Two items for today.

I’m playing on a new, unofficial ARK server. Search the unofficial listing for “Narco Heads” to find it. Unlike most unofficial servers this one doesn’t have silly 8x or 10x rules, just 2x from the official with everything else the same, so the work/investment is still there, but tames that would take you 4-5 hours are now a somewhat more manageable 2hr or so. Same goes for base building or XP gains; they aren’t silly, but not as big a grind as on the official servers.

The best part is the admin is very active, and goes around cleaning up abandoned bases regularly. This means that not only is the map not cluttered with random garbage, but the server performance is also excellent, far above what I have experienced on the official servers. Server population is pretty decent, with usually half a dozen or more people on, and more seem to be joining daily. Also if you provide the admin (Exodus on Steam. There is also a Steam group I’m part of so you can find info that way) a screenshot of your old character, he will level boost you back up, so you don’t have to start completely from scratch if you don’t want. Join up and ping me on Steam or in-game when I’m on.

Second item: I finished the Blood Bowl 2 campaign, and it was surprisingly enjoyable. The campaign starts as a general tutorial for the game, which is frustratingly slow for anyone who knows the game already, but then shifts into a series of matches with special events and players, all tied together by a decent story about the team and its coach (you).

The campaign shows off how dumb the AI is, where at one point the enemy team sat with the ball one square out of the end-zone for the rest of the game, while being down two scores. But really the games aren’t about a challenge so much as they are about seeing star players or different events, and completing the side goals per game (have a specific player score, injure 3 players, etc). The whole thing shouldn’t take longer than 8-10 hours, and IMO is worth that time investment.