tag:cheerfulghost.com,2005:/games/39569Cheerful Ghost: ATLAS2024-03-29T15:45:32+00:002020-02-05T05:00:55Ztag:cheerfulghost.com,2005:Post/41782019-08-17T21:39:01Z2020-02-05T05:00:55Z/Azurephile/posts/4178/single-player-modeAtlas Single Player Mode<div class='youtube-player' data-id='miwYMiEUYiA'></div> <br/>I was an early adopter of Atlas. I can attest to it’s less than perfect launch. In fact, I had a terrible time with it. I joined an official server, but couldn’t hardly get any frames per second. It turned out that there were very many players in the world, but most of them were sleeping (they were offline). This caused serious issues which was later resolved.<br><br>I didn’t play the game for too long. I enjoyed the beginning of it, starting out, collecting resources to make my first set of cloth armor and tools. Then I had to collect resources so I could build a raft and set out to sea, I had to make sure I had enough resources, including food, for my travel. What makes this game kind of complicated, regarding food, is the need to monitor your vitamin values and try to keep those up. There are <strong>four types of food,</strong> each corresponding to a vitamin. Vitamins are A, B, C, and D which are (in no particular order) fruits, vegetables, fish, and meat. This meant you needed a stack of each kind to keep your vitamin levels in check and keep in mind that food spoils. You also had to be prepared with fresh water, as you can’t drink sea water. Luckily, the Freeport that you spawn in has a pool of freshwater that you can drink out of and use to fill your water skins (which will leak over time).<br><br>I restarted multiple times, but didn’t get very far with progression. I tried to find land, but it was all taken, so I couldn’t build any where. Eventually, I gave up. You can read my original post on the game (<a target="_blank" rel="noopener" href="https://cheerfulghost.com/GregoPeck/posts/3971/the-most-ambitious-and-most-improved-early-access-game-of-the-end-of-the-year">https://cheerfulghost.com/GregoPeck/posts/3971/the-most-ambitious-and-most-improved-early-access-game-of-the-end-of-the-year</a> ). However, Grapeshot released a <strong>single player mode</strong> for the game and I’ve returned to check it out.<br><br>It’s a lonely world. Luckily, I don’t actually have to claim any land to build, I can build pretty much where ever I want. I’ve restarted a few times, but ultimately, I found a nice island with fresh water, metal, and other good resources. I kind of feel a bit lucky for finding this island. I started building, but ran into a problem. If you place something like a workstation, or just about anything on top of a wood foundation and then decide to upgrade to a stone foundation, you have to destroy whatever you placed on top of the foundation, before you can place the stone foundation. I’ve submitted this as a bug. This doesn’t happen in Ark, which is pretty much what this game is based on with the same engine, same files, and a lot of other similarities other than being a pirate game. This made me look for a mod like Structures Plus for Ark, which allows you to pick up anything any time. I found one similar called <strong>Atlas Architect,</strong> which has some stations which are smaller and it allows you to pick them up any time.<br><br>I would like to tame something, but I haven’t found anything at a high enough level that I want to tame. I think my single player settings will give me a max level of wild creatures that I can tame of 150 and I haven’t seen any yet. Some have been close, but not close enough for me. However, I was able to get started on building ships. I like the raft, but you have to go in the direction the wind blows and it doesn’t contain much space for anything, nor any way to defend yourself from Ships of the Damned (SOTD). Speaking of them, they are intimidating now. They now can be found in fleets, usually about four, but there could be many more in a single area of the map. I wish there were individuals (as it was earlier in the development of the game), which would let me practice fighting them and be less intimidating. Taking on a fleet of them by myself is definitely a challenge.<br><br>I built my first Sloop. It took some time to get used to having to manage sails and a rudder by myself. I really needed some crew. Luckily, <strong>you can recruit crew members</strong> at a Freeport for just 5 gold. Then they’ll want 1 gold every few hours or so. You can also get them by destroying SOTD, they’ll be swimming with the debris of the ship and you can swim up to them, press a button to give them gold, and take them back to your ship. Usually these crew members are at a higher level than the ones you can recruit in a Freeport (which are all level 1). So, I found my way to a Freeport and recruited a few crew. Then I returned to the island where I made my home and built my first Schooner.<br><br>I can’t recall at the moment, if my Sloop had canons on it, but I think the Schooner did. I don’t think I used them though, maybe I did try at least once to destroy a fleet of SOTD. If I did, it didn’t go well and I restarted from a backup. I use the same system of backing up my saved data and restoring it when I want, like I do for Ark (just by copying certain files to different directories). After I built the Schooner, I once again traveled to the nearest Freeport to recruit some more crew. Then I traveled back to the island where I made my home and started to build my Brigantine.<br><br>It was around here, I think, that I found and added another mod. In Ark, I use one that significantly decreases the weight of items and increases stack sizes. I found one for Atlas and was able to collect and carry a lot more resources, which was very important as each new ship requires even more resources. The mod is called <strong>Custom Item Stacks.</strong> I also had trouble keeping my vitamin levels maintained, so I began using a mod called <strong>MultiVitamin,</strong> which lets you craft a multivitamin which will raise your vitamin levels to normal. This takes food of each kind and a medicinal herb, but is well worth it. Having a vitamin deficiency will cause you to lose health and eventually die (which will reset your vitamin level, making death actually kind of helpful w/out this mod).<br><br>After I constructed my Brigantine, I once again headed to my local Freeport to recruit more crew. It was either during this trip or the next that I was unable to recruit any more at one point. Luckily, finding out why wasn’t too difficult with a simple Google search. You can only have a max of 10 level 1 crew members. So, I simply just had to level up the ones that I had, which I didn’t bother with before. They got levels easily enough and didn’t take long to get their first one. I can’t recall now whether or not I tried to fight the SOTD with the Brigantine. Once again, I headed back to the island where I made my home and started to build my Galleon.<br><br>The Galleon is huge! The max amount of gun ports on it is 52! It’s definitely a behemoth, which obviously took a while to build. I had some trouble with previous ships where I built the shipyard in water that was too shallow and therefore couldn’t get them out easily. Each ship, by the way, has it’s own size of ship yard. You have tiny, small (I think), medium, and large ship yards. You need to build each to build each ship. This will let you build the skeleton of the ship.<br><br>The Galleon has six large sails, but doesn’t feel faster than any other sea craft (ships and raft). Maybe this is because I haven’t seen each craft sailing together (which I obviously can’t do in single player mode). However, more sails are supposed to make crafts faster and the Galleon is the fastest (and biggest) ship in the game. After I completed this build, I once again headed to my local Freeport to recruit more crew. I ran into an issue with the dinghy. You can build a dinghy dock on your ship. When you get close to your ship with it, you can select the option on the radial menu to have it return to your ship. This will pull it up and put it back where it belongs. There were a few times where I had crew with me when I did this and they disappeared, or seemed to, I may have later found a couple of them. It took a while to hire the remaining crew members I needed to fill my ship. It has a max crew limit of 59, but you can increase that by leveling up a certain stat (ships get experience and level up, too, maybe I should have mentioned that earlier).<br><br>This time, I did not return home. I set sail with the wind (if I have no destination, I like to travel in the direction the wind is blowing). It wasn’t long until I ran into a fleet of SOTDs and I started shooting at them. The first time, I beat all four of them, but my ship was damaged and was sinking. I ran out of wood to repair it, so I was heading back to the island from which I came so I could gather more wood. On the way, I ran into a ship wreck and decided to go after it. You can see floating debris every now and then indicating that a shipwreck is below the debris. I had installed a diving dock on my ship as I did before on the Brigantine. So I hopped in my diving suit and went down. Unfortunately, it was night and I couldn’t hardly see nor find the entrance to the treasure chest. I later learned that you can make a lantern to attach to your belt. I started dying and realized that I was freezing to death. I died, but was able to respawn on my ship and go back down to collect the items I had on my body, but I couldn’t find my body, so I restored the files to the backup I made just after hiring all my crew and before setting sail the last time. I ran into the SOTDs again, but I destroyed them all and I’m not even sure if any of them hit me. This was impressive, but it also takes quite a bit of time and effort to circle back around and against the wind after you’ve sailed passed them. Once they were destroyed, I was able to collect the debris they left behind and rescue one person, because I had one more slot for a crew member. She was level 27, I think, but she disappeared when I brought her aboard via the dinghy. She’s still counting as part of my crew, so I’m not sure where she is. This is where I have finished so far.<br><br>Since I’m done building ships, I have a little less to do. I can tame creatures and collect treasure from shipwrecks, flotsam, and the SOTDs I destroy. I can (and have tried to) also find buried treasure using one of the many maps I’ve found, but the Damned (soldiers of the damned maybe?) are very over powering. I need to tame a good high level bear to help me take them on. I would like to build a submarine, but it requires me to make three different kinds of alloy (which are basically metal ingots). I have iron and thought I had copper, but don’t and so I need to find more. I know there is an underwater trench you can go to with your submarine. I think one or more of the power stones is there. I think these stones allow you to fight the boss, the Kracken.<br><br>There are mythical creatures, too, like the Cyclops. There’s also a dragon and some more things you can actually tame or purchase (in-game not w/ real money). These tames will only last for a limited time though. However, if you defeat them, you can collect something called mythos, but I’m not entirely sure what that’s for.<br><br>There is also a DLC map. I think it was not made by Grapeshot, but another individual. I know it’s much smaller than the single player map (which is huge). I haven’t tried it out yet, but I think I’m getting nearer to feeling ready to do so.<br><br>A lot of this game was pretty much nearly impossible to do alone before single player mode came out. Although single player mode doesn’t exactly make things easier, you can use mods, which makes things a lot easier. SOTD and soldiers from treasure maps are still numerous and intimidating, although I did find out I can defeat fleets of SOTD with my Galleon. There are videos on YouTube that can show you how to build a good ship to beat them as well.<br><br>I’m glad they released single player mode, although I wish a few things were adjusted to make things easier (or less intimidating) for the single player. The map is huge and in multiplayer mode (the base mode of the game), each section is run by a server. So the map is actually a cluster of servers you can travel to. Surprisingly, it takes as much time to travel to different places on the grid at the same speed in both game modes, although it doesn’t take very long at all. I think this is impressive, that you can travel to a new server and the switch happens very quickly.<br><br>So now that single player mode is out, do you think you might give this game a try? I might actually recommend it now, especially if you like building/crafting, taming, and pirate stuff like building ships, sailing, and sea battles. It’s also a good game for exploring, although it can get boring out there in the open sea. Have you tried to play the game in it’s normal multiplayer mode? What do you think of it? Let me know in the comments, if you want to talk about this.<br><br>I may update this in the future as I play more, or write a new post.2020-02-05T05:00:55ZAzurephiletag:cheerfulghost.com,2005:Post/39712018-12-28T21:22:36Z2020-01-29T23:04:40Z/Azurephile/posts/3971/the-most-ambitious-and-most-improved-early-access-game-of-the-end-of-the-yearAtlas the Most Ambitious and Most Improved Early Access Game of the End of the Year<div class='youtube-player' data-id='miwYMiEUYiA'></div> <br/><strong>Atlas:<ul>
<br><li>The pirate life MMO with RPG elements along with taming, crafting, and surviving similar to Ark: Survival Evolved and Minecraft</li>
<br><li>Horrible delayed start, “mostly negative” reviews on Steam</li>
<br><li>Huge map spanning server clusters</li>
</ul></strong>Atlas is an interesting Early Access MMO pirate game made by some of the devs who created Ark: Survival Evolved. This is readily apparent, you can tell just by playing it how similar to two are. <br><br>Atlas has “mostly negative” reviews already and the game hasn’t been out for a week. Part of that, perhaps most of that, is because of the rough start it got. In the beginning it was extremely difficult to play, due to lag and serious rubber banding. Rubber banding, in case you don’t know, is when you walk in a direction and you get pulled back to where you started. This is an issue seen in online games that people play on a server. This also seems to be relative to the server’s ping. Higher pings mean you’re going to see more lag or rubber banding. Atlas servers usually have a high ping, especially in the starter zones. Luckily, the game got patched and it’s not as bad as it started out to be.<br><br>Many players were already disappointed, because the game release was delayed. This happened more than once, I think. This is nothing new to those of us who are used to Ark updates, hence one of the similarities between Studio Wild Card (the Ark devs) and Graphshot Games (the Atlas devs). Players could not pre-order the game, we had to wait until the devs released it on Steam. Once that finally happened Atlas arrived. It was extremely difficult to purchase. Apparently so many people were trying to buy it that Steam got overwhelmed. I’m pretty sure the holiday sale had something to do with that, too.<br><br>An interesting thing about the game is that it uses <strong>server clusters.</strong> The map is so huge that it covers more than a few servers. When starting out, players can choose one of the four main server sections (NA PVE & PVP or EU PVE & PVP). Once that’s selected, you’ll be shown the map and the many servers in which you can start in (these are called free ports). The servers will show you the server’s ping and how many people are playing on that server at the time. In the beginning, I found the ping to be inaccurate, because I’d get on one with a lower ping (not usually lower than 100) and end up playing with 255 (max ping). Once you make your way out of the starting area, you’ll find the number of players on each server drops as does the ping, which means a more stable game.<br><br>One of the issues with these starting areas is that players who were logged out still showed in the world, except they were sleeping. There were tons of sleeping bodies lying around. The devs quickly realized this was a problem and corrected it. Another interesting thing about the game is that it boasts the ability to handle 40,000+ players.<br><br>Once spawned in to the world players will need to gather wood, thatch, and stone to make their first tool, a pickaxe. <strong>Like Ark and Minecraft,</strong> wood can be harvested from trees by punching them. However, like Ark and unlike Minecraft, punching trees hurts, you can definitely kill yourself by punching a tree too many times. Unfortunately punching trees mostly yields thatch and it takes a bit too long for it to yield wood. Once you get a pick axe, you’ll be able to more easily gather thatch, wood, and then you’ll need to gather flint, which you can harvest from stones. Without any tools, you can gather stone by punching stones, similar to how you obtain your first wood and thatch. This also hurts, but once you get your first tool, it’s no longer necessary to punch anything for resources.<br><br>The point to getting your tools is so that you can get other materials more easily. The axe (or hatchet) will yield more wood and stone. Once you have enough of these materials (including flint), you can start by making spears. This is how you’re going to kill animals, which you’ll need to do for meat and pelt. Pelt and fiber are used to make all of your clothes, except the hat, which only requires fiber. Gathering fiber may also yield berries, which are a starting source of food. However, in Atlas, one cannot survive on meat and berries alone. You have to keep an eye on your vitamin levels. There are four of them one for meat, berries, veggies, and fish. Before you set out off of the beginning island, you’ll want to make sure you have plenty of these and water skins full of fresh water. You cannot drink salt water. Luckily, there’s a fresh water area in town and you can also get water in the wild by going prone and searching lush areas.<br><br>You can go fishing, but if you want to do it in the nice, relaxing way, you’re going to have to craft a chair and gather bait, which is sap from trees. This can be a difficult resource to get, so this may not be the ideal way of fishing. Probably the most efficient way of fishing is to swim in the water, look for a fish, and hit it with a spear a couple of times. Once it’s dead, you’ll automatically start dragging it, which you’ll want to walk to shore so that you can harvest it with your pick axe (best used for getting meat).<br><br>Before setting off, you’ll want to gather more materials, especially for a camp fire, which is used to cook meat, and a bed, which is used to respawn. You’ll also need to gather enough materials in order to craft a raft, which can be done via an NPC on the dock. Once you’re prepared, it’s time to set sail and explore the large world of Atlas. Of course, you’ll run into more players on the starting island, but once you get off of it, you’ll find there are few around. However, you’ll notice as you’re exploring that it’s difficult to claim land as most land (outside of free port and lawless areas) is already claimed. You could sail for hours and still not find any land that isn’t already claimed. You can, however, contest a claim, but this takes time.<br><br>You’ll want to start out small in the beginning by building a small dock. This will allow you to start building your first “ships,” the raft and dinghy. I tried building one of these, but I didn’t have enough weight to carry all the required resources, so I’m not sure how people have already built them. After that you’ll want to build a ship yard. You can build bigger ships, but this will take many hours. Once you have a bigger ship you can buy AI crew members and set sail. You’ll be able to fight other ships (assuming you built cannons on your ship) including ghost ships, which can be seen patrolling the sea every now and then. Such tasks probably also pretty much require joining a company, which is a group of people. Many things in this game are very friendly for the solo player.<br><br>As of now, the game finally runs pretty decent. I’m so glad that most rubber banding is gone and I can now get more than 10 frames per second. I am currently sailing the seas with my 5th raft after my 4th (which I named “May the 4th Be W/ U”) suffered a devastating destruction by trying to get turned around and getting too close to shore. I haven’t talked to very many players. One guy said “ahoy” to me as we crossed paths on rafts out in the sea. He was obviously using a microphone as I am. I ran into a woman who asked me to leave the island she was trying to claim land on. I said, “sure,” but she got a bit nasty that I messed up her claiming process. This encounter left me feeling sour.<br><br>I don’t know what the future holds for this game, hopefully more servers so that more people can enjoy it and pings won’t be as bad. There’s also hope for more servers to provide more land to claim as I mentioned the difficulty in finding land to claim. But, right now the game is cool, interesting, beautiful, and running quite well on my PC. It is currently about $30. After they take it out of Early Access the price will raise again (I think they said to $60) as was the way with Ark. If you like <strong>pirates, sailing, and MMOs,</strong> I give this game a recommendation. It’s not as bad as it started out to be. The devs have been very good at resolving issues and updating the game frequently.<br><br><strong>*Update 6/4/19*</strong><br>My thoughts on this game have kind of changed and I think it's important to update this post. I really did enjoy playing Atlas when it came out. I enjoyed the beginning, which was quite similar to the beginning of Ark where you have to punch trees and gather resources to make tools and clothes. After that, you start to work on building your first raft and making sure you have enough supplies for a trip to sea. Once you're ready, it's time to set sail and hit the open seas, and there's a lot of sea to explore, assuming you're playing on a server (like an official one) with multiple servers in a cluster. Next is pretty much where my enjoyment of the game ends. I played on an official server and searched for unclaimed land to claim as my own and make my home. Unfortunately, there was little to no land to claim, in fact I ended up landing ashore at one point to get cussed out by a female pirate, because I interrupted her claim on some territory and was abruptly asked to leave. I never did find any land to claim. I also quickly learned at this point that this game is most definitely focused on multiplayer. In the beginning it's quite forgiving and welcoming for the single player, but once you set sail on your first raft, the single player parts of the game fail to become relevant or anywhere near easy. It takes a company (the game's name for groups of players) to build boats, and it takes a lot of resources to do, hence the need for multiple players constantly gathering resources for ship production. Once a company has a ship (because a single person could definitely not easily or any where near quickly build one), it's time to set sail once again. However, there are undead pirate ships out there to battle along with big monsters on various islands to fight (in a group). You can also go treasure hunting, but that also requires a group effort as it triggers the spawning of undead pirates, too many to deal with alone. You can also find a variety of animals to tame. You can find AI pirates to hire to help with ship operations, but to get these, you have to defeat undead pirate ships and rescue them. While I was originally interested in the game and enjoyed the very beginning, it quickly dawned on me that this was not a game for me. I'm used to solo, single player gaming. So sadly, my enthusiasm for this game has died. However, if you're interested in a <strong>multiplayer pirate, ship building/crafting, exploring kind of game,</strong> this might be the one for you.<br><br><strong>*Update 8/7/19*</strong><br>There's a new single player mode, which has got me playing again. It's interesting and, I think, in ways better than the multiplayer mode. There's also a free DLC.<br><br><strong>*Update 1/29/20*</strong><br>Yet again, I’m feeling disappointed with the game. Even though there is a single player mode now, much of it is still too difficult to do alone. The best way I found to build, especially ships, quickly and efficiently is to use a mod that modifies the weights and stack sizes of resources. I find such a mod essential to the single player game. Even with such a mod, much of the game is still very difficult to do alone. Out in the open season, undead ships spawn in groups and you’re the only one available to defeat them. You can hire an NPC crew, but you also have to manage them, keep them paid and fed or they’ll mutiny. Areas where there are much stronger creatures are pretty much impossible for the single player.<br><br>The other major issue I had when I last played in October was dealing with the game crashing. At the time, it wasn’t completely stable. Even though this is still an Early Access game, game crashes are a major disappointment, especially after getting used to games (like Monster Hunter: World) that never crash.<br><br>I’m still keeping my eye on the game’s development and I really hope much of my own complaints get resolved. I’ve clocked 171 hours again, so paying nearly $30 wasn’t really a big waste of money. I don’t think this is a bad game. It has ambition, but still has room to improve.2020-01-29T23:04:40ZAzurephile