Gaming - Atlas

"It will be epic", my brother said. "It'll be just like Ark, only bigger, much bigger" he said.

We hadn't heard a thing about Atlas when we visited my brother last weekend. So when he told us about it, we got excited! Okay, hubby a little more so than I, because it's more about sailing and I never really cared much for being a pirate, but those shitloads of islands sounded fun to explore!

So, the next day we found that the game had launched after it had been pushed back multiple times. We bought the game, downloaded it and started playing.

I loaded on a random server and island first. Lawless territory. There was lag, but it was doable. I just told myself: It's early access and it only just launched. So, it was fine. I first noticed a couple of things:

Definitely like Ark. It plays and feels like Ark, which we were told about beforehand. That's fine, because I know how to play Ark, so that makes it easier to get used to.
I wasn't able to create anything. It's all locked away in a skill tree.

This second one was a little annoying. Then the most annoying thing I noticed: Eating is a pain in this game. See, it's just like real life! You need all sorts of vitamins (there's 4 kinds ingame), they all come from different food sources (gathering, killing, fishing), and eating too much makes you sick.

This means I can't put my character on a berries diet. She cannot be a vegan (which would mean I wouldn't have to bother with the rubberbanding creatures). This also means she somehow has to eat enough of everything while not eating so much that she'll get physically ill from all the food I try to feed her. So far, it looks like her vitamin levels are slowly depleting while I try my very best to keep her on a varied diet.

Anyway, so I started on this island in lawless territory. It was one out of many, many servers and from what I gather, you should be able to sail inbetween them. Can't buy a raft in this territory though, so I had to move over to a port server. Boy was that a bad idea at launch! I couldn't get anywhere, due to massive rubberbanding. I had the hardest time commiting suicide, just so I could switch back to a lawless territory server.

I quit and the next day, things were a little better. I was able to go to a port, buy a raft and start setting up my stuff on this raft. I did loads of gathering, finally managed to kill some fish (darn vitamins), became level 8 and had to set sail, because level 8 is the max in port territories.

So I set sail and after some time out on the open ocean, I found a couple of islands. Still in port territory though, so I haven't sailed far enough. I think I might have to sail off my map to sail to another server, though I'm honestly not sure yet. I'll try, but it'll take me a long time! Gotta take this raft with me though, so I think I don't have any other choice.

So far, Atlas was a real pain and I think the first few levels are super annoying. Once you've managed to unlock some necessary crafting items, things start to pick up and once you're all set on your raft, the game becomes even more interesting.

I'm a little excited now that I have my raft and I can start exploring all of the islands. We'll see how my excitement holds up!

Edit: So I just logged back into the game and found my raft and all of its contents gone. I am on a random island and I'm thirsty, with nowhere to go, except the open ocean. Without a boat. Bah what a frustrating game! Time to die and start from scratch in a port town...