ARK Adventures: Frog Fail
I reached the mid level 30s in ARK before I decided to brave the swamp biome that left us homeless when we were still quite low leveled. I learned how to craft the chitin gear, and riding on Zento, I felt like I could take on the world.
My one main goal was to catch one of the Beelzebufo (henceforth known as frogs). I’d heard they were somewhat overpowered and very fun to ride, but I needed to see for myself. So I headed to the little thatch based we’d left next to the swamp and caught myself the nicest looking little red frog ever. I named her Hippity.
Everything I heard about frog mounts was true. Not only are they super fast and fun to ride, but they clear a ton of ground easily with their super jump. They can also turn any bugs they defeat into paste… which I guess is used for higher level metal crafting, but I’m not sure just yet. Frogs have a long range tongue attack as well as a frontal cone AOE tongue attack. I find them pretty powerful even against some of the bigger dinos.
Anyway you look at it, frogs are great, and I find myself jumping on one more often than my Trike now. You don’t usually go into a dinosaur game thinking you’re going to ride a frog… but in this case, it works.
I knew I needed to tame one for Syn, so I tamed a nice orange fellow I named Mr. Toad and took them both home.
At this level, I was finally able to make a saddle for my Sarco, whom I named Snappy. She tends to hang out on the shore and take care of any invaders that try to sneak in around the edge of the fence.
I also tamed my first Stegosaurus, whom I named Prongs. Just because I could.
I’m not sure what prompted me to go back to the swamp after that. I think I was just exploring with the new-found freedom my frog mount gave me. But I did go back to that little swamp shack, where I ended up needing to spend the night.
The only problem was that a bunch of giraffe-asaurs (as I call them) had spawned around the camp and were getting stuck up on the roof of our shack.
As the night wore on, it didn’t get any better. They remained stuck on the shack in the most comical way.
Oh-Ho! I thought. This would make a fantastic one-shotter blog post!
So I checked on Hippity, and alt-tabbed out to write a blog post about this funny situation.
Little did I know that would be the last time I saw Hippity… alive. It’s also the last time I will live-blog something from ARK when I’m not in a perfectly safe, enclosed area.
I wasn’t gone but a few minutes. I swear! When I tabbed back in, I knew something awful had happened. The giraffe-asaurs were no longer stuck on the shack and half of the walls were torn down. Hippity was nowhere to be seen.
Though it was still night, I searched frantically all around the shack. When I couldn’t find Hippity’s green name plate nearby, I began to fear the worst. I spread my search out towards the swamps. Eventually, I found her mangled dead body among the reeds.
I don’t know what Hippity had been chasing that took her that far from the shack. Chances are, she may have been attacking something to defend me, and that makes me sad. I was able to salvage the saddle and some of the stuff she was carrying, but that was it.
RIP Hippity 🙁
Eventually, I did go and tame a new frog, whom I named Mr. Frog. We now have a Mr. Frog and Mr. Toad. He’s not quite as eye-catching as the red Hippity was, but that was my fail as a bad blogger… and I have to live with her blood on my hands. 🙁
