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It will be released any second from right now. I personally haven't been this excited for a game in a long time.

From the pre stream video things, the game looks great. Although it is a survival game its more like an open world game. Learning to build new things, taming dinosaurs and making clans/tribes.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/346110

Well worth looking into. Anyone else been waiting for this?


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It just released, I am about to play it now.

I woke up on a beach, saw a little dinosaur run up to me. It spit in my face and blinded me, so I ran. A stegosaurus swings his tail and nails the little dinosaur just as I clear the gunk from my face.

A few hours later I run a tribe I called the Unga Bunga's with 3 members. We have started making huts and almost tamed a Giant Tortoise. We defended the Tortoise against some raiders and ate their flesh as a celebration.

We had to set up rules about clearing our defecation off the beach because it was starting to look messy. We unlocked the ability to make slingshots and used them to take out a Giant Eagle that tried to feast upon us.

This game is great (although there are some bugs here and there). Had a lot of fun. Some ugly characters as well.

Got home from work and am installing now.

I would love this game. Too bad my comp can only handle mine craft.

So how is this different from the dozens of other survival games on Steam right now? It doesn't have zombies, OK what else? I watched videos of it and it just looks like the Stomping Grounds (hell the features are the same), with a bit of that medieval game where you can become King thrown in. In other words Youtube bait, but there's no substance to them. Question is, where does it see itself in a year? The same game with less of a playerbase and a load of promised features that take forever to come? Or that, just with maybe some more features, but still nobody'll be playing it because a couple of hundred over games turned up on Steam that offered the exact same thing in the mean time...

Yes, I do watch all of Jim Stirling's videos.

Dinosaurs.
Dinosaurs will always get people to sell.

 Wyrmalla wrote:
So how is this different from the dozens of other survival games on Steam right now? It doesn't have zombies, OK what else? I watched videos of it and it just looks like the Stomping Grounds (hell the features are the same), with a bit of that medieval game where you can become King thrown in. In other words Youtube bait, but there's no substance to them. Question is, where does it see itself in a year? The same game with less of a playerbase and a load of promised features that take forever to come? Or that, just with maybe some more features, but still nobody'll be playing it because a couple of hundred over games turned up on Steam that offered the exact same thing in the mean time...

Yes, I do watch all of Jim Stirling's videos.

Alright all fair questions

Now this game is different (I love Dayz to be clear) to the others because.... its very casual. Everything I need is around, it is just up to me to what I do with it.

Taming is done better than the other survival games. Its hard, the better the dino the harder it gets.

It actually promotes teamwork. Building a fortress is so easy with 3 of us doing it. The fact that finding people is easy helps a lot too. The map isnt huge huge and global chat means making friends (and enemies) is easy.

It has an RPG ish system that means you can focus on things that your friends dont have. This is huge. For example I made spears for my buddies while they made pick axes.

It has a real end game (ish). We start off as mere cavemen. Eventually guns, taming a wide variety of animals and huge fortresses will be attainable (in its current state too).

It has stories and mysteries. We are still trying to find out the full situation but there are mini quests. Something about brood queen spider mothers, caves, giant towers that apparently have story in them.

Ultimately it is very different to the other survival games, as they all differ from each other. HOWEVER will it develop properly? Who knows. DayZ is still being a pain with development...

I hear it is very hard on on the graphics card. How is it running for everyone? I would have to play solo and that basically means setting up your comp as a server.

nomotog wrote:
I hear it is very hard on on the graphics card. How is it running for everyone? I would have to play solo and that basically means setting up your comp as a server.

Solo is worse than server.

Right now... I must play on low (with an average comp) but my buddy with a high end can play medium. I can run DayZ on above medium, so I expect mine can run it ARK on medium when it gets better optimized (which is the first fix apparently).

I'm on high, and it's stutter-y.

I'm gonna try this when I get back from work. Rig should have no problems running it.

Man we had so much fun, my tribe grew and we sucjed up resources for miles around trying to create our fort and tamed a few dinosaurs. The first cavalry was formed today.

We had a war with some lesser peoples over the last berry tress in the 10 minute radius.

New technology is being discovered.

Most people are very nice in the game too.

Best game in ages.

Ok, just bought it half way through watching a first installment of someones Let's Play.

It will go on my laptop to start, so graphics settings may suffer.

When I a back home I will load it on my rig and see how it flies.




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Not happy, got the infinite loading screen problem many have reported.
Relogged several times, often after lengthy waits, not yet played. Sometimes it crashes or freezes instead of kicking me back to choose server screen.

I've got a decent set-up. Wooden two story house on PVE37, northeastern side of the Island. Had a few setbacks so far - went off to tame a Parasaur, and 3/4 of the way through I got the message that Warpig, my tame Phiomia had been killed by an Argentavis... big bird thing. So the Parasaur I was taming glitched or something, because as soon as the bar filled it got up and walked away, still wild. Or maybe I did something wrong... but it took all of my berries with it.

So I killed the thing and ate it raw for revenge, and ran back to my house. On the way I managed to aggro another Argentavis and a raptor at the same time, and despite a guy on a trike trying to help me, they killed me.

But it's alright, on the way back to my house I leveled again and tamed a parasaur I ran into - although he's only level 5 instead of the level 17 one I almost had before.

So far that taming glitch has been my only issues - there is some rubberbanding and graphical issues, but pretty good so far. I haven't crashed once, which is pretty rare on an early access game.

One aspect that makes me laugh is the sheer level of deforestation, there are maybe three active players around the cove where I built my house, and we have pushed the treeline waaaay back. Makes me feel like a Captain Planet villain.

Sometimes the animals wake up before the taming is finished because either another dinosaur of the same type is around or someone was messing with your dinosaur (happened to me once, caught the guy and ate him).

Yea the loss of resources is what will drive the huge tribes that will develop into war I reckon. Those resources dont come back quickly...

A tip for the dinosaurs, the trikes and parasaurs love the purple berries. I put the other berries in there for the taming meter to stay just in case but I focus on simply getting the mejo berries on there. Having a mortar and pestle really helps the taming too.

Got a Trike! LordMurderDeathFace joins me and my Parasaur Long Dong McQuaid.

 Bromsy wrote:
Got a Trike! LordMurderDeathFace joins me and my Parasaur Long Dong McQuaid.

We had a trike too, he was amazing at level 20, but I accidentally put him on aggressive mode and he charged some creatures, by the time I caught up with him he was dead surrounded by bodies. Heroic end.

The trikes can do damage to buildings so make good use of that!

I got it, and it works. I kind of wasn't expecting it to run well, but I get a good frame rate on med.

Gameplay is rather good. I like how easy it is to gather mats wich is good as I die a lot and never find my body. Anyone a little annoyed that you have to remove your weapons/tools to harvest plants? It's a diffrent button so I don't know why they can't just let you pick them with a axe out.

It's annoying but workable; every game has little quirks like that.

To continue my story...
Using global chat I found a group of people working to establish a village called New Haven over on the east coast of the island. Considering I was established center north, I knew the trip would be difficult. I took Long Dong McQuaid, my parasaur, on a trip to scope out the area. It was a harrowing journey, I chose to travel upriver into the center of the island and then east to the coast from there.

The central part of the island is both beautiful and terrifying, I discovered many a sight that coast dwellers might never see, including huts built out over silt filled lakes, a mighty cliff hundred of feet high which an enterprising group had colonized, building a ladder up to the top where they had established a fortress, and a dozen strong herd of brontos. I was nearly slain by raptors, smilodon, and carnosaurs; but eventually the doughty Long Dong and myself emerged onto the eastern coastal plains, a land much less harsh than the northern coast I had initially landed upon. There I found New Haven, a small community built onto a peninsula jutting out into the sea, largely isolating them from larger predators.

I made up my mind to relocate, as a solitary existence on the north shore would no doubt feature significantly more death than would be my preference, I made the shorter and easier journey back to my home along the coasts.

I then set about demolishing my abode, packing my Trike, LordMurderDeathFace and Long Dong with the most valuable and lightweight components I could determine. Having finished the delicate loading process I ventured forth, into a brand new day - both literally and figuratively.

I managed to make my way almost a fifth of the distance to New Haven, artfully bypassing a T-Rex and a few other predators. Unhappily, LordMurderDeathFace seemed unable to negotiate even the most marginal of barriers, slowing the pace of my journey to a crawl. And then, as things often do - everything went wrong at once. A smilodon emerged from the brush to attack my mount, and I made the mistake of trying to outfox the canny predator instead of using my superior speed in an attempt to give my slower compatriot a chance to catch up. At the same time, an Argentavis locked eyes on him, and within moments my seemingly mighty comrade was so much carrion. And to make a bad day even worse, the Smilodon, whom I had thought long since left behind, emerged from the oceans to finish off my mount.

Scooping up a bare few necessities, I lit out for the safety of New Haven. I managed to avoid any great unpleasantness for the rest of my journey; the time since has been busy, phoenix like I emerged from the ashes of my ordeal and have now rebuilt myself to an astonishing degree. I have built a home far larger and far better designed, and begun work on a curtain wall to keep the wild beasts away from my new home. I have harnessed a new Trike and another Parasaur, and even tamed a mighty Carnosaur. The future of New Haven and her nineteen brave souls is bright indeed.



Okay - so I played a lot this weekend. Didn't get much sleep but I got to level 28 or so. Here are a few things I wish I'd known.

Stay Away From Argentavis.... insanely far aggro, will pursue you great distance, hit hard, graphical bugs make them hard to hit, and apparently they level up faster than anything else in the game because of another bug.

Picks and Axes don't necessarily work the way you'd think.
Used on corpses, a pick will get more Meat, an axe will get more Hides.

Used on trees, a pick will get more Thatch, and an axe will get Wood.

Used on rocks, a pick will get more Flint, and an axe will get more Stone.

Harvesting Stone is easiest just running along the beach, there is plenty to pick up just laying there, no need to mine.

Taming animals is apparently easier if you starve them for a while before you start feeding them. You must still use narcoberries or narcotics to keep their torpor up thought- this won't count as feeding them

Meat and Berries will degrade much slower if in the inventory of a pet. Get a Parasaur quick to use for this purpose.

As far as I can tell, Farming is functionally a waste of time, unless you are absolutely set on a turtling strategy. At level 20 you unlock the Trike Saddle, and when you ride around on a Trike your attack button will also do an AOE gathering of resources on bushes and trees. I've gotten 30 narcoberries in a minute or less, and without the investment needed for farming - engram points, time, space, resources.

I never spent the points to get a campfire, I never froze to death. Get cloth clothes and you are okay.

This is probably the most important thing, and will no doubt be changed soon due to the sheer OP factor, but bows. Right now, bows have a melee attack (hold lctrl) that fires quickly (seriously, just hold it down and go to town), does a pretty good amount of damage, and will knock dinos out instead of killing them. Ignore spears, spears are garbage - in their current incaration they don't suffer damage until they break like basically every other item in the game, they just have a fairly high chance to break any time you use it. This means that you will sometimes find yourself in a fight where your first four hits break three of your spears, and considering their fairly hefty weight you can't exactly expect to carry ten of them.

I'd say use your axe/pick until you get your slingshot, and then use that til you get your bow.

Oh, and swimming is for suckers unless you have a turtle mount or maaaaybe a parasaur. If you try to swim what seems like a reasonable distance to you based on other video games, you will die. You will either become exhausted and drown or a half dozen megalodons will hogpile you.

So, is this another survival MMO, or can it be played in singleplayer as well?

Also, how hard is it to craft a gun?

 BrookM wrote:
So, is this another survival MMO, or can it be played in singleplayer as well?

Also, how hard is it to craft a gun?

It does have a single player mode.

I can't find any complete crafting guides yet, they're being made basically as people discover the game, but I think guns are a way high level item. You'll have tamed multiple dinos before you get guns it seems.

Played it for a bit, died three times already, this is going to take some getting used to.

Also, really rough around the edges graphics wise. My rig may be a year old, but it can handle any new title without any hassle, except for this one. Ouch. Had to disable motion blur from the outset and lower the graphics from ultra to medium. Again, ouch.

Optimization is terrible right now, devs are working on that.

Then I'll sit it out for a bit and wait for them to fix that first, seeing as a fight against three Dodo's has been utmost lethal with the framerate dropping to that of a Powerpoint Presentation.

Bit of a shock last night, we traveled around the island to realize other people had become far more advanced than us. Huge zoo's full of dinosaurs and forts that put ours to shame. I have a lot of work to do now.

I played to about level 17. Giving the game a break now since I don't want to burn out on it before some proper work on it is done. I'll probably come back to it in a couple months.

They rolled out an update this morning, it now more or less runs on my rig, plus the loading times have been reduced from 10+ minutes to a more manageable three or so minutes.

Bought it. Will play it later today.

Someone should make a Dakka server.

Another two updates were rolled out today, I can almost play this game on medium now!

Also, the material demands for some of these items is absurd. 75 rocks for a cooking fire?

Fun times. We tamed a Dilo. It was attacked by a Velociraptor and tamed that to. Tried taming a bigger dino but were interrupted by a Carnosaur attacking us. It ate us and our dinos. Then we knocked it out with our bare fists and are taming it at the moment.


Plus the game has a defacate button. 10/10 Would poop again.


I myself have not a lot of problems running it. Got about 40/50 fps on high settings. And my rig is about 3/4 years old.