Hello Survivors,

Welcome to your latest edition of the Community Crunch and ARK Digest!

Xbox One Sale!

ARK: Survival Evolved is currently available on the Xbox Game Preview Program at a reduced sale price! Survivors can now pick up the game, with a 15% discount for Xbox Silver Members or a 25% discount for Xbox Gold Members! If you’ve been waiting for a sale to grab it, now’s your chance!

Xbox Sale!

ARK Digest!

Here is our question and answer session with Lead Designer, Lead Programmer, Co-Creative Director of ARK: Survival Evolved, and Co-Founder of Studio Wildcard: Jeremy "Drake" Stieglitz!

Survivor, n_scheffel asks, “In the last digest you mentioned the new industrial grinder would be similar to the industrial grinder mod detailed on steam. That grinder is an industrial version of the mortar and pestle, and it also does things like convert wood into thatch. We already have the chemistry bench acting as an upgraded mortar and pestle, so how is the industrial grinder going to fit in between without making the chemistry bench pointless?”

Quote It’ll support other kinds of mass-resource conversions!

Survivor, fitzsteve asks, “Hi, would be great to have an update on VR support, when you will be supporting the latest Oculus drivers?”

Quote We’ll go ahead and try to update the support for them for the upcoming v245 patch!

Survivor, HarbingersCat asks, “Any chance of Titanosaur eggs being added in the future?”

Quote Probably best left to a Mod focused around Titanosaurus breeding.

Survivor, n_scheffel asks, “How about an "undo" feature for placed items with a timer of approximately 30 seconds? For example, you place a behemoth gateway you just spent 1500 metal, 350 cp and 100 polymer making, only to realize one pillar is hovering off the ground by 3'. It would be nice to quickly pick up the item rather than demolishing it and wasting 1/2 of the resources.”

Quote That’s a good simple idea, I’ll give a quick implementation and see if the QA team can find any flaws/side-effects or exploits that it opens up.

Survivor, AERHAE asks, “When will we see difficulty level 5 on the island map?”

Quote When Tek tier releases

Survivor, FlyinJapman4 asks, “In regards to Primal Survival, Will we be able to customize our creatures similar to how we customize our human characters, such as height, limb size, skin/fur/scale color, etc?”

Quote Yep, you will!

Survivor, FlyinJapman 4 also asks, “At what Maturity level would a player character be spawned into when they start a game, and how would they be able to survive if they start at newborn/hatchling since raising them as a human is already time consuming?”

Quote Presuming that you’re referring to Primal Survival, in the Official Server configuration, you’ll spawn in as a newborn, BUT you will be able to attack/harvest. Just very, very weakly. It’s challenging Unofficial Servers will be able to specify the age they want new player-creatures to initially be created at.

Survivor, FlyinJapman 4 also asks, “How are the super dinos like the Giga and Titanosaur going to be balanced on PVP servers? Will there be admin options to restrict on what and how many of a species are allowed in that session?”

Quote Yes, servers will be able to configure what creatures are available to choose from, and how many can be chosen within a length of time (for example, the server can specify “1 additional LIVE Titanosaurus can be added every month”, and if it is killed, then it immediately frees up another Titanosaurus slot).

Survivor, HarbringersCat asks, “Will it later be possible to chance upon wild versions of advanced crops, so that you can begin making dino kibble without needing to rely entirely on farm plots?”

Quote We don’t plan to add crops into the wild, but with an upcoming plant diversification, there will be some new plant resources to acquire.

Survivor, tomb asks, “Is there any chance we can get a server setting for only displaying the name tags / ownership tags of our tribe and allies? This would help RP servers a lot by giving the admins a chance to hide meta information. This would prevent for example being identified when you are wearing a mask. Or when you are hiding somewhere and they use a spyglass. You would also not know who owns a house unless they put up a sign!”

Quote Sure, that’s pretty straightforward. We’ll get on it v245.

Survivor, Wulfsige85 asks, “can have an option to place armor on the Training Dummy, that we can see how much damage each tier of armor can take from players/Dino's. Also we need a Dino/Boss dummy.”

Quote Agreed those will be cool, but they’ll require a bit of rewriting of the training dummy to make it wear armor. I will make it happen one weekend though, as soon as I get a bit of time

Survivor, RedStorm8616 asks, “Also, you explained that if you don't stimulate Troodons, they'll eventually betray you, but if you raise one from birth, say imprint it 100%, would it lose this traitorous nature?”

Quote Imprinted Troodon will never betray you!

Community Contests!

ARKitect!

This is an award given to Survivors to celebrate the amazing structures you build. These bases are judged based upon a number of different factors such as their creativity, uniqueness, how fun of a base it is, the difficulty of building it, the functionality it provides and much more!

The ARKitect for Community Crunch 55 is…

Sea Port Fantasy by Wolf Angelus!

See more screenshots of their build in the gallery linked below:

We'd also like to announce three runners up that we were very impressed with! You'll all be awarded runner up prizes!

Backhow by Valoule

Source:

The Temples of Ark-Mun-Ra by The Lime Inc.

The entries this week were phenomenal guys, seriously! Fantastic work

ARKVideo!

This contest will be open for all types of video be they funny, epic, scenic, stories, whatever inspires you. Just a general reminder that they should remain safe for work, think of the children!

The ARKVideo winner for Community Crunch 55 is…

Star Wars Cinematifc by LameWolfProductions!

That’s it for this week’s entries guys! Thank you to all those who entered and congratulations to all our winners and if you’d like to take a look at what all the survivors submitted, you can do so here:

Fan Feature!

Redwood Forest Biome Preview by Fresonis

IS ARK COMPLETELY BROKEN? - THE DREAM VS REALITY by ThickFreedom

Dragon Statue by FataL1ty

Source:

Ark Breeding Phase 3: Random Mutations 2 by King Sandbox Warrior ✥

Source: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=719497249

Treehouse by Sitharias

Source: https://survivetheark.com/index.php?/gallery/album/954-treehouse-build-work-in-progress/

JP is growing | hatchery test by fox™ ✮

Source: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=717283965

Tree House Platform 6 by Pellamelion

Source: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=716777592

Rex Memories by ={ARC}= ArcTrooper210

Source: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=718480216

Happy 4th July by GamerPerfection

Rainbow by Devil69Jin

Fanmade Dossier: Beipiasaurus by CiTyS

Fanmade Dossier: Bistahieversor by CiTyS

Fanmade Dossier: Hulk by CiTyS

Fanmade Dossier: Tetrapodophis by [DS] Massimo

Source: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=715291722

Fanmade Dossier: Potato (Diabloceratops) by Shadlos

Source: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=719490348

Fanmade Dossier: Daeodon Entelodon by INFCTDxGAMR

Primitive+ Developers Blog!

Hey fellow survivors!!!

It’s Ced and I hope you are getting ready for the official launch of Primitive+! For those that have been with me for the past year and a half while I worked on P+, you will know that it has went through a transformation and has had its up’s and down’s in terms of stability. It has been a massive undertaking in which I’ve learned a great deal. While we may be nearing the end of the road, we aren’t at the end of the ride

There are still plans to keep polishing and adding to Primitive+ after the official launch - so keep those ideas and suggestions coming in. Expect a lot of things to look different in the next update! It will be the biggest update P+ has ever seen! In terms of what you may expect to see - bridges, alchemy tables, stairs/steps, more meals and consumables, heavier integration of existing resources, integrated mailbox systems, and much much more.. That’s in addition to the 160+ custom items that Primitive+ introduces. Oh and maybe bug fixes

I’m shooting for a weekend release (Sunday) for the next content patch. Following that, the next updates before going ‘live’ will focus on bug fixes and optimization only. I hope to see everyone give it a shot and see how long they can thrive when living off what the land provides without modern conveniences. Until then……

-Ced

Mod Spotlight!

Cedric: Whats up everyone, I'm here with iSpezz, a well-known modder in the community. Today we're here to talk about his SteamPunk mod but he has other content in the workshop as well. iSpezz, why don't you tell me a little about yourself and other mods you've worked on!

Quote iSpezz: Well i'm 34 been modding ark since it release . I've worked on several mods From Ark Advance, Ark Steampunk, and many other mods. http://steamcommunity.com/id/iSpeZz/myworkshopfiles/

Cedric: Wow, since release!? That's impressive! So is this the first game you started modding for, or are there other games you've tried to mod?

Quote iSpezz: Ark is the first game i ever modded for. I use to play on a lot of modded servers and use to wonder how they did it so i decided to pick up the devkit and take a shot at it. I didn't have any knowledge on the devkit or Unreal Engine 4. But decided hey why not, Started by making a electric generator that used a different resource and it evolved from there. Now i think i have about 8 mods from structure mods to dino mods.

Cedric: You obviously keep busy! OK, so let's talk about the SteamPunk mod. For those that don't even know what SteamPunk is, why don't you give them a brief introduction. What types of things can we expect to see in the mod?

Quote iSpezz: Well Steampunk is a genre of science fiction that typically features steam-powered machinery which i thought would fit in to ark perfectly without making it to techie. So in my mod there are a lot of water/steam powered items like, steam powered generator, water power refrige, to copper steampunk theme structure such as wall floors foundations and more. I do have some electric powered items such as pipe lights and walls lights but i tried my best to stick to the steampunk theme. Recently i've added a few items to the steampunk mod unique that no other mod has, from automated doors to vertical opening gate as well as the very popular steampunk Air balloon.

Cedric: I agree, I think it fits nicely within the ARK family. I must say, I've been dying to ride in an air balloon across the island haha! Are there any other plans to keep adding items to the mod, or are you mostly complete with it?

Quote iSpezz: Actually there is! I plan on adding flying platforms where u can build on, ad well as a steampunk War Zipplin and in the works of steam punk Armor, which a good friend and modder Ben Cheers (http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198036208665) has made for me here is a few screenshots of both the male and female armor:

Cedric: That looks so cool! Can't wait to check it out!!! Well if your history repeats itself, I'm sure we'll see another mod from you in the future! Where do you draw inspiration/ideas from for new mods, or is it just something that hits you and you start working on it?

Quote iSpezz: Well most of the time they just hit me, but i do get ideas from the hundreds and thousands of fans I have on my mods. I have to say Ark as some very full hearted fans that do always offer ideas, feedback and help in testing out of my mods.

Cedric: Can't wait to see what's up next! Before we part, is there anything you'd like to say to the community. It's been really nice chatting with you!

Quote iSpezz: Thanks for all the support as well as if you want to try out modding come join me and a few other modders in our modding discord we help anyone that's willing to learn: https://discord.gg/AqnR2

That’s it for this week’s post guys! As always if you’ve got anything to share please get in touch and be sure to follow us on Twitter at @survivetheark - Facebook at www.facebook.com/survivetheark and Reddit at www.reddit.com/r/playark

All the best,

Wildcard Jat and the ARK: Survival Evolved Team!