Greetings Survivors!

June 2020 will mark the 5th anniversary of ARK: Survival Evolved, and what an amazing five years it’s been! We have some special treats planned to commemorate the occasion with our fantastic community!

We’ll be celebrating this momentous milestone with multi-week long revelries which will include a special birthday in-game event, the arrival of a new dinosaur, and the initial rollout of the one-of-a-kind experience of the expansive Official “ISO: Crystal Isles” map!



Here’s a little teaser of our new real-world dinosaur primed to make its dizzying mark upon the skies on June the 4th across all platforms! Can you guess what it is?



Crystal Isles is a stunning, other-worldly map filled with a vibrant display of teeming life scattered amidst its varied landscapes, awe-inspiring floating islands, and breathtaking biomes.

Ever since Crystal Isles launched as a mod in 2016, its fantasy appeal has secured its place as one of the most popular maps within the ARK community and we’re thrilled to bring it to players as a fully supported free DLC.


Crystal Isles will initially launch for PC on June the 4th, with an Xbox and PS4 launch coming later this summer as the team continues to hunker down and iterate on the console version.

We hear you on the Crystal Wyverns and they’ll certainly be making their tameable appearance on the Isles! ;)

And finally, we’ll be donning our party hats and celebrating with a time-honored in-game event commencing on all platforms on June 4, featuring Party Dodos, interactive cakes, new chibis & surprises, and dazzling unicorns frolicking on rainbows. Yes, really!


It’s been an incredible journey over the last 5 years filled with so many unforgettable memories and we can’t wait to celebrate with you once more!

There were so many amazing entries we found it hard to choose just one winner from each category. We’ve decided to award more prizes!

GrandPrize: 100$, plus a copy of the Genesis Season Pass and a special ARK Goodie bag!

ButWhyTho


Congratulations, what an epic creation!

Winners: 100$ prize each!

DodoPandora

Progress Pictures

AlannahJay101


Mitharen


Congratulations to these winners! And finally...

Runners Up: 50$ prize each

Amitaya1982


Magmamage


Thank you all for the creative entries!


Want to introduce your friends to the world of ARK? Right now, the ARK: Survival Evolved Explorer's Edition Bundle is available for 75% off on Steam! The Explorer's Edition gives you access to the base game as well as the Scorched Earth, Aberration, and Extinction Expansion Packs.

Go grab your copy now!



As mentioned in a previous post we've enabled 2x XP, taming, breeding, and harvest. We'll continue to run these rates for the time being as a gesture towards our community as we all deal with the isolation and stress during these tough times.


We’re proud of what we’ve accomplished over the past five years and couldn’t have done it without your love and support. Thank you! Stay safe and take care!

Studio Wildcard

Twitter: twitter.com/survivetheark
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Greetings Survivors!

In this edition of the Community Crunch, we’ll cover the details of opening Genesis Transfers on our Official Networks, the Dupe Protection System, Meshing detection, Third-party software, hardware upgrades for our servers, player dedicated servers for console, Mac, Linux, and we’ll touch on what we’ve been working on recently along with an overview of our focuses over the coming weeks.

Before we dive into that, we’ll take a brief pause to acknowledge these unprecedented times for all of us - our team, our players, our families, and yours - things are tough right now and we could all use some support and camaraderie. Now, more than ever, activities like gaming allow us to stay connected and engaged with our community, particularly for those of us practicing social distancing, often in isolation. As a small gesture of appreciation for our extended ARK family, we will be continuing to run 2x rates for the foreseeable future. As we continue navigating our way through these extraordinary and challenging times together, our heartfelt thoughts are with all of you. Stay safe Survivors!



We’ll be opening full transfer of items and dinos into Genesis on May 15th, 2020 with two notes. The first note is that Extinction Titans will be restricted from transferring and the second is that Managarmr will be marked as unrideable. In the case of the latter, this decision was made in relation to their close-to-flyer status and their ability to dash through certain missions. We have opted to allow Gigas as they serve as a counter to tanking dinos, and Rockdrakes, as they bring some utility whilst being less mobile than Manas.

These were the latest servers added in tandem with our free weekend. Similarly to Genesis One servers, on May the 15th, they’ll also have their transfers enabled:

• EU-PVE-Official-TheIsland705
  
• EU-PVE-Official-TheCenter706
  
• EU-PVP-Official-TheIsland707
  
• EU-PVP-Official-TheCenter708
  
• EU-PVE-Official-Ragnarok709
  
• EU-PVP-Official-Ragnarok710
  
• EU-PVP-Official-Valguero711
  
• EU-PVP-Official-TheIsland712
  
• EU-PVE-Official-Valguero713
  
• EU-PVP-Official-TheCenter714
  
• EU-PVP-Official-Ragnarok715
  
• EU-PVP-Official-Valguero716
  
• NA-PVE-Official-TheIsland717
  
• NA-PVE-Official-TheCenter718
  
• NA-PVP-Official-TheIsland719
  
• NA-PVP-Official-TheCenter720
  
• NA-PVE-Official-Ragnarok721
  
• NA-PVP-Official-Ragnarok722
  
• NA-PVP-Official-Valguero723
  
• NA-PVP-Official-TheIsland724
  
• NA-PVE-Official-Valguero725
  
• NA-PVP-Official-TheCenter726
  
• NA-PVP-Official-Ragnarok727
  
• NA-PVP-Official-Valguero728

We’ve also been recently working on upgrading the last of our servers to new hardware. A lot has already taken place across all platforms, these were our most recent that took place over the last week:

• EU-PVE-Official-Aberration222
  
• NA-PVE-Official-TheIsland339
  
• NA-PVE-Official-Extinction502
  
• EU-PVE-Official-Valguero526
  
• EU-PVE-Official-TheIsland198
  
• EU-PVE-Official-TheIsland43
  
• EU-PVP-Official-Ragnarok189
  
• EU-PVE-Official-Ragnarok397
  
• LEGACY-The-EU-PVE-OfficialServer262 (on Nitrado)
  
• EU-PVP-Official-TheIsland333
  
• EU-PVE-Official-TheIsland343
  
• EU-PVE-Official-TheCenter349
  
• LEGACY-The-EU-PVE-OfficialServer272 (on Nitrado)
  
• EU-PVE-Official-TheIsland346
  
• EU-PVE-Official-TheIsland347
  
• EU-PVE-Official-TheIsland344
  
• EU-PVE-Official-TheIsland395
  
• EU-PVE-Official-TheCenter396
  
• LEGACY-The-EU-PVE-OfficialServer263 (on Nitrado)
  
• EU-PVE-Official-Valguero523
  
• EU-PVE-Official-Valguero525
  
• LEGACY-The-EU-PVE-OfficialServer265 (on Nitrado)
  
• LEGACY-EU-PVE-TheCenter633
  
• EU-PVE-Official-Ragnarok389
  
• LEGACY-The-EU-PVE-Isolated-Ragnarok60
  
• EU-PVE-Official-TheIsland78
  
• EU-PVE-Official-GenOne661
  
• EU-PVE-Official-GenOne662
  
• EU-PVE-Official-GenOne663
  
• LEGACY-The-EU-PVE-Ragnarok59
  
• EU-PVE-Official-TheIsland705
  
• EU-PVE-Official-TheCenter706
  
• EU-PVP-Official-TheIsland707
  
• EU-PVP-Official-TheCenter708
  
• EU-PVE-Official-Valguero518
  
• EU-PVE-Official-Valguero519
  
• OC-PVE-Official-Ragnarok208
  
• NA-PVE-Official-Ragnarok383
  
• EU-PVE-Official-Valguero516

Late last week we were able to push out fixes for both the Mac and Linux versions of the game, which should allow those clients to play on the latest servers, with all the latest content. We appreciate your patience and will be working on improving our pipeline to get these out to you in a quicker and more stable state.

Over the past couple of months, we’ve shifted our primary focus for our regular patches between balance/quality of life and bugs/exploits. The past few weeks have been primarily dedicated to bugs and exploits in this regard. We’ve also been working on various crash fixes. We plan to pivot back to further balance and QoL improvements soon, including a pass on breeding to improve player’s experience and further tweaks to mission rewards and crates on Genesis.

The last time we spoke about our efforts to combat cheaters, we unveiled our work on our Anti-Meshing systems which focused on detection and prevention. After rolling out the system entirely, we saw a 90% reduction in overall meshing cases across the board. Since then, we've continued the fight against the various ways that underhanded survivors try to cheat on the ARK, and we'd like to give you an update on that fight.

Our Anti-meshing Detection System is proving effective and we’re continuing to see a vast decline in incidents. Like all exploits/cheats, this is an ongoing battle and here's our latest progress:



As you can see the battle against meshers is not over, but cases remain low and will continue to decrease over time. Some of the additional changes we've been working on have included:

• Improvements to the Anti Meshing detection system. This has involved being able to detect meshing in new areas of the map, as well as eliminating false positives and refining the system where edge cases could slip through.
  
• Level Design changes across all maps which focused on filling in holes and ensuring that collision has been set correctly to prevent players from entering unintended playable areas of the map
  
• Tackling mesh-methods head on to prevent players from being able to get into the mesh in the first place
  
• Initial rollout of the Anti Mesh Biting solution on all platforms, to prevent creatures from attacking through the mesh. Still early days so far, but a lot of the primary methods of mesh biting have been eliminated and we’ll be continuing to monitor for new methods and reports to squash them too!

We really appreciate and want to thank the ARK community for the reports and support, as the information provided helped us to improve the system overall. Keep it coming guys! <3

Similarly to meshing, this has been another hot topic that has plagued the game. In one of our most recent updates, we were able to release a system to identify duped items (in some cases retroactively), as well as prevent many instances of duping from occurring in the first place. It's still early days, but so far the results have been outstanding, as we're sure some of you have seen. The system is still being monitored by our team and we'll continue to iterate on improvements where possible whilst having our enforcement team dish out harsher punishments.

Fixing bugs and exploits has been the main focus of our most recent patches. We’d intended to push out some patches focusing on balance but they were put on hold whilst we address what we consider to be more pressing issues.

Examples exploits we’ve fixed recently include:

• Fixed an exploit with the Rock Drake
  
• Fixed an exploit that allowed mission creatures to be used in unintended ways
  
• Fixed an exploit which allowed certain creatures to attack structures through walls
  
• Additional server-side protection against exploits
  
• Fixed an exploit with turrets and ziplines
  
• Fixed an exploit with meshing and the cruise missile
  
• Fixed an exploit that allowed you to get under the map.
  
• Fixed a mounting exploit with Magamasaur

And there’s definitely more if you go through the rest of the patch notes, as well as a whole host of bug fixes!

We know that the patch notes regarding exploits aren’t super detailed. We typically just reference the object surrounding the exploit and that is because we prefer to hold these cards close to our chest, especially to prevent these methods from being exploited on unpatched Unofficial servers.

We recognize that some of the auto-responses on tickets could be worded in a more precise manner so as to mitigate confusion and we’ll be working with our GM’s to update them. Something we’d like to clarify is that an auto-response with the ticket being closed does not denote that the case isn’t being investigated. It means one of the following:

• enforcement action has taken place
  
• an investigation is ongoing
  
• no further information from the reporter is required.

Our enforcement team (GM’s) does not disclose the outcome of player reports for player privacy reasons but rest assured that if a reported player or tribe is found in violation of the Code of Conduct, the enforcement team will be taking the necessary action against them.

For those wanting to report a player for breaking the code of conduct on an Official Server, it can be done so here.

Over the past few months, we’ve seen a spike in our CCUs across the platforms, which usually leads to a spike in cheaters too. In particular, on PC and Crossplay servers, we’ve witnessed a rise in aimbot reports and the team has been working hard with our partners to combat the use of third party software.

For some additional insight into the cycle of fighting against aimbots, this is usually what happens: We notice an increase in the number of aimbot reports, we work with our anti-cheat partners to identify and detect the new software and once that has been done, we’ll issue a ban wave and punish cheaters accordingly. Following this, we’ll see a slight dip in the frequency of aimbot reports on our Official Networks, until either new software is released or older software has been updated, and then we repeat the process again of identification, detection, and punishment. This cycle can be as long as a few weeks, or as short as a few days. It’s a constant cat and mouse and our team is working diligently with BattlEye in order to detect new third party software and keep our officials as safe from cheaters as possible. In addition to that, we have also ramped up our enforcement measures, including, not only player bans but full wipes of tribes associated.

In regards to Crossplay specifically, we’ve recently implemented and improved our systems & heuristics to identify those using malicious third party software and it is proving effective. Over the past week, our enforcement team has wiped multiple tribes and banned a large number of players on our Crossplay servers with more to come very soon. We’ll continue to enforce hard against these cheaters.



As a reminder, the Eggcellent Painting contest is ongoing. There will be two competitions with a prize for the winner of $100!

In-Game Painting
Real-life Egg Painting

The entries will be judged by our community team. Submissions are limited to three eggs per survivor, so choose your best egg. You'll have the month of April to enter, with April 30th being the final day to enter. Submit your images in the comments below, and we look forward to seeing your creativity!

Click here for more details and enter your painting for a chance to win



Along with continuing to squash bugs, improve performance, and address any exploits that may arise, we will be working on planned balance and QoL for the Live Game. Some of the team are busy working on the upcoming Crystal Isles map and a unique new creature. We’re excited to release Crystal Isles on our Official Networks in the not too distant future!


Want to introduce your friends to the world of ARK? Right now, the ARK: Survival Evolved Explorer's Edition Bundle is available for 75% off on Steam! The Explorer's Edition gives you access to the base game as well as the Scorched Earth, Aberration, and Extinction Expansion Packs.

Go grab your copy now!



As mentioned above, we've enabled 2x XP, taming, breeding, and harvest. We'll continue to run these rates for the time being as a gesture towards our community as we all deal with the isolation and stress during these tough times.

That’s about it for this Community Crunch. Stay safe and take care!

Studio Wildcard

Twitter: twitter.com/survivetheark
Facebook: facebook.com/survivetheark
Reddit: reddit.com/r/playark
Instagram: instagram.com/survivetheark
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Steam: steamcommunity.com/app/346110
Youtube: youtube.com/survivetheark

Much has happened since our last edition of the Patch Notes Round-Up. Since then, we've launched Genesis: Part 1 and introduced several improvements and bug fixes that have been circulating in the community. With close to 300 improvements, changes, and tweaks since the release of Genesis, we figure it might be a good time to summarize them and get you caught up to speed!

GeneralMagmasaurSnow OwlMEK'sFeroxBloodstalkerPelagornisRhinoCluster GrenadesFabricatorTEK SuitsHLNAMissionsCreatures (Misc)Damage/HealthBiomesBugs


Don't forget Eggcellent Adventure starts tomorrow and runs until April 21st. Don't miss out on you opportunity to experience this annual event on PC, Xbox, and PS4!

Click Here For Event Details



If you've been waiting to become a Survivor on PC, now is the time! ARK: Survival Evolved base game, Season Pass, Scorched Earth, Aberration, Extinction and the Explorer's Edition are now on sale on Steam!

Grab yours at the sale price until the 24th of April!



There will be no EVO event while Eggcellent Adventure is active.

Until next time!

Twitter: twitter.com/survivetheark
Facebook: facebook.com/survivetheark
Reddit: reddit.com/r/playark
Instagram: instagram.com/survivetheark
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Youtube: youtube.com/survivetheark

Beginning Tuesday, April 7th until April 21st, survivors will be able to experience our annual Eggcellent Adventure event on PC, Xbox, and PS4! While much of the world is at home, we wanted to give you some new adventures to hunt down. During Eggcellent Adventure 5, survivors will be able to collect special "Bunny Eggs" across the ARK from wild Bunny Dodo's. These Bunny Eggs can be painted or used in special Cooking Pot recipes to craft new holiday-themed item skins such as the Spear and C4 skin, as well as 10 returning skins.

Similar to past Eggcellent Adventure events, Bunny Oviraptor's will drop festive Dino Candy. Collect the candy and feed it to your tames for a special festive effect! To top it all off, wild creatures roaming the ARKs will also find themselves sporting some eggcellent colors!

For those that are looking to expand their chibi collection, you're in luck! You'll be able to collect the past chibi's we've introduced with the addition of 6 new chibi pets by placing and cracking event-themed eggs from wild bunny dodos.

Event Details

Rate Boosts
New Chibi'sNew EmotesSkinsItemsEvent-colored Wild Creatures


Want to show off your creative side? Similar to last year, we are bringing back the community egg-painting competition. After you've found a Dodo egg, place the egg down on the ground and take out your paintbrush and dyes. You'll be able to paint select regions on the egg as well as free-hand paint it with the brush to paint any design on it. Have fun and get creative!

There will be three competitions with a prize for the winner of $100!

• In-Game Painting
  
• Real-life Egg Painting

For the in-game egg painting, players are expected to paint their own designs and downloading templates or images to use is not allowed. For the real-life egg painting, we're looking for you and your tribemates to get together and paint some eggs in real life that somehow reflect the world of ARK! Screenshot or photo quality won't be taken into consideration but try to get a picture that best shows off your egg.

The entries will be judged by our community team. Submissions are limited to three eggs per survivor, so choose your best egg. You'll have the month of April to enter, with April 30th being the final day to enter. Submit your images in the comments below, and we look forward to seeing your creativity!

Click here for examples of entries from last year




Want to introduce your friends to the world of ARK? Right now, the ARK: Survival Evolved Explorer's Edition Bundle is available for 75% off on Steam! The Explorer's Edition gives you access to the base game as well as the Scorched Earth, Aberration, and Extinction Expansion Packs.

Go grab your copy now!




Survivors on all platforms will be receiving a special Evolution Event perk this weekend! It will be active from Friday the 3rd of Apr at 1 PM EST until Monday the 6th of Apr at 3 PM EST. All Official Servers across each platform will be undergoing this evolutionary change which includes:

3.5x Harvesting Rates
3.5x Breeding
3.5x Taming Rates
3.5x EXP Rates

Until next time!

Twitter: twitter.com/survivetheark
Facebook: facebook.com/survivetheark
Reddit: reddit.com/r/playark
Instagram: instagram.com/survivetheark
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Steam: steamcommunity.com/app/346110
Youtube: youtube.com/survivetheark

Welcome to another edition of the Community Crunch!

We've got a short one this week. We're all busy working on new and exciting content for upcoming months. We are remaining focused on the health of the Official Network and collecting bug reports and feedback from various social media platforms.

You should expect to see a continued focus on existing bugs and polish as we round into the summer months!



Enforcement Updates
Mission Areas
Last week we encountered a bug that rendered some caves build-able. If you have structures within a mission zone (cave) on the Genesis map, you should remove them. The Enforcement Team will take the appropriate actions to remove them otherwise.

Teleport Zones
Teleport zones are treated as spawn zones and should not be blocked or have turrets in them on PvP or PvE

Mindwipes
Recently we deployed a patch with a fix to the cooldown timer on mindwipes. We are aware that this didn't resolve all the existing issues that players are currently seeing. We are actively working on a fix for the remaining issues.

Player Dedicated Servers
We hoped to have player dedicated servers up and running but we've hit a roadblock that will delay us from being able to deliver the feature as we had previously hoped. We will keep you updated on the progress we are making!

Voice Chat
We're excited to introduce new chat modes (whisper and yell) for those that found the previous chat functionality lacking. We expect to have this feature deployed to PC in the near future!

EVO Events
We've enhanced our tuning system that's responsible for rates, like harvesting and taming, to be more accommodating for the various game modes and play styles we have available. This will allow us to do specialized rates for those who didn't normally receive them. We're putting the final pieces in place and we'll let you know when the system is live and ready to go. We'll do a detailed post outlining how you should expect EVO events to work in the future.




Survivors on all platforms will be receiving a special Evolution Event perk this weekend! It will be active from Friday the 20th of Mar at 1 PM EST until Monday the 23rd of Mar at 3 PM EST. All Official Servers across each platform will be undergoing this evolutionary change which includes:

2x Harvesting Rates
2x Taming Rates
2x EXP Rates
Until next time!

Twitter: twitter.com/survivetheark
Facebook: facebook.com/survivetheark
Reddit: reddit.com/r/playark
Instagram: instagram.com/survivetheark
Twitch: twitch.tv/survivetheark
Steam: steamcommunity.com/app/346110
Youtube: youtube.com/survivetheark

We'd like to give a big thanks to the community for all the support you've shown during the Genesis launch! We've seen some amazing community content and enjoy hearing your experiences in the simulation.

We have a busy summer coming up! Last week we announced the addition of a new map, Crystal Isles, and a new TLC patch coming this summer. Click here to read about the plans for Summer 2020.

In the meantime, we have a number of tweaks we'll be deploying to Genesis in the form of bug fixes and quality of life enhancements over the coming months. We are planning for a patch Wednesday to address some of the more immediate issues following the Genesis launch.


The Enforcement Team has been monitoring the overall health of the Official Network and have new updates to share with the community. Recently there has been an influx of people reporting that dinos are being left in mission areas, including blocking the hoop in basketball missions. Going forward, we will be removing any dinos if they are reported to be blocking mission areas or mission objectives




Survivors on all platforms will be receiving a special Evolution Event perk this weekend! It will be active from Friday the 13th of Mar at 1 PM EST until Monday the 16th of Mar at 3 PM EST. All Official Servers across each platform will be undergoing this evolutionary change which includes:

2x Harvesting Rates
2x Taming Rates
2x EXP Rates


Until next time!

Twitter: twitter.com/survivetheark
Facebook: facebook.com/survivetheark
Reddit: reddit.com/r/playark
Instagram: instagram.com/survivetheark
Twitch: twitch.tv/survivetheark
Steam: steamcommunity.com/app/346110
Youtube: youtube.com/survivetheark

We are very excited to announce that the one-of-a-kind experience of the ISO: Crystal Isles map will be coming to PC, XBOX, and PlayStation this Summer!

Crystal Isles is a stunning, other-worldly map filled with a vibrant display of teeming life scattered amidst its varied landscapes, awe inspiring floating islands and breathtaking biomes. Ever since Crystal Isles launched as a mod in 2016, its fantasy appeal has secured its place as one of the most popular maps within the ARK community and we can't wait to bring it to players as a fully supported free DLC.



The Crystal Isles DLC will also launch resplendent with a new real-world dinosaur to tame! What do you think the new dinosaur may be?

In other news, we've been itching to share that we'll be performing a TLC Pass 3 in the Summer of 2020! This TLC pass will see some of our classic creatures get some new love via visual and functional upgrades.



As we move closer to the release of the new Crystal Isles DLC and our much-awaited TLC Pass 3 we'll share more details and information with our players.


Dead Survival


Tired of dinosaurs? Of course you aren’t, but sometimes we do want a little change in our diet. Dead Survival does just that, you can swap out the wildlife of the game with some … not… quite life? Zombies… I’m trying to say you can have zombies. Lots and lots of zombies. Hordes of them even.

Check out the Dead Survival Mod

Roleplay Additional Items


RP communities have been a long time aspect of ARK, but sometimes our core structures can feel a bit insubstantial when you are trying to build a set for acting in. Roleplay Additional Items can add a lot more flourish to your locations from lighting structures and gear, to new taxidermy stations!

Check out the Roleplay Additional Items Mod

ArkVenture Park


I’m pretty sure we have all dreamed of having our own backyard water slides and roller coasters. (Zen may have actually tried at one point, and failed… obviously) But now you can do just that in your base. Build that mine-cart roller-coaster that plows through your living room or a water-slide to the lava pools out back!

Check out the ArkVenture Park Mod

Castles, Keeps, and Forts: Remastered


CKF development went dormant for a little while while the author went on a break. But it’s back, and getting a face-lift. The author is taking what they learned over the years and working on a remastered CKF (The original is still available). So far it’s looking great!

Check out the Castles, Keeps, and Forts Mod



Primitive+
Primitive+ remains a priority. We have engineering teams working on the complications from the Genesis update. We will keep you informed with any significant progress

Genesis Part I Update
We're continuing to work on Genesis bugs and balance and we plan to keep up with the rapid iterations. Thank you for your reports and feedback.



There will be no EVO event this upcoming weekend.

Until next time!

Twitter: twitter.com/survivetheark
Facebook: facebook.com/survivetheark
Reddit: reddit.com/r/playark
Instagram: instagram.com/survivetheark
Twitch: twitch.tv/survivetheark
Steam: steamcommunity.com/app/346110
Youtube: youtube.com/survivetheark