How to survive your first day in ARK: Survival: pointers for newbies

Picture by Traitine

Last week, I was asked by Traitine of Constant Warfare to help him out with ARK: Survival. He had logged in once or twice alone but didn't get the hang of it. This was something I could relate to, considering Conrad's disastrous first play session on the "Beaches of Terror" I reported on last week, so I was happy to be of any help.

In this post, I hope to give some pointers to ARK newbies inspired by the stream, right from the absolute start (picking a server) to how to prepare for your first logout (you can imagine falling asleep in a wood roamed by tyrannosaurus rexes and whatnot isn't the brightest of ideas). It's basically a post with the 5 Things I Wish I Had Known When Logging in to ARK for the First Time (if I'd have wanted to go with a real clickbaity title)! In addition to the blog post there's the stream, so you can pick whatever form (watching, listening or reading) suits you.

My return to LOTRO

I am still not sure how, but something odd has happened. The past couple of weeks, I've found myself lost in virtual Middle-Earth and I can't seem to motivate myself to go anywhere else.

Fashion Friday: a purple shadow

This Fashion Friday I'm introducing you to my shadow Gaïende, who is very fond of a certain colour (her eyes, the lightsaber crystal, the clothes... you get it). This is her second tanking outfit out of three - and yes, they're all purple! I didn't get a lot of pictures, unfortunately, but I wanted to share it anyway because I'm quite fond of it: it has a lot of different armour pieces from various sources.

The misadventures of Conrav on the Beaches of Horror, or: The steep learning curve of ARK: Survival

We're writing December 2015. Inspired by Haffle's enthusing adventures, I bought ARK: Survival for Conrad's birthday. Just one copy to start with, because we don't usually play survival games and I had no clue if this one would stick. But I just had to buy it because it was too perfect of a birthday gift opportunity to pass up: it has dinos in it (gasp)!

Loyal readers may remember from this Liebster Award post that we both independently nerded out on dinos as children (pro-tip: check out the comments to find out with which dinos well-known bloggers identified with). We even share both ankylosaurus AND elasmosaurus in our favourite dino top 3, so we're a perfect match! But I digress...

PvPing with Traitine and Shintar: my first stream appearance

This is my baby sage, togruta Ashrava. When Traitine of Constant Warfare invited her to join him and Shintar for some PvP on his stream, I thought about it for a while before I agreed. I said yes because I had seen his previous PvP stream and it seemed like fun, but also because I love trying new things, even when I'm terrified of doing them. I should probably elucidate a bit on the latter.

Food in MMOs

Today's 5 Fandom Friday is about favourite fictional food. Looking for my traditional gaming twist, I decided to investigate why we have food in games. After all, if you think about it, there's no need to use food in a digital environment. However, I will argue that food does play a role in MMOs - the game type I spend most time playing - as a method of implementing realism and familiarity to digital environments. Here are some examples from the games I play. As always, your own examples from other games are very welcome in the comments!

Six times pink

It's time for 6 on 6 again (and yes, it's already 7, sorry about that) and this time I've dug through my screenshot collection for pink pictures. Although pink is not a colour I roll with a lot on my characters, it was easier than expected. This edition is surprisingly Lord of the Rings Online heavy, which may have something to do with me having picked up that game once more.

Winter in Sweden

After the enthusiastic responses on my Autumn in Sweden post, it's time for the sequel: Winter in Sweden! It actually feels odd to be writing this, as I barely spent any time in Sweden in the winter. I returned to the Netherlands prematurely at the start of December because of my father's bad health. So it was halfway January when my brother, Conrad and I rode back to Lund to pick up our stuff and hand in the keys of out apartment. Although it wasn't exactly like a vacation (we had four days), I was happy I had to chance to say goodbye to the town one last time after having had to leave it in such a rush.