Patch v278 finds its way hopping onto the ARK with many new features, fixes, and a bunch of tender loving care for some old friends! The Rex, Procoptodon, Gigantopithecus, Direwolf, and Direbear all find themselves receiving both gameplay and visual upgrades!

Here's a breakdown of the five creatures that have been updated in this TLC pass.

Dino TLC - The Procoptodon!

- Receives a model update, animation update, sound pass, and some new abilities:

- Will take reduced fall damage

- Carry weight will be noticeably increased

- Can carry small creatures and baby dinos in its pouch

- A knockback kick which can affect significantly larger dinos

- Added an aimed jump which can be used by holding down the Jump key

- Carried characters in a pouch have reduced food consumption rate when carried by Mate-Boosted Female Procoptodons.

- Babies imprinted while in a carried Procoptodon pouch receive more affinity

Dino TLC - The Gigantopithecus A.K.A Bigfoot!

- Receives a model update, animation update, new fur, sound pass and some new abilities:

- The Bigfoot will receive an armour-degrading attack; this means when it fights, it'll do more damage to your armour's durability. It is important to note that the armour-degrading attack will not affect the Yeti creatures found in the game.

- Added the capability to climb ziplines (but not jump between them)

- Added a jump

- It can now carry and throw small creatures

- Throwing has been made more accurate, similarly to crabs with targetting cursor

Dino TLC - The Direbear!

- Receives a model update, animation update, new fur and some new abilities:

- When riding a Direbear, players will be immune to bees. They won't be able to knock you off your bear, and they will target focus the bear instead of the player.

- The Direbear will also be able to harvest honey from wild beehives without attracting bees or hurting the hive using it's alternative attack. Plus the amount of honey it receives will be 3x the standard amount.

- Increased swim speed

Dino TLC - The Direwolf!

- Receives a model update, animation update, new fur and some new abilities:

- Howl now activates a pack buff for 90 seconds (with a 1.5 minute cooldown). When the Alpha howls, the pack also howls. The pack buff strengthens the Alpha, as well as its pack (reduced amount vs Alpha)

- Hunter's Instinct passive buff which will allow it to sniff out people/creatures with less than 50% health

- Sniff tertiary ability to indicate nearby explorer notes, or to detect buried/stealth creatures

Dino TLC - The Rex!

- Receives a model update, animation update, and some new abilities:

- Its roar should receive a CD and make non-allies (under a certain dragweight) poop to act as a small stun/interrupt. There will be a cooldown on victims so that they cannot be pooplocked continuously.

- The roar will not be able to scare anything above its level

- Roar will cause players to poop but not stun them

- Rex's ability to climb over small rocks and steeper slopes have been improved.

Patch Notes for v278!

On top of the TLC pass, we also have a ton of tweaks and fixes in patch v278. The list is long, so buckle up!

On the 10th of February, turrets will be hard-number limited to 100. This means that you will not be able to build over 100 turrets within a 10k unit radius, however existing set-ups with over 100 turrets will still function as normal until the 18th of February when we will enable the hard limit, which will retroactively disable (randomly selected) turrets that are over the 100 limit from functioning. Here's the patch note for the turret changes when they land on the 18th:

Quote - You can now enable the retroactive turret hard limit by enabling this setting in your game.ini under ShooterGameMode: bHardLimitTurretsInRange=True This will work on autoturrets, heavy turrets, tek turrets, plant turrets and is no longer map specific. The hard limit calculation is done on start-up, so if your turrets are ever over the limit, they will be randomly shut-off until you're under the limit. In order to restore shut off turrets, you must pick up any which exceed the number, as well as shut-off turrets and replace them in order for them to work. 1

Creature Specific Bug Fixes & Balance Balance

- Dragon's Fire Breath direct impact damage reduced by 50%

- Fixed a bug which caused Rock Drake and Wyvern eggs to sink below their nests over time.

- Added Rock Golem Saddles to Scorched Earth Loot Table

- Added Basilisk and Krakinos Saddles to Aberration Loot Table

- Uploaded Creature stats now display Movement Speed and Melee Damage

- Fixed a case where certain creatures would get stuck under the map/inside the map when colliding with larger creatures (most noticeably seen the Rock Drake and Basilisk)

- Fixed an issue which was causing a desync with the Reaper's collision

- No longer need pheromone to claim Reaper Kings

- Moschops will no longer flee when told to harvest dino corpses

- Fixed a bug where some creatures would not be able to attack at low server FPS

- Bronto's and Paracer's breeding time have increased by 50% (equivalent to Quetz)

- Reduced Bronto HP gain per level by 33%

- Reduced Bronto base HP by 10%

- Reduced Paracaratherium base HP by 10%

- Reduced Paracer HP gain per level by 25%

- Reduced Tuso Base HP by 20%

- Reduced Tuso HP gain per level by 25%

- Reduced Dunky resistance to bullets to 40%

- Reduced Dunky other resistances to 60%

- Stego Plate Resistant reduced to 30%

- TEK Tapejara no longer inflicts raid damage (how you inflict torpor on titan, krab, and golem)

- General AI Option for Dinos to only attack conscious targets

- Skittish Stance added to tamed dinos

- Fixed a case where the Pela could use more weapons than just the fishing rod

- Fixed fishing rod no longer working on the Pela

- Tamed and Wild Karkinos no longer get stuck in a floating state by medium/big sized dinos

- Gigantopithecus can now use the teleporter

- Krakinos can no longer move when encumbered

- Fixed a case which allowed Rock Drakes to Glide infinitely

- Pegomastax can no longer steal Artifacts

- Fortitude now provides some resistance versus the effects of the Rex Roar, and this resistance carries onto player-ridden dinos too. Enough fortitude can prevent player-ridden dinos from being poopstunned.

- Increased the amount of food Achatina receives from cake to 500.

- Direbear and Gigantopithecus have been added to Aberration

- Removed the ability to place Plant Y and Bear Traps while riding a dino

- Reduced Titanosaur walk speed by 5% and run speed by 20%

- Corrected bigfoot's socket for Desert Goggle headgear

- For creatures with targetted jumps, pressing jump again in midair will result in the tame falling straight down (to prevent erroneous cases where the dino may unintentionally bounce awkwardly)

- Basilisks now damage foliage on movement to prevent them from getting stuck in trees, and the accuracy of their poision shot has been improved.

- The Giga is no longer raged by fall damage

- The Giga's rage mechanic is now based on damage taken before reduction from external sources (saddles, yuty)

- Reduced the respawn rate of Basilisk and lowered the Nearby Player check

- Fixed a case where the Rock Drake would not correctly uncloak

- Increased the Phoenix's health, stamina and weight.

- Adjusted The Center's Gorilla boss so it now matches The Island

General

- Creative Mode building (an admin command which you can trigger on yourself/another player which removes weight restrictions, crafting requirements, and unlocks all the engrams. Allowing you to freely craft items to your hearts content. Must relog to disable the effect). Creative mode can be activated using the following commands: "Cheat GCM" to activate it on yourself, "Cheat GiveCreativeModeToTarget" to toggle for a player on the center of your screen, and "Cheat GCMP" to toggle for a player by their ID.

- Server option to disable fog. (?DisableWeatherFog=true)

- ARK will now scan your steam achievements and update your local profile accordingly to restore any lost skins/hairstyles.

- Add messages to tribe logs with information about uploading and downloading creatures

- Made a respawning player not targettable by Wild AI

- Option to hide learned engrams

- Players can now directly go from Proning to Crouching position

- Ambient Sounds have their own volume slider

- Right Click Context option added to folders to equip everything insider, allowing for rapid gear switching

- Created a "Use Last PIN Code" so players can quickly access secured structures

- Server option which makes the Silencer hide the name of the player who has killed you from the kill message and tribe log (enabled by default on Console, disabled on PC Official PvP servers)

- Server Option to make Supply Crates random (?RandomSupplyCratePoints=true)

- Option to enable NVIDIA Ansel on Servers (-ServerAllowAnsel)

- Prevented specific graphical flags from being invited via .ini files

- AxisMapping is now taken into account when underwater

- Cooldown added to tribe's changing their name

- 5 Second character and base immunity added to ORP servers when first logging in

- Fixed a collision issue affecting some dino gates that allowed unintended entry

- Fixed multiple client-side and server-side crashes

- Fixed multiple exploits that allowed players to get through the mesh or world barriers

- Fixed a bug which allowed structures to powered infinitely

- Fixed a bug which allowed players to gain a lot of height when using the zipline

- Fixed a bug with Grappling hook which allowed it to be reeled in much quicker than intended

- Fixed a bug which made TEK Sniper not lose any element when zooming in

- TEK projectiles no longer damage structures with splash damage after the projectile has traveled for 5000 units

- TEK projectiles no longer explode midair

- Fixed a bug which allowed players to exceed the boss arena caps

- Fixed a bug which allowed players to speed up the baby raising process for water creatures

- All TEK structures now have an element cost, though in some cases may be in the form of shards

- Smoke nades and Posion nades now have different impact sounds to distinguish between them

- Railings can no longer be built within distance of enemy foundations

- Demo Timers are now hidden behind the Extended Info option (H)

- Can longer prevent turret targeting with cables

- Can no longer handcuff a player to a TEK Bed

- Fixed an issue where the Tek Teleporter built on pillars/ceilings would push players and creatures beneath it.

- Fixed a crash caused by using ForceTame when riding a Dino

- Improved Red Crystal collision so they can be harvested more efficiently by Anky

- Corrected the Aquatic Mushroom description

- Removed collision from glowsticks which would cause movement problems with certain creatures

- Fixed multiple client/server crashes

- Fixed an issue where some zip line anchors were outside of replication range, preventing them from being used.

- Fixed a case which would allow players mounted on certain creatures to throw/place C4 a lot further (e.g. Stego)

- Corrected an incorrect icon with the Seeker Dossier

- Fixed a case where teleporting outside of a large base with the TEK Teleporter would show foliage that was harvested

- Fixed multiple map issues (holes and collision)

- Fixed a case where some foliage would not replicate appropriately on Aberration

- Turrets now respect enemy foundation placement rules, and there is a 30-second spin-up time when being powered by a battery.

- You can now scroll the chatbox using a game controller by holding down the BACK Action Wheel, and selecting the Scroll Chat Box option. This will highlight the chatbox. To exit this mode, just press back button on your controller (B/Circle)

- You can now enable the retroactive turret hard limit by enabling this setting in your game.ini under ShooterGameMode:

bHardLimitTurretsInRange=True

This will work on autoturrets, heavy turrets, tek turrets, plant turrets and is no longer map specific. The hard limit calculation is done on start-up, so if your turrets are ever over the limit, they will be randomly shut-off until you're under the limit. In order to restore shut off turrets, you must pick up any which exceed the number, as well as shut-off turrets and replace them in order for them to work.

- Tribe ownership in hardcode mode is now transferred to the next person in line when the owner of a hardcore tribe is killed

- Mini map overhaul:

Will receive a new 'Me' marker which is easier to identify

'Me' marker now tracks rotation

Increased number of point of interest map markers to 30

Changed font for map markers to avoid overlays

'Me' marker and 'points of interest' markers are now colourable

- Tribe Log now displays when people have been kicked, promoted, demoted, claim, unclaim, upload and download a creature.

- Players are automatically expelled from tribes when they die in hardcore

- Large underwater rock features on the island can now be built on

- Reduced cloning costs by approximately 40% across the board.

- Providing players with the option to flip their tribe log, so that they can either select to have the most recent messages at the top or bottom.

- Torches will work similarly to Flame Arrows versus Plant Y Traps

- Distuingish the sound effect for smoke grenades and posion grenades when hitting the ground

- Reduced TEK Tier vacuum crafting requirements, increased their damage resistance and made it so that metal giant hatchframes are snapable to them

- Spyglass now functions correctly on Tamed Reapers

- Tribes can now see the demo timers of their own structures

- Added an option checkbox for 'Toggle Extended Hud Info' that will make 'H' function as a toggle rather than a hold

Community Crunch 118!

The Community Crunch is where we share important things going on with ARK, as well as host contests and showcase creations made by the community!

TLC Phase 2 Preview!

Introducing -- The Sarcosuchus! The Sarco has been an often requested creature to receive a TLC pass. One of the earlier creatures added to the game, over time it has become over shadowed by other predators. On top of its visual update, the Sarco will also be receiving new abilities to better keep it in line with the other carnivorous creatures of the ARK.

The Sarco will be given three new attacks:

A grab and roll attack, also known as a Death Roll. With smaller creatures the Sarco will be able to grab and roll with them in its mouth while with larger creature it will grab on and spin aggressively.

A 180 degree attack wherein it can attack something directly behind itself by swinging it's body around and biting behind itself.

A short lunge attack where it'll be able to lunge forward to take its prey by surprise.

Sarcos are natural deterrents for Piranha's making them valuable partners when travelling through waterways and swamps. The Sarco will also prefer fish meats over regular meat for taming, and when idle will rest with its mouth open in a permanent toothy-grin.

Please remember that creatures showcased for upcoming TLC are still works-in-progress and are therefore subject to change before final release, which includes both visual redesigns, as well as gameplay changes.

A common question from Primitive Plus fans is about the lack of content on Scorched Earth and Aberration. For TLC Patch #2 in March, we'll finally be properly introducing the content to these maps so that Primitive fans will be able to take full advantage of the gamemode on these maps.

Valentine's Day Event!

Starting on February 13th for 72-hours (until the 16th at 6pm EST), love will fill the air as we celebrate Valentines Day with our #MateBoosted Event!

The ARK will be placed under Cupid's loving spell. With this event, creatures have also been affected by Cupid's spell in the following way:

Tames have a 5% chance to drop a Valentine's Cake when they mate. A Valentine's Cake can be used for a Full Heal or to advance 50% of a creature's taming affinity bar. Must be used during the event.

Red, Pink, and White colored wild creatures can be found wandering the ARKs searching for true loves kiss.

All servers (including Officials) using the following commandline parameter: -vday can get some extra mate-boosted bonuses:

Mate Boosted range increased by 2x

Mating Speed and Mating Recovery increased by 3x

Creature Maturing and Egg Incubation speed has been increased by 3x

Baby Food Consumption has been decreased by 1/3

Survivors also have the opportunity to send out their own customs Valentines Day card to their loved ones. Head over to http://playark.com/valentines/ and create your custom card! Be sure to send us a tweet with your image attached and the #MateBoosted, so that over the course of the week we can retweet your loving messages!

The Great Migration #2!

Today we will be beginning the process of removing our lower population LEGACY ARK servers on PC, Xbox, and PS4 from our Official LEGACY network once again. Over time the ARK population has migrated from legacy to non-legacy and in its wake left many servers with low populations for 0-1 players in a significant amount of cases. In addition to taking down these underutilised servers we will also be putting up new servers onto the non-legacy network across all platforms for players to enjoy a fresh start on their favourite map.

Here is a quick breakdown on how this process will work:

Taking Down Low Pop Servers

With calculations based on sustained player-count as well as popularity of game mode we will be removing the lower 40% of legacy servers, most of which retain a 0-1 player concurrent population. These servers will be taken offline and some will be re-purposed for new, fresh servers that will be put up on March 9th. Any existing server that is not considered a low pop server and is not taken down will still exist on the Legacy network.

Legacy servers will continue to remain on a separate cluster from the new cluster, which means you will not be able to transfer anything between Legacy servers and the new servers.

Servers Up for Deletion

Below is a complete list of the LEGACY servers that will be deleted come March 9th. You have from now until then to move your belongings onto a server not present on this list. Please click one of the links below. They are separated by platform (PC, Xbox, and PS4).

How To Move Servers

If you are unfamiliar with the process, you are able to upload your items, creatures, and player through the Obelisk terminal, supply drops, as well as the Tek Transmitter. Survivors are advised to use Cross-ARK immediately to relocate their belongings onto a server that is not included in our take-down list above.

Allocation of New Servers

We know you are all very curious about this, but we don’t have this information ready to share quite yet. What I can tell you is that we plan to continue to support all current existing game modes in some capacity, so you won’t lose access to your favourite way to play the game. This means that lower population token servers won't be deleted if they are the only server of that gamemode. We will be mainly focusing our efforts on strictly PVP and PVE servers on all maps, but will allocate servers to the other game modes based on their popularity.

Server Saves of Deleted Servers

We will make the save files available as soon as we can, which will likely be sometime around February 19th at the earliest. We will host the PC files which anyone can download and then you are welcome to re-host the save file for your own use. We'll include a link to where you can download server saves in this post when they are available. Nitrado will also be able to provide the saves for use on Nitrado servers for console, as they have done in the past.

ARK: 2x Evolution Event Weekend!

Survivors across ALL Platforms will be receiving a special Evolution Event perk this weekend! It's already live now and will remain active until Monday the 12th of February at 3 PM EST. All Official Servers will be undergoing this evolutionary change which includes:

2x Harvesting Rate

2x Taming Rate

2x EXP Rate

Community Contests!

NVidia Ansel Photography Contest

Super Resolution Version: http://images.nvidia.com/ansel/SuperResolution/ARK-SuperResolution1/ARK__Survival_Evolved_HighRes_2016_09_01_-_14_38_36_55.html

ARK: Survival Evolved and the Scorched Earth Expansion Pack now include support for NVIDIA Ansel -- a revolutionary new way to capture in-game shots. Compose shots from any position, adjust with post-process filters, capture HDR images in high-fidelity formats, and share the screenshots in 360 via a smartphone, PC or VR headset.

Learn more about these features from the NVIDIA blog.

Now let’s get to the contest!

There were 3 potential categories for survivors to enter their shots into and they were the following:

Four Categories

*NEW* Freestyle: These can be images or videos taken using NVIDIA's new Freestyle filters! If videos are submitted, they must have a maximum duration of one minute.

Super Resolution: These should be taken at 8x Super Resolution. Players can optionally use Depth of Field effects accessible in Spectator mode by pressing the [Delete] key.

Panoramic 360 Stereoscopic 3D: These should be taken at 4x Super Resolution, in 360 Stereoscopic 3D mode. We will crop them to 2D for web display, while also providing the 3D version for viewing within VR display.

Freeform: Any settings, whacky and creative use of Ansel filters are encouraged. Adding humorous titles/captions in Photoshop is also acceptable for this category!

And now without further ado, here are your entries!

Freestyle!

Winner!

pitsmat - Poison

Runners-up!

Blue Dragon - Skin Deep

pitsmat - Flutter

Honourable Mentions!

GP - Hidden Depths

pitsmat - Emerge

roguewolf91 - Moonlit Run

Norlinri - Burning tentacles

Blue Dragon - Regrets

Blue Dragon - Into the blue

pitsmat - Phoenix

Wolf Amaterasu - Hallucination Effect

starwolf23 - Painted Mantis

pitsmat - Spit

pitsmat - Ember

Norlinri - Three kingdoms

Norlinri - Retro Manticore

Norlinri - Ray of light

Norlinri - Portal

Norlinri - Landscape

Norlinri - Desert

Norlinri - Deep in the cave

GP - Mobile Light

F1r3fly - Warm Forest

F1r3fly - Relic Filter

Ego - World of the Light

Ego - Nest Protection

Ego - Last ounce of strength

Ego - ARKon Heavy

Blue Dragon - Lost

Super Resolution!

Winner!

Wolf Amaterasu - ARK Primal

Runners-up!

Ego - What the hell, Elon

Blue Dragon - Drakes of a feather

Honourable Mentions!

Wolf Amaterasu - Aim & Launch

Valoule - Freedom

GP - Challenging The King

Norlinri - Tapejara

Norlinri - Shadows

Blue Dragon - Swamp life

Blue Dragon - Just keep swimming

Wolf Amaterasu - Sand Attack

Wolf Amaterasu - Fear

GP - Always Sleep With One Eye Open

roguewolf91 - Catch Me If You Can

Norlinri - Super powers

Blue Dragon - New Arrivals

Blue Dragon - King

Blue Dragon - Joker

Blue Dragon - 3rd Generation Plant

EXFIB0 - Aberrant Dinosaurs

EXFIB0 - Riverside

Panoramic 360 Stereoscopic 3D!

Winner!

GP - Hidden Grotto

Honourable Mentions!

Blue Dragon - Remains

Blue Dragon - Shooting star

Ego - Aberrant paradise

GP - Magnificent Center

roguewolf91 - A Magical Evening

Valoule - T-rex Pareidolia

Wolf Amaterasu - Enchanted Village

Wolf Amaterasu - Up or Down

EXFIB0 - Pink River

EXFIB0 - Light

EXFIB0 - Down The River

EXFIB0 - Blue

Freeform!

Winner!

starwolf23 - ARKentines

Runner-up!

Valoule - Ark park vr

Honourable Mentions!

Blue Dragon - ARK Winter Olympics

F1r3fly - Relic Filter

GP - Extinction Is Upon Us

Wolf Amaterasu - Puppy Filter

EXFIB0 - Retro

ARKVideo!

This contest is open to 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!

And without further ado, the ARKVideo for Community Crunch 118 is...

Ark Survival Evolved - Dodgy by GeeKy gAMer no.1 & gOOgly Owl!

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 118 is…

Last Train to Ragnarok, PvE Concept Build, No Mods (ARK) by Sitharias!

If you'd like to check out the submissions from the rest of the entrants, you can do so here:

Fan Feature!

ARK Aberration - Zauberwald (Enchanted Forest - Mushroom Village) by Wolf Angelus

Let's Turn Two Cliff Platforms and a Rock Slab into THIS! - ARK Castle Base - ARK Building Showcase by SWChris

Ark-Truly Round Base Build! by Tlc138

Sphinx by MissyPrime

16 Golems VS 3 Broodmothers - PVE Server Community Event (gameplay) by RaMarcus

Ark Highschool ! by Valoule

Cliffside Mansion by QueenGoddess93

Forest Camo Sarcosuchus by Sharkcat



http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1289624702

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:

Twitter: twitter.com/survivetheark

Facebook: facebook.com/survivetheark

Reddit: reddit.com/r/playark

Instagram: instagram.com/survivetheark

All the best,

Studio Wildcard