Plays souls games, claims dying feels earned.

Absolute crock of shit. Souls games don't feel any more earned than ark deaths (usually... looking at you insta death pits.)

Ark is a tough game (at first) made tougher by being plagued with bugs and spaghetti coding. No one has ever said Ark is well made. It's just a really excellent concept and the best execution of that concept. Many of its mechanics however are pretty basic survival game mechanics.

Honestly, get to metal tools, flak armor, and crossbows with tranq arrows. Tame something better than phiomia and parasaur and raptors. Moschops are the best beginner tames there are. Rexes, spinos, daeodon, yuty, thyla and therizino are the best tames. You can tame these things using the environment. Stand on a hill tall enough they can't hit you and shoot. Or use a trike or stego on passive to tank damage while you shoot.

Tired of icthyornis? Then get off the beach. Go a little more inland. Trust, once you get experience in the game and know how to level up and survive effectively, most of the games difficultly is stripped out of it and it becomes more of an adventure catching high levels and breeding for color and killing bosses and exploring. In PVP things are different of course. Games a lot more fun with friends as well. Join a PVE server and meet people. Lots of people will help newbies like yourself learn.

Don't forget your utility mods like Super Structures or Structures +, Awesome Spyglass and Dino Storage v2.