There are, however, some interesting shake-ups this week, if you’ve been following the Steam charts for a while. There are a couple of games that had their DLC charting last week without the main game, whilst the reverse is true this week. What does it all mean? I do not know. Consumer data is a mystery to me. Stop pre-ordering things.
I ve built an army of inflatable flesh bags that puff themselves up to three times their normal size and then launch into the air like oversized, leaky balloons. They re called Gasbags, and they re my favourite dinosaur in Extinction, the latest expansion to Ark: Survival Evolved. Whenever I don t fancy aimlessly floating around on the back of one, I can load any metal I ve collected into their giant inventories and puff my way back to base. They re brilliant.
Extinction s new creatures are some of the best in Ark so far: alongside the Gasbags you ll find new friends including the lumbering, sloth-like Gacha, which drop semi-randomised loot from giant crystals on their back, a teleporting robotic raptor/spider hybrid called an Enforcer, and a Velonasaur, which can fan out its facial fins to transform into a walking machine gun that shoots quills, shredding armour in seconds.
QUICKLY! FOR CRYING OUT LOUD, QUICKLY! I’ve written the charts and there are some jokes and you have to read it!
One of the jokes is quite good!
Patch notes for 285.104:
- Extinction Expansion Pack!
- Removed Bodybags exploit!
- Group ranking number increased by 5
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.
And now, enjoy some dino-screens.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
Hello! This week John is doing a super secret special mission (playing a video game) so I, one of the other Alices, have taken over the Steam Charts. I am afraid that I do not put as much time as John into constructing elegant jokes that are several layers deep, though, which means you might even be able to tell which games are charting. I understand if this is a huge disappointment.