Hi, friends! It’s my birthday week and I’ve been quiet on the blog front, but that is not because I haven’t been playing. As you might suspect, the Ark: Survival Evolved saga continues and it has exploded yet again. Last time we left off, I was talking about exploring another island, but that adventure died pretty quickly. Frankly, there’s still a ton to do on “The Island” and I’ve discovered something new: the admin console (you’re going to be seeing that A LOT on my captures).

Before we get into the admin console fun, let me tell you about the latest developments. They are: I’ve gone into the ocean, we have night vision goggles, and I’ve built an enormous T-Rex pen.

One: the ocean. The very idea of the open waters in Ark sends chills down my spine. I literally get nauseous and clench my teeth along with every clenchable orifice (lol why I gotta say it like that) whenever I peer into the vast abyss… but YouTube videos say that the ocean is worth exploring, so I do.

I see every type of bone-chilling sea creature possible, including the Tusoteuthis, aka giant squid. Electric eels, angler fish, and other massive sharp-toothed fish are all around and looming in the shadows. With a scuba set equipped, I can make my way around pretty quickly and largely evade the monsters underneath. You swim especially fast in shallow water, but that doesn’t make me feel any less anxious about what might be creeping below me.

There’s even underwater caves, including one I accidentally swam into that had literally the highest level monstrosities I’ve ever seen. It looked so pretty and unassuming when I first went in until shit hit the fan and we were swarmed. Unfortunately for my boyfriend, going into a cave spawns him in with me so he was surprised with an underwater adventure he was not prepared for. It was not intentional!

Two: night vision goggles. An absolute game changer. My underwater adventure yielded a surprise material: absorbent substrate! A giant squid I killed dropped it and I didn’t realize it. Using this, we were able to craft night vision goggles and it has totally changed the experience. While it is utterly useless when it starts raining, going out in the dark is easier than ever. I can actually see obstacles, I’m not running into surprise dinos, and I can go out searching for materials without constantly toggling between a torch and my tools. After this game-changing find, we decided to invest in collecting materials needed to craft absorbent substrate so we’d never be without it again.

Three: a T-Rex pen. This is my first major build project because I’m usually too preoccupied with finding cute dinos. We decided we’d let our dinos roam, but I didn’t want to lose them… so I decided to craft a pen! I have inadvertently created a T-Rex breeding compound, however, because all of these wandering T-Rex have not been spayed/neutered and they keep laying fertilized eggs. I have probably 20 T-Rex total and it’s completely ridiculous.

So, the big update is the admin console. We decided we wanted to fight some bosses and discovered it was possible to do it without collecting items. All I had to do was plug in some commands and I could make just about anything I wanted a reality. After fighting two bosses, the third I attempted was a dragon. The dragon didn’t attack though and we found it could be tamed. So, now we have this massive dragon that we fly around the map and it is super dope.

I was inspired to look at more commands and found I could spawn in a lot more than that. I started spawning Spinos because I wasn’t finding wild ones anymore. I’d keep spawning until I found a color I liked and then I tamed it. Now my Spinos are doing the same thing as the T-Rexes… Whoops! (This isn’t even all of them, by the way)

But that’s not all! You don’t have to tame wild dinos… You can just spawn them in tamed! I decided to do that with a couple that are harder to tame naturally: the Hyaenadon and Equus. Apparently there’s a variant of the Equus that’s a Unicorn so you know I had to get that too.

I decided I’d make a pen for spawning dinos so that I could check them out without them making a run for it. I spawned in all kinds of crazy things, but the most intense was this thing called a Reaper. I should’ve known with a code like “Xenomorph” that I was making a mistake, but Xenomorphs are cute and I thought it was worth the risk. And look, it is cute, right!?

Well, good thing I spawned it in the pen because this thing would. not. die. After I shot it and stabbed it for a while with no response, I had my boyfriend fly our dragon over, spawned a second dragon in, and well… see for yourself.

Finally, I searched for a code to handle this for me and with one press of the button, the Reaper was no more!

I promise I’ll stop spawning in random dinos, but it’s fun being able to see what creatures exist on the other maps and I like being able to find what I might not otherwise. I mean, I could go through the painstaking steps needed to tame Troodons… or I could just spawn in four tamed ones and send them to do my bidding.

Anyway, that’s the latest on Ark! My birthday is on Friday and I’m sure part of my evening celebration will be winding down with my dinos. My gift to myself will be… more cute dinos!!! And the massage and facial I booked. See ya next time!