I've thought about coming back to speedruns (I say that a lot it seems xD) but find the new layout fairly difficult to navigate. The rulesets quite frankly are very convoluted in the way they're set. Having multiple categories for any%, no major glitches, no transfers, no major glitches and no transfers, easy mode, and easy no major glitches just seems like a lot that could be organized better. Especially considering you also have the levels system where each map has its own 3 categories, navigation is just rather rough.

Not only that, but there doesn't seem to be any rules anywhere, especially considering your default any% run is default settings, which quite frankly nobody is masochistic enough to try and even prior to this rework the "easy mode" was the one that everybody did because it makes the game beatable in a reasonable time. On top of this, the most recent speedrun was done by a moderator who literally crashed their game repeatedly in order to duplicate dinos to fight the boss with.

With the way that it's set up currently and the usage of breaking the game as a whole in order to dupe, I can see the speedruning community here dying if it hasn't already. I understand "breaking the game" in order to do what you want is a normal thing in speedruns, but crashing the game imo is taking it too far because that's almost reliant on your computer's hardware, which I don't think is ok. As somebody who wants to get back into speedrunning, I see the game on here and the "meta" and the lack of information and it turns me away from wanting to run this game. I hate to say it but I don't think anybody wants to run a game that's being run like this. I'm fairly disappointed to see what's happened to this game.

Take away from this what you will, but I'd like to have a conversation about fixing this game's community because I hate to see this.

(This is CrowGuy12 btw, I renamed myself here on this site. I had the second ever WR for any%)

If someone were to... post a QotB run, would the category be restored?

The rules state I can spawn in a cryopod for every creature on the island (a total of 88) as well as a vault to store them in. Am I able to use these cryopods throughout as tools rather than just for storing the dinos I need for the list? Like if I want to transport a land mount to the carnivore island, may I use a cryopod to transport said dino after swimming on an ichthy? The rules don't state any restrictions with these spawned cryopods.

After some research beer takes an hour with single player settings so thank you for the tip! although I also found some more problems skimming through more of the dino lists. Specifically, the scorched earth list is lacking the phoenix (which is a permanent tame) and the extinction list is missing 20 entries: gasbag, giant bee, bigfoot, giga, hesperornis, hyaena, ichthyornis, penguin, kapro, kentro, lymantria, lystro, mammoth, managarmr, mantis, megalania, megaloceros, piranha, and technically diplodocus but you've accidentally put 2 diplocaulus's in place of both diplo's. I haven't looked at any DLC map or either Genesis so if I find more I'll let yall know.

Well if singleplayer settings do make crops grow faster than hopefully that also affects beer. I'll have to run some tests, tyty

I've considered it, and in fact, I think it would be surprisingly easy. I've compiled a color coded list of every dino based on taming method or whether or not they need a special food or item. While it seems like a massive list, leading to a lot of variability in timing, I find that there are two key factors leading to less variety. Specifically, the chalicotherium, ovis, achatina, arthropleura, as well as any creature requiring bug repellent. All of this is because they require crops, as well as beer. According to the wiki, it takes 6 hours for a beer barrel to make a single mug of beer. To add, crops take approximately 1 real-life day to grow from seeded to a fruitling. However, with full 300% greenhouse, it can allow them to grow up to 4x faster which is funny enough, 6 hours. All of this meaning if you can rush straight to greenhouse and beer barrel, it would be 6+ hours no matter what you do. Of course there are a lot more factors to it but this is the most consistent thing I've found. If it weren't for my busy schedule, I would actually be willing to. The only way to bypass one of the nuisances would be to raise crop growth speed (which would be really nice and I would by no means argue with that change in the ruleset) so that way the beginning is just a bum rush to a beer barrel (100 cementing paste and 80 metal ingots I believe). To say this is an insane run is an underestimation. But me being me, I somehow believe that I can manage to tame every last creature. Assuming the crop growth speed can be changed (seeing as everything is stupidly high I can see one of yall increasing that, but I won't count on it), a run would consist of rushing a beer barrel, working on tree sap taps and crops while taming little things along the way, then an all-out tame spree until crops and sap is done, tame whatever remains as well as the ones listed previously (if all of this couldn't be done within 6 hours then you could go back and grab the beer), then make your way back to the barrel to tame the chalicotherium. In theory, there's a lot less variety in terms of possible time as it's always going to be 6+ hours.

Edit: Hit post and saw how insanely long those paragraphs were. If you couldn't tell, I do my research lol

Well first and foremost, ovis is mispelled. But one creature who was not included on the list is megalosaurus. Is that intentional?

Like, I understand that the rates were turned up since the thing was made, but the run itself is "default" rates so it should be just default rates, not everything 0.5. And this is especially clear when you consider that nobody has even posted a default run just yet. Not only would it encourage people to try default stats, but it wouldn't screw anyone over because nobody has yet completed a run like that. All I'm saying is that calling it a "default" run and then editing xp, tame, and harvest just doesn't feel like a default whether or not the stats themselves changed

So I requested a game be added to speedrun.com so I can do some runs of the game. It's a game that was released a few weeks ago and I requested the 15th of last month, and I haven't heard back from anyone for almost 3 weeks when the expected wait period was 1-2 weeks. Is there any way to know for sure if my request has been read and either confirmed or denied? I've checked my notifications and emails daily since I requested the game and nothing. Let me know, thanks!

Ok, that answers my question perfectly. Thanks!

Basically, when you pick up a stone at 1x you used to get 1 rock, but they upped it so at 1x you pick up 2 rocks. But with this recent update it went from 2 rocks to 4 rocks (I believe). So a simple dividing gather rate in half would resolve the issue

I've been kinda inactive when it comes to ARK but I heard that they're increasing the harvest, taming, and xp rates by 2x. This is honestly a great change but I was wondering if the rates for the speedrun should be turned down accordingly. The only one that'd need turning down would probably be harvest due to the rest being 1,000,000,000 but that's down to preference by the mods ig. But yeah, I've wanted to do another run for a bit but this has me wondering about everything, thanks!

Well unless the artifacts are broken on console, there’s no reason for him to spawn the artifacts and that would be breaking the rules. Scorched earth artifacts are known for taking a while to spawn however so I doubt they were broken. So in my opinion if he spawned artifacts that spawn without fail then it’s a chested run and therefore wrongfully accepted. But again, that’s my opinion, I have no clue how console works. But unless the artifacts are spawning fine WITHOUT cheats, then it’s illegal. As for Dino stuck, I think it means bugged out, like if you’re not careful with a pteranodon by the artifact of sky lord cave he can glitch into the wall. So if it isn’t the players fault and it’s due to the broken nature of the game, then that’s when a fly or ghost command is allowed.

They mainly spawn in caves and sometimes there are none. But it if you were to check all the caves you're bound to find AT LEAST 1

Cool, but I don't think completely banning the hatching creatures is what should be done. Hatch speed isn't gonna do much else for you except for making wyverns, drakes, and reapers more manageable, so I think it's fine with that being allowed. With the full greenhouse it is 2 hours sure, but you gotta account for the fact people aren't gonna have a ton of metal, crystal, and paste towards the beginning of the game. Which is why I found it to be an issue, but if you're willing to spend a ton of time on it I don't see why not. Equus are fine, you don't NEED carrots to tame them, it only makes things 50,000,000 times easier. But if you insist that's fine. The rest I can see removing. Thanks for the reply.

iOS doesn't actually have themselves an overseer boss fight. They have their own separate content though that should be looked at. Overseer might be added later but for now with them only having the Island but no final boss there's nothing in this game category so far that they can do.

I like these ideas, but I do have some notes.

I'm thinking the default should definitely be somewhere like that, but I think the category should be added really if it's proven one can beat at least the Island with those stats. But other than that your default ARK runs look great my guy.

The King of the Beasts category sounds dope, ngl. But there are SOME issues with some the creature taming methods, similar to the Chalicotherium. All creatures will be listed here. Achatina - Requires sweet vegetable cakes, which require veggies. Vegetables with default settings (crop growth can be turned up), require about a full real life day to reach maximum maturity. This could be sped up by using greenhouse structures (300% greenhouse speeds up the growth process by 4x) but even with that it's a bit random and could take up to 6 hours. So really, anything that requires crops are out of the picture. Ovis - Same issue as the achatina. These guys require sweet veggie cakes which are impossible to make given crop growth time. Wyvern - At default settings it takes 5 hours to incubate these guys. That will take a while and I'm not sure it's a good one to add unless the default also includes a hatching rate increase. Phoenix - It's technically tameable in the base game. But finding them requires you to search during a super heat, which don't happen often, or last long either. And once you find one you gotta find a way to keep it confined. The only way I see getting out of that is to use a tapejara to fly with a weapon in hand. But let's say you're lucky enough to find a Lvl 1 it'll take a whole 255 flame arrows according to dododex at 2x tame speed. And might I remind you if you were to find a Lvl 36 (max) it'll take 679. They just seem WAY too rng reliant and I'm not sure they can be considered for that reason. Rock Elemental - There's really no issue with taming these guys. My only problem is their knockout method, but this can be easily glossed over. Reaper - With default stats a reaper takes 12 hours to estate. That's obviously an issue, similar to the wyvern. Seeker - Untameable Rock Drake - Same issue with wyverns and reapers, except it's a 6 hour incubation time. Enforcer and Scout - I get that these are considered tames, but they aren't creatures. I'm not sure tek "animals" should count towards the final goal of "King of the Beasts" but that's really down to preference. Plus the mek is already a no, so why not add the rest of the robots? A simple fix for a large amount of these creatures would be to increase hatching rates for default as well as easy mode. Nothing too big, but nothing that'll take more than an hour I think. But again, down to preference.

I would love to see a good notes run, I almost completely agree with all the rules you gave. My only idea is that maybe the ones in arenas shouldn't be excluded but it's probably a good idea to not count those.

And lastly, we're not entirely sure what Crystal Isles will bring us, but if it all works out fine then I would be down to run the map. The cave design is very creative but they don't have an arena of their own which is what concerns me. But other than that I see no issue with having a Crystal Isles run category.

These are really great ideas that I would love to see come into play in the future. An interesting idea would be to add a 100% category where you have to beat all the bosses/final boss as well as collect all the explorer notes. That would be fairly difficult but I feel like conjoining the 2 can make something very interesting. Thank you to whoever you are who actually sat down and read this.

Well that's one reason why I didn't want to speedrun Extinction, because of all the apex drops and corrupted hearts. And the 0.5 to 1 dino count doesn't actually do anything for the dinos on the map I don't think, only the amount of creatures you're allowed to tame, correct me if I'm wrong. As for no downloads I honestly think that's a fair call, it could be found unfair.

So I was given moderator privileges on the ARK: Survival Evolved speedrun so that I could add the DLC's as their own categories. After that, the original super moderator either decided to up and leave or was kicked due to inactivity. So I'm now super mod on a game that I only wanted to be a temporary mod for and I have no one to give this title to so I'm kinda stuck now. There's currently one active runner and I'm an off and on again runner. If there's any way to get rid of this moderator title please do let me know, my life is too busy to have to also be a mod of a game and sustain it. Thanks

Yeah, that'll be a no. That counts as using admin commands I'm afraid. The only commands allowed are those used to fix performance issues such as t.maxfps or stat fps.