially element, element shards and element dust. The second is a mastercrafted map. You have everything you could want in FJordur. It's also Viking themed and there's the ultimate end game weapon: The Mjolnir.

Tìhose are my main maps. I also love Crystal Isle. The floating islands are so beautiful.

The gameplay on Gen2 is pretty relaxing and for water base... Gen2 has the most beautiful and secret underbase location, but there are lots of creatures down there so...
BUT you really don't need to go underwater on Gen2. Sadly, the biomes are kinda boring. No artifact hunting, no cave diving. Exploration on Gen2 is minimal, just for taming or drop runs. No boss fight either, saved for some missions (i.e the summoner) and the big man himself in his final form.
Also, on G2 you can use hlna to scan dinos and you can buy from her pretty much everything you need, from resources to emotes to skins.
Also on G2 you will spawn with the federation exo suit, that dosen't require element to work and it's also a beautiful skin for the tek gear.

The spawn in ARK is absurd and broken, so you will always have overspawn, no matter the map, and finding high levels on story maps is really a problem. For a better spawn system, use mods like Custom Dino Levels or Kraken Better Dinos. Modded maps like Rag and Fj have a great spawn system but overspawn will always be here. Remember: ark is a hell of unresolved bugfest. Use the cmd destroywilddinos to clear the overspawn on the maps, if this is an issue for your pc and yourself. This dosen't prevent overspawn to be a thing again but for a bit your map will be less populated.

Imo, the best way to play is making a main base on a map (g2 and Fj for me), then go on the other maps for boss fighting, ascension and unique creatures (ie. Crystal Wyverns, Sinomacrops, Amarg, etcetera). Just make some outpost bases in every map and you will be good.

For Artifact Hunting: go Crystal Isles.

[Konachibi]

Thanks for the info!

To be honest, it's not overspawns that bother me on The Island, it's that that map was used as Studio Wildcard's dumping ground for every new creature they made, and it has years upon years of just having more creatures thrown on to it, so there's no equilibrium there, it's just a chaos of herbivores and carnivores constantly duking it out every 10 feet because there's not enough room on that map for every species to exist.

Scorched Earth was the opposite of that, everything had it's place, it felt like a functioning eco-system where each creature had a habitat and only occasionally would a carnivore encroach on a herbivore's home to get food.

I gave Crystal Isles a try, and first impressions weren't too good. I started in the north only to find I was freezing to death, and it had put me on a plateau with no clear way to get down without taking big fall damage. After dieing I tried the south and found the same problem except without the cold. Giving Ragnarok a try at the moment, and it seems ok so far. I just wish we had more desert maps, or at least maps that didn't have oceans surrounding them.

[🦊 Hermit]

My thoughts on every official map can be found here - be warned, it seems we disagree significantly on The Island and Scorched Earth, but I respect others' viewpoints even if I may not share them myself

https://steamcommunity.com/app/346110/discussions/0/3768985793298746502/#c3768985793298821577

As to your specific request about a map without too much water and similar to Scorched - perhaps Extinction would be up your alley? Most of the map is barren wasteland like the deserts of SE, but it does have the ruined tek city in the center of the map, the snow and desert biodomes, and the sunken forest to the north west. And in terms of water, at most it has a few relatively shallow lakes, nothing as deep as an ocean. It offers some extra gameplay in terms of 'horde defense' orbital supply drops and element veins, and has four bosses to fight, three of which can even be tamed.

[Mason]

The coolest looking is definitely Aberration. Crystal Isles is nice too. For the longest time though, Ragnarok was the best, although I think Fjordur has replaced it since it does pretty much everything better than Rag. Better base spots, being able to teleport around the map, and a good amount of resources. But I dunno, all the maps are worth playing, maybe except for The Center.

[CrusherFabio]

Originally posted by Konachibi:

Thanks for the info!
Giving Ragnarok a try at the moment, and it seems ok so far. I just wish we had more desert maps, or at least maps that didn't have oceans surrounding them.

There is no ocean in Gen2, just two lakes and some rivers. Gen2 take place in a "ginormous space ship". The deepest water is where the "secret" underwater base is. A bit claustrophobic, since it's an underwater biome inside an artificial cave of the ship, but no ocean or sea whatsoever. It's like a hole in a lake.

Crystal Isles have a S.E Biome right next to the wyvern trench/ griffin nests zone.
And while there is water around the map, isn't a deep sea or a deep ocean.

Originally posted by 🦊 Hermit:

As to your specific request about a map without too much water and similar to Scorched - perhaps Extinction would be up your alley?

Another great choice here

[Konachibi]

Thanks for the input everyone. I'll give the crystal isles map another try.

@Hermit, I agree with a lot of points about the maps, and I do agree that The Island can be fun, my only issue with it is how cramped it is with different species. As you said for one map, they picked a theme and ran with it rather than trying to stick every dino in there, and that's what I enjoyed about Scorched Earth, and what I feel is wrong with The Island. On a half-mile stretch of beach you can get chased by a Baryonyx, a Rex, a Spino, a Sarco, a Dilo, a Thyla, robbed by a Pego and seagull and stunlocked by a Microraptor. It's great that the map has so much variety, but there's simply no room for it all to fit without giving the player the middle finger in the process. Meanwhile on S.E, I had my base inside a nice little valley with some water, set up some walls on either side, and knew that I could step outside those walls and the worst I'd have to deal with is maybe a terror bird or a sabertooth until I travelled some distance. It was hostile, but not so much that I couldn't get a foothold, and meanwhile the caves in S.E are a billion times better than the ones on The Island, which feel poorly designed and overly-dickish in their design, while the S.E ones look and feel like effort was put in to creating them, they aren't just rock meshes haphazardly stuck together to create tunnels and platforms that may or may not just yeet the player off of them without warning due to janky physics and weird hitboxes.

Saying all of this though, I've been watching some let's plays on youtube by Syntac involving Aberration, and I'm starting to realise that, while the map is really cool and varied, I think the steps I'd need to take to make it to the boss and ascend may be more effort than I'm willing to put in to it. I started with the goal of completing all of the maps to have a fully ascended character and then just drop on to whatever map was my favourite and just have fun there, but now I'm thinking that's a goal I'm not willing to indulge in any longer, because I know I'd just end up resorting to using admin cheats to skip so much of the process like I was forced to do on The Island ('cos screw doing underwater caves).

So yeah, I'll take another crack at Crystal Isles and hope that's a map I can settle on.

[KOOLLAYDTAC]

For me and being entirely honest I've only played the game a few times since EA and mainly either on The Island or The Center. With the modded Star Wars server I set up for playing with some friends I went with The Lost Island because it's the biggest official map in Ark. So lots of building space to create a new world in. I'm actually kind of enjoying that map. I actually have decreed a new name for it. It is here by known as Planet Bob as a nod off to the movie Titian A.E.. lol I like playing on Planet Bob. lol

[Mason]

Originally posted by Coffee And Games:

for KOOLLAY er whatever

It would seem. she like the centre map, and like to talk dirty. And...Gets off on star wars references while pinching nipple, (count me out) only nipples for star trek here we go again.... we have KJool decreeing that he or she or it is having some new world map..... hey this sounds cool.... except it has decreed a name for the map. (gay) (LGBTQ why U) map?

Ah okay the planet is called BOB and the moon that circles it is called KNeel, so bob and kneel happen one a day.

??? Is your English just bad or are you like insane?

[Mason]

No I'm serious, is your English terrible or are you just loopy? Because nothing you say makes sense, just incoherent blabbering.

[Konachibi]

There, now that this thread has been cleaned of that the topic can continue as normal.

@KOOLLAYDTAC, I'm liking the Titan A.E reference! I'll eventually get around to trying out all of the maps, but I'll make sure to call The Center Planet Bob from now on :D