Sticking with The Island map

    After giving it some thought, I will be keeping The Island map for my server. At some point, however, I will be adjusting player, and tamed dino, stats. I might do some mod swapping/adding/deleting as well. No worries though. I will post here, and at my Discord channel, any changes I make.

Shall we try Extinction?

   I've been giving some thought to switching my server to the new Extinction map. Please, let me know your thoughts on this matter either here or at my Discord channel. If we do make the switch I will also be re-adjusting some of the player/dino settings and possibly getting rid of a mod or two.

    For quite some time now I've been extremely bored with ARK....and sadly, I think that's partly because of how "OP" things are on my server. If we switch to Extinction I'll be dialing back the settings that effect our, and our dino's, stats. Not to worry though, I won't be dialing them back to 'vanilla' standards. I'll lower them just enough to add a little more challenge to the game.

    Again, please let me know here and/or in Discord what you think.

    Thank you!
       Thela

Fal's Shutting Down His Servers

Just a heads up, mine and Fal's server are no longer going to be clustered. Fal is closing down all his ARK servers, starting today, with the last one going offline on October 5th.

New Mods Added

    Hello all! I have added the following mods to my server:

• Gyrosphere
• Gunsmoke Tailor
• Awesome Spyglass

    I have removed the following mods:

• Ark Steampunk Mod
• Dynamic Fence System
• Dino Tracker

    The 'Gunsmoke Tailor' mod is a mod designed for an RP sever. The mod is set up so that their players have to get a special token from their admin in order to learn the engrams for the Gunsmoke crafting stations. Since I do not have access to these tokens I will be providing blueprints for each of the crafting stations. They will be in the same vault that I provide Giga Hearts and Leeds Blubber in. Please, take only one blueprint for each of the three crafting stations. Make sure you do not get rid of the blueprint. This will be the only way you can make the crafting stations.
 
    Thanks for all your patience and I greatly appreciate that you have chosen my server as your ARK home.

Thinking of switching out a few mods....

    I am thinking about getting rid of the following mods:

•  Dynamic Fence System 
•  Ark Steampunk Modtacular 

    I am not sure how much the Steampunk mod is used, but it is a large mod that if removed will reduce the time it takes to load the game a little bit. The Dynamic Fence mod, I've noticed, has been creating a lot of lag. The few build sites I've used it at makes it pretty laggy in that area. I've tried it both with power and lights on and with power off and no lights on. It is still laggy.

    I will most likely be adding the following mods, however:

Gunsmoke Tailor - This mod will allow us to create clothing with an old time western look. The only issue is that this mod was created for a role playing server and requires a special item from that server's admin to learn the engrams/make crafting stations.

    I have been fiddling with the mod in single player and was able to spawn in one of the crafting stations, because I have no idea what the special admin item is they use. I was able to create a blueprint of it in the S+ Blueprint crafting station. IF I do install this mod, I will make a bunch of blueprints and leave them in a crate, like I do with the Giga Hearts, etc., for players to pick up so they can make their own crafting stations whenever, and wherever, they need.

    The clothing from this mod can be upgraded, augmented and turned into blueprints in the crafting stations from the Upgrade Station mod.

Awesome Spyglass -  This mod allows you to craft a spyglass, in your inventory, that displays a lot of information on the lower left side of your screen about the dinosaur you are looking at. You can also have a ranged weapon equipped and activate the spyglass, on your action bar, to have dino info displayed on screen. When you have the spyglass activated it puts an outline around any, and all, dinosaurs, birds, fish and critters that are within your vicinity...tamed and wild alike.

Gyrosphere - This mod allows you to craft a gyrosphere type vehicle, like seen in one of the newer Jurassic Park movies. The gyrosphere makes you 'neutral' to all wild dinos while you are in it, unless you get in it when you have already aggro'd a dino onto you, and it keeps your body temperature normal. You can drive it in any biome and not be affected by the weather/temperature. It will go underwater and has a breath meter like you do, but allows you to breath just fine. It also has a pretty large inventory space and decent health. It will carry a passenger as well.

    Please let me know here, or at my Discord channel, what your thoughts are.Changes will be made in about a weeks time from now.

Mod Removal Coming Soon

    This coming weekend, on May 6th, I will be removing the 'Castles, Keeps and Forts Architecture' mod. The author has abandoned it and is not releasing the files for anyone else to use to keep it updated. Please log in when you can and prepare for the removal of that mod.

    I might also be removing the Dragons mod and activating Classic Flyers mod to allow Griffins, Wyverns and Phoenix on the Island. Please empty out your dragon's inventory before/by the 6th.

    If I make any other changes I will post here, and at my Discord channel, about the changes.

Server Back Online

    It's been a long weekend, but the server is finally back in business. The backups took and the only things we've lost are things that were a part of the mods that have been removed. We can all thank Falandir for his help. He was a trooper and helped me way more than he probably should have.

    Aside from the time spent reinstalling everything, we ran into an issue where the server would start, but not fully come online. After many hours of troubleshooting, it came down to one mod being bad. After uninstalling, reinstalling and updating the mod, it still would not cooperate. Therefore it was removed. The mod was 'Advanced Rafts'. I hated to see this mod go, but it was not playing well with the server.

    So, as an update to my earlier post, the following mods have been removed:

• Pillars Plus
• Advanced Rafts
• Conquer the Seas
• Spoiling Bin
• Extra Ark 2.0
• Scorched Earth Engrams for Any Map

    The list of new mods added is the same as my earlier post, with one exception. I did not, and will not, add Ship Quarters Decor. It is from the same mod author as Advanced Rafts. I do not want to run the risk of another mod of his becoming uncooperative.

    Again, thanks Fal for the help. Thank you all for being patient. And sorry to have ruined your weekend of gettin' your ARK on.

Thela

P.S. - Don't forget to re-add my server by IP address using Steam in the way I described in my earlier post. Can't wait to see you all around the ARK.

Server Update 2

Good morning all!

    Just wanted to fill you in as to where we're at with the server. All mods have been reinstalled. I did get rid of a few mods, however, but have put in a few different ones.

    The mods removed were:

• Pillars Plus - S+ has a 'dynamic' pillar that does pretty much the same thing
• Conquer the Seas - as much as I hated removing it, it has problems and is no longer being worked on/updated. (I'm gonna miss the lighthouse and jetski so much.)
• Extra Ark 2.0 - it has problems and is no longer worked on/updated.
• Spoiling Bin - doesn't work and is no longer worked on/updated.
• Scorched Earth Engrams for Any Map - don't think we need it. let me know if you feel differently.

     The mods added are:

• Ship Quarters Decor - from mod author of Advanced Rafts. it has some nice furniture.
• Werkrat's Spoiling Bin - self explanatory
• eco's RP Decor - well all know eco's mods are quality stuff
• eco's Scorched Earth Decor - again, eco's equals nice things
• The Last Grapple - reusable grapple hook with crossbow

    All backups were installed last night but there are issues that Fal and I are working on. (I installed them to the wrong spot and Fal was kind enough to correct me on that. *giggle*)

    I am reinstalling backups to the correct place right now and have my fingers crossed that it works. Because I had them in the wrong place last night, when I logged in to test server I was prompted to make a new character. Not the outcome I had hoped for.

    I also want to let you all know that when my hosts recreated my server they changed the IP address for it. My server will not show up in your ARK list because of this. The easiest way for you to correct this is to manually add it through Steam. Do the following:

Click 'View' at the top left of your Steam panel
Click 'Servers' in dropdown list
Click 'Favorites' tab in window that pops up
Click 'Add A Server' at bottom right
Enter new IP address in window that pops up 
181.214.149.43:27515
Click 'Add this address to favorites'
  
Now, the next time you log into ARK my server should be back in your 'Favorites' list.

Thela

Server update 1

    Just my luck....hosts have finished recreating my server and everything has been wiped. Sadly, I have to start getting ready for work in about 20 minutes and that will not give me time to reinstall the backups. I will have to do it when I get home from work.

    For now I am going to take my server offline. If I don't run into any issues reinstalling everything, the server should be back up around midnight tonight (or a little later depending  on how long uploads take).

Thela

Server down for repairs...

Hello all!

    Just wanted to let you know that my server is offline right now (11am EDT on 4/14/2018), and might be for the day. There is a glitch in the daily backups and my host needs to delete and recreate the server. They have not given me an estimate as to how long this will take.

    I got everything backed up to my personal computer just before my server was taken offline. When it comes back up, and saved info reinstalled, there should hopefully be no losses of anything done...give or take the last 15 minutes or so.

    I'll post here, as well as in Discord, with any updates or when server is back online. Sorry for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience!

Thela

Please Join Our Discord

Hello everyone!

    I'd like to ask each of you to click the 'Join' link for our Discord channel (upper right side of this blog), provided you have Discord. I've been a little busy with real life and keeping my blog updated is not high priority. You can, however, keep up to date with server info at our Discord channel. We post there regularly.

    If you do not have Discord, you can get it at the '<here>' link just a little below the 'Join' link.

Thank you!

Starting From Scratch

Hello everyone!

Today has been, for lack of a better word, hectic. I brought the server down to perform an ARK update and something went haywire. The server somehow got wiped.

Falandir and I spent the last 7 hours trying many things to fix it. We did the following:

 - Verified Steam/ARK Update - Did not work
 - Rolled server back to most recent save - Did not work
 - Rolled server back to save before that - Did not work
 - Rolled server back to save before that - Did not work
 - Rolled server back to 4:15am Back-Up - Did not work
 - Deleted all mods and config files and reinstalled game on server
 - Reinstalled all mods and config files - Did not work
 - Rolled server back to save from last night -Did not work
 - Rolled server back to save from 2 days ago - Did not work

For whatever reason, the game is not reading any Saves or Back-Ups. Sadly, a wipe is the final result.  /cry

I'm sorry this happened and will help replenish items and resources. Sigh...the joys of starting back at level 1 on an empty map. If any of you lost dinosaurs you brought over from Aberration we'll help replace them as well.