We’ll continue my tale of ongoing Ark adventures with details regarding the first leg toward mine and Alex’s quest of defeating bosses on The Island. First, a little more detail about the bosses themselves, as I’ve been sparse with them so far…

On the island, there are three mysterious obelisks. Blue marks the Northwest corner of the map, Red marks Southwest, and Green marks approximately East. While travelling long distances, we often use them as directional markers because you can see them from very, very far away.

In any case, the obelisks are the point on the map where players summon the bosses to defeat. But to summon them, a player needs ‘proof’ of their worthiness. AKA you need to collect a certain number of artifacts specific to the coloured obelisk and the boss you’re summoning.

To get these artifacts? You need to beat the caves. They’re like small dungeons that you go into, deal with a bunch of scary creatures, collect the loot and the artifact at the end, and then get out of there. Easy. Right?

But First, We Must Have Wolves

Before we talk too much about the bosses, we need to talk about the caves, and before we can talk about the caves, we need to finish our prep to take on the caves.

Usually caves are small, cramped spaces, so bigger dinosaurs such as Spinosauruses can’t go in there. But at the same time, it’s not really a good idea to go into a cave on foot because the dinosaurs inside are much stronger than their outside counterparts. Reguar dinos get to level 150 max, but cave dinos cap out at something like level 400 or higher depending on the cave difficulty.

Our favourite spelunking dino is the Dire Wolf. These big wolves are ridable and not that difficult to tame, and when you have multiple tamed ones nearby, you get a pack bonus which increases the wolves’ damage and defensive stats. Plus, caves are filled with insects, which drop a very valuable resource, chitin, that wolves happen to be very good at harvesting. We use chitin to get stronger, which helps us work toward the bosses… so it’s very cyclical in that way.

Also, wolves can jump, which not all dinosaurs can, so that’s really useful for caves that are a bit more difficult to traverse. Some will have ledges that need to be navigated over where “falling” where you need to go isn’t exactly an elegant solution. 🙂

Taming wolves means going up north, back to where Roslyn died (RIP) and isolating a couple of high-level ones for breeding. Bed dinosaurs, and other animals such as Dire Wolves, are about 30% stronger than regular tames, which makes them significantly more ideal for things like warfare, boss fights, and of course caves. Conveniently, you can pick up wolves with an Argentaivis, which I tamed a few more of since my previous fiasco in Drop Cat City.

So the hunt begins: we’re out flying around looking for wolves to nab, using our aerial advantage to look for wolf packs ravaging the mountainsides and using our handy spyglasses to figure out which ones are the highest levels. We grab a couple–more than we’ll need because inevitably we want to try and get the best stats into some super wolves through breeding. Then we tame the few that we choose and bring them back to our base in the south. After our first round, we ended up with a decently high-level female wolf and some with cute colours because of the game’s Christmas event, which allows for a couple of funny but unnatural colour variants, but we still want a better male.

Alex goes off to gather some other resources that we need while I fly back into the north to search for more wolves. I fly through the night, arriving just as dawn breaks, intending to spend most of the day searching for wolves and picking out and taming the best ones. On the far side of the northern mountain, I spot a 150 male (max level score!) that also happens to be flamboyantly red and blue.

But since Alex isn’t there yet, I have to tame the wolf on my own. Normally this wouldn’t be an issue, but we’re still relatively young on this server, which means we don’t have the best or even the most optimized equipment at this point. My gear is pretty basic patchwork of items I’ve picked up from drop caches around the map, but I have a good crossbow as I prioritized that early on for better taming (although rifles are far better, we ‘re not that advanced in our technology yet). The trick will be to KO the wolf before it bites me too much, because that hurts (wouldn’t want one in real life that’s for sure) and they’re fast.

I flying around for a while, dropping and trying to shoot the wolf with my tranquillizers, but the wolf is being difficult, and I don’t want it to pass out somewhere that has more aggressive dinos running around. I happen to know, at this point, that there are two Alpha Raptors stalking the jungle nearby, as well as a very angry T-rex roaming the arctic beachside in search of prey–or maybe just a sunny enough spot to rest and tan. Of course, I am too stubborn at this point to give up and just make a taming pen where I could safely keep the wolf isolated while I knock it out.

High ground is usually safe though, so I go up to the top of this big, pointy rock on the beach. It’s sloped enough that I won’t get knocked off right away if the wolf bites me or if I have to make a run for it.

I put the wolf down… and right as I dismount my bird, crossbow in hand and aiming at the wolf’s face… I get about one arrow into it before the world begins to SHAKE.

I swear I’m on the receiving end of an earthquake when I hear the T-rex’s roar. At first, I don’t think much of it because I’m high up on this rock… but then that hungry mofo RUNS UP THE SIDE OF THE CLIFF, hungry as if it hasn’t eaten in days. I shriek as it bites my arm and sends me flying off the side of the rock, along with my wolf. My bird starts flying around to attack the Rex (bird vs rex not always the best idea) but after decidedly not dying when I hit the ground, managing to dodge both the pissed wolf and the Rex, I yank my grappling hook out of my backpack, latch onto my bird, and swing myself up to make a swift getaway.

Phew. Wasn’t expecting to survive that, honestly, without losing either limb or my bird (and then a few limbs because without my bird, I would be stranded lol).

After a quick breather, I swoop in to reclaim my wolf, use it as bait to lure the T-rex away, and then fly around to knock out the wolf… this time in the taming pen that I should have been using all along instead of running around like an idiot. Whoops!!

And thus ends the tale of my taming adventure for Andrew Jackson, the 150 wolf that we will soon begin our cave-spelunking journey with.

—Erynn