Best Ways to Farm Chitin Easy in Ark: Survival Evolved

Chitin is a common crafting component in Ark Survival Evolved.  It is a very durable material which is used to craft cementing paste, Chitin Armor, and is used to make metal and many other mid/late game Engrams.  The only way to get it is to harvest it from dead dinosaurs which have external skeletons(exoskeletons). The dinos that are best to farm/harvest for Chitin are the Titanomyrma, Meganeura, Pulmonoscorpius, and Trilobite.  After killing one of the listed exoskeleton dinosaurs, you should always harvest their body with an Axe to receive the maximum possible Chitin.  The best tamed Dino to harvest chitin with is by far the Sabertooth. You will get more per harvest when you level up the Sabertooth’s damage.

Now that the basics have been explained, lets discuss what the best and easiest Dino to find and farm from is.

Best Dino to Farm Chitin from is the Trilobite!

The Trilobite in Ark is a newly added Dino, and was not released yet at the time of the game launch.

Why are trilobites the best to farm chitin?

They are easy to kill -Trilobites do not fight back, they just slowly flee.  Once you attack one of them in a group, you need to kill fast so you don’t let any get away from their fate.

They are easy to find – You can find trilobites all along the coast lines and in some rivers. They are also in huge pack under the sea, but that can be more difficult to farm unless you are fairly advanced and have a good sea creature that is ride able. If you go to the Ark wiki page you will see a map on the right with all spawn points.

They drop other useful mats – Ontop of being able to harvest chitin from them, you will also receive Raw Meat, Silica Pearls, and Oil. This cuts down on how often, if ever that you will have to go deep sea diving for the pearls and oil.

Although Trilobites seem to be the best for me, you can still get a Sabertooth and farm inland if your server has a good spawn rate of dinos. Desert areas, usually near mountains can have big groups of scorpions which can add up to a good bit of chitin after being harvested. The choice is yours, do what is the most enjoyable for you and always just playing Ark Survival Evolved.

How to Improve ARK Survival Evolved FPS Issues

In my entire life of PC gaming, I’ve never experienced a more difficult and frustrating game than ARK to optimize.  I am sure at least 90% of the ARK community can relate as well.   Don’t get me wrong, I love playing this game and have hundreds upon hundreds of hours invested, not counting the time that has been invested into reading the wiki, Reddit, watching videos and streams.

When I first bought the game and launched it, I had crazy lag and rubber banding, some good frame rates for a second, and then 5 fps for a few seconds, and this is how it has continued until very recently.  Many of these issues are caused from the game being in alpha and server lag which we are powerless to fix.

During my time playing, here is the list of things I’ve upgraded and tweaked to improve performance in ARK Survival Evolved. These changes have improved load speeds and FPS, but now to the point where it doesn’t happen or annoy me.

  1. Switched game install from a normal hard drive to a solid state with a fresh format.
  2. Set steam launch options to include –USEALLAVAILABLECORES
  3. Tried every single graphics setting, low, medium, high, epic – etc. You have to tweak these for yourself and figure out what works best. I always turn shadows to low.
  4. Launched game with low memory, no sky effects etc. For my PC, I actually get better game play when launching it in normal mode.
  5. Purchased a new video card. I had a Radeon HD 9750, not a bad card, but figured it just wasn’t enough for this game. I switched to a GTX 970. Unfortunately this barely increased my FPS, and didn’t do much for the sporadic lag and FPS drops.

What did work?

Overclocking the GPU! This is the one thing I haven’t thought of or read about on any forum. This might not be possible for many of you, but for the ones who have decent systems with less than satisfactory results should definitely try this.

I can only relate and tell you how to overclock the GTX 970, but if you have other cards just YouTube a guide for overclocking your card.  When you search, try to match your motherboard model to the video card so make it super straight forward and step by step.

There is software that can be downloaded, or came with your card that you can use to overclock the GPU. I use MSI Afterburner.

After overclocking, and while tweaking the settings, you will want to either benchmark and stress test the card, or have a hardware monitor open to make sure it’s not getting too hot and also hitting the speeds you expected. I use Open Hardware Monitor open on my other monitor while I play.

GPU-Z will also show you the stats and speeds or your card.

CPU-Z will show you and let you benchmark your CPU, but I believe ARK is more GPU intense than CPU. I have both overclocked but didn’t notice a huge difference until the GPU overclock.

You can go down the list and tweak everything I’ve discussed to greatly improve your game play and enjoyment from playing ARK Survival Evolved.

If you have a GTX 970, click here for my short tutorial on how to overclock the GPU to gain a massive performance and FPS increase.

 

 

 

How to level fast in Ark Survival Evolved

Ark Survival Evolved is a very complex and detailed game.  Leveling in Ark is also complex, which means there are so many ways to which you can level up.  You should first off understand that everything you do in Ark(for the most part) gives you XP points.   There are quite a few factors to account for when estimating your experience gains and what is the most beneficial at your current stage to get you leveled.

Things to take into account

  • Tribe Members – This is huge factor because if you are playing solo, well, straight up, you are going to level way slower than someone in a big tribe, heck even a tribe that only has two people.  This is because when you are within range of your tribe members they share XP with you, and it’s a good bit of it. Now imagine you have a tribe of 10 people, all in the base crafting walls, narcotics, metal parts, etc. it can add up fast.
  • Server Type – The XP will also vary depending on if you play on an official server or an unofficial server. Unofficial server hosts can set the XP multiplier to fit their needs, and I personally enjoy this feature because after playing originally on official servers, it just takes too long in my opinion. Some unofficial, like the one I play on have 20 x multipliers for experience points.
  • Engram’s available – If you are only level 10, well you don’t have everything you need to start producing high quality items which will grant you more XP.
  • Dinosaurs – If you have a high level Dino you can ride, you can go on trips and just kill everything in sight.  This is an easy and fairly safe way to level and also gather materials on the way. There is much more to this topic but it will have to be covered in another post.

Now that we understand how XP is gained, we have a good understanding of what needs to be done to maximize the amount of levels or experience points we gain per hour.  I wish there was a certain item I could tell you to create to just get to max level in 4 hours, but that isn’t possible or realistic, and it also ruins the point of the game.  I am going to give you an understanding of how to play, which will benefit the leveling process for the long term and also keep the game fresh and exciting for you.

Starting out – When you first join a server, I would suggest finding a good base location, but on the way constantly farm bushes as you run by tapping the E (interact) key.  Craft your basic tools, axe, pick, some spears, bow/arrows, armor etc. Usually by the time you have located your new base location you will have gained a good bit of level to make everything a bit easier.  Now it is time to build your first shelter or base. Depending on the size you choose to build it, it will level you up super fast.  Start chopping down trees,  continue to gather berries and fiber from random bushes and set the item you want to craft on your hot bar.  You can craft items as you move around and gather more materials. You will have to walk slowly while crafting but if you are in the forest etc it shouldn’t be too big of a deal.  You can also just gather / craft as you go and then once your weight is maxed, drop your inventory and continue on.  Everything in your hot bar will not be dropped when you do end up dumping your entire inventory so you shouldn’t have to pick as much/if any items or material out of the dropped bag.

Mid level – Once you are fairly leveled and have learned some more Engrams, you can move on to better items which will produce more XP with the downside of costing more materials. The sweet spot is finding an item you can farm the materials for fairly easy, seems to give good XP and you can use for something productive, in this case I would say wood/stone building components. The bigger you decide to build you base, the more levels you will get, so be creative and just enjoy the game and keep on crafting and the levels will start to roll in without you even noticing.

High Level – Now that you have a base and safe location with a bed, chests, etc, you can start taming Dinosaurs.  Dinos are great because depending where you put their stat points, the better they get which also enhances how fast you can run, gather and kill other Dinos.  You don’t get the full XP value when you kill or gather while riding a your tamed dinosaurs, but you get a good percentage of the XP they receive.  It’s still faster on a tamed Dino than manually running around shooting 30 or more arrows into a Triceratops.  If you are REALLY high level and ALSO your Dino, you can start searching for Alpha Dino spawns.  Alpha’s give tons of XP but at the cost of having crazy health and damage percentages so be prepared, you will probably die a few times until you understand what you can and cannot take down.

That is the general concept of the game. I’d love to give you a spreadsheet that has all the listed values, and it may be out on the internet somewhere, but who really cares.  Craft what you need, keep advancing and staying productive and most of all have fun with the game.

Personal Tips – There are some items you can just never really have enough of, or at least for me they seem like my go to items everyday when I log in to craft at least a few to get me rolling.

  1. Cementing Paste
  2. Narcotics
  3. Armor
  4. Weapons / Arrows / Ammo

You can set up multiple mortar and pestles to craft tons of batches of Narcotics/Cementing pastes and the XP from each can stack and really start to level you fast, but this takes time to stock all your fridges with spoiled meat, narco berries, stone and chitin or keratin. I believe, unless they changed it, that you need to stay within a semi-close distance of your Mortal and Pestles to still receive XP. I start a few batches and while they are crafting and giving me XP, I do the daily tasks like feed my dinos, refresh my fridges with gas or spark powder or just fix up my base with my already full cabinet of neatly sorted supplies.

That’s all I have without rambling on but hopefully if you are new to the game this can be helpful.  Check back often for more Ark Survival Evolved guides and much more! Thanks for reading.

Borderlands TPS – Complete Grinder Recipie List

The Grinder in Borderlands The Pre-Sequel is a pretty nice addition to the game. 

If you are wondering what recipes make what, then here you go.  Remember that unless crafting with moonstones you can still get the lower rarity / quality weapons.

Basic Weapons

Green Weapon – 2 White weapons of desired type + 1 additional White random weapon

Blue Weapon – 2 Green weapons of desired type + 1 additional Green random weapon

Purple Weapon – 2 Blue weapons of desired type + 1 additional Blue random weapon

Legendary Weapon – 1 Purple weapon of desired type + 2 additional Legendary random weapons

Random Weapons

Green Weapon – 3 White weapons of different types

Blue Weapon – 3 Green weapons of different types

Purple Weapon – 3 Blue weapons of different types

Assault Rifle

1 SMG + 1 Sniper Rifle + 1 Shield, All White

1 SMG + 1 Sniper Rifle + 1 Shield, All Green

1 SMG + 1 Sniper Rifle + 1 Shield, All Blue

Rocket Launcher

2 weapons + 1 Grenade Mod, All White

2 weapons + 1 Grenade Mod, All Green

2 weapons + 1 Grenade Mod, All Blue

Shotgun

1 Pistol + 1 SMG + 1 Shield, All White

1 Pistol + 1 SMG + 1 Shield, All Green

1 Pistol + 1 SMG + 1 Shield, All Blue

SMG

1 Assault Rifle + 1 Pistol+ 1 Shield, All White

1 Assault Rifle + 1 Pistol+ 1 Shield, All Green

1 Assault Rifle + 1 Pistol+ 1 Shield, All Blue

Sniper Rifle

1 Assault Rifle + 1 Shotgun + 1 Shield, All White

1 Assault Rifle + 1 Shotgun + 1 Shield, All Green

1 Assault Rifle + 1 Shotgun + 1 Shield, All Blue

Oz Kits

Any 3 Oz Kits, All White

Any 3 Oz Kits, All Green

Any 3 Oz Kits, All Blue

Shield

Any 3 Shields, All White

Any 3 Shields, All Green

Any 3 Shields, All Blue

Classmods

Any 3 Class Mods, All White

Any 3 Class Mods, All Green

Any 3 Class Mods, All Blue

Grenade Mods

Any 3 Grenade Mods, All White

Any 3 Grenade Mods, All Green

Any 3 Grenade Mods, All Blue

How to get Unlimited Money and Moonstones in Borderlands The Pre-Sequel

What it requires to get unlimited Moonstones and Money in Borderlands The Pre Sequel!

1. First thing you need to have is a previous save from Borderlands 2 or Borderlands on your computer.

2. Every time you make a new game in Borderlands TPS you get a gun and 10 moonstones.

3. How can we use this to our advantage? Well on your main character, quit to the main menu, start a new game, as soon as you can pick a character hit escape and go back to the main menu.

4. Once you are at the main menu, you can go to “select character” and then continue game.

5. When you login to your character you will receive a loyalty bonus of one item(blue pistol) and 10 moonstones.

You can repeat this as much as you would like until/if they patch it and it only takes 1-2 minutes to complete.

Enjoy!

Review of Final Fantasy 14 – A Realm Reborn – Good or Bad?

I have decided to try out Final Fantasy XIV – A Realm Reborn – and so far, I have good and bad things to say.

Currently on the message boards everyone is crying because of server issues, which I guess is a big deal, but the factor they aren’t considering, is at the time of posting this, the game is still in early access and they are readjusting and adding more servers.  I expect this anytime a new game comes out.  To make up on their end for the downtime for early access players, they extended the date until the 29th, so you get two extra days of early access before your free 30 days start ticking.  This has been the only bad thing, the server and login issues, but those aren’t the game, so this is all I will mention about that.

Now for the actual GAME!

I’ve only played for 3 days so far, but I enjoy the game a lot.  The controls are great, much like WoW, which I believe has the best controls.

Graphics are beautiful

So far I have not seen or heard of any major bugs

Questing is fun and leveling isn’t so bad, I would say it is kind of fast.

 

If you ever played Final Fantasy 11 you know that leveling solo was almost impossible at higher levels.  This does not seem to be the case here.

The Classes/Jobs are a great aspect to Final Fantasy.  Very customizable and a reason to keep leveling multiple characters.

That is it for now, but if you are looking for a new good MMO to play, I do feel like this one has what is needed and will last a very long time.

 

 

Minecraft Feed The Beast | FTB Tutorial | Get Rich in the Twilight

If you didn’t already know, you can get an amazing amount of resources from mining in the twilight, specifically within hollow hills.

What are hollow hills you ask? Well check out this video I made a few days ago for more information about them and what they look like and also how to find them.

Minecraft FTB Tutorial Get Rich in Minecraft

Borderlands 2 Boss Farming LVL 30 XP AND EASY LOOT – SATURN

Hello Nerds! I have another hopefully helpful video about where and how to farm the boss Saturn in Borderlands 2.

It takes only a few minutes and gives great loot for your level and super fast XP.

The XP amount at level 30 is 13600.  He drops iridium also.  Hope this video is helpful and please comment and subscribe to my youtube if you enjoy the video!

Check back often for more Borderlands 2 Videos!

Leauge of Legends Summer LCS Music Video Mashup – Next Split

If anyone watched the LCS for the Summer Split, you may have seen, or missed this hilarious mash up created by Riot.

LCS MASH UP SUMMER SPLIT VIDEO

How to Get the Most Diablo 3 Gold for the Money – EASY

In-case anyone hasn’t played Diablo 3 in a while and needs a boost to get their gear up to par, here is an easy way to maximize your money when using the real money auction house.

After you put your money into battle net, you can either by gold for .25$-ish per million, or spend 1-2 dollars on the highest level gems and re-list those on the gold auction house for about 20 million gold.  You do the math, but that’s about 350% better than buying gold straight up.  This is the way most people get their gold easily in Diablo 3.

Emeralds I believe sell for the most, but do a little research as the market fluctuates and see for yourself.