It’s been a good long while since I’ve written about my video game exploits, so have a seat and get ready for a tale of dinosaurs and dodos. As you may or may not have been aware, my friends and I play Ark: Survival Evolved. We decided to move to a new official PVE server a while ago, but I hadn’t been playing much.
Sai managed to tempt me back to the game with the building of a small village. I constructed a general store that caters to new players. Ellie*Mart offers basic food, gear, and materials for the low, low price of free (or whatever you can afford)!
After finishing the building of Ellie*Mart, I had to think of a new project. So, I started building a dodo betting ring and planning a small in-game ‘festival’ dubbed Dodo Fest – which took place this past weekend.
The gambling ring is called the Dodo Ring of Fire. I’ll be perfectly honest, I didn’t actually draw the dodo on the flag, or the turtles on the turtle flags. I picked up the clip art from google images and fenagled them together in photoshop. But, I think for a project in a video game the results were all right. I already spent a long while working out the construction of the ring and didn’t want to spend more time creating flag designs from scratch. (IE, Lazy!)
We only had three entrants into the turtle race, but they were all fantastic.
Some people bred turtles just for the race, and one even painted racing stripes on their turtle for added effect. The track itself was a bit of a cluster fuck, but I’ll be making improvements before the next festival which is schedule for Saturday, July 8th. Sai was the judge for the turtle race, and was streaming the dodo fest live. She was excellent enough to make a clip video of the race as well as a clip of the first round of Dodo Ring of Fire.
A few people also participated in Dining Roulette. The concession stand (which is unfortunately undergoing reconstruction) had normal food – dodo burgers, beer, etc. as well as an option called Dining Roulette. If you choose dining roulette, you pay less than you do for buying normal food items outright, but have a chance of getting a less desirable (re: possibly deadly) food item. We have 20 different food items total, so I just roll a d20 for each Dining Roulette person, and people get whichever food item they land on.
All in all, Dodo Fest was a pretty good time. I’ve got a few more projects to work on before the next one in July, and hopefully these festivals will help the server build an even bigger, better community! For the next Dodo Fest, we’re going to have another turtle race, a fanciful animal contest, and more dodo gambling in the new and improved Dodo Ring of Fire.
If you’re interested in attending one of our evens, you can find us on Official Server 333. Our tribe is SSWB; don’t ask what it stands for, none of us really remember.
PS, we also have a public toilet. Call Skeezer for a good time!
