Leenaya

The patch notes say they fixed an issue with the lighthouse thinking there was no one around to maintain it. I will assume that was the issue and build a new one.

Yes I am. I didnt see anything in patch notes. Pve server.

I had a lighthouse yesterday, I know I did because I had put oil into it so it was shining like a beacon of hope. Today I log in and the lighthouse is missing. This is bad. I knew that some of the trees in my area were not the same as the others, but I didnt know they were Ents. No other reason why the entire lighthouse would walk off. No log messages in my company either. Oil is cheap and so is a lighthouse, but I dont want to put one down only to have it walk off again. Though I also dont seem to be able to find the lighthouse engram anymore either. Maybe they made a mistake with the last patch and removed them from the game by accident.

I built my fort with trees growing up into the walls and silk plants in the courtyard. Dont have to leave the fort to get basic building materials. It looks funny, but the alternative would be allowing foundations to block resources spawning. The last time they did that entire islands went barren. Dont want to see that again. Plus with no way to police lawless pve for metal blocking, one group could grief the entire island by stopping all the spawns on purpose. Its best to let the grass grow and just plop down your buildings in a clear area if you want it tidy.

Today started the eggcellent event in Ark, but Atlas didnt get any such thing. I find that sad. The chickens should be laying colored eggs as they walk around. The rabbits should have little bags on their backs that have prize eggs with gold coins in them. The cows should get the same easter colors as the ARK dinos. Also would like to see the SOTD attack you with giant eggs instead of cannon balls. Why cant i cut down rushes and make easter baskets that I can fill with fun pirate gifts like glass eyes, peg legs, and hook hands? I also have not seen the special easter Kraken with giant bunny ears that stick out of the water to lure you in expecting a giant gift giving bunny. Now that I think about it, all those ideas are ridiculous which is probably why we got no event. Still, it would be interesting to see what the future holds for Atlas in terms of events. I am sure it will be fun. Zombie animals at Halloween perhaps? Every pirate needs an undead crew that works for brains after all. We already have undead treasure guardians so the models exist.

I always like building things in Atlas even though its mostly pointless, but now that I have finished the first part of my lawless fort and looked at it from a distance I am not happy. There should be more parts for building so you dont have to use doorframes on the top of the walls to fake having crenelations. Also would like bigger flags, and banners that can be custom painted. About 2-3 foundations wide and 4 long on banners would be good. One could argue that they have better things to do then make frufru decorations for a pve minority in a pvp game, but on the other hand in terms of pvp, nothing ruins a persons day better than having their beautiful defense network and perfectly laid out villages in burning ruins after a failed defense. Failure drives innovation. Here is my fort with the doorframes that I dont like. At some point I would like useless cannons on top because... cannons?

The population on my pve lawless grid is up to 45 or so. Highest I have seen since relaunch and its not even the weekend. The foundations are showing up, but its not a complete island cover yet. Pvp lawless, which he was asking about, does seem to be a death sentence. But then again the idea of lawless was to make a temporary place there. That idea just didn't translate to pve well since no one can shoot you anyway. All the good stuff about living for yourself and no drawbacks yet on pve lawless. Its a great place to build useless buildings. My fort is coming along well i think. Few more days to finish. Edit: Forgot to mention. There is no repair bill to maintain a base yet. If and when there is I am up the creek without a dingy. My forts outer walls alone is over 500 single walls. Add the 150+ outer wall foundations and the entire central keep tower... All of it in stone which takes metal to build as well... I dont even want to think about paying maintenance.

I wouldnt put it past the designers to look at the numbers and come to the wrong conclusion. I would think "Make claimed islands better" They will think "Nerf lawless!" Best not to spread around the tales of the golden lands of love, peace, harmony and friendship that is lawless.

Well lets see... Its pve, so I cant be raided for one. For another I build big because... I want too? Sounds good to me. Started a dock area between my two shipyards that will have small shanty town houses like in skyrim. Who will use them? No one, its just because.. I want too? Sounds like a good reason to me. If you have a better idea of what to do in pve other than build big impressive and useless structures please let me know. I stopped playing last time because I got my base done and couldnt think of anything else to do on pve. Edit: I see why you assumed I would be raided. He said on pvp server. My mistake. Still, lawless is the same on pve as on pvp i think. Never saw any difference.

I have been building a harbor fort with 9 towers, connecting walls, and a large central tower in lawless. As it stands right now I have found nothing I cant do in lawless. In fact its even better than before as now I have 10 days to log in rather then 4 before anyone can blow up my stuff. The only caution I would give is that its called lawless for a reason. You cant stop someone from building all around you and boxing you in. Cant stop people from dropping ugly buildings all over making the place look like Detroit or San Francisco. Not had this problem "yet" but its still early days. On a claimed island if you have a good overlord they can clean up that sort of mess.

Unless they change something major I probably wont bother starting over. I only play pve so its partly my fault for being bored I suppose. I built all the ships solo, got my little farm going and even had a small group of animals on standard rates. Then I logged in one day, looked around, and thought "Now what?" As far as I can tell the ptr pve server is exactly like the old server. Been there done that, ate the sandwich. Ark 2600 hours or so invested. Atlas 162 hours and ran out of things to do. But, to be fair as the brits say, most of my other steam games dont break 50 hours. So got my fun out of my purchase with no regrets.

Lost both my schooner and galleon hulls. Wasn't planning on building them thankfully. Still, annoying. I live in lawless if that makes a difference. Edit: Just as i was tabbed out typing this reply looking to see if anyone else on the forums lost hulls, the server seems to be down for me. I have no luck

I dont recall seeing a repair building as a choice to make. Also over the 2 hours at least there was no decay. The lion chewing on my door doesn't count

I have built my 9x3 house that has room for all crafting places, forge, loom, etc. I also built my small and large dockyard and laid the keels for a schooner and a galleon. Enough trees to build an entire galleon even on regular rates within render. Pure copper nodes i can walk to and silk enough for a hundred sails. This is all on a lawless island. I have seen no drawbacks for being on lawless yet. Its still early though. Always a chance something will go badly wrong with lawless when the big patch hits.

I have to say that even with it pooping out on me, I had fun. Got killed on the very first beach I went to while looking at a chicken. Then found a different place and built a schooner. Its very smooth when its up and running. Edit: While your waiting you can design a sail for your ship. Something that just screams "Your about to die" or some such. Or skull and crossbones if you lack imagination i guess. This was my old sail design.

Well I also crashed out and cant get back in right now. Says it "Network Failure Message. Unable to query server info for invite" I figure it will fix itself at some point.

Limited time to look over but I did search the entire grid. Of all the spawn points they all had lots of potential for shipyard building. Only one was what I would consider a prime island in terms of resources. Some of the big ones had lots of land, but have to build up to get up. Mesa in the water so to speak. The main drawback for most was lack of dense woods. Ships need lots of wood to build. Overall impression of land area 7 of 10. Could have used more trees on most shore areas. Good progress on having flat beaches to build dock areas on though. Didnt climb up top due to limited time but looked interesting. No duplicate islands

Great name, but obviously one of the small islands. Standing on the rock you can turn and see the entire thing. 5 trees total. Though it does have pure copper. Perfect for putting up cages and leaving people to rot.

Well, from what i remember about the first launch, i skipped the first two days of that, even when it came up it wasn't very playable for most people. If I had to guess I would say they did some small batch testing as a "launched" client on their own private server and one of two things happened. Either A: it failed to launch at all, or B: the problem they had last launch day wasn't just still there, but their own test launch on a private server showed that the new code made it 10 times worse in terms of lag. If I was them I would not bother putting it out there in that state either. The rage isn't worth it. Stability first then worry about letting us try the new features.

TL:DR - Be a good overlord + have server admin oversight = Have Minions = Profit + Fun If the above mentioned 900 players = 900 overlords comes to pass, the only way it would work that i can think of is if they have actual in game admins that track what the overlords are doing. In a perfect world you could settle on an island as a non overlord after reading some sort of in game billboard that explains what said overlord will allow on his island and have fun. As long as you follow his, or her, "rules" for building, rules that would be vetted by the in game admins, and the overlord isn't a jerk, 900 possible overlords should present enough options to find some island that meets your pve needs. For instance, if i was an overlord my rules would be simple. Design actual buildings that look like buildings. No open foundations, pillar spamming, or unfinished rambling one story buildings that look like they came out of the back end of a cow. An island with big castle looking buildings would be a sight to behold. I would even help my minions, i mean settlers, to design a building if they don't know how. When you get down to it, the way Atlas works currently, you only need space for a warehouse-stable, somewhere to plant crops, and a place for the shipyards to attach on land. Some space would be needed to store your built ships of course so it would be in the rules that a single person cant have 500 galleons all around the island blocking everyone in. If they tried to spam ships for no reason they would get razed by my mighty delete key of doom. If no one liked my rules there would still be 899 more overlords to choose from that might like cow pie looking buildings, so you could build there instead. Again, an overlord that has no settler-minions would be bounced out by the in game admins for having stupid rules they only put in place so no one would ever accept them. That's in a perfect world though. In an imperfect world it might still work if the admins enforced policies with a heavy yet not too heavy hand. It would just take time to weed out the bad overlords. At some point everyone would be a good overlord that didn't screw everyone else over. 2 years perhaps?

I think thats why they have a week beforehand of test server. You can pick where you want to live and be ready to spawn there as soon as the server comes up. As I have said in other posts, that foundation thing needs to be addressed somehow. On the pve server now i visit a tropical island because it has oil. Every shore, cliff, field, mountain, and even underwater is spammed with single foundations from just 2 companies. Its a huge island too.

The new changes sound fine for pve. They only seem to be overlooking one problem. About 2 days, less if you blitz it, after the server comes up every square inch of every island will be covered in foundations. Yes the notes say things need upkeep, but single foundations probably wont take much, and unless i missed it in my fast read through, no limit on how many upkeep buildings you can have, if they even have a range at all. Maybe one building is good for the entire island. I could have missed that in the notes if they talked about it. Fix the spamming of foundations or no amount of land will be enough for everyone to build on. IMO.

I have to say I preferred Ark early access to Atlas early access. Have 2700 or so hours in ark but only 180 or so in atlas and I feel like i ran out of things to do. Mostly that's because I play solo and Atlas is not a game for solo players. Its simply not designed to work if your playing alone, and that's not always a bad thing. I do feel that Ark had more potential that Atlas does. it never hit a perfect score in my head, but then again it was good enough to be my longest playtime invested game ever. Most games these days are 20-30 hours if your fortunate. Even sandbox or massive replayability games like civilization 6 only made 300 or so for me so far. That's a far cry from 2700. The only real takeaway from Ark vs Atlas is that its made by the same company and uses a lot of the same systems and assets. In terms of how it seems to be designed to play, they are too far apart to compare in a meaningful way. At least to me.

I am happy that there will be crabs soonish. I am looking forward to picking up galleons in PVE and dropping them on land because no one thought to check that crabs couldnt do that. Okay, so maybe that wont happen, but it would be funny if it did. They will probably be super hard to tame but I want one anyway. So much screaming when they super jump onto someones boat and slide around forever. I hope they keep the super jump they had in ark anyway. Otherwise whats the point? Maybe really good armor. I would also like to see dolphins be tame-rideable someday. At the fountain of youth i saw the pteradons, i mean leatherwings, flying around. Dolphin riding doesn't seem too far fetched in a pirate game.

North west tropical is just 2 zones away. I can try that next time I log in. Atm I am logged off because an alpha wolf is on the prowl. Edit: Also should note that with my sloop with medium speed sail I can get across the entire map in no time. Its so fast I wasnt able to turn away from the shore in time and flipped the boat over into a roll. 3600 damage over and over until the thing sank. Oops. Good thing they are cheap.