Comedy of Errors

Playing Ark Wednesday night, on the new Extinction map for the first time since before Christmas, and I've still got the Christmas event with Raptor Claus enabled.

So every in-game 12PM Raptor Claus flies over the map dropping presents, and I hop on Pterry, my trusty, but rather weight-limited pteranadon to try and get to one before it despawns. First time, out in the hideously dangerous Wastelands, I succeed, second time, in the theoretically far safer city ... does not go well.

I did actually find the present, but it was stuck on a ledge of a building, with no room for me to hop off to to pick it up. So I landed nearby to consider what to do, and hopped off the pteranodon. And off the edge of the roadway I'd landed on - I looked, there was room! So now I'm plummeting several hundred feet to my death. At the last minute I realise I'm wearing a parachute and use it. But now I'm stuck in the canyon, which splits the city, and which only has a couple of ways out. I set off towards the one that comes out near my base, and I somehow miss it, or turn the wrong direction. What I do find is a pack of raptors, which kill me - "Clever Girl!" So I'm now lying dead in the canyon, with all my gear. and I haven't had time to accumulate a lot of gear on that map.

So I respawn back at base, grab the minimal amount of gear available, and my trusty iguanadon steed Igzelda ,and hurry over to where I can see my death marker from the edge of the canyon. I freeze Igzelda in a cryopod so I can carry her, and I'm about to leap off the edge of the canyon when I realise I don't actually have a parachute on me. That's down there on my body. So short delay while I gather the resources for a parachute. I parachute into the canyon, grab my gear, and unfreeze Igzelda. Yay, triumph!

Unfortunately, I decide that the shortest way out of the canyon will be to carry on to its end. This takes me into the wastelands, where I loop around to find the next way into the city. 20 metres in I realise that's teeming with raptors and pull a u-turn, unfortunately something spots me, and it's an Alpha Raptor, for those times when a plain "Clever Girl" isn't enough. So new death marker.

At this point, I give up. I respawn and go into cheat mode. This is a pain as you're basically stuck at walking pace, but you can walk in the air, so nothing can get you. I finally get to my death marker to find the Alpha Raptor is still trying to kill Igzelda* As I'm getting closer she breaks free and makes a run for it. Yay! She runs straight into a pair of brontosauri, which object to the rude interruption, one of them tail-swats her, and she dies. Bugger. But at least it's sufficient distraction for me to grab my gear, again.

Finally I make it back to base, to find all of my tame creatures are outside, rather than inside, and a titanoboa is killing them. I rush in to kill the titanoboa, still in cheat mode, and somehow get swatted through the map. I die. My gear is unretrievable.

At this point I really do give up, and start spawning in replacement gear and creatures.
I guess I must have been on Santa's naughty list.


* Different map sections only process when you're actually in them.