How to Play Stegosaurus (Evrima Branch)

How to survive and thrive as this heckin chonker, solo or in a group.

Foreword

So you want to play Stego. You want to be a huge lumbering walnut brain with big flappy plates on their back. And most importantly, you want the THAGOMIZER.

I'm here to help you reach your maximum potential as this heckin chonker of an herbivore.

Before we begin, there are a few things I want you to keep in mind going into this to help you have the most fun and take any mishaps in your stride.

1. Stego has a lot of HP for its size, but it's still going to be vulnerable for a while before you can really consider yourself fairly safe. You are probably going to die a couple of times before you get a run going that works out for you. Don't let it get you down, it's a part of the fun of the game, really. Carnivores are hungry, and your sacrifice is helping someone else have a better day. Even if a herbivore kills you, your scent will attract carnivores and potentially draw them away from your next spawn attempt or fill their bellies, making them somewhat less likely to attack you.

2. Stego is slow. For the beginning of your life, you won't have the most travel stamina either, so running (even as slow as juvie stego runs) won't be your best option. Take deep breaths and embrace the slow. All you need to do is find some food and get some sips of water, and you'll do okay.

3. While getting one of each diet does give you an enormous boost to growth, having only two diet pips filled, especially with only one diet, does NOT. Don't get hung up on trying to go for perfect diet and shun perfectly good food along the way. You'll start with one diet pip already, so fill your stomach (and your other two diet slots) with a different food for a fairly substantial growth boost until you can afford to take your time and perfect your growth rate.

An Important Note About Finding Food:

While the scent system has been massively improved since its inception, it can be very annoying to keep stopping to smell where the food is instead of just looking for it. I recommend familiarizing yourself with what your food looks like at a distance, and will provide some images to help with that.

Fig. 1- Marigold Flowers


Fig. 2- Sumac bushes
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Fig. 3- Pumpkins


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These are your three main food groups. By traveling east and west between the south and southeastern spawn areas of the map, at around the 150 to 200 latitude on Spiro, you will readily find many of your desired foods. Moving north towards center may yield more pumpkins, but you should find everything you need along that particular route.

0-30%

So you've spawned in, and you realize your huge, lumbering, thagomizer-wielding stegosaurus is a tiny babu that stands about knee-high to a grasshopper.

Now what?

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This is gonna get a bit technical, but I'm gonna try to make it as easy as possible. If you already know how to use coordinates to navigate, skip this section.

- The Isla Spiro playable area is in the negative/negative quadrant of the map, which sits in the northwest quarter. There are no positive coordinates on the map currently.

-Picture the map with north at the top, like you usually would. Latitude zero and longitude zero would be the southeast corner. Latitude zero, longitude 900 would be southwest. Latitude 700, longitude zero would be northeast, and latitude 700 longitude 900 would be northwest. If you're confused because I didn't mark these coordinates negative, that's because since the entire map is in the negative, negative configuration and you will never see a positive coordinate, you can effectively ignore that. As of right now, that is only really true on the Isla Spiro map, though. From this point, you can use a map or coordinate list to better determine your location and destinations, or simply get a sense for where you are and what direction you need go based on experience.

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- As of right now on Isla Spiro, your food is going to mostly be in the central, southern, and southeast sections of the map. Spawning Center is generally a bad decision. Spawning in the northern third of the map will generally put you far away from most of your food sources. Ideally, spawning in the southern third of the map, leaning a bit east, will be your best bet. This is one of the few times I might actually recommend spawning in the southeastern swampy region.

Follow your nose to food and water, and try to avoid moving towards areas where you smell a lot of dead things and bones, and you should do all right.

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Now, as I've stated before, this stage of your life is where you're most vulnerable. While you are this small, you DO have a certain amount of defensive capability, but you'll still be vulnerable to pinning attacks from raptors, being knocked down by large carnos, and being grabbed by smaller deinosuchus than you'll have to worry about later on.

I've found to have the best chance of survival by following these three tips:

[1] Don't use your calls if you can at all avoid it. 2-calling to group up is one thing, and your normal chatting calls don't carry TOO far, but nothing sounds more like a dinner bell to a carnivore than a baby screaming its head off spamming its calls.

[2] Don't linger at the water's edge. Any body of water can be considered at any time to house a deinosuchus large enough to kill you. While those odds go down as you grow, you're at your smallest and easiest to yoink right now. Try to drink from places you know are shallow so you might have some warning. Approach through trees when possible, and at a walk to minimize noise. Get your drink, and disappear back into cover as swiftly as possible.

[3] Don't sprint through open fields waving your head and tail in the air like you're in a disney movie. Move at a walk or trot when possible, move from bush to bush, use dips in the terrain to help keep you out of line of sight of potential predators. If your skin is vaguely natural looking and not bright orange (a phenomenon I continue observing for reasons unknown to me) slowing your roll, so to speak, helps reduce visibility. A baby stego will still be visible in the open if its standing still, but will attract more attention and from ten times as far away if it's running along a ridgeline in full daylight.

If you've read through this far, great! But if you're just skimming, basically this part of your life you should just hide. Only really come out to eat and drink, then disappear back into the woods again.

"But guide writer!" You might be asking, "Shouldn't I get into a herd for protection?!"

No. At such a small size, you are too vulnerable against most predators to risk detection. And while the presence of large stegos acts as a pretty major deterrent

Let me reiterate: Unless you have really good friends who know what they are doing, don't get into a herd at this size if you can avoid it. You are too small and easy to yoink by carnivores. That being said, even one or two competent stegos that you can voice chat with will be enough to keep you safe, but mishaps may still occur.

30-60%

Okay, so you survived to 30% growth. Congratulations! You're a much bigger snack now.

I say you're basically food, but for most creatures, a 30%-60% stego is too much to handle. Your tail attack really hurts, capable of putting many smaller predators back on the creature select screen. Balance may be subject to change, but by the time you're 50% grown the only things you should really need to worry about are particularly large theropods, your own kind, and deinosuchus. You should always worry about gators, though.

I'm about to introduce a rule of thumb to you here that will help you survive as a stego:

If it's your length or shorter, you're basically not in any danger from it.

Stego's tail attack is its most damaging move, and also its easiest to hit with from a standing position. Alone, a stego's best bet to survive is to hold position and defend itself with its tail. You really shouldn't be running after things trying to bite them or whack them with your thagomizer, because at this size your bite is only enough to deal with basically fresh juvies and also maybe a pesky hypsilophodon. Also, you have to stop dead to use your tail, which means almost anything can outrun the tail attack if it's already going away from you and you're chasing it.

At about this stage of your life, it becomes safer for you to seek out a herd and join with them for protection. At 45-50% growth you are generally big enough to help defend smaller members of a herd, or raise your friends if they join as fresh spawns.

Also around this time, a strange phenomenon starts to occur. You see, the bigger a stego is, the more it tends to accumulate other stegosaurs. You may find that as you wander the fields looking for more food, that other, smaller stegosaurs gravitate to you from great distances and begin to orbit you as though you were some kind of planet. The closer you are to popular river sections and big open fields, the faster this phenomenon occurs. I've come to refer to this as the law of stego attraction.

There isn't too much else to discuss here. Once you get pretty close to 60% growth, you start to feel stego's true special ability: its size. Once a stego reaches a certain size, a real life mechanic starts to come into play: the bigger something is, the harder it is to be killed. The only thing that could potentially pose a serious threat is a pack of well-coordinated raptors or deinosuchus, but deinosuchus can be avoided by... not fighting them, and running any pouncing raptors against a tree will knock them off and generally allow you to kill them.

If by the time you pass 60% growth you have not encountered another stegosaurus, you're probably playing on a very low population server. Stego calls travel for ages, and it seems that any substantial group of them generally won't shut up.

60-100%

So you've made it to the final stretch. You're now large enough to be safe from MOST predators, and are generally more free to do what you want and move where you want.

At these growth sizes, your growth chart in the insert menu will likely start telling you you're an adult stegosaurus. This is only sort of true. Yes, you're pretty big, but at 60-70%, stego still has some enemies. I know I just said you're largely safe, but the rule of stego length still applies. If it's longer than you, it's a threat. And at this size, an adult carno is still longer than you are. They're still gonna be in a lot of pain if you hit them, so it's likely they'll back down, but it's also possible that they'll be very good at avoiding getting hit, or well coordinated enough that you won't be able to land hits on them, even though stego's tail hit recovery time is less than half a second.

It is at this size that stego really needs a herd. However, thanks to the Law of Stego Gravitation, it's highly likely that you won't need to even look for other stegos, but rather that other stegos will just sort of find you instead, even if they're not looking.

This is also the start of your life where it becomes less taboo to make calls. If you've somehow managed to avoid other stegos thus far, this is a good way to fix that. Since the sound design of the isle makes it easier to determine the age of the dino making the call, you can actually get a pretty good sense of what you're walking into by the calls you receive back. Do be aware though, that until you're closer to 75 or 80% growth, that you are generally giving away to at least some people that you're not fully grown.

In this section I have to make note of stego's interactions with deinosuchus. As you grow up to this point, you are a hamburger to the larger individuals. Until you are at least 80% grown, you should still consider yourself somewhat vulnerable to being grabbed. Deinosuchus are usually capable of lunging and grabbing things up to one third of their current weight. Since weight is one of the statistics of a creature more prone to fluctuation, as it has such a large impact on balance, this does mean that the part of your growth between 50 and 80% can be a bit fuzzy from update to update as how safe you are from being grabbed and dragged down to have a personal introduction to Davey Jones.

However, once you reach 85% growth, you will have become too heavy for even fully adult deinosuchus to grab and drown. At this point, while you are not totally invincible, you do become fairly defensible against most attackers. Persistent attacks by bleed or venom-based opponents are something to watch out for, as their strategy allows them to be more cagey and provides you fewer opportunities to land a critical blow. More all-in, raw damage attackers like carno or deino run a serious risk of death if they don't play their cards totally right. While it seems that stegos and deinosuchus have a long-standing tradition of duking it out at the water's edge, a pair of fully grown deinos that coordinate well can and will bring you down fairly quickly.

In the next section, we'll discuss how to best throw your weight around as a large stego, solo or in a group!

Adulthood and Group Strategies

So you've made it. You're finally among the largest stegosaurs on the server. You're really starting to feel the weight of the creature you're playing. Raptors are looking mighty small and even a carnotaurus that was sizing you up looked like it wasn't much of a threat, and maybe it even backed down before you even had to take a swing at it! What can you do to keep this stego alive through thick and thin, whether you're alone or in a herd? Maybe you've got a friend that you want to protect and raise up to be this size, or maybe you've joined a herd of randos and need to protect their smalls as effectively as possible.

I'm here to tell you how to do that.

Before we begin, there are two things you need to know about stego that will help prevent friendly fire:

1- Be aware that lag can put your charges at risk while you're defending them. No matter the direction of your swing, a baby stego that is near your back legs or under your tail is at serious risk of finding out exactly what it's like to be a leaf on the wind.

2- Your tail attack is going to try to track the direction of your camera, but between the delay between activating the attack and when it actually comes out, you may need to lead your target somewhat. But also, because of the limitations in range caused by putting your most deadly weapon directly behind your butt, the tail attack may come out in a direction that may surprise you. Don't attack with your tail while pointing your head directly at your target if you can help it. Instead, try to keep the things you want to kill on one side of you and the things you want to protect on the other.

THEY DO MOVE IN HERDS

Since stegosaurus are fairly large and prone to forming herds, here are a few things to keep in mind while travelling with others of your kind:

Generally while moving, a herd of stegos will take on a sort of elongated oval sort of formation. While moving like this, try to keep the largest individuals closest to the outside and the smallest in the middle. Look around you at the others. There usually aren't enough stegos to make many layers, so try to draw a middle ground line between "insiders" and "outsiders" and figure out where you go.

Crossing rivers is always going to be dangerous for smaller stegos, and there is simply not a lot you can do about it. Time and time again, it's been shown that you cannot body block a deinosuchus from grabbing a baby out from under you while swimming. They are too capable of simply going under and tanking a stray hit that lands and moving away. While keeping babies surrounded while crossing a river is still going to make it more difficult for a potential predator to grab one, there are other factors to keep in mind, namely:

• Try to cross in shallow areas where an approaching gator would be much more visible
  
• Don't hesitate or linger at the water's edge. Don't drink where you cross if you can avoid it. Do it before or after, but unless the water is extremely shallow or too small to house large enough gators to threaten you, it's a situation you should generally avoid. Go to the water, cross immediately and swiftly, and then keep going further onto land.
  
• Try to cross rivers that are surrounded by forest. Forests will prevent gators from seeing you coming towards the water from miles away, help hinder their movement on land, and provide obstacles that make getting in and out quickly more difficult for the underwater predators.
  
  So, keeping all of those things in mind, an ideal crossing would be to make for the treeline, come at the river directly at a known or easily visible shallow area, and cross swiftly with no hesitation. If drinks are needed, you would then move in a semicircle through the woods to break line of sight with the water before coming back to drink at a different place away from where you cross. It's important to note that while this is an ideal scenario, there will be many times where circumstances prevent this from happening. Keep in mind, though, that spending too long wandering along a river's banks trying to find a decent place to cross can and probably will put your group in much more danger than if you'd swam across at the first place you came to, provided it wasn't a known hazardous area.

Afterword

So now you know just about everything there is to know about stego. I hope that even if you didn't read all of it, the knowledge I've gained while playing this creature has proved useful to you, or even gotten you interested in playing a dinosaur you didn't expect to like.

I definitely didn't expect to like stego. I'm a chronic carnivore who's played more deinosuchus since its launch than almost any other creature, and who generally prefers to play medium sized, maneuverable theropods like raptors and ceratos. A near-apex-sized lumbering herbivore couldn't have been further out of my wheelhouse, and yet it's been one that I find, dare I say it, relaxing to play. I'm sure that won't always be true, as the game changes and time goes on, but overall it has been one of the most relaxed experiences I've had, especially in a herd. It's easy to see why so many large herbivores today use this time-honored strategy.

This is also one of the dinosaurs I actually like walking with. Sometimes the walk speed or animation will be frustrating to look at or deal with, but stego I think is well suited to it, and I can always hear the jurassic park theme playing in my head as I and seven other stegos walk through an open field towards our next meal.

Granted, sometimes you'll walk for a minute and a half, go 200 feet and say "okay I really need food now" and you'll run the last 300 feet to the food bush, but for that minute and a half, you'll likely get to really enjoy what is undoubtedly the best thing about this game for me: experiencing being a dinosaur, and witnessing the glory of a group on the tree of life that was more dominant on Earth for longer than we mammals have ever been or might ever be.

I hope that some of you read this and see how much love I have for this game and the dinosaurs that exist in it. I also hope that even if you've been an avid carnivore player since the progression days, that you'll give stego a try because some of the devs have done some serious work and put some serious love into herbivores that they haven't had before. And thank you, dear reader, for visiting this page and reading my work, and maybe leaving a comment on what you'd like to see next, or what you liked or didn't like about the guide.


If you've made it this far, and read everything through and through, you're a seriously dedicated reader with loads of interest in this dinosaur. You rock. Now go out there and put your thagomizer in the air and wave it like you just don't care! ...Provided you're big enough.

[Dapper]

First of all I'd like to thank everyone for the kind words. I never thought this would go off in the way that it did, and the response to my silliness has been incredible.

Unfortunately some parts of this guide are becoming outdated with the changes to the game, especially diets. Lately I have just been too busy and had too hard of a time getting into the isle to make the appropriate updates. Still, there is good info to be had here, but particularly where diets are concerned be aware that information is becoming less accurate with every update.

I'm sorry that I haven't been able to keep this guide up to date, but all the positive responses have lead me to decide to leave it up for what benefit it can still provide. Thank you again everyone for the kind words, they really make my day.

[Dave The Alien]

c o o l .

[Isle Jesus]

Once I hit 60% stego. My Diet changed completely, as I cant improve my diet since now what I can eat is limited. So my question is, whats the growth % to where I can get my diet back to more plants to eat?

[Moon Mole]

This was an awesome read and actually had me laughing at a few points. Thanks for the help and I shall wag my thagomizer once I'm big enough 😂

[AmericANA]

i thought this was just gona be something like "step one kill yourself"

[Belshamaroth]

Excellent guide. Accurate, fun to read, informational and detailed. I love to play stego, and this taught me a better way to do it.

[Zeus massierte Treiss am Suez]

Nicely put, easy to read and made me enjoy the playstyle

[HAMBURGER]

what if i make a stego so green that i become grass

[Creamy Delight]

based guide for based gigachad stego enjoyers!

[KrazyKaid]

dope