Finish your journey through the worlds of ARK in ‘Extinction’, where the story began and ends: on Earth itself! An Element-infested, ravaged planet filled with fantastical creatures both organic & technological, Earth holds both the secrets of the past and the keys to its salvation. As a veteran Survivor who has conquered all previous obstacles, your ultimate challenge awaits: can you defeat the gigantic roaming Titans which dominate the planet, and complete the ARK cycle to save Earth's future?
ARK: Extinction is an entirely new map that promises to deliver the long-awaited climax to the ARK storyline, returning to where the story began and now ends: on Earth itself! Visit the ruined world that’s rampant with Element-corrupted creatures, scour the land for Orbital Supply Drops, tame exotic creatures, and build a Mek powerful enough to defeat the colossal, tameable Titans dominating the landscape.
A PLANET IN DISTRESS
Extinction brings survivors back to where the mysterious journey all started; Earth. What was once a lush and thriving home world is now a corrupt, hostile and desolate shell of its former self. Venture into the diverse landscape where ruins of a past civilization reveal clues to Earth’s demise along with the keys to reviving its future. At the heart of this bleak and foreboding terrain is an overgrown, deserted technological metropolis that rises amidst the waste. Discover and explore long abandoned micro-biospheres which served as the early prototypes for the ARKs of today.
Patch notes for 285.104: - Extinction Expansion Pack! - Removed Bodybags exploit! - Group ranking number increased by 5
TAME NEW CREATURES
Capture, tame and craft powerful and unusual organic and mechanical creature types different from anything previously seen in the ARK universe. Increase situational awareness by flying and controlling robotic surveillance drones. Harvest valuable resources by taming and feeding organic transmutation machines. Reach new heights and remote locations by climbing and teleporting with the ultimate security bot. Ensure your survival by building and piloting your own customizable battle Mek to victory!
CRAFT UNIQUE ITEMS
Ensure mastery on this forsaken world with many new and exotic craftable items. Keep your tames where you want them with a creature leash, use taxidermy tools to enhance your home decor with trophy mounts from your most memorable kills, span and traverse previously uncrossable gaps with a Tek bridge, store and preserve your favorite friendly creature in a portable cryopod for reuse later, utilize Tek gravity grenades to attract or repel foes to your advantage, and autonomously airlift loot back to your base with an airborne delivery crate!
CONQUER NEW CHALLENGES
As Element runs rampant across Earth, corrupting and mutating all that it touches, Survivors must be prepared for the unique challenges fueled from these cataclysmic events. Engage in epic battles of titanic proportions when encountering the colossal Titans that rule this hostile planet as the ultimate apex predator. Scour the wastelands for orbital supply drops and protect the precious cargo they contain while fending off an onslaught of Element-corrupted monstrosities barely resembling their former selves. Survive and shelter from environmental anomalies such as Element eruptions, eclipses and meteor showers.
Return to Earth and complete your conquest of the ARK universe, gain sought after answers to advance the storyline, discover the fate of the original explorers, determine the true purpose of the ARK network, and unravel the remaining mysteries of the Homo Deus!
Haven’t yet explored the thrilling world of ARK? Jump into the adventure today during ARK’s Free Weekend on Steam, where the base game ARK: Survival Evolved is available to play for free now - Sunday, Nov 11th, paired with massive discounts to own ARK and its other expansion packs, Scorched Earth and Aberration.
Stay tuned to our Twitter account for the most up-to-date information on Extinction official servers going live.
Dinosaurs walk the Earth again in Ark: Survival Evolved‘s third expansion, Extinction, which launched today. After bouncing around biodomes and comets and other strange habitats, the survival sandbox is coming home to Earth, where… oh no. You maniacs! You blew it up! Ah damn you! God damn you all to hell! Unless the T. rex roaming the streets of a futuristic city in that screenshot is just someone’s pet, and the greenery overgrowing the buildings is just stylish planting, in which case I apologise and compliment you on the future you’ve created.
Three years after it released in Steam Early Access, and one year after it launched for real, Ark: Survival Evolved's third and final DLC expansion, Extinction, arrives today on PC. It comes to PS4 and Xbox One on November 11th.
Extinction follows on from Ark's previous paid expansions, Scorched Earth and Aberration, and introduces a brand-new map, a new selection of mechanics, and new tameable critters.
For this, its final offering, developer Studio Wildcard has once again opted to go hard on the sci-fi, foregoing Ark's earlier, more natural environments for a brooding sprawl of dereliction. Extinction's map transports players to a ravaged Earth, which, for those invested in the series' lore, "holds both the secrets of the past and the keys to its salvation". Alongside its ample wasteland, Extinction includes the remains of a sprawling metropolis, waiting to be explored.
The big Ark: Survival Evolved expansion Extinction is set to go live today, adding a brand new map and massive mega-dinosaurs to the game, and finally concluding the story that began, and will end, on the ruined world we call Earth.
The launch trailer sets up the story in broad strokes: Earth looks like it used to be a pretty nice place, but it's clearly suffered from neglect in recent years. It's also got a bit of a pest problem, which you and your dinosaur pals are apparently going to have to sort out. The trouble is that as big as your helmet-head T-rex looks compared to you, so do they appear when stacked up against the colossal creatures called Titans that are now roaming free on our former homeworld.
The solution? Build a Mek that's even bigger. Which doesn't strike me as a particularly efficient way of handling the problem—hasn't anyone around here heard of air power?—but it should make for some pretty cool "let them fight"-style moments.
The dungeon-boss Titans are the centerpiece of Ark: Extinction, but it will also add new creatures like the balloon-like Gasbag, the frosty, flying Snow Owl, and the spine-firing Velonasaur. New technological additions include Pokemon-esque Cryopods, which will enable players to store tamed creatures and carry them around in inventory, and chasm-spanning Tek Bridges, while Orbital Supply Drops will deliver gear and resources in the field—which Element-corrupted dinos will probably want to fight you for.
Existing Ark: Survival Evolved characters can be transferred from their current servers into Extinction, but items and tamed creatures cannot; characters, items, and tames can be transferred out of Extinction onto other maps, however. Studio Wildcard said that process will be identical to that of the previous Scorched Earth and Aberration expansion. As for an exact start time, that's a bit mushy at the moment: The developers said they'll be rolling it out slowly, beginning with North American and European servers.
"We will be releasing an initial start batch of servers, and bringing more servers online as needed so please be patient for us during this period. The servers will be the standard 70-player cap. Extinction will be included in all CrossARK clusters (except 'TheHundred'), as well as Conquest and Small Tribes servers," Studio Wildcard explained on Steam.
"Extinction will not be supported in Primitive Plus on launch, but it is something we will consider looking into at a later date. Extinction will also not have NoTek/NTek-NoTaming, Primitive, or TheHundred servers for those currently playing on those subsets of gamemodes. The legacy network will get a few servers, however they will be in small supply."
Ark: Survival Evolved will also be free to play for most of the week, beginning at 10 am PT/1 pm ET on November 6 (so, right now, basically), and running through November 11. It's also on sale until November 13 for $20/£18/€22.
As we all know by now ARK: Extinction will be launching tomorrow on November 6th. We are expecting the download to be approximately 10-20gb in size for PC. The information below pertains to PC ARK servers that will be brought online tomorrow at approximately the same time as the expansion pack becomes available.
On launch you'll be able to transfer your existing character from your current server into Extinction. You will not be able to transfer items or tames. You can however transfer characters, items, and tames out of Extinction onto other maps. If you were around for the release of Scorched Earth or Aberration this is the exact same process those servers underwent.
There are no disabled engrams in Extinction like there was at Aberration's launch, meaning things such as Tek Teleporters are allowed. Creatures like flyers are also enabled on Extinction.
We will be introducing North American and European Extinction servers first. We will be releasing an initial start batch of servers, and bringing more servers online as needed so please be patient for us during this period. The servers will be the standard 70-player cap. Extinction will be included in all CrossARK clusters (except 'TheHundred'), as well as Conquest and Small Tribes servers. Extinction will not be supported in Primitive Plus on launch, but it is something we will consider looking into at a later date. Extinction will also not have NoTek/NTek-NoTaming, Primitive, or TheHundred servers for those currently playing on those subsets of gamemodes. The legacy network will get a few servers, however they will be in small supply.
ARK: Survival Evolved will be free to play for a week, starting November 6th 10AM PST through November 11th! On-board your friends and family who have not experienced to give them a taste of The Island, Ragnarok, or The Center yet for no cost during those few days. And consider buying it if you enjoyed your time on the ARK to keep on surviving!
Extra Life 2018!
25-hours later, our Extra Life charity stream has come to a close and thus another chapter of our Extra Life journey does as well.
There were so many great and funny moments throughout the stream. Members of the ARK dev team battled it out in several games that resulted in the loser receiving a penalty. There were wigs, there were hats, there were costumes and hair adornments. There were a special unicorn that managed to steal the show on multiple occasions as well.
There were also special previews and discussions regarding our upcoming expansion pack, ARK: Extinction. We showed off taxidermy, Ice Titan taming, Cryopods, Orbital Supply Drop gameplay, and a few creatures that you'll be able to get your hands on soon.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1558017754 This is our fourth year participating in this event and it also happens to be the 10th anniversary for Extra Life as a whole. We were thrilled to learn that on this 10th anniversary we were able to surpass our total donations raised in the past four years to over $100,000! As an individual member (not including team member contributions) we've reached $112,246.44 and counting! As a team we have raised $188,782.75 over the last 4 years (and counting as today is still on-going!).
This year was our highest ever personal amount raised. Previously our record was $23,805 and we are sitting at $45,122.27 at the time of writing this post. This was also our highest ever team goal. Previously we had raised $62,004.01 and right now we're sitting at $76,536. Our original goal when we began the stream was hoping to reach $30,000 and we more than doubled that amount, with $11,000 raised before the stream had even begun at 9AM. With all of those numbers, we're currently sitting at rank 7 globally as an individual and rank 6 globally as a team for donations to Extra Life this year!
We would like to give special recognition to our top streamers and top individual donators who were a big help in assisting us to our goals this year. We could not have done this without you!
Top Streamers (in order of amount raised): LazyCat Xastus the Mad King RoyaleWithCheese Ryan S. FistofTheWalrus Belle Syntac Kara_dee
Top Donators: Pavan Fred316 vl_darkangel_lv Helldiver, Anthomnia SurvivalServers.com Eric K. Jerryn tribe of bozo JustPixie Pac-Man443 family KageRamen Pip, Acidic songtao ke Eric P. Jesse P.
Thank you for all of your questions for this digest, Survivors! Here is our question and answer session with Lead Programmer Chris Willoughby. This week we've covered some of the very popular questions we've received regarding Extinction.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1516371542 Survivor Asher asks, "Will extinction have an ocean, or at least a large body of water for some bigger aquatic creatures?" and survivor Alex asks, "All Extinction related pictures you've published were mostly on land. Is Extinction is going to be a map like Scorched Earth with no sea or is it a map with water creatures?"
Extinction does not have a large body of water. As you can imagine, the surface of the Earth has undergone some dramatic changes, one of which is that most of the water has dried up. That said, we did build the Extinction creatures with water in mind, and there should be a few surprises waiting for you when you take them to other maps!
Survivor Caleb asks, "Is the dev team currently working on a long-term solution to improve the quality of life/tame cap issues on PVE? If so, could the team provide us with some details?"
We think that Cryopods coming in Extinction should help with this problem directly. When a creature has been captured into a Cryopod, it does not count against the tame cap of the server. In addition, Cryopods can be kept forever in a Cryofridge with power, arming players with a powerful tool to work around the limitations of the cap.
Survivor Nattix asks, "As you mentioned in the previous digest, titans are going to be temporary tames. Will titans have more uses for PVE players who aren't looking to go to war or are they going to be solely for PVP like titanosaurs?"
Our hope is that Titans bring a new type of PVE encounter to the game with in-world boss fights and interesting new mechanics that are interesting in themselves. Once tamed, Titans are very powerful. They can clear space and take down lots of dinos quickly making them good for area cleanup or meat runs. In addition, we’ve worked to make each of them fun to ride. I enjoy exploring the various maps on them for that reason.
Survivor Thomas asks, "In a previous teaser we saw some Defense Units roaming the land, this time without their supreme leader summoning them. Could this be the time we finally are able to get our chance to befriend the buggers instead of ripping them apart limb-from-limb (or at least, put them back together again :P)?"
The Defense Units found within Extinction are part of the automated force that served and defended the city before it fell into disarray. These days they like to roll around and punch Dodos. They aren’t craftable like the other Robots found within the city (such as the Scout or Enforcer), but we felt like they brought a missing piece to the ecosystem there, namely punching Dodos.
Survivor Thomas asks, "Since we already have seen a glimpse of some Wyvern-action on the land below, can we then confirm that Extinction will have some more creatures from previous expansions living on earths crust and if so, will they be living under similar conditions as they were on their respective arks accordingly?"
There are a number of creatures that make their return in Extinction, and they exist in biomes/environments that you’d expect to find them in. In addition, a number of existing creatures have been corrupted by Element and they roam the wasteland. These creatures will not behave as they would traditionally, instead destroying anything that gets in the way of their hunt for additional Element to consume.
If you have a question you want answered by the ARK dev team please submit your questions with the Subject "ARK Q&A" to our email address: arkfans@studiowildcard.com
Community Livestream Update!
There won't be a community livestream this coming Thursday, but it's because we're super busy poreparing for our TwitchCon event coming up this week, and our yearly Extra Life stream AND the launch of Extinction falls shortly after! These next few weeks sure will be busy. Jen will be present at our special TwitchCon event this year along with ARK producer John. To those of you that RSVP'd to attend we look forward to seeing you there and we hope you enjoy getting to be the first to play Extinction!
In case you've missed our last couple of mentions of it, Extra Life this year is on November 3rd and we'll be streaming for 24-hours straight to raise money for sick kids hospitals. We'll be dropping some Extinction teasers along the way and boosting our official server rates as our Extra Life team gets closer to our goal. Be sure to tune into our Twitch channel on the 3rd and we'll have more details about this next week.
Mod Community Updates!
Over the last two weeks, we managed to spotlight almost every mod in the contest. If you missed any and would like to see what all of the mods have to offer, the streams have been sliced and put into convenient episodes, all of which can be found in this Twitch collection.
Public voting for the Mod Contest has concluded but technical evaluations are still being finalized so rankings may still continue to change until the winners are announced on November 1st. The current Rankings can be found here:
The start date for the next contest has not yet been determined, the management system will be taken offline during the winter months for some updates and adjustments based on feedback from the current contest. Once a date is determined everyone will be made aware of it.
Survivors will be receiving a special Evolution Event perk this weekend! It will be active from Friday the 26th of October at 1 PM EST until Monday the 29th of October 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
That's it for this post guys! As always if you’ve got anything to share please get in touch and be sure to follow us on:
Happy Patch Day, Survivors! It's Tuesday and ARK's latest patch is live on all platforms.
First off, be sure to tune in to the Xbox channel on Mixer at 2pm EST today to see a brand new Extinction creature teaser during their stream!
We're also sharing some more previews of our upcoming expansion pack ARK: Extinction. Check out the images below for a sneak peak at what you can expect to see on planet Earth!
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1540666780 In Extinction, Earth has become an Element-infested planet filled with fantastical creatures both organic and technological. Element has ravaged the planet and corrupted both the landscape and some of its inhabitants, causing mutations in the creatures and plants that can be found there.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1540666929 This will be the last Extinction Chronicles related event and screenshot teasers on patch day before Extinction release. We hope that you've been enjoying them, and we're very excited to be sharing the entirety of Extinction with you very soon.
Our Extinction Chronicles V event is going on right now, including new Corrupted skin, Explorer Notes, and Tek dinos. You can read all about it in yesterdays announcement:
Tomorrow there will be a client and server side update that will bring Extinction Chronicles V to survivors on PC, Xbox, and PS4!
Leading up to the release of Extinction there will be monthly drops of Extinction-related Explorer Notes on The Island, Scorched Earth, and Aberration. Once collected these notes will unlock new Extinction-related skins!
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1540093443 There will also be the appearance of more powerful Tek-themed Dinosaur variants within the ARKs each month. These Tek Dinos are permanent additions (meaning they will continue to spawn even after the event is over), with a new one beginning to appear each month.
* In Extinction Chronicles I we released three Explorer Notes, the Corrupted Helmet and the Tek Rex. * In Extinction Chronicles II we released three Explorer Notes, the Corrupted Boots and the Tek Stego. * In Extinction Chronicles III we released three Explorer Notes, the Corrupted Pants and the Tek Raptor. * In Extinction Chronicles IV we released three Explorer Notes, the Corrupted Shirt and the Tek Parasaur.
And now, tomorrow we're excited to bring you three new Explorer Notes, the Corrupted Gloves and a new Tek creature, the Tek Quetzal!
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1540094608 In addition, special colored dinos will be populating the ARKs. You'll be able to find creatures sporting black, red, green, purple, and white up until the launch of Extinction, beginning tomorrow. Be sure to take advantage of these special colors before they're extinct!
Last but not least: just like we did last month, you can expect to see some more extinction screenshots tomorrow here on our forums! Be sure to check back for that.
Patch Notes!
Here are the full fixes and notes in Extinction Chronicles V update.
- Extinction Chronicles V - Added Tek Quetz * New breeding line * 5% chance to spawns * 20% higher base level - Added new color set (black, red, green, purple, white) - Added 3 new Explorer Notes and matching unlock (Corrupted Gloves) - Increased maximum player level by 1
- Climbing pick meshing fixes - Better handling for low fps server dino attacking - Fix for failure to cleanup structure placers - Pre-emptive API for server structure cleanup improvement - Increased damage range for players/dinos on surface of Aberration
Rock, Paper, Shotgun - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Fraser Brown)
We ve been battered by wave after wave of survival romps since Minecraft popularised the genre, with its deadly nights and groaning zombies, almost a decade ago. In its wake, we’ve been introduced to a cavalcade of punishing, persistent environments intent on putting us in an early grave.
The masochistic impulse to put ourselves through the wringer for entertainment has spread to RPGs, management games, cosmic sandboxes and more than a few horror games, so even if you don t fancy punching rocks and trees while wandering around in the wilderness, you might still find a survival game to tickle your fancy. (more…)
