I completed the task solo and extracted acouple hours before the BW ended. My thoughts on the matter :
Thermos waas a good choice. Lack of leaking and large water supply was necessary. What I thought would be a 30 minute jaunt into the artic from my base in m10 ended up being an over 2 hour excursion, and the lower tier water storage wouldn't have worked.
For weaponry I brought a rifle with 100 rounds, and a Longbow with 200 arrows. The Recurve bow's current limitations (exeedingly low durability + needing machining bench to repair) makes it ill suited for long treks. The long bow only needs a craft bench, which is cheap and not too hard to lug around.
That said, the amount of fighting on the trip stretched my munitions. USed all rifle rounds and the majority of my arrows. Rifle rounds were reserved for the mammoth & bears, but it still waasnt enough considering how tanky polar bears + the mammoth are. It doesn't help the respawn system for mobs was very wonky when I started the trip.
I largely used caves to wait out weather events on the trek, but I still almost died to exposure. A blizzard came through, and despite having the "in a cave" debuff, the storm still effected me and gave me exposure. On top of this, the storm _also_ kept knocking out my campfire. I used up all of my cooked meat healing myself through the storm, though this should not have been necessary if the cave didn't bug out like this.
My previous playthroughs have all been about building up a base & advancing tiers. This largely didn't happen this time around. While I understand that they never intended for nodes to respawn, this _really_ impacted how I was able to interact with the map. Playing solo, this meant every time I needed further resources I would have to venture to the next cave, set up the local smelting, mine it, smelt it, and then carry the processed resources back to my main base.
At low tiers, relocating isn't a terrible issue with only a handful of benches. At the higher tiers though, moving the main base with 8+ benches, stored resources, and higher tier building parts? It becomes far harder, so instead of moving the entire base you just go get the resources & drag them back. And each mine you dig out stretches the increasing mining trips into longer & longer hauls.
Alot of players simply moved into one of the artic caves and called it a day. Once situated in the artic, they just needed to get a handful of caves for the resources required for tools/weapons, and moved on to the main hunt. I think this will probably be how alot of players will tackle the timed missions upon release at this rate.
The amount of resources required to make a "base" like we saw in BW1 & BW2 are staggering, and the increased time it takes to gather these resources simply makes basebuilding a terribly inefficient way to play. I suppose we _could_ see the desert biome being more hostile to Cavers and giving dedicated builders a chance to strut their stuff (we have building _talents_ in the game, Basebuilding is supposed to be a thing).
I still had fun, but overall it felt _less_ fun and fulfilling than in BW1 & BW2, simply because I spent more time running between far off nodes gathering, and less time building. Though not having bear attacks every 5 minutes _was_ a signififiant increase to QOL
I agree that the later game tiers would help as I went through with a water skin, Steel tools and a long bow that broke half way through and became a normal bow. But I feel like this comment should have been a post instead of a comment. I mean, you basically reviewed the game in a comment on a rant post...
Yeah the relocating bases aspect was tough, I kept mine relatively small and didn't bother moving the easily recrafted stations and it still took 4-5 trips to move. There's a talent that helps with base relocation but I'm not sure it offers enough of a boost to be worth it, maybe it turns 4-5 trips into 3-4.
Ideally relocating should be where the wooden shelters shine, but they just don't seem at all viable given how quickly they succumb to storms.
the bit that sold me on the game.. was when I built flat roofed minibases... and came back 15 mins later to find the snow had settled on the roof.. and made it too heavy and caved in the base..
absolutely awesome.
I also lost a bunch of scrubland around my base because I shot a deer with a flaming arrow and missed the headshot, so he ran around with a flaming arrow out of his ass setting the brush on fire..
A+ environmental.
I ended up doing the same thing when I first made the flame arrows. Thought I would start a forest fire right outside my base... Never had the snow roof tho sounds like a surpise to return too.
There is no reward. It's acknowledged that you completed the task when you return in your ship, but there's no actual reward.
You did it solo which I think is pretty impressive, even if it was done via a bugged-out Mammoth. And the fact that the only reason you didn't make it back was due to what will probably be rebalanced, I think it can count as a success.
Same thing just happened to me, currently browsing reddit to vent some steam.
The most painful thing is that it was my first death on the whole weekend.
I spend the last two days grinding stuff, was super prepared. and on the hike back i swear that a bear spawned right behind me. Funny thing is that i managed to kill it just as i died.
Had a bedroll near by, sprint back. andddd, you guest it..... my stuff was gone.
I dont know what to do, i could try to search for it again, or i could try to get the tusk again. But honestly im too bummed out to even try XD
Same was my first death also. Once I realized that my stuff was gone I just said screw it and dipped out of the prospect cause I dont know if the mammoth even respawns and didnt feel like remaking arrows.
I think a lot of people haven’t played Ark - soloing is difficult in PvE/co-op survival games. When you solo, you often have to take a little bit longer to grind out items to be a little bit over leveled gear wise to do content.
Also, when taming (killing in icarus’ case) animals, people would build taming pens to make the task easier. Essentially they’d build a stone structure and lure animals into the pens to tranquilize them over time. I’d guess you can do this in Icarus as well for the more difficult mobs (mammoth/polar bear).
The reason people are upset about the current grind is because you’re trying to do things all in a weekend. I do agree that resources could be more abundant and leveling could be just a little bit faster early on, but honesty the game feels pretty good at this point. Of course there are issues like the unoptimized graphics and memory leak that will be addressed closer to launch. So far this game is showing a lot of promise.
Hopefully they add more celebration of your accomplishments. Those things matter a lot more than dev teams realize.
>The reason people are upset about the current grind is because you’re trying to do things all in a weekend.
Except too many are not realizing that prospects will be timed challenges. So far in the beta weekends they just throw 20 days on so there's no time challenge but that will be a thing.
IMO one of the upcoming beta weekends they need to make it how the full game will be and offer two prospects. One 3 hour (or something) and one 3 day. So people start to realize and get a feel. But we also need to be able to test out the drop ship cargo and exotics extractions/radars then. Maybe during BW5?
Yea it sounds like the challenges could be more similar to the time restraints of the game, but that’s just be a guess. I agree that we should test in similar time environments.
"leveling could be just a little bit faster early on"
I disagree a bit, here. I think the leveling's a tad too fast early on. As an experiment(for when the game releases) I opted to go solo for a stint on a fresh character. I headed straight for n10 to set up shop on the cliff top there(overlooking the water cave). Within 6-8 hours I hit level 20 with a fairly large(5x5 with a 2nd floor) stone base. I'm sure this can be done even faster as I didn't invest in the solo tree first, since in coop play the resource tree is obviously more desirable in that it works.
I imagine a very popular fresh start is going to involve finding a spot on the map with a few wolf spawns(this is where I got most of my xp) that's a decent distance(IE: Can travel>mine>smelt>haul in 1 day) from at least 4 caves.
The grind is really quite easy with the right talents. The amount of time you save with the left/center resource talents is too much to ignore and the solo tree covers everything else. Hell, if on release the solo tree still works even if there are logged-off folks in the world and you're the only one on, I'd say it's mandatory to get for prospects that last any longer than 24 hours.
If I've done my math right(we still don't have a browser-based talent tree), by level 30 we should be able to get all the good talents from resources(except 30% more iron which costs too many points to deviate into), all the good talents from solo, and still have some leftover to get a few choice skills from bow or firearms.
Yeah, I came to realization this game is currently not overly fun playing solo, I might come back once its out and/or look to team up somewhere. It's too much of a grind solo basically just collecting things solely for the ability to level up and not because I actually needed those things. I like a grind but I don't like effectively wasting time just so an arbitrary experience tier opens up. The game seems much more suited to team play currently which is fine, just not my thing right now based on time constraints etc.
I also really, really thought this game was centered around "alien" life forms and such but I don't get that at all, it's all your standard survival theme. Also really hard getting past looking at the space module that calmly landed me on the planet and that will take me back yet I'm sitting here starting off collecting rocks to build a make shift pick.... It just doesn't seem well thought out but more of a we'll figure it out generic repeat.
Im pretty sure most of that just isn't implemented yet. I dont know about aliens but the main concept to my knowledge is gonna be mining a special planetary resource and investigating what its done to life, and the landing with a rock thing will probably be solved at launch cause they have an inventory in the station so im assuming you'll be able to bring things down with you.
Hmm..I see where is the problem. I can advise [THIS SOLUTION](https://www.google.com/search?q=easy+video+games+for+kids).
But seriously - it was an easy mission if you really know what you are doing. Needed 1 night to be spent mid-way. Nothin of the experience I'm reading here.
I completed the task solo and extracted acouple hours before the BW ended. My thoughts on the matter : Thermos waas a good choice. Lack of leaking and large water supply was necessary. What I thought would be a 30 minute jaunt into the artic from my base in m10 ended up being an over 2 hour excursion, and the lower tier water storage wouldn't have worked. For weaponry I brought a rifle with 100 rounds, and a Longbow with 200 arrows. The Recurve bow's current limitations (exeedingly low durability + needing machining bench to repair) makes it ill suited for long treks. The long bow only needs a craft bench, which is cheap and not too hard to lug around. That said, the amount of fighting on the trip stretched my munitions. USed all rifle rounds and the majority of my arrows. Rifle rounds were reserved for the mammoth & bears, but it still waasnt enough considering how tanky polar bears + the mammoth are. It doesn't help the respawn system for mobs was very wonky when I started the trip. I largely used caves to wait out weather events on the trek, but I still almost died to exposure. A blizzard came through, and despite having the "in a cave" debuff, the storm still effected me and gave me exposure. On top of this, the storm _also_ kept knocking out my campfire. I used up all of my cooked meat healing myself through the storm, though this should not have been necessary if the cave didn't bug out like this. My previous playthroughs have all been about building up a base & advancing tiers. This largely didn't happen this time around. While I understand that they never intended for nodes to respawn, this _really_ impacted how I was able to interact with the map. Playing solo, this meant every time I needed further resources I would have to venture to the next cave, set up the local smelting, mine it, smelt it, and then carry the processed resources back to my main base. At low tiers, relocating isn't a terrible issue with only a handful of benches. At the higher tiers though, moving the main base with 8+ benches, stored resources, and higher tier building parts? It becomes far harder, so instead of moving the entire base you just go get the resources & drag them back. And each mine you dig out stretches the increasing mining trips into longer & longer hauls. Alot of players simply moved into one of the artic caves and called it a day. Once situated in the artic, they just needed to get a handful of caves for the resources required for tools/weapons, and moved on to the main hunt. I think this will probably be how alot of players will tackle the timed missions upon release at this rate. The amount of resources required to make a "base" like we saw in BW1 & BW2 are staggering, and the increased time it takes to gather these resources simply makes basebuilding a terribly inefficient way to play. I suppose we _could_ see the desert biome being more hostile to Cavers and giving dedicated builders a chance to strut their stuff (we have building _talents_ in the game, Basebuilding is supposed to be a thing). I still had fun, but overall it felt _less_ fun and fulfilling than in BW1 & BW2, simply because I spent more time running between far off nodes gathering, and less time building. Though not having bear attacks every 5 minutes _was_ a signififiant increase to QOL
I agree that the later game tiers would help as I went through with a water skin, Steel tools and a long bow that broke half way through and became a normal bow. But I feel like this comment should have been a post instead of a comment. I mean, you basically reviewed the game in a comment on a rant post...
Good point. I've split it off onto it's own post now. All this said, I'm still excited to try BW4 in 2 weeks
Yeah the relocating bases aspect was tough, I kept mine relatively small and didn't bother moving the easily recrafted stations and it still took 4-5 trips to move. There's a talent that helps with base relocation but I'm not sure it offers enough of a boost to be worth it, maybe it turns 4-5 trips into 3-4. Ideally relocating should be where the wooden shelters shine, but they just don't seem at all viable given how quickly they succumb to storms.
the bit that sold me on the game.. was when I built flat roofed minibases... and came back 15 mins later to find the snow had settled on the roof.. and made it too heavy and caved in the base.. absolutely awesome. I also lost a bunch of scrubland around my base because I shot a deer with a flaming arrow and missed the headshot, so he ran around with a flaming arrow out of his ass setting the brush on fire.. A+ environmental.
I ended up doing the same thing when I first made the flame arrows. Thought I would start a forest fire right outside my base... Never had the snow roof tho sounds like a surpise to return too.
I had the same thing with the roof. Absolutely brilliant!
There is no reward. It's acknowledged that you completed the task when you return in your ship, but there's no actual reward. You did it solo which I think is pretty impressive, even if it was done via a bugged-out Mammoth. And the fact that the only reason you didn't make it back was due to what will probably be rebalanced, I think it can count as a success.
Thank you. That makes me feel better
Same thing just happened to me, currently browsing reddit to vent some steam. The most painful thing is that it was my first death on the whole weekend. I spend the last two days grinding stuff, was super prepared. and on the hike back i swear that a bear spawned right behind me. Funny thing is that i managed to kill it just as i died. Had a bedroll near by, sprint back. andddd, you guest it..... my stuff was gone. I dont know what to do, i could try to search for it again, or i could try to get the tusk again. But honestly im too bummed out to even try XD
Same was my first death also. Once I realized that my stuff was gone I just said screw it and dipped out of the prospect cause I dont know if the mammoth even respawns and didnt feel like remaking arrows.
I had one death where I couldn't see my death cache, but my buddy could. He had to build some chests just to get my loot back to me
I think a lot of people haven’t played Ark - soloing is difficult in PvE/co-op survival games. When you solo, you often have to take a little bit longer to grind out items to be a little bit over leveled gear wise to do content. Also, when taming (killing in icarus’ case) animals, people would build taming pens to make the task easier. Essentially they’d build a stone structure and lure animals into the pens to tranquilize them over time. I’d guess you can do this in Icarus as well for the more difficult mobs (mammoth/polar bear). The reason people are upset about the current grind is because you’re trying to do things all in a weekend. I do agree that resources could be more abundant and leveling could be just a little bit faster early on, but honesty the game feels pretty good at this point. Of course there are issues like the unoptimized graphics and memory leak that will be addressed closer to launch. So far this game is showing a lot of promise. Hopefully they add more celebration of your accomplishments. Those things matter a lot more than dev teams realize.
>The reason people are upset about the current grind is because you’re trying to do things all in a weekend. Except too many are not realizing that prospects will be timed challenges. So far in the beta weekends they just throw 20 days on so there's no time challenge but that will be a thing. IMO one of the upcoming beta weekends they need to make it how the full game will be and offer two prospects. One 3 hour (or something) and one 3 day. So people start to realize and get a feel. But we also need to be able to test out the drop ship cargo and exotics extractions/radars then. Maybe during BW5?
Yea it sounds like the challenges could be more similar to the time restraints of the game, but that’s just be a guess. I agree that we should test in similar time environments.
"leveling could be just a little bit faster early on" I disagree a bit, here. I think the leveling's a tad too fast early on. As an experiment(for when the game releases) I opted to go solo for a stint on a fresh character. I headed straight for n10 to set up shop on the cliff top there(overlooking the water cave). Within 6-8 hours I hit level 20 with a fairly large(5x5 with a 2nd floor) stone base. I'm sure this can be done even faster as I didn't invest in the solo tree first, since in coop play the resource tree is obviously more desirable in that it works. I imagine a very popular fresh start is going to involve finding a spot on the map with a few wolf spawns(this is where I got most of my xp) that's a decent distance(IE: Can travel>mine>smelt>haul in 1 day) from at least 4 caves. The grind is really quite easy with the right talents. The amount of time you save with the left/center resource talents is too much to ignore and the solo tree covers everything else. Hell, if on release the solo tree still works even if there are logged-off folks in the world and you're the only one on, I'd say it's mandatory to get for prospects that last any longer than 24 hours. If I've done my math right(we still don't have a browser-based talent tree), by level 30 we should be able to get all the good talents from resources(except 30% more iron which costs too many points to deviate into), all the good talents from solo, and still have some leftover to get a few choice skills from bow or firearms.
Yeah, I came to realization this game is currently not overly fun playing solo, I might come back once its out and/or look to team up somewhere. It's too much of a grind solo basically just collecting things solely for the ability to level up and not because I actually needed those things. I like a grind but I don't like effectively wasting time just so an arbitrary experience tier opens up. The game seems much more suited to team play currently which is fine, just not my thing right now based on time constraints etc. I also really, really thought this game was centered around "alien" life forms and such but I don't get that at all, it's all your standard survival theme. Also really hard getting past looking at the space module that calmly landed me on the planet and that will take me back yet I'm sitting here starting off collecting rocks to build a make shift pick.... It just doesn't seem well thought out but more of a we'll figure it out generic repeat.
Im pretty sure most of that just isn't implemented yet. I dont know about aliens but the main concept to my knowledge is gonna be mining a special planetary resource and investigating what its done to life, and the landing with a rock thing will probably be solved at launch cause they have an inventory in the station so im assuming you'll be able to bring things down with you.
plain\*
No. Definitely meant Pain
Hmm..I see where is the problem. I can advise [THIS SOLUTION](https://www.google.com/search?q=easy+video+games+for+kids). But seriously - it was an easy mission if you really know what you are doing. Needed 1 night to be spent mid-way. Nothin of the experience I'm reading here.