The only function of this article is to collate the campaign me and Orangeister chronicled within our long-running save file of ARK: Survival Evolved. It’s not a full history, more a compilation of highlights recorded in various qualities and mediums, but that’s part of why I remember it so fondly.
The series started off simply enough, Orangeister wanted to play the game and thought I’d enjoy it too. And it admittedly took a bit before I got the ropes down and started appreciating it, but we both soon grew entranced by what little we’d experienced simply building our first mud hut on the beach underneath the red tower.
There are three primary avenues through which the series was published, and the first is Steam Screenshots by Orangeister. His photo catalog does a great job illustrating the irreverent experiences and steady evolution of our characters from hatchet-wielding beach hobos to more exotic pastures and better gear to try and die less to the hordes of dinosaurs.
The second, my series of YouTube vignettes, was also started right at the beginning and similarly illustrates the comical accident-prone misadventures the two of us got up to. No matter how far we got along our journey, from braving giant snakes in the swamps to fleeing enraged mammoths in the snowy mountains, our sprawling network of outposts ensured we always had places we could respawn at to continue our expedition across the island.
https://www.twitch.tv/aabicus/clip/EndearingConcernedChinchillaPMSTwin
And the third avenue, when we decided what we were doing was memorable enough that we might want nostalgic longform content to look back on later, was a series of Twitch streams chronicling looseleaf slice-of-life gameplay from the second era of our time on the island. We never really scripted these, more just ran around getting into the sort of shenanigans we always did, though the last few episodes chronicled us trying (fruitlessly) to find the one Quetzal who spawns per save file.
If you’re only going to watch one thing, I’d recommend the finale as it was structured with the expectation that the series would be ending. We felt we’d done most everything there was to do, the save file was getting more and more broken with the many years of patches and content updates, and we were ready to move onto greener pastures. To that end, it was a very retrospective episode where we fly across the whole island visiting every outpost we’d erected and reminiscing about the shenanigans we’d gotten into during our playthrough.
Main Cast
The ABCs of ARK was named for its three protagonists, the first being Orangeister’s character. Asmund was the team leader and engineer, builder of bases and filler of tech trees. He was a one-man support staff in his zeal at enabling the equipment needs and fast travel networks that facilitated our explorations, though his true motivation was to catch, breed, and train as many dinosaurs and other tames as possible. By the end, the island was littered with his vast self-sustaining menageries of pretty much every species the island had to offer. His main weakness was needing to play conservatively as he often carried all our major supplies, plus a fear of water that mostly left his deuteragonist responsible for harvesting oil or braving the watery depths for its secrets.
My character, Bogardt, was the combat specialist. She didn’t have the patience for proper base-building beyond the sort of emergency mud-huts one makes while in a panic, but she was fearless at throwing herself into situations to save tames or secure resources less replaceable than herself. She was often naked due to her sacrificial playstyle, but she was very tanky, speedy, and scrappy at exploiting monster AI to either fight, kite, or lure them away from objectives until Asmund could rescue whatever was in danger. Usually by swooping in on the back of…
Czar Cider was Asmund’s loyal steed, an argentavis he caught extremely early on and supercharged into a true badass among beasts. Thanks to Asmund’s training, Cider grew to outlevel both of us and could probably take anything on the island by the time the series ended. On several occasions we both died and stranded Cider in hostile territory, and when we returned while fearing the worst, we discovered him surrounded by bodies and still massacring wildlife while fighting fit. All the more impressive considering he wasn’t allowed to die and respawn like we could!
Case in point, this was the original fourth member of our crew. Maltravers was Bogardt’s mount, a handsome salt-and-pepper bird who served much the same cavalry/pack mule/transportation duties as Czar Cider. Unfortunately, on one occasion Asmund borrowed him and attempted to do Czar Cider things, but Maltravers lived up to his name and did not survive when a classic unanticipated hijink broke out. Bogardt replaced him with Bienvenida, a red-and-black formel who later had FEAR ME painted across her wings. She went on many adventures and survived the series, but never got promoted to opening credits. (She also wasn’t quite as ever-present as Cider, thanks to her trainer’s proclivity for deadly gear-free recon.)
All in all, the series consisted of 167 screenshots, 22 videos, and 8 streams totaling 16:49:44 hours of footage, a far cry from the 218.8 hours (or 321 in-game days) we had in the save file, but I’m glad many of the best moments across the canon are preserved, and in several different convenient mediums depending on how much time one wants to devote to seeing them. Also, if you want to go forge your own story on our humble island, here’s the save file! Czar Cider is waiting for you on the top of the tallest peak. Can you reach him?
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