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OK, so you've tranquilized a dino and it's time to tame. Taming 1 Tapejara will potentially take days or even weeks. For example, if you want tame the quick flyer called the Tapejara, you need to start at the beginning of the chain with Lystrosaurus eggs, which are used to tame Diplododcus, which are used to tame Allosaurus, which you can finally use to tame a Tapejara. The most efficient way to tame is to follow a Kibble tree, taming each dino in order until you can make the kibble for the dino you really want. Every dinosaur has their favorite type of kibble and you'll need to feed them the correct one to tame them effectively. Kibble is a type of "dino chow" made out of dinosaur eggs and vegetables, meaning to make kibble you need a cooking pot, a farm, and 1 tamed dino at the very least. You can feed them raw meat or berries to tame them, but feeding them their favorite type of kibble will reduce the time it takes significantly. Once you manage you knock them out, you now need to feed them a steady supply of narcotics to keep them sedated as well as food to tame them. What's more, the animal will quite often run away or kill you in the process of incapacitating it. There are 6 different crafting materials and 2 crafting stations required to make a single tranquilizer dart, not including the gun, meaning that just building up a supply of tranqs is expensive and time-consuming. There are a few ways to do this, but by far the most efficient is to shoot them with arrows or bullets infused with narcotics. Here's how it works: First, a dino needs to be incapacitated. One of the first ways Ark starts conditioning players to be victimized is through the taming process. RELATED: At Its Best, The Last Of Us Part II Is A Chilling Depiction Of The Cycle Of Abuse The game is an expert at conditioning its victims to accept abuse over time, using manipulating tactics to train them to accept being disrespected and set back, sometimes even to devastating degrees. When things are bad, it's easy to make excuses and minimalize or justify the things that hurt. When things are good, they're better than you could have ever imagined. Playing Ark is a lot like being in an abusive relationship.
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Nothing compares, and if you make it to this point, congratulations: you're hooked. It's 100%ing Through The Fire And The Flames on expert with your eyes closed. It's hitting Grandmaster in Overwatch on a 50 game win streak. That milestone is nothing short of euphoric. A new player will die and restart dozens if not hundreds of times before they finally learn enough to make some clothes, craft some weapons, gather resources, and build their first house with a bed so that when they die they'll have a familiar place to respawn and start over. It's brutal, unforgiving, infinitely frustrating, and a massive waste of time. The "new player experience" in Ark would run-off any rational person with even an ounce of self-respect. See a velociraptor, get eaten, start all over. Pull up some grass, make a shirt, protect yourself. Punch a tree, gather some wood, make a spear. The first several hours (or more realistically, several days) of Ark is all about establishing basic needs.
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