with the current meta of how we submit runs we are wasting alot of time if we need to restart a run cause we had a bad spawn or we have a run that is not working cause specific alphas are not spawning. some things should/could be changed to minimize wasting time for getting a good start and RNG

1. free spawn point choosing: some runs need to have specific spawns before starting the run (crystal isles / moeder for example), in my eyes there is absolutely no point in restarting a run cause the game gave you the wrong spawn in the chosen area (some times you need ~20 restarts to get the right spawn, that means 20 times going back to main menu showing all the settings + deleting save files again) so you are already wasting around 30min just to get a eventually doable run (if you add timeskips to to that you are wasting around 5min per restart). this could be avoided by letting the runner choose the spawnpoint (only official spawn points allowed!) you are not allowed to interact with anything else before teleporting (this includes skilling) timer starts after teleporting to the desired spawnpoint

TPCoords <Lat> <Lon> <Altitude> spawnpoints for each map can be found here: https://ark.gamepedia.com/Spawn_Locations

2. force spawning alphas: in some runs you need a ridiculous amount of time to get an alpha to spawn (enraged rex on extinction sometimes only spawns twice but you need a third or alpha blood wyvern doesn't spawn at all) in my eyes i would be ok to force spawn a wild alpha after the runner killed lets say 10 regular versions of that dino (you still need to be in confirmed spawn area for that alpha)

3. removing skilling from the run: every run starts the same pump your points in the stats and get the engrams. no one is watching a run to see how fast the runner can spam the mouse buttons. so the timer should start after the skilling (you are NOT allowed to move)

I do agree with this, but for the alpha spawning (cause I had to deal with a lot of restarts due to no alpha crystal wyvern) I believe the player have finished every other thing to do (for example in Crystal Isles once the player receives 5 talons and all 5 artifacts and are in a place where the wyvern can spawn then they can spawn them in)

this comes with a problem, if you go for the tributes in that area in the beginning or the middle of the run (to save travel times between other spots) you would need to get back at the end only to force spawn the alpha (this would add a lot of travel time to your run, probably ruin the run)

Personally I think the spawning alphas should not be added. My reasoning is that how dinos spawn are an integral part of the game, alphas they are supposed rare simply spawning one in would remove the purpose of that, I know that they take ages to spawn but I don't think spawning one in just because one isn't already there is the answer. The other times admin commands are allowed is because for example artifacts are suppose to spawn there, in those instances it's an intended mechanic not working properly. Maybe it's just but that's what I think, at most maybe a separate category could work but other than that I don't think its a good idea.

not entirely true, you are allowed to spawn artifacts in easy mode mainly be cause you are to quick at the actual artifact spot (so you would need to wait there at least a specific time to get it to spawn naturally). In my eyes waiting for thinks to happen is absolutely against the definition of speedrunning, despite that it is already meta that in every run the artifact gets force spawned immediately after reaching the artifact location.

back to alphas on easy settings its very hard to get alphas to spawn. as for now you only need alpha for extinction and crystal isles. for extinction 3x alpha rex or enraged rex, alpha rexes do not spawn at all, enraged rex do spawn sometimes only 2 times (extinction takes around 5-6 hours you start tribute hunting around 1-1,5 hours after the start so you have 3,5-5 hours to get 3 alphas but they on some starts they only spawn 2 times. for crystal isles we have different problem, first some times they don't spawn, before FrostyGamingSnowman did his run i had no idea where to find alphas even the internet research wasn't to helpful. even after knowing the spot i checked how long do you need to be there to get an alpha sometimes you get it instantly sometimes after around 7 sometimes no alphas spawning at all. second problem is the speed of the run itself, you are reaching artifact of devious (at the alpha / crystal talon farm spot) around 30-40min after the map start this is still on day1 - early day2, but on day1 crystal wyverns do not spawn. 3rd problem you already have another RNG-factor getting an argent in that area. there are 2 spots that are close enough, otherwise you will waste to much time to get the argent pulled to the spot. if you don't find an argent at these 2 spots the run is ruined and you can restart.

1. free spawn point choosing

Good idea but ... . But dino spawns are also random. Will that break the atmosphere? I want to compare that situation with other random games.

I know how much it hurts, but that is the part of the game. I never allow spawn choosing on default or official rates. But if look at easy mode run, i can tell how current minecraft speedruns are bad ... that is absolutely random. You just have to accept it. I added a moeder as this is a fun type of speedrun ... and short. The developers did not give us the opportunity to choose a spawn point there are. This is just part of gameplay. But. Why then are you wasting your time? While you are leveling up first (and do not move)? You can turn on the teleport through Helena first (to the necessary part of the biome). Try it. I mean turn TP first and level up points while TP on CD.

The only way I can help in this situation is to allow to create new character after killing the previous one (and also reset timer) without interacting with the world (without harvesting and taming and etc) or allow to respawn already created character (and also reset timer).

... do not forget that in ARK speedrun you can get pump action shotgun in the loot crate with extremely high damage like 125% (i find that one in ice cave in my first run) that brake the game much more ... i need to craft ~82% ammo amount - less grind and less craft time and less time to kill the boss (and much more chances to survive) ...

2. force spawning alphas

Developers mistake. Our pain. What to do. Increase "dino count" to 1.0 or allow to spawn alpfa wywern talon in any time of the speedrun?

The developers did a good job here (they made a gift to the speedrunners ... also they made so small arena ... there is no way for gun strat on default (so sad ... this is not an arena, but a meat grinder 100%)), deciding to add an alpha wyvern claw for the crystal isles. I do not want to allow alpha wyvern spawn (or enraged rexes on extinction as a 450 corrupted hearts).

One player has already achieved a speedrun. Spawning artifacts is all fair and obvious. But wild creatures should spawn without such influence. Not all maps are speedrun friendly.

I think that i can help little bit by increasing "dino count" from 0.5 to 1 only on Crystal Isles (still random but little bit more chances). Or allow to spawn alpfa wywrn talon in any time of the speedrun. What you think?

I want to allow anyone to spawn that stupid alpfa wywern talon and forget that pain and ... beat new WR without a tilt.

3. removing skilling from the run

No. No. No.

For example you can forget something or missclick ... that is a part of the gameplay. You can split leveling and skilling by time ... you waste a lot of time while skilling at spawn point and go through all engrams at one time. In my island runs while i crafting for example bow and arrows i skilling little bit. When you regen stamina or taming you can do it. When you parachuting you can leveling. Also on the Genesis P1: moeder you can level up MS little bit and run to the corner and jump in water. When you falling (in water) you can lvl up and skilling. I mean plan your "build" order.

And you do not need to show your settings at the beginning. Just complete the run and show your settings. But! Newer do that on default. Especially when you leave the game for a break. In that case just reset settings (at the start) and go to the run. When you want to continue after a break, you can reset the settings again or scroll through them (there are not so much restarts ... on crap, scorched earth).

And also i saw a lot of times ... lvl up hp and waiting time to regen stamina with low hp ...

I believe that we should not spawn anything that are not artifacts, however bringing creature count up to 1.0 will probably help a lot. Since there are no caves it would defidnetly be possible to complete it as easy as I did .

Now i just want to listen all your opinions first. I also do not want to spawn any creature (or tribute).

I used to think that alphas should be spawned in because they were physically impossible to find, however it has been shown that all maps are runnable now, so for that reason i really dont want to make any of the points that maverick brought up because it skilling points and spawn locations are a part of the game and it is possible to find alphas on all maps they are needed in. there are much more rng heavy games out there that are run and i personally dont want to stray further than "real" ark than we already have with spawning in artifacts and insane rates. and i really dont think it takes much to restart if you get a bad spawn cause you have already recently shown ur rates so you dont have to do it again if you are insta restarting.

I also wanted to add that spawn locations and skilling points takes literally 30 seconds of the run and if you fuck it up you can just restart in the matter of again less than 3 seconds. I can understand the frustration of restarting hours into a run because of bad alpha rng but 30 seconds really is not necessary

to spawnpoints, there is absolutely no point in forcing the runner to restart 20 times (thats what i needed to get the right crystal spawn).

btw its already easy enough to cheat a run so i would require to show the settings before you enter the map (EACH TIME).

to MC speedruns you start a run with random seed so you know nothing about the world you are spawning in on ark you know your spawn points and you know which are in the favor of the runner, could you use some other spawns as well? yes you could and you could easily beat the boss with other spawn points but not in the required time.

to alpha crystal wyvern i did some testing and here are my results (video proof as soon as YT upload is finished)

dino count 1.0

gcm 20:40 95kills 00:25 3kills 02:10 14kills 03:05 19kills

argent 08:35 10 21:00 27 37:00 49

on avg you need ~30 wyvern kills to get an alpha

@Bishokukai

The only way I can help in this situation is to allow to create new character after killing the previous one (and also reset timer) without interacting with the world (without harvesting and taming and etc) or allow to respawn already created character (and also reset timer).

^if thats ok than there is no point in not allowing to use tpcoords to a specific spawn point, the only difference is that you don't need to constantly kill yourself (btw with killing yourself you have much more impact to the game than just tping to your desired spawn, cause you don't produce 10-20 corpses that trigger dinos)

So we have only 1 very broken map - Cryslal Isles. I want to change something only for that map. We can increase dino count for better spawn dinos and allow to summon alpfa crystal wywern talon one time in any time you need. Also i want to add brand new rule for time dalaying: If you need to start the run not at day 1 you can wait some time by using "slomo 10" ... and recreate new player after that. That will help a lot on Crystal Isles, Valguero (Deinonychus spawn). But when i launched my SP on Crystal Isles i met wywerns (with gcm) an day 1.

Or maybe delete Crystal Isles from the speedruns (that is not official map, so broken, unspeedrunable).

But with a run in CI is it really a reason to delete CI . I mean it is my only run so far, but still I showed that it could be done and it could be done way faster too.

Also if you spawn in the talon you might as well spawn in the primal crystal too. The only real consistent way to get it and have a chance to do under an hour is by killing an alpha.

Given that there is already a run and there are other people trying for the run, myself included, CI should stay a map, no one is forced to run it but currently, there are people actively trying to run it. People should be free to run what they want even if it is heavily rng-based. That being said ever since I got into the speedrunning scene and talked to Frosty I even said this may be the one map where 1.0 Spawns would be beneficial to aid in the likelihood of the Alpha spawning. Frosty has proved that it can be run and that it can be run even faster so I do think that CI should be a category with 1.0 spawns on easy.

Crystal Isles itself is a great map for speedrunning, yeah the lighting is shit, you need a fixed spawn to be able to get to the artifact of the immune to have a doable run and alpha wyverns are a big problem of that run, but everything else is very fair for speedrunning. I dont want do get CI removed I just want to make it compatible.

From my recent testing is can say finding crystal wyvern on day1 possible but they rare on day2 there are much more (not alpha). for alpha it's totally random and fighting an alpha is not sth special its just a normal wyvern that takes 2-3 hits instead of 1. every ember wyvern ist far more dangerous than the alpha one.

I am also totally against removing CI from the board.

and one more thing i want to clarify everything that we are discussing here is meant ONLY for easy mode. for default runs I also think that nothing should spawned at all.

but keep in mind Genesis P1 Moeder is already highly optimized to a point, that you need specific spawnpoints and a specific Basilo lv (13+ with the right stats) just to have a chance to beat moeder in under 9min

for CI we have the spawnpoint problem as well, i think 2,5 spawnpoint in north west a useable, every other spawn in this area will take to much time to get to the artifact (if any proof is necessary for that to i will check every north west spawnpoint and take the time that i need to get to the artifact)

btw here are my testings for alpha crystal wyvern on CI: dino count 1.0: dino count 5.0:

and one more thing i want to clarify everything that we are discussing here is meant ONLY for easy mode. for default runs I also think that nothing should spawned at all.

Yeah. 100% true.

so I believe the alpha problem can be fixed by using the slomo command to get to day 3 then using 1.0 dino count. Also Maverick it feels like you watched my video and didnt look at the other possible spawn locations such as the west spawn of the map. Spawning here makes it easier to get a ptera.

actually i did but i think that many of you don't get the real problem. these problems are not seperate problems.

so lets say you have a 10% chance to get the right spawn (your actual chances are much lower, but for calculation lets go with easy numbers) that meant after 10 restarts you should have a do able run, but we have 2 more major RNG points.

so after you collected the artifact of the immune the run gets pretty skill based, that means RNG doesnt have that much impact to the run.

after you got the artifact of the brute you had to the desert biome, to tame an argentavis, collect artifact of the devious, farming you crystal talons and the alpha crystal talon.

so you 2nd RNG point is getting an argent in that area (yeah you can get them all other the map but have fun pulling the argent down to the wyverns and back to red obelisk -> it takes forever, so if you dont find an argent down there you run is trash.

Now back to our 10 runs we need to get a doable run. once again lets say we have a 10% chance to get an argent at this area or close around (actual chance should be a bit higher prob around 20% even with dinocount 1.0) so now we dont need to restart 10 times to get a doable run we need to restart 100 times to get a doable run and we always need to play to argent taming to confirm if we have a doable run or not (even after adding set spawns and force spawning alpha wyvern this factor will be there.

so lets say you got a doable run with 100 tries now you need to get a alpha wyvern in around 10min (your normal talons are included to this time) to have a run. once again 10% chance (actually also feels like a realistic number with dinocount 1.0) to get an alpha spawned in that time.

congratulation you made your 1000 attempt to get a doable run (if you fuck up on the skill parts or having anything else happening cause we are still playing ARK afterall, good luck getting another doable run.

another example for moeder you need a right spawn and the right glitches (some of the glitches are covered by maelstorm or electrophorus, these glitches are not obtainable so you need to find other ones and you finally need to find a decent basilo (for moeder the only help would be to get a fixed spawn you cant avoid electrophorus blocking glitches or not finding a good basilo) btw finding a good basilo is pretty hard cause you need 4-5k basehealth to fight moeder if you dont have a basilo like that the run ends

@FrostyGamingSnowman just a question: how many attempts did you have for that run?