First time playing, need help with the next step after the boss fights on The Island

[Roehann]

My wife are playing on our own server, and we are playing through for the first time.

We are on the Island and getting close to fighting the last boss and wanted to understand the process of going to the next place. For us, we want to go to Crystal Island next.

Can someone explain what happens to our base, tames, inventories at base, inventories on us etc when we go to the next place?

Will we be able to bring our tames with us? Inventory? Equipment? Or will we start all over again with a rock and from the beginning?

Any tips on this process would be greatly appreciated since neither of us have ever played before and we have built up a nice base and gained a lot of inventory and blueprints, we would hate to lose them

Thank you,
Jamie

[Loki]

do you play on a server or do you host it on singleplayer?

[CryH. Solo your fav verse]

You have to put your items in a terminal and get them on the next map from a terminal or drop again. Characters can be uploaded but i recommend playing with a new character, as the grind makes it more fun for the first times exploring new maps. If you take your character with you, after ending some maps u get extra levels. The character must also be uploaded on a terminal/loot drop and downloaded from one as well.

[🦊 Hermit]

When you finish The Island, the next place to go canonically is Scorched Earth. That is where you continue the story with explorer notes and all. But if you aren't bothered about the story then yes you could go to any map you choose.

When you ascend, your characters will automatically be uploaded to the obelisk network. Again canonically you are supposed to just swap to your next map and start afresh without any of your tames or equipment, however if you choose you can redownload back to The Island and take things with you when you transfer. Important note: when you defeat the Overseer, any items on your character may be lost, so in the short time you have between the end of the fight and the cutscene, transfer all items, armour and equipment to one of your tamed creatures' inventories. They will be safe there.

After the cutscene, select to download your survivor, and choose somewhere to spawn (your beds may not show up at first, but spawn and die once and they should appear). The army which you used to fight the Overseer will appear at the entrance to the tek cave, so you can retrieve them and your equipment from there.

In order to take things with you to your next map, you will have to take them to an obelisk and upload them. Gather creatures around the obby terminal...once you have everything there in place, I would recommend using a console command to trigger a manual world save, so you have everything backed up in case you lose something in transfer. Then access the terminal inventory. On the right side you will have three tabs - Tribute to summon bosses, Ark Data for items and equipment, and Creatures.

* First click on Creatures, and you will see a list of all the tames in the area. Click on each of them in turn and hit the dino paw icon with an up arrow to upload them. They will vanish from the world and appear in the lower menu on the right. They will also drop any saddles or items they have on them to the floor, so make sure to pick those up if you want to save them.

* Next, remove all your armour, select the Ark Data tab, and drag all armour, equips and items into that inventory on the right. That will upload them so you can access them on the other map.

* Then finally, look for a button in the middle of the screen saying 'Upload Survivor'. Hit that button, and your character too will be removed from the map. You will be prompted to download them again - just hit Escape instead, and you will be taken to the new character screen. Do not make a new one, just quit out to the main menu.

After that, start up your game on the new map. When you log in you will be prompted to download the character instead of making a new one - do so, and choose where to spawn. Then when you are in the world, head to an obelisk and access it, and you will be able to pull your items and dinos out of the network and use them on the new map.

A few disclaimers though -

The transfer system can occasionally be buggy, so I would recommend taking backups of your saves before you start transferring, so if anything happens you can revert to those and not lose anything.

When transferring, it's best to stick to a maximum of 50 items and 20 tames. Some game modes (dedicated servers particularly) allow you to go over this, but if you do you run a real risk of your data becoming corrupted and losing things in your upload.

What happens to your save on the other map depends on whether the game is simulating it or not. If you are on a non-dedicated session or hosting the game on your own hardware, then likely the map will not be running, so it will be frozen in time just like a savegame when you are not playing. However if the map is hosted on a server and the server is still online, then time will continue to pass on the old map and if left alone for too long, your tames could starve to death.

[Roehann]

Originally posted by Loki:

do you play on a server or do you host it on singleplayer?

We are running our own server at home.

[Roehann]

Originally posted by CryH. Solo your fav verse:

You have to put your items in a terminal and get them on the next map from a terminal or drop again. Characters can be uploaded but i recommend playing with a new character, as the grind makes it more fun for the first times exploring new maps. If you take your character with you, after ending some maps u get extra levels. The character must also be uploaded on a terminal/loot drop and downloaded from one as well.

Thank you, we have thought about that and are thinking of doing that, but if push comes to shove we want to be able to pick up the comforts we have built up.. :)

[Roehann]

Originally posted by 🦊 Hermit:

When you finish The Island, the next place to go canonically is Scorched Earth. That is where you continue the story with explorer notes and all. But if you aren't bothered about the story then yes you could go to any map you choose.

When you ascend, your characters will automatically be uploaded to the obelisk network. Again canonically you are supposed to just swap to your next map and start afresh without any of your tames or equipment, however if you choose you can redownload back to The Island and take things with you when you transfer. Important note: when you defeat the Overseer, any items on your character may be lost, so in the short time you have between the end of the fight and the cutscene, transfer all items, armour and equipment to one of your tamed creatures' inventories. They will be safe there.

After the cutscene, select to download your survivor, and choose somewhere to spawn (your beds may not show up at first, but spawn and die once and they should appear). The army which you used to fight the Overseer will appear at the entrance to the tek cave, so you can retrieve them and your equipment from there.

In order to take things with you to your next map, you will have to take them to an obelisk and upload them. Gather creatures around the obby terminal...once you have everything there in place, I would recommend using a console command to trigger a manual world save, so you have everything backed up in case you lose something in transfer. Then access the terminal inventory. On the right side you will have three tabs - Tribute to summon bosses, Ark Data for items and equipment, and Creatures.

* First click on Creatures, and you will see a list of all the tames in the area. Click on each of them in turn and hit the dino paw icon with an up arrow to upload them. They will vanish from the world and appear in the lower menu on the right. They will also drop any saddles or items they have on them to the floor, so make sure to pick those up if you want to save them.

* Next, remove all your armour, select the Ark Data tab, and drag all armour, equips and items into that inventory on the right. That will upload them so you can access them on the other map.

* Then finally, look for a button in the middle of the screen saying 'Upload Survivor'. Hit that button, and your character too will be removed from the map. You will be prompted to download them again - just hit Escape instead, and you will be taken to the new character screen. Do not make a new one, just quit out to the main menu.

After that, start up your game on the new map. When you log in you will be prompted to download the character instead of making a new one - do so, and choose where to spawn. Then when you are in the world, head to an obelisk and access it, and you will be able to pull your items and dinos out of the network and use them on the new map.

A few disclaimers though -

The transfer system can occasionally be buggy, so I would recommend taking backups of your saves before you start transferring, so if anything happens you can revert to those and not lose anything.

When transferring, it's best to stick to a maximum of 50 items and 20 tames. Some game modes (dedicated servers particularly) allow you to go over this, but if you do you run a real risk of your data becoming corrupted and losing things in your upload.

What happens to your save on the other map depends on whether the game is simulating it or not. If you are on a non-dedicated session or hosting the game on your own hardware, then likely the map will not be running, so it will be frozen in time just like a savegame when you are not playing. However if the map is hosted on a server and the server is still online, then time will continue to pass on the old map and if left alone for too long, your tames could starve to death.

Thank you for a great response! We are loving this game, I know, we are late to the game in playing it.. lol but we do really enjoy it and wanted to make sure this next step is done correctly.

My wife is the one leaning towards Crystal Island, I would like to follow the story line, but you know.. Happy wife, Happy Life.. lol

Thanks again for a detailed response!

[🦊 Hermit]

lol good on ya for making that sacrifice for her Nothing stopping you doing a stint on Crystal and then dropping back into the story maps afterwards.

And glad you're liking the game, hope the transfer goes well. Just so long as you keep comprehensive backups you should be fine, even if something does end up breaking - you sound like an experienced tech handler so I'm sure you already know the value of keeping data backed up just in case

[Roehann]

I have a few of more questions about this process.

Is there a time limit on getting to the Obelisk in the next <new> map we go too? Fighting to it naked might be a challenge. :)

Also, can we go back to The Island and retrieve any items not sent during this first transfer later? Can we visit The Island again if we want to go back and hang out there sometime? I guess a better way to ask would be can we bounce between places any at all?

Lastly, we have decide to stick with the story line and go to SE next. Is there a better place to spawn in order to enable us to retrieve our things more readily? I know we get the choice of spawn locations and we us have never been on this map, any guidance would be helpful.

Thank you,

[🦊 Hermit]

There are config settings to set time limits on uploaded stuff, but so long as you haven't activated those they should be off by default, so you shouldn't have any issues with that no.

Yes, you can hop between maps any time, you'd just have to go through the upload process again. But you could leave the tames you took to the new map on there and just do your character if you wanted, would make it a bit easier, plus you'd have more space to bring extra stuff from the Island.

As for SE - all of the obelisk locations are pretty tricky, as they all have the potential for kaprosuchus to spawn and torpedo you as you approach. But in terms of the general areas and their danger levels, I'd say red obby is probably the easiest of the three to get to. So try to spawn south-center area and head west from there.

[DreadCthulhu]

Just to add, since you have beaten the bosses on the Island, you will be able to make a tek device called a transmitter. Transmitters let you do the upload/download process from the comfort of you own base. I reccomend uploading a transmitter before you go to a new map, that way you only have to do an obelisk run once, and can then put your base were ever you want it and still do map transfers.