I named my first Argentavis after a cute Twitch streamer. Morgcules. She wasn't into Ark but it was fun to play Ark and mind her channel's chat while she played wtv. Seemed to fit since it was a massive, powerful, very strong willed creature.. and the bird looked pretty tough too :p
Not to long after I got another.. Morgcules the Two'th. Would have worked better if birds had teeth.. but wtv. Few other creatures are as useful.
In the pursuit of ruling the desert.. like ruling the Island, which just required a Giga, the only reason to keep playing really.. Having an Argentavis, at least, is key. Ultimately, to conquer the desert, I need a wyvern but spending what will be weeks taming and leveling up an army of puny Argy's with speed and health just to steal an egg, the hatch it successfully, then slaughter several more wyverns.. just to raise one for myself from a hatchling to a fearsome fire, or poison, or electricity spitting dragon, seems extremely stupid and ridiculous.
I don't understand how that's even possible let alone appealing to solo players. It is possible and I know most of the theory behind it.. what I don't understand is why its designed to be so impossible.
I mean even the generic design of the wyvern capture structures can be reduced to something relatively resource cheap and simple. I don't know why but several days ago I started building a gate and accidentally started a behemoth gate instead of just a large one for my base. I needed 3 doors and built this extra big one by mistake. I have a few wind turbines also ready to go. By the end of today or tomorrow I could have a wyvern/deathworm/golem/mantis trap set up. But until I need to use it to capture and kill a wyvern there's no sense building it.
All I need to start though is metal and an Argy. Another industrial stove and another fridge.
My Argy was killed so I need a new one.
The first one disappeared into the sky while fighting off another wild Argentavis. Never found it. Not even sure if it died since there was no death notification. I felt that losing it was annoying since being able to fly was really liberating and empowering. Same feeling having a sword on Twitch. Though there's some responsibility involved.. you can't just fly around and murder wtv you like. An Argy is a creature that needs to be treated with respect.. and being reckless will get you stranded or dead from jumping off. I've jumped off SOOOO many times.
I landed my only Scorched Earth Argy near the edge of the map because it was out of stamina. But the god damned game crashed.
When it started back up again I had to find my vulture and get back on the Argy.. but couldn't find the stupid vulture. My torch had just burned out so it was pitch black. Worse is that apparently when you reload the game at night for no reason there's half a dozen predators out.
This is one of those things about Ark that makes no sense. I mean as far as the Single player aspect of the game which apparently gets zero attention from Studio Wildcard. There's so many things that haven't been addressed which make Single player eye-clawingly annoying. When you reload the game you aren't mounted and any small creatures you have picked up will not even be anywhere near you. they could fix this or at least address it but no.
Now I'm not blaming stupid game design for this clusterfuck. I could have been carrying another torch. So while the vulture and Argy managed to wreck a few of the predators I couldn't even see.. I couldn't pick up or get mounted up because they kept flying around.
WHY ISN'T THERE A GET THE FUCK OVER HERE AND PICK ME UP BUTTON!?!
Wasn't even mad at that point, just annoyed.
What was getting to me was that I was whistling for them to calm the fuck down and come back to me.
The new whistling mechanic is ridiculously convoluted especially when they are panicked and flying around so you can't aim at them and they keep getting panicked.
Fine.
I pulled out my crossbow to help them out with the last couple of predators.
Somehow managed to kill the fucking vulture.
Eventually got mounted on the Argy and tried to find a tree because I needed mats, which I should have been carrying, to make another torch or at least repair the one I had. That as far as I know there's only torches to make light at night is ludicrous. The flashlights are on helmets and guns. No thanks. The helmet light makes me puke and the gun lights are useless. There's no electric (or battery powered) light that replaces a torch, but more importantly lasts at least the whole damned night.
No dice. As soon as I landed I got mobbed by even more predators. So I whip out my sword and start flailing. Somehow managed to kill a couple of things and suddenly I'm hitting something that isn't taking any damage and I'm not able to mount my Argy because it's still panicking.
I'm like Fine.. but then I died. Keyboard smash time.
In some amount of shock I killed the app. I need to stop doing that because it doesn't do anything on PC. Also it makes it so I can't recover my body bag. So I lost everything on the vulture, the Argy AND my survivor.
Fine. Rip..
When I reloaded the game I realized I'd fucked up. Having installed a second redundant, and for the moment useless fridge, at my base I had removed the only bed there.
Clawing my face I had to have her run naked back up to the base, still in the dead of night, grabbed a TREX and tried to track down that damned Argy.
The game crashed again for no reason. But not before it notified me that the Argy was killed by a rock golem.
Ah. That's the fucker that killed me.
It crashed ever time I got close to the area where the Argy should have been,
The vulture... wtv.. My survivor dying.. wtv. But not my Argy. Getting another one would take half a day.
I'm here pissed about how hard it will be to get a wyvern, like giving up every time I see one in the sky because it can one shot my late Argy.. getting another one.. or several more for redundancy will take days.
So at about that time she came on and asked how I was. Seething by that point I told her that I haven't been this mad with myself and the game, for not being properly prepared for the possibility of literally everything that could have gone wrong while away from base at night.. all of it happening at once. But more so the loss of ANOTHER Argy.
Studio Wildcard didn't put any Stegos or alternatives into Scorched Earth.. so like dozens of other things like the double spoil times it makes taming them much longer than it would on the Island.
Fine.
I gave up trying to get it or finding its body bag because that rock elemental would be camping it. Definitely worse than dealing with a Giganotosaurus. This or these rock elementals always pop up exactly when my mount is out of stamina and just in the right position to get murdered.
In the aftermath I read that they are weak to fire arrows. I have some of those.
AND that I could just tame an Archeopteryx since they are like having a hang glider in case I need to ditch the Argy or do so accidentally.
Ok, I'll think about getting one versus replacing the vulture.
The shock of the lose and the unholy clusterfuck that just happened.. I wasn't sure I wanted to deal with Ark Scorched Earth for the rest of the day.
Hopped on Destiny for a bit and was not having it.. the shock still wasn't wearing off.
Previously when I lost the last few dinos I just jumped on a predator and collected meat for a while. wasn't helping.
Just being busy trying to collect the mats necessary to replace the shit I lost.. wasn't helping.
A few in game days later I walked by a lvl 25 Argy and figured why not.
Dumped all the mats and took a Rex out to find it. Dropped it and went back to base again to get some muscle to guard the area during taming.
But it was night again. Pitch black. It'd be a long while trying to starve this one but it would be worth it because it would tame above lvl 30.
I'd set the 2 guard Rexs to aggressive and they started attacking something. A Doedicorus. I fucking hate these things. Marvelous.
Except my initial reaction was who cares. It wouldn't cause any issues since it is a herbivore and would turtle up if it took too much damage from the guard Rexs.
Of course.. with my luck the idiots were pushing it over to the downed Argy I was trying to tame.
Clawing my eyes out I couldn't believe this shit was happening.
I'm trying to starve the fucking Argy and this Doed that magically appeared out of nowhere the instant I brought some muscle to protect the Argy from damage and its already at no health.
I had to abandon the idea of starving it and had to waste half the food I'd brought to feed it, of the 8500 or so food points needed to complete the tame and maybe get a couple of bonus levels.. I'd get maybe 1 level. And it would need thousands of food points to complete the taming and what the calculator was telling me.. probably 4-5 real hours of guarding it.
How do I have luck this bad!?
Most survivors don't leave this shit to luck. They bring resources to build walls around their tames to keep predators out.
But I just can't bring myself to bother. It has to be entertaining somehow to have to deal with this fucking bullshit right?
So anyway.. once the Argy was healed up and the guard Rexs banished to a hundred feed away.. I waited for the Doed to un-turtle. Dumped 30 tranq arrows into it before it got knocked out and murdered the shit out of it.
Eventually this Argy will be tamed. Or I'll do mad and delete the game. In the case that it does successfully get tamed.. What to name it.
One of the only streamers I sometimes watch is missKyliee. She's making cookies atm. I asked her to ship me some. Apparently she is shipping them to people that tip. Not likely to but it would be nice to have a cookie right now. Might name it Kyliee and see how long it lasts. Morgucles the 3rd did go strong for a long while and was up to that point one of the oldest of my tames.