Sep 11, 2020

Community Crunch 237: TLC 3, Live Game Update, EVO Event and More!

ARK: Survival Evolved - complexminded

In this edition of the Community Crunch, we’ll be teasing you with some juicy TLC 3 info along with giving you an overview of what we’ve been focusing on lately behind the scenes.

The much-awaited TLC is getting closer and we’re excited to get some of our re-imagined favorites into your hands soon!

Download the high-resolution version

We’ll be reconceiving these veteran ARK friends via visual and mechanical upgrades that will introduce new elements of gameplay. Much appreciated community feedback drew our attention towards the Wooly Mammoth (among others) and it’s time for this relic of the Pliocene epoch to make a new debut heralded by the beat of a new buff bound to add more utility to emergent gameplay, and more!

We hope that drums up some enthusiasm ;)

Live Game Update

Whilst we’re ramping up work on the TLC 3 patch and our climactic Genesis Part II expansion, we frequently pivot to Live Ops and seek to achieve fast iterations on fixes for bugs and exploits.

One of our biggest priorities at the moment is the ongoing investigating and work done on server reliability. Over the last few weeks we have seen an uptick in player reports regarding their servers not listing, not being able to join them, high ping, being unable to transfer, “ghosting”, or offline. While the cause of this downtime may vary, sometimes it is the result of a malicious attack. Our engineers are working with our partners on technical implementations to further improve stability and mitigate the attacks. We will be rolling out changes to all platforms in the near future which will have a serious impact on resolving these issues.

Recently we’ve also addressed issues that include fixes to various exploits including: invulnerability related to characters and dinos, pincode bypassing, further checks between server and client in relation to shooting, and abuse of dino mechanics. We’ve also implemented Level Design changes across varied maps with the purpose of filling in holes that may have allowed players to gain entry into unintended playable areas of the map. A fair environment is important to us and to the health of the game, we’ll continue to address these issues as they arise.

We plan on continuing to improve the player experience with updates like our recent Quality Of Life and Balance patch in the near future...speaking of Quality Of Life, how does an EVO Event sound?

EVO Event

Survivors on all platforms will be receiving a special Evolution Event perk this weekend! It will be active from Friday the 11th of Sep at 4 PM EST until Monday the 14th of Sep at 3 PM EST. All Official Servers across each platform will be undergoing this evolutionary change which includes:

2x Breeding/Maturing

Fan Art

Dropping some ARK work by RoboticHat717

The Featherlight Family by bluedragonark

ARK Survival: Alpha Raptor by Valonia-Feline

Supa Pink Dodo by DakotaAnnArt

Desert Watchtowers by ThePilgrim

Speedpaint: Forest Camping by Earthsong9405

Small Mockup by EdiPotter

We hope you’re all keeping safe and well. While working remotely has been somewhat of an adjustment period for us, we’ve now hit our stride and look forward to sharing more of what we’ve been grinding away at very soon!

Over and out, Survivors!
Studio Wildcard

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

Aug 14, 2020

Community Crunch 233: Crystal Isles Console Launch

ARK: Survival Evolved - complexminded

Welcome to another edition of the Community Crunch!

On Tuesday, August 25th, we will be releasing Crystal Isles for XBOX and PS4 console users! Additionally, we will be enabling full server transfers into Crystal Isles and our freshly launched Official PC Servers. From August 25th, PC players will be able to download items and creatures onto the map without restriction. Similar to PC, console users will have a period of time where item and creature downloads will be disabled.

Official Rates Increase

With the major update on Tuesday, August 25th, we'll be doubling the fun by doubling the Official Rates across PC, Xbox and PS4 as standard, along with some changes to our specialty servers. From the next major version, Official Server rates will now have increased default rates for Harvesting, Taming, and XP. What was previously ‘2x rates’ prior to today, will now become the new base rate (1x).

The increased 2x rates will be implemented directly in the game build itself. This means that Non-Dedicated Servers, Single Player Sessions and of course Unofficial Servers will also feel the increased rates. Therefore, if you’re currently using customized rates, it’s something you will want to keep in mind before this change is in place -- specifically upon the release of the next Major Version on each of your respective platforms, you may wish to reduce your server/game rates by 50% to have the same effective values as before.

Official rates will be adjusted accordingly:

Standard Official Servers: 1x harvesting, taming, and XP (which is equivalent to 4x when considering our old values)
Small Tribes Servers: Smalls will have their taming, harvesting, and XP changed to 2.5x (which is equivalent to 5x when considering our old values)
Apocalypse Servers: These will remain at 3x harvesting, taming, and XP (which is equivalent to 6x when considering our old values)

EVO Event

As mentioned in prior Community Crunches, the Official Network rates will be increasing to 2X following the next major version update on Tuesday, August 25th. Following the update, we'll have more information on EVO events. Until then, we'll be using the EVO event system to apply the bonuses.

Community Fan Art

Chilling with my Dilophosauruses by konstancja

Wings Of Valor by blue

Extinction by scoot

Catch you on the flip side!

Studio Wildcard

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

Aug 7, 2020

Community Crunch 232: PC Server Transfers, Beginner Servers, & More!

ARK: Survival Evolved - Jatheish

Greetings Survivors,

Welcome to another edition of the Community Crunch! This week we'll be taking a sneak peek at something small and cute, discuss the opening of transfers on PC Crystal Isles/new servers, and sharing awesome community fan art and content!

Check out last week's Community Crunch for more information on Genesis Part 2 and other events planned for this year!

Crystal Isle and New (*) PC Official Server Transfers

We will be enabling full server transfers into Crystal Isles and our freshly launched Official PC Servers on Tuesday, August 25th. This means from that date, players will be able to download items and creatures onto the map without restriction.

Beginner Server Wipe Schedule

Just a friendly reminder that we're close to the next reset date on Beginner servers, which will take place on September the 8th, 2020.

For those not familiar, Beginner Official Servers are an experience for new ARK players to test the waters without the threat of thoroughly developed tribes.

Unlike our regular servers, these have undergone some changes. First of all, there have been some limitations on how much a player or dino can progress. Player levels hit their cap at 44 and the highest encounter possible for wild creatures is level 30. Tamed creatures can receive up to an additional maximum of 30 levels. Due to the progression limits, some engrams are not achievable through leveling up but are found via supply crates. Some other changes include the disabling of alliances and tribe sizes have been limited to 5 members maximum.

Once established on a beginner server survivors can choose to exit into the rest of the official server network by uploading their character and moving to another server for the full ARK experience. Downloads of any kind are permanently disabled on Beginner servers so once you upload your character and leave the server you can't come back.

These servers are not intended to be a long-term place to become established and because of this, they are regularly wiped so new players can get their fresh start.

Wipe Dates: Upcoming Wipe: Sept 8th, 2020 Wipe following: Dec 1st, 2020

🐛

If the mantis is always praying, what is their faith?

Varies a bit. They're all in sects after all.

We'll see ourselves out... 🐛

EVO Event

As mentioned in the prior Community Crunch, the Official Network rates will be increasing to 2X following the next major version update. Following the update, we'll have more information on EVO events. Until then, we'll be using the EVO event system to apply the bonuses.

Community Fan Art

Deinonychus by @Riyuu

Titan Thumbnails by @ImEnFuego

Ferox by @Riyuu

Ragnarok Castle by @sam_stimo

Argentavis by @kawara

Primal Plesiosaur by @드찌/어찌

That's it for this week!

Studio Wildcard

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

Jul 27, 2020

Community Crunch 231: An Update on Genesis Pt 2

ARK: Survival Evolved - complexminded

Download in full resolution

An Update on Genesis Part 2

As we gear-up for the epic conclusion of ARK: Survival Evolved’s storyline with ARK: Genesis Part 2, we’re checking in with the community on its progress. Near the beginning of this year, the studio transitioned to working remotely. While the development of Genesis Part 2 has been ongoing throughout, and significant progress has been made, going from a highly collaborative in-office workflow to remote comes with specific challenges.

Upon further evaluation, we now have a better sense of the production timeline for Genesis Part 2. The new locked-in release date is now March 2021 simultaneously on all platforms. We understand that you are eager to get into it, and this news is disappointing; however, we are passionate about delivering something genuinely special, memorable, and suitably epic. This additional time allows us to ensure a better and unique experience and is well worth the investment.

We’ll be showing an extensive first-look at Genesis Part 2 later this year, revealing more details about completing your quest for ultimate survival; the forthcoming preview will reveal some of the new creatures, items, locations, features, and more!

We do however have other significant updates locked-&-loaded for this year! Just over the horizon, you can look forward to:

‘The Crystal Isles’ Free DLC on console: This includes the map in its entirety as well as three new tamable and breedable Crystal Wyverns. We are planning to release this significant update during the last week of August 2020.

Tender Love and Care Pass 3: This patch will overhaul two classic creatures with a new makeover containing updated models, animations, visuals, and new gameplay functionality for them. We'll also be doing further general quality of life, balance, and gameplay changes to the core-game in this update. Our much anticipated TLC 3 pass is planned for a simultaneous release on all platforms in October 2020! More on that a little later ;)

On behalf of the broader Wildcard team, we want to thank you for your ongoing support. We are continuously humbled and appreciative of the community’s creativity, passion, dedication! We're looking forward to sharing ARK’s next chapter with you and a very exciting 2020 & 2021!

Studio Wildcard

Upcoming Balance Pass

We’ve spoken a lot about what players can look forward to in the future for ARK, now let’s talk about the present! This Thursday, July 30th, we’ll be releasing a minor version update on PC, Xbox, and PS4 which will contain a number of quality of life and balance changes. Here’s some of what you can expect to get your hands on. We'll share the full set of notes on patch day:

Creatures

Basilosaurus
- Increased deep-sea-depth value at which damage taken by approximately 30%
Bloodstalker
- Reduced armour penetration by approximately 35%
- Reduced durability damage by 50%
Carno
- Added 30% armour penetration to the Left Click attack
- Added a Bleed effect to the right click attack which does up to 5% of targets health over 10 seconds, cannot
be stacked but the timer can be reset.
Carbonemys
- Increased resistance to TEK Turrets by 10%
Dunkleosteus
- Reduced weight of Obsidian in inventory by approximately 75%
- Reduced weight of metal, stone, crystal, and black pearls by approximately 50%
- Increased swim speed by approximately 20%
Liopleurodon
- Increased buff timer from 30 minutes to 6 hours
Megachelon
- Reduced Shell Resistance by 30% (from 80% to 50%)
- Reduced Health Per Level gains by approximately 15%
Paracer
- Reduced Health Per Level gains by approximately 15%

Breeding

- Reduced Mosasaur maturation time (now matches Yutyrannus)
- Reduced Basilosaurus maturation time (now matches Gacha)
- Reduced Tusoteuthis maturation time (now matches Yutyrannus)
- Reduced Plesiosaur maturation time (now matches Gacha)
- Reduced Compy maturation time (now matches Otter)
- Reduced Equus maturation time (now matches Procoptodon)
- Reduced Quetzal maturation time to approximately 5 and a half days
- Reduced Phiomia maturation time (now matches Ovis)
- Reduced Ichthyosaurus maturation time (now matches Roll Rat)
- Reduced Dunkleosteus maturation time (now matches Mammoth)
- Reduced Jerboa maturation time (now matches Otter)
- Increased Rhino maturation time (now matches Doedicurus)

General

- Flying creatures will prioritise picking up friendly-creatures rather than dismounting friendly riders
- Baby Creatures will no longer auto-wander when hatched
- Mounting a flying creature will no longer instantly cause it to take off
- Cryopods in a player’s inventory will now charge if a player is sleeping in a TEK Pod.
- TEK Helm will now provide players with the Gas Mask bonus, protecting them from the Poison
Wyvern and Basilisk spit.
- TEK Turrets now require double the amount of shards per bullet
- Metal Ingot stack size has been increased to 300
- Raw Metal stack size has been increased to 300
- Spoil time on Lesser Antidote has been increased to 3 days
- Spoil time on Prime Meat and Prime Fish have doubled
- Gasbags will no longer push Dinos around in PVE when landing to prevent griefing and exploits
- HLNA and Chibi Creatures no longer disable the protection against Bees buff.
- Yell and Whisper can now switch between the following modifier keys on PC: Left Shift, Left Ctrl,
and Left Alt
- Boss Fight timer on Valguero has increased from 20 minutes to 30 minutes.
- We are also adding a configurable GameUserSettings.ini which allows server hosts to limit the
amount of gateways that can be placed on platform saddles. This configuration is not retroactive, so
applying this change will require some manual administration work to clear up any pre-existing
platforms that exceed the limit.

MaxGateFrameOnSaddles=2

We’ll be enabling this on our Official PvP Network and setting the limit to 2, on all platforms. Official
PvP players will have approximately 30 days to adjust their current existing platforms to remove any
that exceed the gateway limit.

- Added an additional 15 seconds to all race missions on Xbox and PS4
- Added Event Emotes to the Hex Store at the cost of 50,000 hexagons

Official Rates

We’ve heard you loud and clear!

Since March, our Official Networks across those 3 platforms have been under the effect of an Evolution Event as these increased rates have now become the norm and we are happy with the results, it’s time to make it a permanent change!

Going forward, we'll be doubling the fun by doubling the Official Rates across PC, Xbox, and PS4 as standard along with some changes to our specialty servers. From the next major version, Official rates will now have increased default rates for Harvesting, Taming, and XP. What was previously ‘2x rates’ prior to today, will now become the new base rate (1x).

The increased 2x rates will be implemented directly in the game build itself. This means that Non-Dedicated Servers, Single Player Sessions, and of course Unofficial Servers will also feel the increased rates. Therefore, if you’re currently using customized rates, it’s something you will want to keep in mind before this change is in place -- specifically upon the release of the next Major Version on each of your respective platforms, you may wish to reduce your server/game rates by 50% to have the same effective values as before.

Official rates will be adjusted accordingly:

Standard Official Servers: 1x harvesting, taming, and XP (which is equivalent to 4x when considering our old values)
Small Tribes Servers: Smalls will have their taming, harvesting, and XP changed to 2.5x (which is equivalent to 5x when considering our old values)
Apocalypse Servers: These will remain at 3x harvesting, taming, and XP (which is equivalent to 6x when considering our old values)

P.S -- This is actually the second time we’ve increased the default rates if we look back to the early access days of 2015. So for you old timeys, it’s technically 4x 😜. Inb4 comments ‘back in my day, it took us two weeks to build a wooden 4x4’.

EVO Event

As mentioned above, the Official Network rates will be increasing to 2X following the next major version update. Following the update, we'll have more information on EVO events. Until then, we'll be using the EVO event system to apply the bonuses.

Community Fan Art

Fan Art Cutscene by @Nightshade_404

Rock Drake by @DiN-the-Painter

Child Who Likes Rain by @sis_6193

Wear Your Mask by @PicturesofArk

Japanese-Style Castle by @sam_stimo

Who's Playing Crystal Isles by @DudeSolo1

Kanata Castle by @forbanana

El Galeón Capitán Archer by @RikerPlays

See you next week!

Studio Wildcard

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

Jul 10, 2020

Community Crunch 229: Sponsored Mods Update, and Fan Art

ARK: Survival Evolved - complexminded

Welcome to another edition of the Community Crunch! This week we take a look at the new sponsored mods and some awesome community fan art and community content.

New Sponsored Mods

The Hunted

The Hunted is a mod that aims to emulate the difficulty of ARK to be more like it's early development days. The Hunted has plans and development for features like territorial behavior, nesting and new taming methods. If you don't think you should feel safe in a survival game, this might be a mod you want to check out!

Check out The Hunted

Dino Hoarders' TLC

While not an official TLC for the game, it is always fascinating to see new artistic approaches and styles from our modding community. Dino Hoarders' TLC has plans to do community TLCs on a lot of the games creatures with a unique art style! We look forward to seeing what is to come with this mod.

Check out Dino Hoarders' TLC

Tiamat

We're a little late with the official announcement but this project was a late addition that started sponsorship in June! Tiamat is a beautiful map with a focus on the ocean, an often underutilized part of the world. The visual style of this map is fantastic and deserves a look, especially if you are interested in vibrant ocean areas.

Check out Tiamat

EVO Event

While Summer Bash is active from June 25th to July 21st, there will be no special EVO event rates.

Summer Bash Rates

3X Breeding (mating interval, egg hatch speed, and maturation)
4X Player XP
4X Harvesting
4X Taming

Fan Art

@NAMCOOo
Link To Images Artist Profile

@ThePilgrimz
Desert Fortress

@harry12983476
127 8K Photos of Aberration

Jul 3, 2020

Community Crunch 228

ARK: Survival Evolved - complexminded

Summer Bash Extension

We realize some players were unable to take part in the beginning of Summer Bash and have extended our Summer Bash event an extra week. You have until July 21st to kick back and relax in the summer sun

Patch Notes Roundup

It's been a few months since we've done the last patch notes round-up and much has been added. From the launch of Crystal Isles on PC to the introduction of ARK to the Epic Games Store, there's been much going on. With hundreds of additions, changes, or fixes, we figured it'd be good to kick off an ARK summer with a recap of the past few months.

Significant Milestones

- Launched Crystal Isles as a free expansion on PC - Launched ARK on the Epic Games Store - EGS Clients can now use the favourite server feature - Whisper (ALT+B) and Yell voice (Shift+B) chat have been added - New command line arg: -PublicIPForEpic=<IPAddress> If this command line arg is used, this is the public IP that EGS clients will attempt to connect to. If this command line is missing and -Multihome is specified, then EGS clients will attempt to connect to the Multihome IP Note that if you're using Multihome and specify a non-public IP address, then players will not be able to connect to your server using EGS. Make sure to set a public IP address (e.g WAN or external)

Crystal Wyverns

- Crystal Wyverns can now be cryopoded - Crystal Wyverns can now be transferred between maps

Bees

- Queen Bee will no longer spawn bees when encumbered - Queen Bee will take 3% of health as damage when a bee of hers is killed - Queen Bee will stop spawning bees when at 10% HP

MEK's

- Reduced MEK pistol damage to players by 85% - Reduced MEK Pistol range by 25% - Prevented MEKS from being able to be stacked inside each other

TEK

- TEK Shield now has a limited number of crafts (like other TEK blueprints) - Fixed an issue with TEK durability that prevented stat capping - Made some UI improvements to the TEK Grenade Launcher and the Giant Turtle's Breath Attack

Creatures (General)

- Scout can no longer pushed tamed dinos - Increased Ovis corpse harvesting scaling by 4x - Reduced the Giant Turtle's bubble-blowing attack on when above ground - Valguero Ice wyvern class switched to Ragnarok Ice Wyvern - Adjusted (reduced) the Thyla cost for cloning - Argents can no longer pick up smaller wild aggressive creatures in PvE

Cryopod's

- Introduced an increase incoming damage multiplier from the cryopod-release debuff

Genesis

- Additional protection added to glitches on Genesis - Titans cannot be transferred into Genesis - Managarmr cannot be ridden on regular Genesis servers (can be ridden on flyer-allowed servers) - Lava Lizard can now be spayed or neutered - Ferox breeding/mutation movement speed has been corrected to be consistent between small and large Ferox. - X-Dinos will now receive the Active Event Colour Override

General

- Improved listing for Unofficial Servers on EGS clients - Re-implemented Multihome server functionality - Loot crates will now automatically open when purchased if you are flying or swimming - Created a cheat command to grant unlimited weight for admins (Cheat deeppockets or cheat infiniteweight) - Fertilized Eggs now have a warning when a player attempts to consume them - Mindwipe Tonic now warns players before being consumed - Corrupted Dinos can no longer be teleported - Set ORP activation timer to 10 seconds on Official PVE servers - Reduced scaling factor of sheep harvesting health to reduce stalls - Added additional protection to character downloads in invalid cases - Added additional logging on Official Servers to identify connection and listing issues. - Primal Crystal is now transferable - Genesis Geysers no longer restore the food stat - Jump Pad enemy foundation prevention removed - Limited the public teleport setting specifically for Official PvP - Disabled bRawSockets as they no longer function with the new game networking code - Added additional server-side transfer logging - Fixed some cases where the login lock could be bypassed

Bugs

- Fixed multiple level design issues related to holes, volumes, floating foliage, and more. - Fixed Dino Leash breaking on restart - Fixed a crash related to crafting items with the gamepad - Fixed a bug which would cause dinos to get stuck when using the Arctic NE teleport - Fixed players being unable to use the bunny-hop dance - Fixed a bug where using the rocket launcher could propel you backwards - Fixed a bug where some Crystal Wyverns could not be tamed properly - Fixed Tropical Wyvern from regaining health passively - Fixed Legacy Servers not showing up when transferring. - Fixed the 'Kicked by BattlEye' disconnection error - Fixed certain server map names not showing on the session filter - Fixed eggs and babies being teleported to 0,0 when in stasis - Fixed voice connection remnants after transferring to a different server - Fixed Linux servers not starting up - Fixed a client side crash when accessing inventories - Fixed Crystal Isles Map showing in all filters - Fixed a mating range bug - Fixed multiple server stalls - Fixed some missing icon related to holiday emotes - Fixed a bug which could have caused characters to fail to download - Retroactive fix for Valguero Ice Wyverns which were stuck as "Raptors" in cryopods. (Note: you'll still see the raptor icon until you deploy the cryopod) - Fixed a bug with Cruise Missiles which caused them to detonate on the player firing - Fixed a bug which prevented MEKs from attacking structures - Fixed an exploit with the Rock Drake - Fixed a bug that could cause items to transfer back to your own inventory when transferring from personal to remote with the T key. - Fixed a bug with the grenade launcher where it sometimes wouldn't use all its ammo - Fixed some bugs where XP was not being awarded properly when collecting Glitches - Fixed a crash that resulted when trying to craft an item from the hotbar - Fixed a bug where releasing from a cryopod using EnableCryopodNerf would cause them to take 10x damage for the time set. - Resolved some connection and start up issues with EGS clients - Fixed multiple start up crashes affecting some EGS clients - Fixed language overrides on EGS - Fixed EGS clients not being able to connect to password protected servers

Exploits

- Fixed some exploits related to ranged weapons and guns. - Fixed an exploit which allowed players to transfer items into non-downloadable servers - Fixed multiple undermesh exploits - Added some additional exploit protection to the transfer system - Added additional protection to GCM, Explorer Notes, and Glitches to address potential exploits - Improved anti mesh detection logic - Improved climbing pick logic to fix some meshing exploits - Fixed multiple exploits that allowed you to stack creatures on top of each other - Fixed several exploits with Magmasaur - Fixed a bug with certain creatures attacking through structure walls - 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 - Adjusted several creatures for the prevention of mesh biting - Fixed an exploit with turrets and ziplines - Fixed an exploit with meshing and the cruise missile

ARK Summer Sale