ARK: Survival Evolved

You're welcome! There are many official free maps to go along with it. Almost all of them include at least one exclusive or exclusive-at-the-time creature. For instance, one of my favorites is Ark's beautiful version of Deinonychus on Valguero. You can see it here: https://ark.fandom.com/wiki/Deinonychus
Usually the free maps were released months after a paid DLC and often include things from that DLC.

I strongly recommend looking at mods, at least eventually. Most of my 3,500+ hours would have been extremely boring w/out mods.

Wow, really?! BTW, you have to dl the new map separately, by finding it in the DLC part of the store page. It's about 30GB. I'm not sure I've ever paid attention to how much Ark requires or uses. I've always had it installed. I also keep my saved data backed up on a HDD. When I saw that Borderlands 3 required 100GB, I wasn't too happy about that. I have it installed, but still unplayed.

As for the new map, I'm actually really impressed that I was able to find a high level Pteranodon, Ankylosaurs, and Doedicurus near where I spawned. I was attacked by raptors, but they started running away after I punched them enough. I haven't died yet. Metal was easy to find and it's where I found my three new tames (145 or 150, perfection).

Now I've got my base built and sealed. I may have to add more walls, because I'm next to a slope and carnivores keep coming down it. I've already killed more than a few Alpha Raptors in the area. I did see the new bat, it was outside fighting w/ an Argy and a Snow Owl.

My own Ark directory under Steam is almost 450GB, but I have a character on every map (AFAIK), except The Center (it doesn't add anything new). My backup data (saved data including configs) is almost 2.3GB.

Thanks for letting me know someone's still interested in what I have to share and say about it. Recently I was thinking about writing a post "why am I still playing Ark" post. Steam says I've clocked just over 3300 hours! The game has disappointed me. I feel like it started off at such a high point that it just couldn't possibly top itself. It did get better in many ways, but I've run into multiple issues which have not yet been resolved, even though some are years old.

Check out the bottom of my post as I just updated it w/ 2 videos by Anthomnia who covers Genesis Pt. 2 details that Studio Wildcard released during the Extra Life event. He watched it all and broke it down into some what small videos for us to see and I greatly appreciate it. This isn't the first time he's done this. I actually find it kind of humorous regarding the things the devs decide to create Tek versions of. I think they should create a Tek Toilet, there is a regular toilet in the game. Tek items are the highest quality/best items and usually require Element to craft and power. Element is given as a boss reward, but there are other ways to obtain it, such as collecting Element Dust from defeating Tek versions of creatures. Yes, they added those in and they look cool! In my experience, most bosses are extremely difficult to do by yourself, even with "single player settings" enabled, so I usually just use the command console and give myself some Element.

I'm not sure how it would work on a laptop, but I suspect it wouldn't be very great, so you'll have to let me know how that goes. I actually did try to play it w/ a controller, but it just didn't feel right to me. I heard or read some where that the Switch version was pretty bad as the console isn't powerful enough for the game. The game is most definitely power hungry and requires quite a beefy system to run it at max quality even at 1080p/60FPS. It usually runs well for me now, but the main map, The Island, often dips to about 40FPS using the "extreme" preset, so I've sometimes changed it to "high." That puts the game at a good near 60FPS just about all of the time. I didn't really notice this during my recent play through and I played on pretty much every official map except Ragnarok and The Center. I didn't spent very much time on The Island, though.

I'm hoping Genesis Pt. 2 won't disappoint me like all the other DLC except for Scorched Earth did. I once eagerly awaited the release of an Ark DLC, but I've now learned to keep my eagerness in check. I'm not impatient about it now. The game and it's updates never get released when they first say they will, there's always a delay, so that's to be expected. After so much of this, I've learned to be patient.

I wonder what's in store for Ark's future or if Genesis Pt. 2 will truly be the end of it. I really hope not. I saw some movie trailers years ago, but I haven't seen, read, or heard anything about an Ark movie for a long time.

Updated post, added link for forum post showing off what was revealed. I thought this might be handy in case someone would rather take a quick look instead of watch a 20 minute video.

Use your pick on a tree, get more thatch and wood, use pick on stone, get stone and flint, make hatchet. :)

LOL Were you able to create a local game to play or did you have to join a server? You can knock out some dinos by punching them, but they either fight back or run away. A slingshot makes that easier. I thought the video showed Ark in "potato mode." LOL

You can punch them and knock them out and tame them, it's just not too easy. You can ride one as soon as you can craft a saddle for one.

Yes, sir! My phone sucks, so I don't think I'll download it. It doesn't look as pretty as it does on PC LOL. I'm impressed that you saw that, I guess that part does deserve its own post. But, hey, if you try it out let me know what you think of it. Tell me if it has Local (single player) mode, I'd recommend playing that one, unless you want to play with random others.