The updates just keep on rolling in from the team over at Studio Wildcard. Today, they released the ARK Digest with a response to the initial launch as well as a new dossier. The dossier is for the Spinosaur, which they call “everybody’s favorite versatile apex predator.” Check out the bottom of this post for more information on that.

In the digest, they cover a couple of new things. First of which is the mod tools. They don’t give an exact date, but they say they will be releasing the UE4 tools along with some example mods to show people how they can begin creating content for the game.

Next, they tell us what new features we should be expecting to see coming out soon. These include a better sign system, expanded illness and weather systems, more species of creatures, and the addition of the “Cave of the Hunter,” a new cave system that will exist alongside the original 6 cave systems and 12 underwater mini-caves.

Of course, as an early access game, you can expect each of the patches to bring stability and performance improvements as well as new content. They mention that the release of DirectX 12 is coming up, and is expected to increase performance by 25-30%, and they are hoping to have SLI support soon to take full advantage of higher end setups. They say they hope to have these improvements made “with the introduction of Windows 10.” With the OS’s launch slated for late July, that gives a window into the timeframe they envision for those features.

These updates should, they say, be rolled out either everyday or every other day for clients, while servers should only see changes a couple of times per week to prevent constant restarts.

Penultimately, they are making some alterations to the forums. Specifically, they are adding a dedicated feedback section and an area for promoting your services. They also posted a few threads to keep people up to date on the patches, the state of the game, and the plans the developers have from week to week.

Finally, they address the issues that have come up since the launch. Specifically, they did not expect the volume of players they got and, as a result, there were a lot of connection issues. For those of you that didn’t notice, most players were having difficulties joining servers, finding the servers their friends were on, and other connection issues. The devs assure us that they are working on this constantly, and we should hopefully see the improvements in the future patches.

ARKaholics, welcome the Spinosaur!

Common Name: Spinosaur

Species: Spinosaurus Aquareliga

Time: Early-Late Cretaceous

Diet: Carnivore

Temperament: Territorial

Wild:

Among the few carnivores on the island that can match tyrannosaurs in size, spinosaurus aquareliga does not quite match its ferocity.

Spinosaurus’ four legs and large sail make it fairly swift on land, and incredibly fast in water.

The one comforting fact about the spinosaurus is that it seems more at home near water than away from it. While the creature is insatiable while near water, it tends to become more docile as it gets farther from it. On one occasion, I only escaped a spinosaurus by getting far enough from its lake home to make it simply lose interest.

Domesticated:

Spinosaurus is an incredibly well-rounded apex carnivore. Faster than a tyrannosaurs in water, able to travel on land unlike a megalodon, and larger than a carnotaurus, its all-terrain versatility may be unrivaled. For hunters who wish to have a well-rounded mount, spinosaurus may be the ideal choice if — if they can acquire one.