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Well, things are not going particularly well.

I finally find a server I get a decent framerate on, I find a sweet spot for a base protected by rocks that prevent any large predators from getting into, and what happens?

Not 1, but 2 Spinosaurs live nearby. And I mean really nearby. One is not 100 yards from my front door sitting on my berry patch, and he killed the lvl17 Trike I was going to try and tame. The other is not visible, and that concerns me.

Meanwhile, these dinos are like, "Great... another mammal. Just what this neighborhood needed. Gentrification."

Turns out it wasn't so bad. The Spino despawned.

Now I have a big wall and a bunch of pets. Just got a raptor too.

Welp, I have been playing way too much since I've been on vacation, but it's also been a hoot.

Fought the Broodmother - my tribe's done this a bunch but this was the first time I was there - she spawns spiders continuously and we had four of us on sabertooths, farming the spiders for chitin while our army of dodos (about 35 of them) tanked the Broodmother herself. They did eventually wear her down.

Finally broke down and tamed a rex, and in the middle of that found one of the white carnosaurs that I wanted, so I tamed both of them at once. That was fun. Sabertooths are amazing and if anyone is unaware they have the best harvesting rates for keratin/chitin, which you need vast quantities of for end game stuff like metal walls and behemoth gates.

Our town is becoming electrified, slowly but surely. We have a pen for our megalodons, which the most resource efficient technique we figured out was simply using four behemoth gates to make a square, since they are so tall.

I'm curious if the game has gotten more optimization options and performance increases, as I'm hesitant to but the game if it'll be laggy. Also, is single player enjoyable? Like, does the world feel empty without the presence of other players, or is it fun enough without them? I'm asking because my Internet is pretty trashy, and I would spend a decent amount of time disconnecting from servers and getting killed from lag. The game seems to have a lot to do even in alpha, and I wouldn't mind a game that gives me a break from 40k and let's me play something else entirely for a change.

Its definitely better than it was 2 weeks ago.

Single player is fine, although interacting with other players is a fun part of the game. And having a buddy is really helpful.

As far as stuff to do, there is plenty for a single person. Its much like Minecraft in that respect. You can just build and tame stuff and explore the island. The construction system is really dynamic and intuitive, although you need some trial and error to figure it out. Of course, playing with people is nicer than not, if you like that sort of thing.

Playing on a LAN or a private server is definitely better than the public servers as far as lag goes. Less traffic, and the people are nicer.

And you WILL get addicted to the game.


My only complaint is that night lasts too long. its a realistically proportioned night/day cycle, although a patch is coming that will let you alter the ratio, and night time is scary as all hell. Even when I'm lvl41 and have raptor bodyguards I don't go out at night.

And unfortunately there isn't in-game Gamma adjustment yet. With the gamma up you could still do stuff at night, but then you'd be blinded during the day. I suppose its realistic in that respect. You really gotta cower in your little hut at night and pray you survive till morning. Cause big predators WILL try and break into your house if they find you.

Ok, that clears some things up. I could probably try and manage to get into a private server seeking some new blood or something, because none of my friends have the game, or even plan on getting it, sadly. Dinosaur games have always caught my eye, and one that let's me get a pet T Rex is fantastic, even if I will probably die a lot trying to tame the thing.

 Grey Templar wrote:


And unfortunately there isn't in-game Gamma adjustment yet. With the gamma up you could still do stuff at night, but then you'd be blinded during the day.

Weeeeelllllll *don't click the spoiler unless you want to lose some immersion

I'm thinking I'm going to have to try this game out.

I have been trying to get a raptor mount and failing. I did manage to tame one, but it died before I made it back to base with it. :(

Raptors are tough. Only takes a few tranqs to knock them out but they're fast and hard to hit.

And you need to lvl their health up too.

I always build some little 2 story towers for raptor shooting. Or find a nice cliff.

Got my own dinosaur today. My brother was already riding around on a Raptor named Sir Reginald the Third, our mutual friend was riding around on a pair of Parasaurs named Butterscotch and Butterscotch the 2nd, while I am now the proud owner of a Trike named Lord Horatio DeSilva.

We also decided to move away from the coastal area and more inland, spending most of the evening working on building a bridge towards a smaller raised area from which we'll build a new house and pen for the dino's, with those big doors keeping the rest of the rabble out.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Raptors are tough. Only takes a few tranqs to knock them out but they're fast and hard to hit.

And you need to lvl their health up too.

I always build some little 2 story towers for raptor shooting. Or find a nice cliff.

Raptor hunting was stressful. I hate hate the turtles now. They have a walk that sounds like something running so I would keep looking around me thinking that I was being jumped by a raptor, but it was just a turtle. Freaked the hell out of me one time I turned around and the turtle was starring right at me. I did finally get a raptor though. Named him sparky and almost lost them in the last leg home to to a fish. (It was kind of a long track back to base, but I was smart and had a saddle so I could ride them rather then have them follow) Your right about their health being low. I think I will level that up the most. He is quite brisk though a real good mount.

Hehe, them turtles are indeed nasty. My brother will gladly attack anything with his raptor. Anything but those turtles.

I just caught a flying dino. It had landed in my base and I thought why not. It only took one arrow to fall over and now she is mine. I don't have a saddle for her yet, so I just have her idling for exprence

Sooo, Apparently it is going to be cross platform

Do you have a link? Also, which platforms?

I got this myself, been playing strictly single player since I don't feel like playing with sociopaths that'll constantly murder me in my sleep and prevent me from making any progress whatsoever (or capture me and render me unable to really play the game at all). PvP in this game sounds like a joke, having people stay online 24/7 in games doesn't work and from what I can see in the reviews it's putting a lot of people off the game.

Surprised at just how awful my framerate is, I have 16GB of RAM and a 2GB video card, have the graphics turned down so low that the game looks like utter garbage compared to other, older games I've been able to run beautifully, and I'd be surprised if I'm even getting 30fps right now. I have an old PC and I know I need a new one, but seriously, this is ridiculous. I don't see any reason why this game runs so poorly. Does everyone get gakky framerates like this? I've seen people with $700 GTX980's in their machines still not being able to get more than 30fps, like it just caps there.

I know, Early Access, and optimization is probably one of the last things they're going to get around to doing. They just keep adding more dinos right now.

I've found a pretty decent spot on the beach I've been able to build a house on, haven't had anything really dangerous spawn close to me yet (couple of spinosaurs roaming around nearby but they're a ways off on the other side of a cliff, would be surprised if they roamed that far), the raptors seem to be on the beach across a large body of water or deep into the forest on my other side so I haven't been jumped yet, plenty of wood and berries nearby, don't have to go too far to find dodos or fish and there's a few supply drops within walking distance even. I've managed to build a two-story house entirely out of wood so far. Tried to tame a raptor (I went looking for one, lol) but I apparently greatly underestimated how many supplies I would need to accomplish that; didn't have nearly enough narcoberries/narcotics or raw meat on me to do it successfully, so I just killed the damn thing for meat. I guess dilos are more "accessible" but I wanted something ride-able that can also help me hunt, and didn't want too many mouths to feed, either.

There's plenty of fun to be had playing solo I guess, just exploring the island, building your house up, that kinda thing, but I do kinda wish I had a group to play with because it does feel a tad "empty" sometimes. And I feel like there's a lot of things you just can't do solo...trying to tame the larger dinosaurs for example, especially carnivores, would require so many resources that I'm not sure one person actually could gather them all (like hundreds of berries and meat, HUNDREDS, and several HOURS standing around waiting for the thing to tame). Taming a carnotaur or even a t-rex seems out of the question, and I'm not even sure how the hell I could knock one out honestly, or kill one if I had to, when the strongest thing I have is a bow. You need a group to get to end-game content too, and to kill the "bosses" apparently.

It is indeed supposed to come out for the xbox and playstation, but only at release - so next summer.

As far as your situation Sid - why don't you play on a PVE server?

Other players and their dinos cannot harm you, your structures or your dinos. The only form of griefing available on PVE servers is locking down large areas with structures (can't block off caves, though) and sneaking into your house to steal if you leave the door open. Since storage containers can be pin coded, even that isn't that big of a deal (you only have to enter the pin code once so it's not even that big of an inconvenience for you).

Yeah, you just gotta find the right servers. And try and stay off the official servers as they're full of buttheads. Find a nice private server. There will be less people and generally nicer people too, if you find one that has an active admin who cares.

I really like the one I found. its PvE during the week and PvP on the weekend. And the XP rates and difficulty are turned up.

 Sidstyler wrote:
I got this myself, been playing strictly single player since I don't feel like playing with sociopaths that'll constantly murder me in my sleep and prevent me from making any progress whatsoever (or capture me and render me unable to really play the game at all). PvP in this game sounds like a joke, having people stay online 24/7 in games doesn't work and from what I can see in the reviews it's putting a lot of people off the game.

Surprised at just how awful my framerate is, I have 16GB of RAM and a 2GB video card, have the graphics turned down so low that the game looks like utter garbage compared to other, older games I've been able to run beautifully, and I'd be surprised if I'm even getting 30fps right now. I have an old PC and I know I need a new one, but seriously, this is ridiculous. I don't see any reason why this game runs so poorly. Does everyone get gakky framerates like this? I've seen people with $700 GTX980's in their machines still not being able to get more than 30fps, like it just caps there.

I know, Early Access, and optimization is probably one of the last things they're going to get around to doing. They just keep adding more dinos right now.

I've found a pretty decent spot on the beach I've been able to build a house on, haven't had anything really dangerous spawn close to me yet (couple of spinosaurs roaming around nearby but they're a ways off on the other side of a cliff, would be surprised if they roamed that far), the raptors seem to be on the beach across a large body of water or deep into the forest on my other side so I haven't been jumped yet, plenty of wood and berries nearby, don't have to go too far to find dodos or fish and there's a few supply drops within walking distance even. I've managed to build a two-story house entirely out of wood so far. Tried to tame a raptor (I went looking for one, lol) but I apparently greatly underestimated how many supplies I would need to accomplish that; didn't have nearly enough narcoberries/narcotics or raw meat on me to do it successfully, so I just killed the damn thing for meat. I guess dilos are more "accessible" but I wanted something ride-able that can also help me hunt, and didn't want too many mouths to feed, either.

There's plenty of fun to be had playing solo I guess, just exploring the island, building your house up, that kinda thing, but I do kinda wish I had a group to play with because it does feel a tad "empty" sometimes. And I feel like there's a lot of things you just can't do solo...trying to tame the larger dinosaurs for example, especially carnivores, would require so many resources that I'm not sure one person actually could gather them all (like hundreds of berries and meat, HUNDREDS, and several HOURS standing around waiting for the thing to tame). Taming a carnotaur or even a t-rex seems out of the question, and I'm not even sure how the hell I could knock one out honestly, or kill one if I had to, when the strongest thing I have is a bow. You need a group to get to end-game content too, and to kill the "bosses" apparently.

Optimization is a issue, and I don't see it getting better. They have put out several optimization patches, but my frames are still about the same. (20-30 on med) I don't know if it can be optimized because it's a big open game with long vistas and a lot of bells and whistles. (No god the lighting is complex. You see the sun reflect off wet dirt.)


Oh I am surprised we don't have a dakka dakka server for this game yet?

Wow, after the last few patches it takes up to 10+ minutes for me to join our local server.

I tamed a raptor! Named him Echo.

Yeah, I thought about PvE servers, but my thinking originally was playing in single player just to learn the game first. I wasn't even sure if the game was going to run when I first bought it. I'd love to see this game with everything turned up to "Epic" but I'm not sure if it's worth investing like $3,000 into a new computer, soooo...

Best chance at running it at optimal settings at this point is to set the game aside for a couple of months and return then when they've shat out two dozen patches fixing this and that.

These 3 commands are key.

hit tab

r.bloomquality 0

r.lightshafts 0

gamma (2 - 4 or so depending on time of day)

 Sidstyler wrote:
I tamed a raptor! Named him Echo.

Yeah, I thought about PvE servers, but my thinking originally was playing in single player just to learn the game first. I wasn't even sure if the game was going to run when I first bought it. I'd love to see this game with everything turned up to "Epic" but I'm not sure if it's worth investing like $3,000 into a new computer, soooo...

Really the only thing you need to run the game better is a graphics card. Its not that taxing on other areas. As long your computer is less than 5 years old it should run it ok. And a good middle of the road graphics card isn't too expensive by itself. No need for an entirely new computer unless its a decade old clunker.

I got it and can barely play it with a radeon HD 6570. Got the fps to a level I can play at tho so meh. I may look into getting a better card but I may need a bigger PSU too.

Been playing in singleplayer after I got griefed in pvp and spawntrapped in a house in a pve servers. Got to level 10 now and have 3 dilo's. Something like level 5, 6 and 22. Been trying to keep them away from larger preds.

I made my house along the coast between spawns west 1 and west 2. Usually just dilo to worry about at my shack and the forest above the cliff doesnt seem to get bigger preds.
Was following the river inlets and I climbed a massive stony cliff and looked at the rivers splitting off below. I spotted a spinosaur sail sticking out the water so I avoided that only to find a second one another 300metres up the river.
Have seen 3 carnotaurus in the forest near west 2 and the other rivers have a couple crocs too.

I pretty much can only explore east of my shack now. I may have to move at some stage too as the closer spinosaur is gradually being lured to me by fleeing parasaurs.

Maybe I can get like 3000 dilo's and send them enmasse to pile the spino. Doubt it tho. Its one hitting anything it catches so I assume its a high level one.

Seems to be on sale on Steam for about $24.99.

 Sinful Hero wrote:
Seems to be on sale on Steam for about $24.99.

It's been that price basically from the start. There was less then a week of it being full price before it went on sale again.

nomotog wrote:

 Sinful Hero wrote:
Seems to be on sale on Steam for about $24.99.

It's been that price basically from the start. There was less then a week of it being full price before it went on sale again.

Really? I could have sworn it was full price earlier this week when I added it to my wishlist.