Ark: Scorched Earth - New Beginnings

We've finally done it. It's weird, really.
Change is important, right? Progress. Evolution. Ark itself embraces that, has evolution right in its title. So how come most of us, as a species, dislike and straight-up fight change? Clinging on to the status quo, reminiscing about the good old days and shit. Anyhow, we've left THEISLAND for the next part of Ark's story: Scorched Earth.

There are a few things about Scorched Earth, which immediately put me off. First of all, it's set entirely in the desert. You get some mountains and canyons and dried-up river beds, but there's simply no way around the fact it's all a bit samey and gets old a lot faster than the varied landscapes and biomes of THEISLAND. Another problem is that moving to a new ark always means you're going back to the stone age.

Downgrading from tek gear to whatever this is.

The good thing about expecting the absolute worst is how it means you're already somewhat prepared. So we chose the east midlands as our starting point, as we live in the east midlands of the UK. Once more into the fray. Spawning completely naked. No guns, no kickass lightsabers, no jetpack. Punching trees, breaking off rocks, making basic caveman tools. At least this time we had an idea what we were doing, which made a big difference. It also helped that our characters already had a hundred levels under their belts, because Scorched Earth doesn't pull any punches.

Where Ark's first map gently pushes your survival instincts in the starting areas by throwing the odd dilophosaur at you, this time around we were immediately attacked by a raptor. Claire knocked it out with her bare hands. Maximum difficulty, no cheats. Apparently, a level 100 survivor is strong enough to take out a level 8 raptor using no gear whatsoever. Interesting. While Claire was taming her raptor, I took out a bunch of giant prehistoric boars using only a spear. Again, interesting. I remember dying countless deaths to raptors and pigs back on THEISLAND, even when we had actual weapons and armor. I didn't expect our levels to make that much of a difference.

We built a base in no time at all.

We followed the old river bed until we managed to find some water. That's where we decided to set up our base. I built a giant wall to section off the dried-up part of the river, then used the water and the surrounding cliffs to ward off the rest of our camp against potential intruders. I built a nice little stone house. Claire built a wooden house, which resembles a penis. The tip of her cockhouse has a little window in it. She can leave her dick house through the tip-window. She says she did none of this on purpose. Maybe it's all in her subconscious.

Definitely not a penis: Claire's house.

Scorched Earth has a handful of new creatures we haven't encountered before. One of them is a stomach-turningly cute mammal called the jerboa. It's basically a small kangaroo with the head of a fennec fox. You tame one and put it on your shoulder and it'll warn you about each of this ark's impending stupid weather conditions like blinding sandstorms and tech-disabling electrical storms and other such crap. I tamed two of the little shits, as the first one immediately disappeared into the foundation of our base camp, becoming one with our home for all eternity. Great.

Next, we tamed a thorned dragon, because they look like a cross between a lizard and a pinecone, they're really good at harvesting stuff and they can put things to sleep with a ranged attack. In other words, they instantly make other popular workhorse-dinos like the triceratops obsolete. Which is fine, seeing as trikes don't seem to spawn here, anyway.

I miss our old friends!

Speaking of stuff that doesn't exist on this ark - we went and transferred some stuff over from THEISLAND. Obelisks and tek transmitters allow you to move gear and dinos between worlds, making things a little easier. We brought some of our worker dinos for resources, as well as our otters. They are incredibly helpful when dealing with extreme temperatures. For the time being, we left our tek gear where it was. For as fun as it is being borderline immortal, having the ability to fly without the help of dinos and shooting every possible threat with a plasma rifle, we didn't want to just completely stomp the place and eradicate all challenge from the very beginning. In that same spirit, we didn't bring our giga, a T-Rex or any other super powerful dinos for now.

Pinecone reminds me of some of our RL pets. I like him.

We also brought our flying dinos upon realizing that the giant moths in Scorched Earth are as adorable as they're useless. They're agile and all, but their stats are fairly unimpressive and they don't fight, because they're moths. So we went and grabbed our argies, then flew all over the place to get a better idea about our surroundings.

We're bringing freedom and democracy to Scorched Earth.

As we went and explored the desert from above, I spotted one of the coolest creatures in the entire game: a mantis. You know, big, green, googly eyes, deadly sickles for arms and apparently they like a little head during sex? I wouldn't want one for a pet in real life, as they're a bit on the fragile side and I doubt they're the bonding type. But in Ark? A specimen big enough for me to ride into battle? Fuck yeah!

I'm not massively keen on insects, but these guys are awesome.

So apparently, in oder to tame one of these bad boys you need bits of a creature called a deathworm. Well, that sounds easy enough, right? Let's go find and kill some of these deathworms and tame us a mantis!
Now, before you give me shit about underestimating something named deathworm, let's have a quick look at Ark's nomenclature, shall we? Because everything is already named giga, mega or titansomething. It means nothing. A titanoboa is largely harmless once you've gained a few levels and you've geared up a little. A megaloceros is something you punch in the butt and then laugh at as it panicks and runs away. So I'm not gonna be intimidated by some worm, no matter his forename. Well, about that.

We flew around the desert for hours. Actual, literal, real earth hours. Then we finally found some weird dust clouds in the sand. We flew a little closer and there was a rumble. A split second later, an alpha deathworm appeared, broke all of my gear and killed me in one hit. Just like that. I didn't know they were the size of a skyscraper or that there was an alpha variety. All I saw was this:

Except, from the inside.

Having sunk several hundred hours into Ark, my attitude towards items in this game has changed a lot. You see, in most games I play, items are everything. Picture any max level character in World of Warcraft. Put him side by side with another max level character of the same class, remove all their items and they become identical. Exact same stats, same skills, save for a handful of very minor, meaningless, non-permanent choices in their talent trees. Now clad one of them in green quest trash and the other guy in raid gear and suddenly there's a world of difference between these two characters. Same thing applies to most (*coughs* actual) RPGs to varying degrees. You get your skills and your attributes, but a huge part of your power, if not the biggest, always comes from items.

Ark, at least from a PvE point of view, doesn't give a shit about your gear. If anything, you'll wear it for utility. Stuff that protects you against hot or cold environments. Scuba gear for deep sea adventures. Camouflaged armor to sneak past predators. When that worm chewed through my riot gear? Fuck it. If you're lucky, heavy armor will protect you during one or two hairy encounters that might not kill you outright. After that, all of your stuff will be broken and require so much in resources to repair, it's basically not worth the effort unless you're part of some huge tribe, who mass-produces items on an industrial level. But I lost something else. Something I wasn't prepared to go without.

You'll be missed, little buddy.

Fishface was my otter. He was one of the first creatures I tamed all by myself, all the way back on Switch. I never went anywhere without him. He saved us when Claire and I lost our mount on THEISLAND and got surrounded by raptors and boas. I'm not even exaggerating. That damn otter fought long enough for me to wake up after getting knocked down, bought me enough time to grab my shotgun and helped me fight off that pack of raptors before they ate us.

The worm ate him. I wish we had dived in there to grab him. Got close enough to whistle at him to run away or to at least fight back. To do something. We couldn't save him. Everything, everyone dies in the end, one way or another. Didn't make it any less of a punch to the gut. Look at his stupid, happy little face. The worm doesn't care. It just wants to eat. Nature is fucked up, in real life and in videogames.

Not even penis house cheered me up that night.

Claire said I could always have one of her otters. Or just get a new one from THEISLAND. And that's true. But I don't want to replace Fishface. Guess I'll just be otterless for a while. Doesn't have to make sense to you. It makes enough sense to me.

On a less depressing note, we ultimately caught our mantis and these guys are incredible! Not only are they really great harvesters and fighters, but you can even equip them with tools and melee weapons, so now I'm riding on this giant black insect, which chops all the dinos to tiny bits with his swords. I named him Chakan.

A glitch is making it look like he's wielding swords and axes at the same time, because this is Ark.

Okay, children, time for a bit of videogame history. Chakan: The Forever Man was a game on the Sega Megadrive/Genesis and the Sega Game Gear based on a comic book character of the same name. The game isn't every good, it's brutally difficult, the music is some of the worst in any videogame ever. The reason why this game has stuck with me since the day it was announced is its unusually dark setting and character. Chakan was this incredible swordsman, who would beat anyone in a fight until he ran out of opponents and challeneged Death himself to a duel. Upon defeating the grim reaper, Chakan demanded his ultimate prize: eternal life.

And since you don't fuck with death, the arrogant fencer soon regretted his wish. He continued to age, undying, ceaselessly withering away. In the game you have to fight your way back into Death's realm to defeat him once more in order to find eternal peace at last. How fucking cool is that? In the 90s, a decade dominated by mascot platformers and cheesy, 'radical' coolness, there was this game where your ultimate goal was to die. And check out that character art:

The megadrive cover art was reason enough for us to buy the game back in the day:

There was a sequel planned in the early 2000s, but in the end it never happened. Rumor has it, that much of the artwork meant for the new Chakan went into Blood Omen 2, instead. And that concludes today's history lesson.
So, inspired by some scrotum-faced badass, who fucks shit up with two nasty swords, I'm now riding around on a giant mantis, which is doing pretty much the same thing.

 The hat is important.

Having watched what my new pet of choice can do, it only took Claire five minutes before she wanted her own mantis. Hers is bright orange and lunges at stuff with two giant lances.

Imagine that thing flying at you like this.

This beastie is bright orange and chops its enemies to bits with heavy medieval weaponry. Obviously, there can only be one correct name for such a creature and that's Choppy Orange. Claire, however, decided to name him Ziggy, which is ... also a name, I guess.

Poor you.

Next to moths, killer insects and pinecone lizards, there's one more thing you'll definitely want to tame when you come to this place: a wyvern. Suffice to say I couldn't wait to go out on an adventure, fly into one of their lava-filled nests and steal one of their eggs, which is the only way to obtain one of these suckers.
Except, Claire went and did all that during a 16-hour Ark session while I was working. I'm not kidding. Started the game one evening, stayed on there until midnight, talked about how we should probably stop soon, fought deathworms until 4 in the morning, tried our new mantis pets at 5, by 10am there was absolutely no point in going to sleep and by 1 in the afternoon I requested a break, because health experts suggest frequent pauses and I could really use a two hour nap after all that.

Having deprived me of one of the cooler things you can do on this ark, I was stuck raising one of the little fuckers from a tiny baby to something the length of a grown-ass bronto. And while I won't deny that wyverns look cool, they're probably the only thing I dislike more than all those bionic robo-dinos. First of all, from a conceptual point of view. I enjoy Ark, because most of the creatures in this game used to exist for real at some point. Not all in the same time period, not exactly the way they're depicted in the game, but it's fun to watch them and to imagine what the world may have been like back in their day. Robots and mythical creatures just don't fit into the picture for me.

I like dinos. And I like dragons. But I don't want them mixed together. I'm not putting bacon on top of my ice cream, either.

I also find them underwhelming from a gameplay perspective. Not only are they the size of a flying oil tanker, but they also handle like one. They have a turn radius of 'see ya in three weeks' and while it's nice of them to come with various flavours of elemental breath attacks, their damage really isn't anything special by the time you have a level 200something argentavis. It'll take your dragon an eternity and a half to catch up in terms of raw stats and then it'll still handle like ass. And, much like gigas, you can't take them into boss battles, so what is their point in pve?

Owning dragons for the sake of owning dragons.

We've also encountered our first cave, which, compared to the caves on THEISLAND, was a bit of a letdown. There were about five enemies and a small platforming section in there, which wasn't much to stop us from obtaining our first artifacts. Two more to go, then it'll be time to fight the one and only boss on this particular ark. And that's okay. The desert is nice and all, but I wouldn't mind a change of scenery. We've got what we came here for and I'm sure that some of our new friends will move to a new ark with us once we're ready to relocate. Next one on the list is Aberration, I think. But we still have a manticore to fight before we worry about that.

I've recorded several days worth of video footage showing pretty much all of these events as they happened. I might convert them into another supercut when I find the time. Not that it really matters, it's not like anyone really watches these. It's still fun putting them together, if only to have a reminder of all the crazy shit we get up to in this game. Right now, the plan is to complete all story content present in each of the official arks, then build a retirement base on Ragnarok and settle there with all our surviving favourite dinos from all the arks we've explored. There's still so much to do!