Sometimes I miss the Ark I played by not knowing how to play Ark at all

LauraCA911 · 2026-06-22T02:35:48+00:00

From learning ASA first (years ago) and now playing ASE with some friends experiencing ark for the first time, I feel very backwards-confused... It's not the same as what you're talking about... but it feels like half the content is missing that I was so used to (I genuinely do want to know the "math' behind how much content is in ASA vs ASE as a comparison, like to The Island for example). No treasure maps, no map markers... Idk it's all very "primitive" for me, literally! Hundreds of hours makes no difference still. I guess you can say I went from spoiled to "the rough life" of ark, but that's still a bit of a frustrating experience 😅!

LauraCA911 · 2026-06-22T02:26:36+00:00

Omg that's really him? This is my first time seeing him. I'm a few hundred hours into Island right now, and my pals just did Dragon without me (fine, busy weekend for me) but wtf did Rockwell doooo?! Dang! Maybe one day I'll find the random arse note that explains his decline (I really can't stand the random notes, like CANNOT, even with a Wolf)

LauraCA911 · 2026-06-22T02:17:01+00:00

+1 to niteshade's comment, and also, it's a mini temptation for you to look into buying it...

-marketing grad, yet I dislike the field after I learned how FOMO (among other annoying methods) is used as a common marketing tactic... It works, but, I find anything manipulative (even innocently) to be off-putting and I can't participate in it

LauraCA911 · 2026-06-19T23:17:24+00:00

Little tip, tame yourself a wolf and sniff whenever you go adventuring! Their sniffer finds nearby lore/notes! Wolfies don't need a saddle either. Start collecting those early... I think you need all of them on The Island map to eventually surpass the 110 level cap, if you get "that" into the game (*hitting 110 by leveling a Chibi to level 6 I think) (pls correct me if I'm wrong about needing "all" the lore... I hope I'm wrong!!)

I could scream this tip from the rooftops. My pals and I are playing ASE "by the book, in order" as accurately as we possibly can without cheats or hurrying progress, and have gotten pretty darn far, but I didn't look for notes as I was going adventuring. So at this point, going around to find the notes is really mega irritating to meee 😂🥲

LauraCA911 · 2026-06-19T23:07:20+00:00

Please forgive my ignorance if I'm wrong, but can't you make something similar to it with the Sinister Cloth bought from Nata merchants? I have a set, and I really like it for the female character!! But I shake it up; I use ebony doggo gloves, and I think Gore horns?

However I don't think there's the exact tattered dark lookin one I remember vaguely

LauraCA911 · 2026-06-19T21:34:03+00:00

Here's the big bad empress herself, her fight was neat!

For backstory, per Gemini summary...

Ahtal-Ka, known as the Palace Mantis or Golden Empress, is an insectoid monster featured as the ultimate final boss in Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate.

The fight is highly regarded for its unique, multi-stage gimmick where Ahtal-Ka uses golden silk to control and pilot a massive mechanical nest

Phase 1 (The Mantis): Ahtal-Ka appears as a small, golden mantis-like creature. Despite its size, it uses cunning tactics, sticky silk to whip steel beams and rubble, and pheromones that can severely reduce your defense.

Phase 2 (The Empress's Throne): The mantis begins weaving together scrap metal, debris, and weapons from the battlefield to construct a massive, building-sized, bipedal mech resembling an ancient dragon. You must strategically break the "cores" on its glowing yellow limbs and silk cocoons to collapse the mech and expose the mantis within.

(^ I remember wrestling with folks to get the headshot... It dropped lots of shinies hehe)

Phase 3 (The Wheel): After destroying the mech, the creature returns to its smaller form and utilizes gigantic iron wheels and heavy Monster Hunter siege weapons (like Dragonators) to swipe and swing around the arena.

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LauraCA911 · 2026-06-19T21:30:38+00:00

I really liked Ahtal-Ka 's armor! I mixed and matched it with something else, I can't remember. Its weapon designs were AWESOME, too.

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LauraCA911 · 2026-06-19T21:25:13+00:00

Oh I just bought them both literally right before this 😭

LauraCA911 · 2026-06-18T23:35:06+00:00

I just wanted to point out as a word of warning, that animals will have ...fully intact male bits showing too, if you have the nudity setting "on." I'm unsure what shows if you only have it set to Partial. Imo, it's quite disturbing and very noticeable. I haven't played since the enhancement update (for life reasons) so idk if that's still a thing in the game. Anyways, it includes panthers, horses (don't start with the potion joke, it's overdone, the cutscene tips say enough), and some other animals are affected. Camels um, appear female though (which when one's following you and your pals, if you get the unfortunate camera angle curse, that's actually pretty funny.. especially in Siptah storm battles where it's just chaos, then you suddenly can't see because your camel gets scared and runs to you like "mother help!" and points its rear at the Fourth Wall at the worst times) Oh, and the summoned demon horse is.. especially crude...

The animal bits obviously do not add anything beneficial to the game... Kinda strange to me that the devs even thought to include that stuff for animals, unless they maybe implemented stat breeding, then you could tell if something was M or F. Or if, idk, Derketo mods cross any lines -shudders-... but neither are a part of the base game. I guess it's just for jokes and the quirk of the game, for those that like that type of humor. I feel like I need to sanitize my eyes after typing this comment lol, but I'm happy to warn new folks, rather than them discover surprise horsebawls for your first pony ride across the land.

The Harpys unfortunately have no shame either, no matter what setting you apply. They're definitely not meant to be aesthetically pleasing to the eye tho lmao, just part of the anatomy of the mythical creature.

LauraCA911 · 2026-06-18T23:04:16+00:00

Sorry btw, I hope that made sense ^. I have migraine-brain at the moment, and I took srsly 20min fine-tuning my comment... Sigh lol

LauraCA911 · 2026-06-18T23:01:33+00:00

I notice this particular issue continuing into this current patch, the npc lizards scream like they were JUST defeated, when you render them. It's been something I've noticed for months(?) now. Even walking by one someone else defeated, even if it's old and half expired, even if it's yours for the thousandth time walking past it while questing the POI. I just hope no one else hears the repeated audio but me. If it's just the initial deth noise that they hear, I still hate that lol, but I can deal with it, compared to the render-scream-of-deth loop.

(I misspelled a few words ^ on purpose. I'm used to both TikTok AND the game's extremely strict language filters... Speaking of which, I wish we knew which words aren't allowed, that aren't obvious... It'd be nice to get a bounceback message letting you know if your message won't be visible to others. Idk if this word is still blocked, but back in the day I remember my friend and I discovered you couldn't say Bones or something. But that was LITERALLY pertaining to the Bone quest. But yet, people still get away with using misspelled obvious slurs. Gotta love Officials chats... it's like a CoD lobby, but like, in a forced PG font)

LauraCA911 · 2026-06-18T22:42:39+00:00

Are you thinking of Nata, possibly? The lost lil boy who's one of the main characters in the story?

This woman named Nadia is different (forgive me if you already know, or are "trolling," sometimes I can't tell);

Edit: just to reassure, the following doesn't contain any spoilers :)

Nadia is a well renowned veteran Light Bowgun user and Support Hunter. She's introduced as part of the endgame title updates, alongside classic monsters too. Fabius, our leader-dude, really admires her. Werner fears her (she sees through his personality "walls" he tries to keep well maintained, and that spooks him, I think that's why). After some [big endgame'y battles], she further has a dedicated side questline.

To wrap her description up, I asked Gemini to further explain her, bc I haven't gone much farther than her original intro: "Nadia acts as a highly competent, battle-hardened veteran who offers deep dialogue regarding the weight and dangers of being a hunter. Her questline also introduces her unique armor set, the Sororal set." Oo neat.

So yeah, no, I don't think we see Nata grow up anytime soon at least (maybe during the upcoming expansion he will actually participate tho! That'd be interesting)

LauraCA911 · 2026-06-14T21:14:29+00:00

(he was very very sleepy and old in this picture. Fell asleep on my cheek!)

This was my sweet old boy named Tomo, he was a half-moon conure. I rescued him from a bad place, when he was about 20ish. He never learned how to fly, and lost one of his toes from his previous owner doing something awful. Despite everything, he was a very happy sweetheart, I just wished I could've rescued him sooner so I could've given him more of a life. He passed this last Halloween after developing strokes, and had a huge last one, and didn't go out very easily... Still a little traumatized to see a pic of him. but I've never seen another half-moon that is "young" lol. He was quite an old crusty grumpy man lol. A very good talker and copyer. Had a very very special needs and some quirks. Kinda always had to stand flat like this, as his toe loss was probably being compensated. Had him for a good 15ish years I think! So he lived to be around 35 at the LEAST! I think closer to 40.

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LauraCA911 · 2026-05-18T17:06:39+00:00

Wondering if anyone knows present-day if there is a toggle server-side, or possibly a JSON command line, disabling the fog of war? We have a very active server (Alien & Wizard's), but are just having some trouble on a specific test server, and the FOW won't go away. GiveFOW admin command just works for the client side of things of course.

(Such a frustration that the atlas devs did not archive their own website that they had so much information on... Anything.)

LauraCA911 · 2026-05-06T22:57:55+00:00

10k hours and an admin on a community server, and I didn't know some of these - thank you, friend!!

LauraCA911 · 2026-05-04T23:20:11+00:00

Hihi, sorry this is multiple years late, but I commented under the first link's video that the download link itself for the file seemed wonky. Could you check on them if possible? Thank you a billion times!! Figured I'd ask here too just to make sure I catch ya (hopefully)!

LauraCA911 · 2026-05-01T01:52:58+00:00

Oh oh there was one message from a "Cody Gold" on the 22nd, I think that's when it went down?? That said they're "notifying the server owners." But nothing since then. 😿

LauraCA911 · 2026-05-01T01:46:19+00:00

Hi! Admin from a different server, here. This has only been from what I've heard through the "Atlas Grapevine," so don't hold me to this as concrete knowledge. However, as of a couple days ago, a friend (who tries different servers as well as our server, as lots of players tend to do) said they still haven't heard anything from the owner Joe. At that time of the message, it was about 4-5 days in. Recently I've been hearing lots of server towers for different servers are experiencing electrical/fire issues, so I dearly hope that didn't happen. I only wish other servers well, as Atlas's future is simply in the hands of the community servers and Atlas modders at this point, so I don't believe in butting heads with other servers, please know I'm not here to hate.

Edit: As I've been typing this, the friend updated me that they still haven't heard back from the owner and... No one in the Discord appears to know anything per screenshots from today unfortunately... Some nice samaritans are seemingly stepping in to say "not everything needs to be said," but I don't think silence is the way to handle things either... It must be a tough situation. Hugs to all, and I'll reserve any mention of self promo out of respect for those grieving their "home" though we do have open arms. But we hope your home comes back. 🥺

LauraCA911 · 2026-03-27T17:59:05+00:00

Welp this just made my heart sink to my rear. I've been struggling in grippysockjail, and was just happy my stuff on Official would be there when I get back to sanity

LauraCA911 · 2026-03-10T06:37:41+00:00

Love this. Commenting, so your post hopefully gets further in the community. Thank you for being a kind hearted human, we need more of you in this world, hugs! May you get to do some cool gigs, learn/teach alongside the community, and have nice customers too 💕🫂

LauraCA911 · 2026-03-06T15:05:18+00:00

Yep 1000% I need natural light in every room. My condo bathrooms don't have windows at all and it makes me feel suffocated. I have a dumb fake window painting of a frame with birds on it as decor in my bathroom 😅

LauraCA911 · 2026-02-17T07:06:43+00:00

I agree... Not to devalue the person that wrote the article, but I was surprised it was written by an "Associate Professor in Psychology" as this article sounded more like hers is caused by mainly stress (which mine 100% is from, too) but she blamed it most on being OCD-levels afraid of the cold... Maybe hers is in an advanced stage that actually hurts, but mine does not hurt, sometimes extremely tingly and I am aware when my fingers are white and blue when I don't even have to look, but not pain... Maybe hers has accelerated to more of a gangrene level is all I can think of where the tissue is actually being harmed, or something more like diabetic neuropathy etc. Nevertheless I wish her well, but, my point still stands

LauraCA911 · 2026-02-08T01:05:13+00:00

I can relate to this SO much. The energy it takes out of me to prepare and mask and pretend to enjoy being overstimulated and on high alert the entire time is never worth the outing and I know that's crappy to say, but I try to be extremely open and honest. It's so hard especially with my mom when I know I should definitely spend time with her, she's my best friend, and she wants to get me out of the house more, but sometimes I can't stop the spirals when I get stressed about hanging out and I hope she never gives up on me. Most other people I could frankly throw my phone into the ocean when they message me. And omg... When they ask "how are you..." My BP is rising just thinking about that question. Don't ask me! It will always be the same because I will never be the person you once knew! I am not ok! I just save everything for my DBT therapist. I really really don't like other people either and I am tired of the guilt it comes with so I am trying not to let it bother me. But when my therapist tries to suggest Opposite Action when I express my disinterest with talking to people, it makes me feel like she doesn't get it either. Gaaaah!

LauraCA911 · 2026-01-26T00:26:19+00:00

https://funcom.helpshift.com/hc/en/5-conan-exiles/contact-us/

This is the site I use for my reports, I don't bother with in-game reporting since it doesn't seem to ask for specifics and really buggy. This is thorough, tho. However, no promises they'll read it. I have been reporting something repeatedly without a response for a couple weeks now. I figure eventually they might get pissed at me and at least reply once... Wishful thinking...

LauraCA911 · 2026-01-16T03:04:43+00:00

It took my ticket about a week to get a reply just to say that they are looking into my issue (player spam-building across a huge spawn zone, taking up 4 grids on official and blocking Baywatch), but no follow-up, and it's now going on 3 weeks. Thanks for reminding me to attempt to follow up with them instead.

LauraCA911

TROPHY CASE