It began Wednesday December 16th, 2015. I left work at 12:22 and headed home to enjoy the afternoon. When I arrived home, I was greeted by Michael, my significant other. He told me of this new game that had just been released in alpha on xbox. He had downloaded it that morning and gave it a go. I was very new to video games, having just gotten an xbox in June, so when he mentioned that Ark had no tutorial I was hesitant. But I downloaded it anyway, and so the saga begins.
After 20 minutes agonizing over character creation, I spawned on a beach at a location called South Zone 1. The beach was beautiful. The graphics were pleasing; the ocean sparkled in the evening light and the palm trees swayed gently in the breeze. As I stood gazing at this beautiful world, I heard the steady sound of something running toward me. I turned in the fading light to see a raptor bearing down on me. Death came swiftly to my level one character with 100HP. I returned to the spawn map and chose the same location. As I woke up and looked around, I noticed that the spawn zones were quite large, as I did not spawn in quite the same place.
This game was no joke. I began running around in earnest. "Punch the trees" Mike said. So I did, watching my health decline as I gathered wood and thatch. As I ran around, punching trees and picking up stones, I heard a very familiar noise. All of a sudden I was blinded like Nedry in Jurassic Park. Desperately, I yelled into the mic, "HELP!" "Punch it!" Mike yelled. If the game were in 3rd person, it would have been a scene worthy of a capture, me blindly running around throwing punches at a dinosaur. Needless to say, I once again succumbed to death at the hands of a long extinct creature.
I respawned a 3rd time with grim determination. I began punching trees and picking up stones and making tools. The torch and pick are tools you are born knowing how to create, and by this point I had leveled up enough to learn how to make a hatchet and spear. Armed with a stone pick, hatchet, torch, and 10 spears I set off to find Mike, or Thing One as he named his character. It seems like every few steps something killed me, or I died of starvation. Once I even drowned. Every time I would die and respawn, I would find all my stuff missing. I would have to respawn at a zone, and navigate my way back (Ark didn't have map markers at that time). Finally, several re-spawns later, we met on a beach near a looming red obelisk in the sky. I quickly joined his tribe FCG (fort couch gaming) and we began to build a hut. Starvation, dehydration, and hypothermia would kill you if the dinosaurs didn't. Berries didn't provide enough sustenance so we began to hunt the local wildlife with out stone spears. I went after a triceratops, and much to Thing Ones disbelief, I brought it down. He claimed it to be a game glitch, but I knew my skills as a hunter were just superior.
Once we sorted out our food situation, we built a large castle on the beach. It was magnificent in its architecture, far superior to our first tiny thatch hut. It seemed fairly well defensible, and provided us with a place to stock food and resources. We even began taming some of the dinosaurs. Feeling very comfortable and quite proud of ourselves, we began to explore the land. We soon found out that dinosaurs weren't the only danger. We had chosen a PvP server instead of a PvE server. Footnote: While both types of servers are still MMORPG, you cannot assault another player on a PvE server. In PvP, however, you can knock out, trap, or even kill unwary players. You can take their stuff, kill their dinos, and destroy their homes. They can do this all while you are at work, asleep, or otherwise occupied. Ark is Persistent Universe with NO offline raid protection.
So we were raided, murdered, and our dinos slaughtered repeatedly. After the murder of a sarco we were taming and our base blown up, we decided to move inland and build in a less open area.
Base One Summary
Ark Location: 85lat 22lon
Environment: Temperate climate, beach.
Dinos: Mostly herbavoires like Trikes, Parasaurs. Pteranodons roamed the skies. Dangerous animals include Dilos, Raptors, Compys, and Mega Piranhas.
Tribe Members: Thing one, Thing two, Kant, Outlaw.