Alice Cooper Ate My Snake

(Part 1)
(Part 2)
(Part 3)

All the raptors, which used to live in riding distance of our camp, had been killed in weird and mysterious ways. While we may never know how, why or where they all disappeared and what tragic fate must have befallen them, I can honestly say that it almost certainly, kinda, probably, most likely didn't, but maybe just a little bit had something to do with us being so useless at taming raptors and getting them drowned, crushed, eaten and pulverized in the process. But hey, live and learn, right? Well. Not the raptors. Poor things.

It was time for a new plan. We prepared our air force once more. It was time to head north in order to explore a huge land mass past the swamp and some river full of asshole crocodiles. Scout things out. See what awaits us there. Maybe figure out whether or not THEISLAND still had any raptors at all. Find a good spot, park our airplanes in a safe spot (or back at home), make our way to the raptors and tame one at long last. It's gotta work out at some point!

Adjust your poop sliders, everybody. It's gonna be a long trip!

We came to an ancient forest, which had some stunning, massive trees, much bigger and more impressive than anything growing back at our base. There were some old ruins we checked out when our dinos had to land for a stamina break. The place was almost beautiful, but, you know, low resolution, massive pop-in and all that. I think I'm gonna stop going on about it, because that dead horse has been mashed into a fine paste by now.

The place was inhabited by all sorts of herbivores. Most prominently, a bunch of annoyingly loud elky things. Or moose or something? Furry things with antlers, which wouldn't shut up for some reason.

The forest was also home to a bunch of dire bears and some annoying pricks literally named terrorbirds. They weren't quite as massive as stupid Theon (Claire renamed him to Edward because of his scissorhands now, which is honestly kinda cool), but they sure wanted some of that sweet Ptetra ass.

We didn't bring any other pets, seeing as we just wanted to explore the area and not have any of our hunting dinos get lost by making them try to keep up with our flying mounts. Making the pteranodons nice and tanky really paid off. And then Claire spotted it.
There was a beautiful, perfect raptor just sitting there, waiting for us to tame it, so we captured it and took it home and everyone was happy and that's the end of Mission Raptor.

Just kidding. There was a fucking T-Rex, and it absolutely fucking destroyed everything. I dismounted Ptetra, because I'm a fucking idiot and I wanted to have a closer look at the Rex. And he tolerated that for a few moments as he munched his way across the forest, happily eradicating bears, elky things, frogs, turtles, snakes and just about everything else that existed. Then he spotted me. Started charging right at me. With animal-like reflexes I sprinted back to my pteranodon and hit the inventory button instead of the mount button. Twice. Opening your inventory in the Switch version of Ark causes the entire game to freeze for two seconds. I peed a little.

Once I was back up in the air, big boy Rex quickly lost interest in me and began to maul the absolute fuck out of a nearby brontosaurus. The bronto slapped him with his long neck as if it was a limp dick, because what else was it supposed to do? So I jumped off my dino and immediately began to pelt the Rex with tranquilizer arrows. The bastard didn't even care. He tore the bronto to pieces, then ate him. Not that I'm complaining or anything. He just kept on feeding for a while, so I continued to feed him tranquilizers, until he realized that something wasn't quite right. That's when he started to run. Who's the apex predator now, bitch? The T-Rex was running away from me, so I fired one last shot at him.

From there it was the same old song and dance. Stuff him full of meat, make sure he eats, wait for him to love us. The whole thing went a lot quicker and was a lot easier than it had any right to. We sat and waited for hours taming things like our hipster bird dino or a stegosaurus, but Mr. Rex liked meat so much, he just happily gobbled it all up in his sleep.

I'm not gonna make fun of him. Us sleep-eaters have to stick together.

And after surprisingly little effort, the greedy little T-Rex was ours. Not entirely sure why we even care about raptors anymore at this point, but coolness factor, I guess? Completion? Anyway, meet Alice Cooper:

Such a winning smile!

And we made even more new friends while we were there! Still mourning the loss of Jerry, the otter Claire had tamed and then killed with her own spear, all within a window of 38 seconds on her very first day in this game, we had never been able to spot another otter. Until now. There was a whole bunch of the little shits going about their daily business, with all the nasty predators around us completely ignoring them for some reason. They were still fucked, of course, since Claire and her spear were here. But she was a little more careful this time around, tamed one of them and decided to wear it as a scarf. Like so:

And since we were already in the process of taming ALL THE THINGS and I had to go back on foot (Alice Cooper can't fly, after all!), I tranquilized one of the elks, who immediately ran into the river, fainted and drowned. So I shot a second one, named him Steve MacDonald and was now the not so proud owner of the most pathetic beast to ever roam THEISLAND.

I'm not sure whether it's bad karma, a broken AI script or the fact he's extra delicious, but Steve immediately began to attract every single predator in a 20 mile radius. He defended himself by wildly flailing around, hitting everything in his path, friend and foe alike. He started by squishing a giant snail Claire was attempting to tame. It left quite an impressive trail of green goo all over the place when it died.

It's a shame, because they're actually quite pretty. They only eat cake.

The journey home was as chaotic as it gets, because fucking Steve pulled everything, forcing Alice Cooper and our pteranodons to swoop in and kill predators non-stop. Imagine a whole bunch of giant herbivores panically escaping in every single direction, a T-Rex trying to keep up and shaking the earth with every step and stupid Steve just panic-stampeding all over the place, squishing and killing random shit wherever he went. It looked a little something like this:

Claire scouted ahead on her mount and had her dino chomp bugs and flying ants out of the air. I had to stay on the ground and protect Steve, so most of my gear had fallen apart. Meanwhile, Steve attracted all the snakes in the land, got paralyzed and went to sleep for an entire night and an entire day, forcing us to sit and wait around his useless ass.

God damn it, Steve!

It's now way past bedtime, but we finally made it home. I put a saddle on Steve and parked him next to our other mounts. I can't craft a saddle for Alice Cooper for now, because holy fucking level requirements, Batman!
Here's the thing though. For as much as I hate micromanaging shit, taking care of all those annoying survival things you have to remember and what have you - coming home felt good! Putting some shit on the crops, throwing some potatoes in the trough, throwing some steaks in the smoking chamber, checking on all the pets, making repairs and so forth. I absolutely hate chores. But just enjoying the safety of our camp, basic maintenance, not having to worry about getting swallowed alive by snakes or having to worry about the Steve murder club for a change was exactly what I needed at the time. We've got a T-Rex, baby! Still no raptors. Chris Pratt would be disappointed.