Sep 25, 2020

ARK: Survival Evolved - complexminded

In this edition of the Community Crunch, we’ll be giving you more details on the upcoming TLC 3 patch and taking a look at some amazing community art.

TLC 3 Update

Excitement is ramping up and we're anxious to share more details on the creature improvements we've been working on. In addition to the creature upgrades we'll been sharing, there's more polish, balance, and quality of life updates in store for the upcoming TLC patch.

Woolly Mammoth

Recently we gave you a peek at the visual upgrades of the Woolly Mammoth but it’s abilities have also seen an upgrade. The Mammoth comes marching in with new attacks and a buff that’s enabled by war drums. We have a feeling you will like the sound of that!

New Abilities

War Drum Saddle and Buff

1 additional passenger seat on a saddle that comes equipped with a war drum that must be played to maintain an AoE buff that improves stamina regen and makes them immune to fear.

New Attacks

Tusk Sweep

Sweeps tusks left or right to gather and harvest thatch

Trunk Trumpet

Emits a trunk roar that does an AOE debuff to all enemies within range

Foot Stomp

Mammoth rears up and then puts all of its weight into a forward “slam” with its front legs to directionally knock back enemies and gather wood

Trunk Grab

Similar to the Karkinos’s grab, it is able to grab, hold, and release smaller targets

Stegosaurus

Primarily known as a harvester, the Stegosaurus will be seeing visual upgrades and an expanded toolset that makes it hard to resist.

New Abilities

Backplate Modes
Backplate passive buff and can switch between three modes. Different modes will be indicated visually

Hardened Plated: Applies a damage reduction buff and prevents riders from being dismounted by enemies; Wood harvesting benefit
Heavy Plate Mode: Applies a slow when attacking with the basic tail whip; Thatch harvesting benefit
Sharpened Plate Mode: Applies an armor penetration effect when attacking with the tail whip. Also useful for harvesting berries

New Attacks

Impaling Tail Whip

Able to impale and immobilize players and smaller creatures

EVO Event

Survivors on all platforms will be receiving a special Evolution Event perk this weekend! It will be active from Friday the 25th of Sep at 4 PM EST until Monday the 28th 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

Rockwell by kawarayane

Starter Base by ThePilgrim

Catch Me by Rackiera

Cliff Platform by maroichigo022

Alpha Hunter by BioZev

Direwolf by bluedragonark

Dodo by Amy the Amers

Catch 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

Sep 18, 2020

Community Crunch 238: Official Discord Launch

ARK: Survival Evolved - complexminded

Official Discord Launch

We’re excited to announce the launch of our Official ARK:Survival Evolved Discord! Along with being a new hub for our ARK community, this Discord will be a source of information for our players where announcements and patch notes can be pushed through to your own Discord if you choose.

Jump in via this invite link: https://discord.gg/playark

Code of Conduct Update

At times we may make adjustments to the Code of Conduct based on evolving game meta or as a result of ongoing enforcement initiatives. These adjustments to the Code of Conduct will take place immediately.

Before

#Discussions_QuoteBlock_Author
Teleportation zones are treated as spawn zones and as such they should not be blocked nor have any turrets in them in either pvp or pve game mode.

After

#Discussions_QuoteBlock_Author
Teleportation zones (on Genesis) are treated as spawn zones and as such they should not be blocked nor have any turrets in them in either pvp or pve game mode.

Before

#Discussions_QuoteBlock_Author
Blocking access to important resources (ie. charge nodes, gas nodes, Extinction City Terminals, etc)

After

#Discussions_QuoteBlock_Author
Blocking access to important resources (ie. charge nodes, Extinction City Terminals, Orbital Supply Crates on Extinction, etc)

If you're planning on playing on the Official Network, please familiarize yourself with the Code of Conduct.

EVO Event

There will be no EVO Event this week.

Fan Art

Poison Wyvern by Kittu Shakmarov

Dodo by Rej PiekielnyGrabarz

Rock Drake by REN SAIO

Falling by CaPrIcOrNbReAd

Managarmr Headshot by Sarahleiwel

The Obelisk by BigChickenLover

See you in Discord!
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

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