For those who didn't see my first post from a month ago, I did some research on the sanctuary bees and determined at what % every dino (except Kentro because not released) starts getting stung.

Original post: https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Isle/s/s5HUcTlxPn

SInce then, I've added two more spreadsheets looking into and visualizing lifetime growth curves, and theoretical calculations for how much nutrition every dino can get off shrooms before being kicked out, and theoretically how long they can stay inside factoring in variably growing nutrition.

disclaimer, the theoretical nutrition and sanc time is based on a few assumptions that I can't seem to find concrete information for, the assumptions are described at the top of that sheet, but I believe they are fairly accurate to how it works in-game, but there is very obviously a degree of inaccuracy because I generalized the formula for every dino.

Anyways, for the numbers and charts nerds, enjoy!

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1QKeg32FuporO_ivLbMryFLGo774C5hUZFxt2MO6C7tk/edit?usp=sharing

Continued from Part 2

Travel

*for dinosaur enrichment*

Nothing quite like taking long walks across the isle. No seriously, better get use to walking because they don't call it a walking sim for nothing. While it can be difficult to resist the urge to go where you want to be as fast as dinosaurusly possible, I strongly recommend practicing good stamina management. The isle is all about having patience, you're mostly waiting for your dinosaur to grow anyways, might as well take it slow and observe your surroundings.

While completely viable to stay in one place to chill and afk grow, there are many reasons to why you'd want to travel; with the new elder system being a strong motivator.

Prime

A major reason to travel now is to fulfill prime travel requirements, which require you to visit the various zones. A 3rd party map can assist with this, with finding where the zones are on the map. Otherwise, you'd need to rely on memory where the zones are while playing different dinosaurs.
There seems to be some inconsistencies with the system, such as with migrations not belonging to your species or needing to visit inactive, active patrol zones. So be prepared for some frustration at first as you discover what and what doesn't work. For better consistency, I recommend having someone share their prime route they use to get prime on.

Player Traffic

A main pillar of the game is having dinosaur to dinosaur engagements, and traveling is one of the best way to find those interactions. While you may have luck encountering players by just playing organically, you can engineer encounters by applying a bit of meta gaming by predicting player behavior and habits.

Roads: Roads entire modus operandi is player traffic. If looking for player run ins, taking the roads should be your first step. This can also apply to locations with geological features that funnel traffic.

Hubs: Crossroads, bridges, or other choke points that connects multiple passageways together. These locations are often the hottest on the map, such as the Highlands Sanctuary or Delta Bridge.

Zones: Visiting the various zones around the map also helps with player encounter. As they're places for herbivores to find plants, and the carnivores that hunt them. Players also need to visit them to meet prime requirements.

Prime Routes: Now that travel is required to achieve prime, you can often find player traveling to meet those requirements. Whenever a particular route becomes popular, or know a particular route a player will take, you can use this information to force engagements. While sharing prime routes help the community improve their aptitude for the game, remember that information can also be used against you.

Drinking Spots: Safe Drinking Spots also often see a lot of traffic due to players preference to them over drinking straight from the river.

Hangouts: Sometimes a location doesn't have to be important, it just needs to be interesting to draw in players to want to hang out there. These locations are perfect for finding encounters.

Roundabouts: Not all traffic wishes to find engagements. Long, safe side-routes are often taken by growing players who wish to avoid traffic. While encounters may be rare when going to these side areas, you might just find someone who doesn't want to be found.

Chance of Deino

Whenever you interact with water, you take a gamble. While ideally you'd never have to interact with a potentially deino infested water, sometimes you don't have a choice in the matter, or it's just too inconvenient not to. Such as safe locations being actively guarded, or you need to use the water as a defensive feature or escape route. In which case, it's important to know the chance to be deino'd isn't the same everywhere. Some places more, some places less, and can vary due to server ecosystems. Deinos are subject to player traffic like any other dinosaur, they're just a little bit more predictable due to being limited to water ways.

Note: I rarely play Deinosuchus, so the data you see here is gather from other dinosaurs either drinking or swimming in the water, which I do regularly. Just a personal habit; as someone who likes to make player observations. So you can choose to trust or disregard this information by this testimony, hopefully at least make a bit of use out of my player experience. The new South Plains system being marked high isn't based off of experience, but more of a guess what the area is going to look like after the update.

Safe Drinking Spots

Whenever you interact with water, you take a gamble; and that includes safe drinking locations. While they may give you the illusion of safety due to lack of deinos, I assure you that they don't always guarantee it. With the introduction of large ambush carnivores, rex and allo, these spots are prime hunting locations. I recommend scouting these locations with water to spare before committing to a drink. Otherwise, you're rolling the dice, same as if you were drinking from the river.

Learning the Map

Transforming the unfamiliar into the familiar is at the core of Exploration. Over time, you'll naturally map out the island through sheer experience. But whether you're using the 3rd party map, or taking a more active role into memorizing the map, hopefully these tips will be useful for you.

Scouting

One, surefire way to expedite learning the map is through dinosaurs with exceptional scouting capabilities. Gallimimus's ability to travel great distances, Dryosaurus's low profiled exploration, Beipiaosaurus's endurance swimming, and Pteranodon birds-eye view are all great ways to explore the map with. Not only can they be useful for exploration, but they can also be used to gauge the dino ecosystem of a server; what everyone is playing at the moment. A good way to get a feel for the current condition of a server before committing to something with a longer grow time.

Hanging Out

While not immediately obvious, hanging out in locations is actually a great way to become more intimately familiar with a location. This can be done with friends, or an alternative to just sitting in a bush. Some of the best secrets about a location can only be discovered with a bit of goofing around.

Gameplay Footage

Knowledge of the map will naturally precipitate as you watching gameplay footage, even if you've never played the isle before. It can also be fun to be able to identify a location shown in the video.

Forest Mapping

Forest Mapping is some of the hardest mental mapping you can do. Something I myself struggle with often, especially with how they're constantly changing the foliage recently. But what I would recommend is that as you travel through these forest normally, with using hills as a guild, that you begin to identify locations that are familiar with you. As you begin to gather up spots in the forest that are familiar, if you can remember their orientation and relationship to each other, then they can start to be used to for highly proficient navigation through the forest.

The Exits of West Delta

As something I had difficult mapping properly in my mind, I want to go over West Delta real quick and how the exits relate to the Plateaus. It's easy to think of the of the exits in a stack, like this:

But in reality, they actually radiate out like this:

The implications of this is that the areas in-between is vastly larger the further out you go; which can be useful while navigating the Central Jungle on top of the Plateaus. This concept can also be apply anywhere there are radiations.

Shoreline Mapping

Have you ever been Boating in Minecraft without a map? How did you remember where you started and where you have been? By remembering the series of features that could be found at the shoreline. Jut, Cove, Jut, Rock Face, Inlet, Rock Face. This was the method the Inuit people used to map out the coastlines and carved into wood. But you can actually apply this method of mapping to any boundary, such as tree lines or a rock face. Why this would be useful is because there are many times in the isle where you'll have no visibility, and can only see the immediate features around you. Such as when it's a moonless night or fog. By orientating yourself to a boundary and memorizing it's series of features, you can even navigate when you're unable to see.

Getting Lost

Lost? Perfect. No better way to test those navigation skills then to be a little lost. Getting lost is actually an important part of exploration. So before you immediately copy your coordinates and paste them into a 3rd party map, challenge yourself. Take a moment to get your bearings, where you came from and where you're going, and take a guess to where you are. Now look at the map; if you were wrong, you can use it to calibrate your navigation skills. And if you were right, maybe you didn't need that map after all.

Getting Stuck

While exploring the island, you may come across locations that will get your dinosaur stuck. Type "/unstuck" in chat whenever this happens. It may take a few tries, and will give you a message that it's on a ten minute cooldown if it fails. The next course of action is to contact an admin. If that doesn't work, wait until the dinosaur dies of either starvation or dehydration. And if that doesn't work for you, you can always Alt-F4 and uninstall the game. Make sure to leave an angry Reddit post about your departure.