One option was Chainsaw Face
I went instead for Cookie Monster.
I'm a bit annoyed with the game because his health was 140K and melee damage was 100% before tame, then went to 30K and 20% afterwards. How the fuck?!
Meanwhile.
Heading up the Northern Coast to WhiteSky for some oil and Obsidian, even though I don't need any now that I have a tamed Giganotosaurus behind me.. I couldn't help but notice his shadow keeping pace. He takes 3 giga steps to my dozen or so. Each time he draws up I see the shadow of his head popping up like a jack-in-the-box.
I'm like that looks like a Jim Henson muppet. Especially with the dopey hands. But the Giga IS dopey. In a murderous psycho-killer kind of way. The shadow looked like Cookie Monster sneaking up behind me just waiting to make god awful mess.
Which is also pretty accurate since that's all Giganotosaurus does. At its most useful, it just murders everything. Otherwise it is gigantic annoying monster. Most other tames will just kill and then devour the body so they collect meat. Most giga kills are quick so there's no devour bite unless the next kill is right there next to the preceding one.
Cookie Monster then.
He makes a mess back at the base too because I sometimes forget to pacify him and he flips out and murders the untamed creatures I have in a pen.
These would be more castoroides. As it had been days without seeing any in the wild up to and after the 733 update.
Hopefully 733.1 doesn't cause a relapse because I finally found a replenishing spawn of the dudes nearby.
Funny because there's a few good videos on YouTube for farming Beaver dams and most of the good spots are around Frozen Tooth.
I'm going to build a pen by the bend in the river to the south of Frozen Tooth for farming Beaver dams, a snake pit, and a massive greenhouse. I mean after cleansing the peak and the surrounding shores of Alphas, and taming the giga, there's nothing much to be afraid of. So the lack of persistent tension has altered the game slightly.
To the point where I can consider the beaver sanctuary, as they won't need to be tamed. But if wild the other creatures in my base will attack them.
Traipsing along the river with an insane cookie monster was a trying experience though. Fucker just wouldn't stop running away on his murderous rampage. He roars which incites nearby creatures to join his rampage. At least if he was able to collect all the meat.. I'd have extra to grill up for at least 1 of the still maturing dinos back at base.
More bbs.
I keep making the mistake of caring about the pups that keep popping out. But there's only so much you can do to ignore a bb in distress.
Another Doed pup means an octuplet of the bastards... BUT having finally leveled up I now have saddles for them, meaning I might be able to make the most of the remaining obsidian. AND somehow in the first almost 400 days on the Island I noticed the other thing, besides the Doed saddles which had been on the back burner of engrams I didn't think I needed, re-fertilizer works on rocks too. I'm gonna have to make a shit load of that stuff and venture back up into the Volcano and to the peaks of WhiteSky and Frozen Tooth to see if I can Johnny Appleseed some obsidian nodes.
It'll be annoying to finally have an abundance of the stuff due to the time and resources required to make re-fertilizer... but at least I'd have more guns and ammo.
The Beaver sanctuary, if dams appear, will also mean cheaper access to an abundance of cementing paste for the greenhouse. It wasn't a priority to have cheap cementing paste because making the stuff was good for XP gain. I'll probably end up kicking myself again if building fragile greenhouse panels turns out to have even higher XP gain.. except for the limited metal. With Grand peak across the water at least there will be some metal.
Some grand things to look forward to.
As usual there's things in the news that cause me to get angry.. This one only because it seems to ask the wrong questions and so frames the issue in the wrong context.
Ex-Bioware Boss doesn't think Xbox One 1.5 is a good idea. When the question was do mid-cycle refreshes/upgrades make sense or not. His answer DOES make perfect sense when you're looking at the production side that needs to have a very clear standard to work with. If you're asking the question specifically about JUST Xbox One getting a hardware upgrade.. I'm hoping his answer would be different. At least because Sony is looking to make their slim and(or) 4K version(s) of PS4 at some point and they are releasing VR.
So I'm like,
"I really don't get why Sony gets compared to Microsoft in this type of argument since they need to support 4K across all of their consumer retail products.. Regardless of the competition. And they will offer VR this year. Microsoft is a school yard instigator, not a competitor, in this current console generation. Instead of making an effort to be aligned with Sony for 4K they are happy to run with what they have, which generally doesn't do 1080p60 and isn't suitable for VR, not yet they say, so it doesn't matter when. That's called holding the industry back. Had Xbox One been more powerful to start with they could have partnered with oculus and Facebook to support the rift and provided a console ripe for VR experiences. But interesting that they try to shoulder the comparison on the opinion of someone that isn't under pressure to release one of those 'VR' or '4K' titles. Should have been more like, great, there's now this higher target we can set for PS4K whenever it launches, and call that target similar to the PC VR spec if possible, and then downsample for everything else. Seems much easier than making the same game over and over for each platform."
But again, looking at Ark, and looking at Xbox One's version of the game.. I can't help but ask, even when people say it'll be better in June/Fall when the game is released to the public in a final retail form, how can anyone think XB1.5 is a bad idea?
Sure Phil Spencer probably meant that a sooner rather than later Xbox replacement will launch with complete support for Xbox One games, that was the point of going with even more conventional PC hardware from AMD this time around.
Every console from Microsoft has failed to be as powerful as a budget gaming PC. Zeschuk's comment is the same as consumers who say well it might not be powerful as a PC but it is cheaper (only for the first couple of years) but at least developers can scratch and scrape and optimize their software well into the last stages of the console cycle to make the most of the hardware's potential.
Right k, please continue to ignore that the performance target should still be near or above what should be expected to happen in the first 4 to 5 years that will shape that consoles cycle.
For Xbox that was DVD. And 720p because it could have help Sony and other TV manufacturers to sell flat screen HD ready TVs.
But of course, Sony had a vested interest in DVD and HD TVs, their business IS movies and TV shows, and their business IS HD TVs.
Same with Xbox 360. Due to several factors, like piracy meaning an early end to Xbox, and a relationship with Toshiba.. it made sense to launch Xbox 360 early and ignore Bluray. It could have done much more to support the proliferation of Hi-Fi audio and 1080i/p multiple screen output etc, but instead it was aimed at 720p.. and maybe a few games that would support 1080p.
Arguable some of the decisions that have been made that hamstring Xbox Hardware really do help the console to sit in a comfortable middle ground and encourage more people to play together online. Over several console cycles now that means most games must have an online component. I'm not saying that's bad or anything but some of the best adventure games were single player. The industry has shifted to a requirement for an online component which is expensive and at times doesn't have anything to do with the game itself.. they have to either invent reasons for a game that would have been fine as a single player experience to require several people to play together.
Then Sony says.. ok DVD adoption was great. VHS is dead. Let's step it up again. 1080p and Bluray. And they faultered on their online strategy a bit but pulled it all together. PS3 was hard but didn't damage the brand at the end of the day.
Xbox One again is behind the curve but at least it supports Bluray and all the benefits Sony intended.
And again there's the comment that look.. Microsoft pushed Xbox One out, and few could argue with Spencer that the console isn't sufficient and reliable. It is those things and arguably it is cheap. But it is not going to support 4K or VR.
Microsoft doesn't need to fall in line behind Sony and copy everything Sony does, because the more Microsoft supports things that benefit Sony, like 4K and Bluray, the more TVs Sony gets to sell, for consumers to buy Blurays for Sony's movies.
Microsoft just wants people to buy Xbox Live subscriptions and to play all the latest games.
I see Zeschuck's comments and say the things I mentioned above because Sony requires 4K support and VR support so that they can have a widely recognized and beloved platform for their games to be offered in 4K, movies also in 4K and possibly even in VR, and TV shows etc.
It is Sony's business to support those things and they can do it now while the market is wide open for 4K consoles and VR games outside of 1500$ gaming PCs. That figure alone would drive PS4K sales because people will say either they need a much cheaper 4K solution than a PC, or at least 1 solution for displaying 4K content on their 4K TV.
Anything between $300 and $1500 is Sony's ballpark. The sooner they can get it out the better. And Sony has had 2 and even 3 consoles at the same time. PS2 is still ok,. PS3 needs to die, PS4 is cheap.. and a more powerful PS4 is in hot demand.
That kind of demand will drive the production of software that will apparently only run on a PlayStation because Xbox One won't suffice.
I found it even funnier when people said that VR runs on my phone but not my Xbox? Your phone probably costs twice as much as an Xbox.
Lastly Microsoft is all Xbox One is ready.
Ready for what? ready to admit that the console generation belongs to Sony and they are potentially going to provide key features that Xbox One can't? 4K and VR?
Having a mid-cycle upgrade would be great because it would have allowed AMD to showcase even more technology for the mobile/console space which they've had ready for ages. Developers like Studio Wildcard could release a UWP version of Ark that runs on both Xbox and Windows.
And all games would be able to support 1080p minimum.
Those are targets.
Something out of left field to consider though.. what about Windows 10? It makes sense for Microsoft to not care about Xbox supporting anything too fantastic because that leaves room for people to buy a budget Windows 10 gaming PC.
Also one could argue that devs would just make games for Xbox 1.5 that could be down-graded to run on Xbox One. They'd bitch and moan that Xbox 1.5 is still not powerful enough.
And even if MS charged something that would seem outrageous like $599 for Xbox 1.5, which some would call cheap for 4K and VR support, they'd end up shooting their Windows 10 PC business in the foot.
It has been the same argument about an ages old conflict of interest that never seems to go away but that no one talks about.
Yes, it would have been impossible to predict Bluray>HDDVD, or that 1080p adoption would have occurred so quickly, and that 4K adoption isn't already happening. None of that stuff fits into a $399 budget.
But Sony can do it?
About the only thing Microsoft isn't doing is pushing Sony to put Windows 10 on PlayStation. From a business perspective of course, if Sony was really pushing to release an upgraded PlayStation.. why isn't Microsoft pushing for them to put Windows 10 on it so that game developers can do the whole UWP thing with PlayStation?
Like Sony was super cagy/coy about responding to the idiocy from Microsoft about cross-network play. Which arguably is a green light for many Xbox One owners who don't have a big commitment to Xbox to sell it and buy a PlayStation, they'd still be able to play a few games with their friends still on Xbox.. which is more like.. it would be easier to convince the hold outs to sell and buy PlayStation.
At this rate I'm just going to buy a PS4 if Sony can offer one that supports 4K and VR to continue to play Ark, in VR with much better graphics. Even buying a 4K monitor at some point because they only cost a few hundred dollars. Makes more sense to play Destiny on PlayStation anyway... even if it means dropping my account that has 3200+ hours on it.
There's no reason to continue supporting a company like Microsoft when all they want to sell is Xbox Live and Office 365 subscriptions.