Hey Survivors!

Welcome to the twenty-fifth issue of the ARK Digest! We hope you had a fantastic holiday period and are just as excited as we are for 2016. We’ve got a lot planned for the ARK this coming year and cannot wait to get it out to you!

First of all, a congratulations is in order!

Survival of the Fittest: Naughty or Nice

On the 28th of December 200 survivors went head to head in an ultimate and epic Survival of the Fittest battle. The 200 survivors consisting of your favourite ARK streamers and some of the best SoTF players around were randomly placed in two tribes, Tribe Naughty and Tribe Nice. They fought it out in an massive 100 versus 100 elimination battle for charity. Each team were sporting stylish blue and red Santa hats respectively, but ultimately only one tribe could prevail as victorious!

For those of you who were unable to watch the Naughty or Nice event you can watch the full VOD here, shoutcasted by our lovely hosts Bikeman and JayEx23. In addition you can also check out your favorite streamers most recent broadcasts, as they may have streamed their POV!

Without further ado, we’re proud to announce the winning team of the last Survival of the Fittest championship of 2015, Tribe Naughty!



As the winners of this event, Tribe Naughty was awarded $10,000 to divide among each player and donate to their charity of choice from the following: AbleGamers, Charity: Water, Childs Play, GamingForAdoption, and TakeThis. Each of these charities also received an additional $1,000 on behalf of Studio Wildcard.

Congratulations goes out to our winners and all of the contestants who made the first event of our new Total Conversion mod incredibly entertaining to watch!

Highlights Video!

Following our festive charity battle, we reached out to content creators on Twitter requesting an ARK: Survival of the Fittest - Naughty or Nice Highlights Video! Awarding 500$ to the video we enjoyed the most!

Congratulations to Valoule who’s SoTF highlight video was very enjoyable and quite hypnotic!

We also had some other great entries from more ARK Survivors and as a thank you for putting a highlight video together, we’ll be awarding you with 100$ each!

0slyde

A2_Dtox

GamerPerfection

Xbox Contest - The Hunt for the Bionic Rex!

On the 15th of December we announced a contest where we would award a Survivor 200$, if they were the first to obtain a Bionic Rex skin on an Official PvP server and tweet us a screenshot! On the 30th of December, https://twitter.com/Fusion_V7 managed this, so congratulations to them!

and speaking of the Xbox - worry not survivors as early next week you’ll be receiving a content update where our latest friend will be hopping itself over to your islands!

Patch 231.3 Balance Changes!

We've rolled out an additional patch to the balance values we altered earlier. These new numbers will still help tackle the issue of over-inflated creature stats however will help alleviate some of the concerns that have been brought up over the past two days.

We're interested in hearing your feedback so please let us know what you think about the new changes and your main concerns regarding the state of balance in ARK. Please make sure that you're playing on an Official Server with the latest version (231.3) or your private-server is running the latest version and has no other customization so that we're able to make full use of your feedback and get a clearer understanding of the state of the game.

Thank you guys!

Megathreads for comments:

Survivetheark

Steam

Reddit

ARK Digest Q+A

Quote Survivor, Buster asks, “Any chance of overhauling the giganotosaurus loot table? Its rather sad that you manage to bring down one of these behemoths and all you get is meat and berries, maybe like all prime meat instead? Or like prime steaks?”

Yeah it should be mostly primes! We’ll make this change in the next update.

Quote Survivor, Buster also asks, “Also can you explain how the dinosaur spawning and persistence works? I have tried several time to make a "zoo" with wild animals, but they disappear when I leave, despite the fact they are enclosed, and well it would be nice to be able to "store" wild animals in a safe place until you're ready to tame them. Or just have them around for ambiance.”

On a Live Public Server (unlike in a Single Player Game or Non-Dedicated Host Mode), Wild creature spawns/despawns can be randomized based on a number of factors, including server performance. Only by tranq-ing them out are you fully guaranteed they’re going to stick around indefinitely.

Quote Survivor, MrXQuikSilver asks, “Will there be a harpoon gun/ grappling hook/ zipline?”

Yes actually that is currently being programmed

Quote Survivor, CarnageRex asks, “Any ETA for the Dragon and Megapithecus to be added into the main game?”

Their arenas are being finished up right now!

Quote Survivor, i321headshot asks, “Is there going to be a way to host our servers from pc to Xbox one so we don't have to buy another Xbox one just to host?”

We’re looking into that. Can’t confirm anything yet though!

Quote Survivor, Deaner asks, “Could we ever see a type of banner that hangs from walls? Instead of just having flags to show our tribe colours, have a big banner hanging off the castle walls”

That sounds like a pretty neat idea, we’ll likely get around to it.

Quote Survivor, 3yerrt asks, “Will we have a desert biome on the current ARK?”

There’s going to be a massive desert.

Quote Survivor, Brobattington the Undying asks, “Will there be a type of bug-zapper added in the near future, for all of our Cajun folk in the Swamp?”

Haha we like the sound of this :-D

Quote Survivor, OnePotatoChip also asks, “Care to elaborate more on the method of Troodon taming? And will this spread to other carnivores, too?”

Basically you need to leave an animal (or person) around for it to hunt. Last team to knock out the animal gets the credit for Affinity when the Troodon hunts and kills that creature. There’s a cooldown on this. The better the creature, the more Affinity. Do it enough, and the Troodon becomes yours with the corresponding Affinity. If it works out well, we will adapt it for other carnivores too.

Quote Survivor, OnePotatoChip also asks, “Ready to reveal any more information about Ark #2, yet? Or how about some lore for us to chew on?”

There are key Survivors on the ARK whose notes you’ll be finding through deep exploration. Dossier Dude (not his real name) is one. Recipe Gal (not her real name) is another. The others include a Three Kingdoms Era Monk and a Roman Centurion. Their writings, across time and languages, help lead to unlocking the mystery of exactly what the ARK is.

Quote Survivor, RedStorm8616 asks, “In the Tek tier, would you consider adding lightsaber--er...laser-swords that glow and hum and you can harvest rare crystals from Ascension to color the blades instead of dying them?”

Plasma sabers. You got it

Quote Survivor, Snera asks, “Survival of the fittest is coming to Xbox ?”

Yup, it will be coming to the Xbox!

Quote Survivor, the_british_kiwi asks, “Could we get a sort of kevlar suit that is resistant to gunfire for the next armour tier?”

Yes, the SWAT Armor is imminent! Security has been very excited about this.

Quote Survivor, the_british_kiwi also asks, “How do you plan on having dinosaurs interact with the day/night cycle? Will dinosaurs sleep? Will they hunt or go for a drink at certain times of day?”

As we get more creatures in, we plan more day/night behavior variation per dinos. Yes, some will sleep during the day or night respectively, unless disturbed.

Quote Survivor, Kaprodonychus asks, “will there be mutated/mutant creatures or hybrid dinosaurs. Hybrid dinosaurs would be nice cause they can have lots of benefits and disadvantages for survivors. They can help with raids, farming or just being a good guard dog. They can also be something that would make survivors afraid to wonder alone or wonder in the dark.”

Not on this ARK

Quote Survivor, tomb asks, “Will we ever be able to eat while sitting on the chair? And maybe even use the selfie cam function?”

You’ll be able to do both in the next major update :)!

Quote Survivor, tomb asks, “Any hints on more upcoming RP features?”

Beer!

Quote Survivor, mac_intosh1172 asks, “Any plans for incorporating mutations in breeding? Something can could either help or hinder the animals and could be passed down through generations?”

Yup, we’ll be looking at this in Breeding Phase 2.

Quote Survivor, neoblackheart asks, “Has there been any thought to an Industrial Grinder? Basically an Industrial version of the Mortar and Pestle?”

That’s the Chemistry Table, and it’s on the way!

Quote Survivor, Fourth asks, “Will we be seeing a better modern preserving bin for making jerky more quickly or at least in bulk?”

Tek Tier is gonna have something special for this purpose, and it will have other uses too.

Quote Survivor, Scorpio asks, “In the boss wars Ascension will the bosses have a tame timer similarly to survival of the fittest or will they be a permanent tame? And if not a permanent tame can we have a server option for it or at least on single player? As I think it would be cool seeing 3 different tribes fighting each other with each respective boss”

Non-permanent, similarly to SotF. However the rate of being able to summon bosses will be server-adjustable, as well as how long they last. So if you want some crazy boss-overrun server… well, that’s up to you :-P

Quote Survivor, Kalico asks, “Do you all know if warpaint will be making its way to the Xbox One version of the game?”

Very likely, but we need to take the time to analyze the memory and performance cost of it on consoles first.

Quote Survivor, J asks, “Will we see alpha flyers?”

You shall!

Quote Survivor, MistyKraken asks, “Will there be Admin/Server/Solo commands like the pc version does?”

Yes there will be. We need to go through and make sure none of them can ‘crash’ the game first (a no-no on consoles).

Quote Survivor, RadioActiveMan asks, “Will there be future mechanic additions to the Dino Baby process to adjust the time commitment of the Baby to Juvenile process, similar to what Kibble did for taming? For the higher end Dinos, 10-16 hours of constant time at the computer (even for a tribe) can be very taxing if not impossible.”

We’re actually working on a skill-based mechanic for exactly this.

Quote Survivor, RadioActiveMan also asks, “Can we have Have E also cycle through nearby snap points, some structures there are many nearby snaps and getting the right one can be difficult”

That’s actually a pretty good idea. We’ll work on that.

Quote Survivor, RadioActiveMan also asks, “Are spiders going to lay eggs in the future?”

Nope, because they all come from the Broodmother!

Quote Survivor, Hannibal asks, “Will we ever see a structure (perhaps tek tier) that is specifically designed for incubating eggs?”

Indeed, at the Tek Tier. It will also accelerate their incubation speed.

Quote Survivor, Hannibal also asks, “Will we ever be able to use a pike and a shield? *waits patiently, longing to be a spartan warrior*”

Yes, you will be. But it’ll do less damage.

Quote Survivor, Quantor asks, “Will there be fix which will help us to craft some of the Blueprints Raptor Claus has dropped ?”

Yep, stack sizes goin’ up!

Quote Survivor, GregoPeck asks, “Raptor Claus dropped a lot of cool stuff, can we get regular supply drops to give us more cool items, too?”

We plan to rebalance the supply drops in the next major update.

Quote Survivor, Drake_69 asks, “Can we please get an server config option to disable loot crates. I would like to have a server without loot crates spawning!”

Sure, we’ll add that in the next major version.

Quote Survivor, Dreanom asks, “I am a giant fan of ark and specifically the underwater parts of it, however, taking a 15 minute break to stare at my screen every time it gets foggy doesn't exactly suit my tastes. Will this ever be changed?”

Yup, we’re working on a fix for it as we speak and hope to have it ready shortly :).

Quote Survivor, Sen asks, “The Assault Rifle mounts the Flashlight on the left side of the barrel. When looking down the sight with the Flashlight on, the light from the attachment obscures parts of the sight which can get in the way while aiming downrange, especially at night (See screenshot).

Could you move the Flashlight mount so it's mounted on the Assault Rifle as an Underbarrel attachment?”

It shall be done!

Quote Survivor, Nihrahk asks, “Will raptors be given a pack bonus soon?”

That’s for the Allosaurus!

That’s it for this week’s ARK Digest! Thanks for tuning in and hopefully you’ve walked away learning something new ;). Please take a look at our latest changes in Patch 231 and be sure to share your feedback! We’ve got a lot planned this year and can’t wait to get cracking!

All the best,

Wildcard Jat & The ARK Survival Evolved Team!