Popular FAQs Answered Issue #2

Hello fellow ARKaholics! Today, we are bringing you our second issue of some popular questions asked by the ARK community that have been answered by the game developers. You can expect us to update our websites ARK FAQ page shortly after this article is out. This time, we are including more popular questions than our previous issue as you all seemed to enjoy it quite a bit!

Gameplay Questions

Dinosaur Abilities

Different dinosaurs will have different abilities, however no word yet on what those would be. The example cited in the question, however, revolved around combat. Though will be able to set your “pets” to a specific setting to allow them to attack on sight, attack anything that attacks your tribe, attack anything that you attack, or ignore everyone.

Infinite Dinosaurs

You cannot run out of dinosaurs or, as the asker put it, cause a second dinosaur extinction.

Confirmed List of Dinosaurs & Animals

On the Steam Community forums, a list has been posted containing all the various species that will inhabit the ARKS. The list, as of the publication of this update of the FAQs, contains 48 species, each with how far in development they are. More are sure to be added in the future, so be sure to check back here for updates. You can look at that post here.

Base Decay

Bases will not naturally decay or anything of that manner, so anything you build will stay forever or until destroyed. Bases can be dismantled by other survivors.

Tree Climbing

Currently you can’t directly climb trees as a player character, but you can build upwards using ladders and integrate your structures with the trees. Actual climbing is something they’ll be considering as they progress though. Certainly trees within dense jungle areas do provide a lot of coverage from the ideas of players!

Fishing

They have already implemented the ability to spear fish, however they are working on adding a fishing rod, which they say should be added by the end of the summer.

Parachutes

The devs confirmed that there will be parachutes, allowing you to fall from great distances and flying dinosaurs and survive. The details on them, however, were sparse.

Excretions

To add to realism, players will, after consuming enough food, need to defecate. It can either happen naturally, or you can force it by pressing a button. And remember to collect your feces, as they can be used later on in composters to create fertilizer for farming.

Tribal Flags & Signs

There will initially be only basic, single-colored flags, but they plan to implement “fully-paintable” flags sometime after EA. These flags can be placed anywhere and can be used to signify individuals or tribes. There will also be signs which you’ll be able to add text on, and not too long after early access you’ll be able to have fully paintable signs using craftable dyes as well as a full painting interface. You’ll also be able to color most structural elements with paints.

C4 & Tripwires

C4 is certain to be a versatile tool, as the devs promise it will be able to be placed “anywhere, really, including players and dinosaurs.” They will also be able to be set up to be detonated by tripwire. Additionally, they plan to add poison dart and spike traps after releasing into early access.

Where to Find Loot

The devs said that there would be supply drops from “something to be revealed.” They would be “beaming” from above and around the ARK. As with any game, harder areas with harder creature spawns will have better loot, which you can spot by the color of the beam the drop emits.

On top of this, they added that caves will be like dungeons are in other games, offering loot at different intervals. Just like above ground, nastier creatures will lead to better loot, and they warn that “some really nasty creatures that lurk deep within the underground,” which, along with the environmental hazards, are sure to make the caves a hotspot for high-level loot..

Next, the various carnivores in the game will sometimes drop loot they got from eating other players. This means they will drop other players’ stuff, so better dinos will have better loot.

Finally, you can craft most things as well, but Loot in particular can give you “rare blueprints that have increased statistical properties (and crafting requirements) beyond normal skill-tree Engrams.”

General Questions

Saves Between Servers

You will be able to transfer items/characters/dinos between servers, but only by “digitizing” them at an Obelisk.

Interactable Land?

You can destroy all the foliage including the trees and many rocks, but you can’t actually terraform the underlying landscape. So you can clear out a forest to make room for a village, but the dirt layer beneath will remain as is.

Procedural Worlds?

Though it will not be available at first, and is in the early stages of development, there is a procedural generation system that is being worked on, and they hope to have it up and running by the end of the summer. They added that they want it to be very customizable, giving the server admins the ability to adjust a plethora of parameters to mold the ARK to their liking. They warn, however, that, like in any other game, procedurally generated content will not be as polished or as high quality as the handmade version, though they hope the modding community can step in and help solve this by both hand-creating their own arks and by tweaking the procedural generation system.

Anti-Cheat

The way ARK will prevent cheating is to use what’s known as a “Server-Authoritative” setup. This differs from other games in the amount of trust it gives players. Some games let the client track it’s own position and report it to the server, trusting all the player location data it receives from the client application. This allows hackers to cheat by exploiting this trust, sending out fake location information that the server will think is from the client. Since the server trusts the client, it just accepts it and relays the information the exact same way it would any other, non-cheating players’ information.

ARK servers, however, won’t trust the client applications at all. What this effectively means is that the server will double check anything and everything the client says against the rules the developers put in place so that, even if hackers send out fake information, it will be caught immediately and those responsible can be kicked and/or banned before they can cause any damage.

They stress, however, that no anti-cheat method is ever 100% effective, and they will be seeking to find and squash any exploits they can in EA.