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Also if you're playing singleplayer I highly suggest changing taming/mating rates
Also be picky with engram points
We've all been there where we've died once, and then get into a loop of dying over and over again trying to retrieve our death bag, but everything you get in early game might feel like a grind, but it's really just crap. Until you start getting quality blueprints, cryopods with good tames, mastercraft or asc stuff, you proboably don't have anything worth dying for.
On the other hand, I basically skip early game at this point and just run around building, harvesting, and just generally leveling up until I can get to stone tier and/or get an Argy. But I'm not a new player.
Play however you want and have fun. Just don't worry too much about dying.
Press E to pick up stones from the ground, and harvest berries and fiber from bushes.
Punch trees to get wood and thatch.
Use those materials to make some basic tools. Pickaxe harvests more thatch from trees, flint from rocks, and meat from bodies. While the hatchet gets more wood from trees, stone from rocks, and hide from bodies.
Stick to the beaches to start with, they are the safest locations. When you unlock walls and foundations, try to fence out a 'safe zone' to store all your stuff. Just so long as the wall around it is high enough to block line-of-sight from surrounding dinos, nothing should attack.
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. Headshot them with stones to KO them, then put food in their inventory and protect them while they eat it. Eventually they'll wake up to be your friend.
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. Once you're riding on a mount, they will take damage for you instead.
I would recommend you start out on The Island map, as that is the first story map and a good introduction to the game. After that if you want to play the maps in story order, go Scorched Earth > Aberration > Extinction > Genesis 1 and 2. The game's story is told through notes and diaries left behind by other explorers who came before you - try to find them all, piece together what happened in their lives, and figure out the mystery of where you are and how you got here.
By this point you should be finding your feet. Keep exploring the maps for secrets, tame all the things, and have fun
Then I realized that we are. We are given exp for simply staying alive.
So my first step was to gather food, make a pickaxe, hatchet, and spear. Then the mats to make a thatch foundation (wood, fiber, and thatch) and storage boxes.
If you're playing vanilla or close to it, you will not have enough points to buy every engram. So chose them wisely. You will eventually be able to make a mindwipe tonic that will reset your engrams and your character stats, but it will take awhile before you can.
At the beginning, I first focus on leveling up my character's health, run speed, then stamina - things that keep you alive. Once you've survived for awhile, you will know what you need next.
I usually make a 3x4 hut that is 2 walls high with stairs going to the roof and 2 doors on the first floor so that if need to run home if something is chasing me, I can either kill it with a ranged weapon from the roof or exit from the back door while the dino is camping the first door, and kill it from behind.
I don't bother with taming dinos until I can protect them. Taming is time consuming, whereas building walls around around your hut is trivial.
When I do tame a dino, the first one I tame is a therizin. They are good at harvesting wood, most dinos won't attack you if you're riding one and if they are a similar level to the therizin, hop off the therizin and the attacker will die.
You will likely need therizins to do many boss fights, so it's good to learn how to tame them. You can find very low level ones on an island southeast of red obelisk. When you find a therizin, build some pillars that you can barely fit through. Then hit the therizin with a tranq arrow and run like heck back to the pillars.
Unlike some dinos, therizins won't run ever run away, so you don't need to make a trap to tame them. You just need to build something to keep them from killing you.
A tamed parasaur works fine early game, can deal with raptors just fine. I fail to see why he should skip early and mid game taming when he's just getting started. The reason I said be picky with engram points cause you can get drops/cave loot crates with BP's far better then default unlocks so you can save alot on saddles/tools/weapons
Why do you expect him to have the except kibble? He's just gonna spend hours waiting for that to tame up XD
Better get para/mos/trike and work on theri once you actually can make enough except kibble.
I'm with you on the Island start, but I've never been a fan of the "story order" declaration by players. That's release order.
But I don't want to derail the thread by arguing parts of the lore.
The Island has always been the best map, it just isn't viewed that way because we all spend so much time there that burn out occurs and it can't match the newness of the other DLC's and free maps.
You can't argue with 4 bosses and 10 progression caves. (11 if you count Tek Cave)
Speaking of which, OP should realize that in edition to the Island, and the 5 DLC maps, there are a number of Official mod maps that are free for download you can play on.
Also, you said you were playing on a private server, but you really didn't come out and say you're playing PVE.
Playing PVP is an entirely different animal.
Uh...that's...the order in which the game's lore progresses...?
There are quite a few people who would disagree with this, myself included. Yes, The Island is up there among the best for both quality and content, but I myself feel Aberration is more enjoyable and exciting to play, and Ragnarok is by far the best map of all the official maps, story or free download. Different things appeal to different people.
But most players, when they come to a game, they want to play through the game's story. And if the OP wishes to do this for Ark, then their progression would be as listed above. That's all I was explaining in that post there - they are free to play how they wish and make up their own minds about which maps they like or dislike.
If a player is new to the game and is interested in the story, I personally would advise against going to mod maps before one has played through most of the official content, at least up until Extinction. This is to avoid potential spoilers of new creatures and game mechanics, and to get a sense of said creatures in their natural habitat and balanced with their surroundings rather than out of context on a mod map which doesn't really do them justice. But there again, the OP can make up their own mind whether that's a concern for them, or whether they don't mind and choose to play in a completely different order.
For some of the characters, not all. Helena is the only one who makes it through all the Arks.
Throughout, we meet characters who have never shown evidence of being on the Island, or SE, etc.
I would say Aberration is my favorite, but it's mostly because I'm tired of the Island. But I definitely spent more time enjoying and learning on the Island.
Ragnarok is a very good map, the best of the free maps, but I don't think it's better than Extinction, Aberration, or the Island. Of course that's subjective.
I agree with you that they should start on the Island. I'm just letting them know these options exist.
True, but the player isn't Helena? They're the player character, who according to the game's lore starts out on The Island, then ascends from there to each map in order, learning from explorer notes and beating bosses in the process. That's the story progression of the game, so if one wishes to follow it, would they not have to proceed in that order?
Ok, but when you beat the Overseer, what happens? You get uploaded into the Ark. Therefore you can transfer to any Ark you wish after that. That's the lore. Mei Ling went straight to Aberration. Helena and Rockwell went to SE. Giaus (sp?) died on Ling's sword, but technically went to Aberration
The game was obviously made with transferring in mind because every consecutive Ark gives equipment to help you on the previous ones.
Yes, in practice the player can choose any map order and gameplay style they wish, and by all means if the OP wants to do so that's fine. But most people who play games want to follow the story of said game, and in Ark's case, that story goes in a specific order: The Island > Scorched Earth > Aberration > Extinction > Genesis 1 and 2.
EDIT: Also, I'd suggest that whole first paragraph of your post there may be spoilers Mat, perhaps might want to include the first few lines in the blacked out bit as well.
I'm gonna be honest,
I forgot Overseer had a cut scene, but let's also be honest, SE didn't until a few months before they gave up on ASE completely, so if you want to make that argument after 8 years of not having that, well, Ok, particularly since you're tying lore to the player (which is also subjective)
There are also many examples of inconsistencies between the explorer notes and gameplay.
and it shows probably 20 different Arks you could have landed on and the one you land on pretty clearly is well forested, NOT a desert. It's pretty clear they didn't have a plan in place when they made that.
And in fact, doesn't the addition of SE's cutscene much later actually confirm that direction, not call it into question, because it indicates they finally decided upon that direction as the game was coming to completion, and doubled down on it? They could have written a cutscene which said something else, and took the story in a different way, but the fact they decided to go that direction confirms that this is the lore they settled on and made canon, setting it in stone where before some things were up in the air. Surely that isn't subjective if it has been confirmed in such a way?