Adventures in Dino-Land

Life at the Pointy End

There’s a golden rule that I learned during my first few days in ARK: don’t try to take on something that’s bigger than you. I learned this the hard way, after trying to spear a variety of dinos that would either run away until I was exhausted, or turn around and trample my face into the ground. Although I lost my gear after every death, I kept onto the engrams and experience I’d gained, which helped to soften the blow.

I eventually decided to stick small, wading into a nearby river to fish, or skewering the slow-moving dodos that wandered the beach. Both were an easy kill, and could be butchered down to meat (which I could cook on the campfire) and hide for crafting. Even so, being outside and exposed meant that I’d always be hungry and searching for my next meal. It was time for me to build a shelter.

And then, right on cue, it started to rain.

Building a shelter in ARK takes some time, but it’s actually fairly easy once I’d learned the relevant engrams. Then again, I was working with thatch and straw, so I wasn’t going to be building a fortress straight away. Think more along the lines of ‘beach hut’, and you’re getting somewhere.

My first task was to find a relatively flat patch of ground to put down some foundations – too steep, and I’d end up with a thin streak of a home. My location scouted, I then got to work with building - it’s a little like LEGO, with one piece snapping to another. A couple of torches, and I had my own desert island home.

Down on the Dino-farm

I’d lost track of the number of hours I’d spent wandering around, hunting, gathering and crafting, but I began to feel like I was making real progress. I was starting to survive, and the world of ARK was starting to feel a little safer. After adding a few creature comforts to my hut, like a bed and a storage box, I decided it was time to start taming a few pet dinosaurs of my own.

Taming a dino of your own sounds straightforward enough: simply knock it unconscious, then keep it that way while feeding it enough food for it to decide it likes you. In practice, it’s a little more difficult.

I started by crafting a club, before scouting for a suitable candidate to test it on. After a bit of exploring around a river delta, I discovered a phimoia – a large and timid herbivore that looked a little like a pig-sized elephant. After clouting it around the head with my club, the beast took off down the beach, desperate to escape. I chased after it, and nearly had the thing cornered, until it ran into a Carnotaurus (basically a small T-Rex). Confronted with that many sharp teeth, I did the only sensible thing – turned and sprinted back to my camp.

I decided to practice on something smaller first, and heard the squark of a dodo outside my hut. An ideal test candidate, I crept outside, and gently bopped it on the head, laying it out cold. After stuffing its face with as many berries as I could find, and using the suspiciously named Narcoberries to keep it asleep, the small bird decided to be a feathered friend for life. A couple more goes, and I had a small troupe of poultry, all squarking merrily around my hut and supplying me with eggs.

Stepping up a gear, I decided to try my luck with a small pachycephalosaurus – a thick-skulled herbivore with two legs, that I could use to ride around the island. Unfortunately it uses that thick skull to charge at anyone that attacks it, including me. The dino nearly managed to knock me out, but a few well-timed strikes and I managed to subdue it. And then, after roughly an hour of feeding it, the Packy finally decided it liked me, and followed me back to my hut.

Alas, our friendship was shortlived. As I arrived back at camp, I saw that a Gigantopithecus – a kind of yeti – had wandered dangerously close to my cluster of dodos. Something snapped, and it spun around and started butchering them. My pachy charged in, and I quickly chased after it, spear raised. But it was all for nothing – the angry yeti killed everything.

As I lay there in the dirt and sand, my corpse surrounded by the dismembered remnants of my simple dino-farm, I came to realise: it doesn’t matter how safe I think ARK is. With one cruel twist of the knife, there’s always another lesson for it to teach me.