Hey Survivors!

Welcome to the twenty-fourth issue of the ARK Digest! It’s a week of firsts for us! Not only is this the first Digest to be dedicated on the new Community Hub, or the first Digest to really feature Xbox One content but also..

We are the first ever online survival game to come to consoles and ARK is available for download on the Xbox Game Preview program!

For those eager survivors, you can pick up a copy of the Xbox One game here!

ARK Survival Evolved - Game Preview!

As always, your feedback remains important to us and we highly encourage you to leave your comments, concerns, suggestions and reports on our new Community Hub! More specifically, any bug or technical reports to be made can be directly posted on our dedicated Xbox report sub-forum here.

And with the arrival of the game on this new platform, we're also celebrating with some contests! In addition to our regular Community Crunch, we shall be offering prizes for awesome Xbox One screenshots and also to the first Survivor who tweets at us (@survivetheark) a screenshot of the Bionic Rex on an Official PvP Server! You can check out more details below.

Alienware Modding Contest!

We’re excited to finally announce the winners of our Alienware ARK Modding Contest! It’s been a few months and we had a lot of entries who all worked very hard on their mods. It was pretty difficult to narrow it down to a top 3 from our initial top 10 and the results were incredibly close, but without further ado let’s give a big congratulations to our finalists!

Here are the winners as announced by Alienware

3rd Place: ARK Pirate World!

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=547377246

Congratulations! ARK Pirate World takes home the third place prize of $2,500 USD, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 Graphics Card!

We spoke to the developers of the mod a little whilst back and featured them in a Community Crunch which you can check out here

2nd Place: Valhalla

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=504122600

Congratulations! Valhalla takes home the second place prize of $5,000 USD, Alienware X51 Desktop, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 Graphics Card

We spoke to the developers of the mod a little whilst back and featured them in a Community Crunch which you can check out here

1st Place: Primitive+

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=504360469

Congratulations! Primitive+ takes home the grand prize of $15,000 USD, Alienware Area-51 Desktop, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 TI Graphics Card

We spoke to the developer of the mod a little whilst back and featured them in a Community Crunch which you can check out here

We’ll be announcing the details for an upcoming mod contest soon in which everyone will be able to enter! Stay tuned for more details

ARK Digest Q&A

Survivor, Bo*****s asks, “What's with the delay on the Therizinosaurus and Dimetrodon? You had the models, animations and even a bit of texturing done! What gives?”

Quote They’ll be coming soon, but we wanted to add some of the more mechanically interesting creatures first. Can you say Procoptodon?

Survivor, DeadlyPaws asks, “Any ETA on the dino perches for dimos, monkeys and possibly compys?”

Quote Soon! (™)

(They’ll actually be little cages that you transfer the creature into and then it remains attached, similar to how the player sits in a chair).

Survivor, Dinogirl4Ever asks, “When more character customisation comes into play could we get a plastic surgery machine so we can modify our characters? Will we be able to change hair on the spot?”

Quote Aye, you’ll be able to give yourself a new haircut using a certain new item.

Survivor, King Barney asks, “Do you guys plan on adding animals, not bosses, that are somewhat mythological? Perhaps the power oozing from the obelisks has an effect on the animals, like a mutation.”

Quote Yes, but not on the primary ARK.

Survivor, Jona | Hugh Idiyout asks, “What will happen at the upcoming "Christmas Event"?”

Quote Presents, Santa, Snow, Coal, Stockings full of Loot, Decorations, Candy Canes, and more. Stay tuned for the full reveal!

Survivor, austingillespie asks, “What are your thoughts currently on contracting diseases? is it a random chance while in the swamps or jungles? would it be affected by overheating? could coming into contact with certain animals help spread diseases? and when you die does the disease reset or does it stay with you until it's cured?”

Quote Diseases will be caused both by the environment as well as certain creatures, and they will persist even after respawn, thus making it imperative to investigate the correct cures.

Survivor, the_british_kiwi asks, “What do you plan to add and to what dinos in your tlc pass that you said you planned on doing?”

Quote For starters, the T-Rex needs to have a creature-frightening roar, and the Trike needs to have a proper charge attack ;-)

Survivor, TheLogicalCow asks, “Shine some light on how beer will work/be made?”

Quote Get the right ingredients, put them into a cooking pot with water, and wait a lonnnnnnnng time (but the time can be accelerated based on the ambient temperature!). Beer itself is extremely nutritious and basically causes you to not have to eat for a while, but has some side effects.

Survivor, Wulfsige85 asks, “Aside from better items, will we have any reason to fight the bosses multiple times? Will it have unique items like lets say you defeat the dragon boss and it drops blueprint to craft a badass dragon armor or weapon ala monster hunter?”

Quote Actually yes, each time the boss will become substantially more difficult (well, each Ascension cycle) with some new tactics, and to Ascend again, you’ll have to beat the new more-difficult boss again in your next cycle.

Survivor, _Nordic asks, “Can we get the ability to "favorite" items in our inventory, so they do not transfer out when we hit "Transfer all"?”

Quote Sounds like a good idea!

Survivor, Zeta1127 asks, “What other defensive plants like Ampullaria Pilobolus (Plant Species X) are planned?”

Quote A Venus Fly Trap, of sorts.

Survivor, Jona | Hugh Idiyout asks, “Will there be a wipe near the new caves? Just rebuild my snow base after the last wipe and while watching the xbox trailer i was wondering where these snow areas (looked new for me) will be.”

Quote We do plan to have some major biome adjustments coming up, but the exact areas will be denoted in-game substantially before they take place this time.

Survivor, -=Justicel=- (Firehawk) asks, “Someone asked a few digest back and you had said would add it next patch but it hasn't been added. Can we get the items numbers updated instead of using the long spawn strings. “

Quote Check v227 notes

Survivor, WeIRdLifE asks, “Hey ark since you are releasing on the xbox would it be possible to get new controller control scheme on the pc version at the same time. my tribe mates and myself all play with xbox controllers but have to keep switching to a keyboard for lots of things.”

Quote Yeah we will be merging the vastly improved gamepad controls from Xbox to PC in the near future.

Survivor, Taffle asks, “Hey Ark Team! questions about the Xbox release will we ever be able to rent a server and have Friends to join instead of 5 players and having 2 Xboxs”

Quote We’re looking into doing that. Should be possible but requires going through some processes with Microsoft and Server Hosting Companies first (security related).

Survivor, COGSCREAMSRAGE asks, “Will there be any type of Cross-platform with the Xbox and PC versions?”

Quote Alas ARK will not be cross-platform. Each version of the game will have their own Official Servers and receive the content updates at different times, as well as have some technical differences, so cross platform would not be possible.

Survivor, Pellzrr asks, “Will I be able to have mods such as Valhalla on Xbone eventually?”

Quote Not directly, but if a Mod is popular enough (like SotF then it might be possible with the consent of the mod creators to release it as an official free content. (Therefore, maybe Valhalla ;))

Survivor, DiksDiezel asks, “How often do you plan to update the game on the xbox one? Do you plan to keep the contents on the console up to date with pcs?”

Quote Xbox One updates are planned at a rate of approximately one every two weeks.

Survivor, Seghs asks, “How will saving the game work? Will me and my mom and dad be able to save separate "games"?”

Quote Singleplayer or Non-Dedicated Savegames are per-Xbox-profile. Dedicated Save Data is per console.

Survivor, That rock over there asks, “Will Survival of The Fittest be available on Xbox One?”

Quote We are intending to port it to Xbox One once it’s refactored into a separate game mode rather than a Total Conversion, a process that is currently taking place.

Survivor, candi_4687 asks, “Split screen?”

Quote Yes! Split screen is something we’re currently working on, and we’ve got it working internally. It won’t be ready for the launch, however expect it some time in early 2016. This will be for both console and PC! You can read more about it here:

Survivor, Bo*****s asks, “At 30 seconds into the Xbox trailer, there is a shot of a snowy mountain range. PLEASE tell me that's not an Xbox exclusive feature.”

Quote This isn’t an Xbox Exclusive feature! It’s just a sneak-peak of our upcoming Boss Arena

Survivor, Up From the Depths asks, “Will hosting a private game be able to support more than 4 players in the future?”

Quote We’re hoping to eventually get it up to 8, as we get on with the key optimizations!

Survivor, DarthGizmo asks, “Is Development on the Xbone gonna slow down the development of the pc version?”

Quote The development of Xbox will not slow down the PC version, in fact it will help it improve. Due to the work we’ve done on the console so far, we’re able to port over a lot of optimization changes and have uncovered many new things to improve the current state of the PC game, some things which have already been implemented. Right now we’ve just released the console version, so it’s in a little busy-period, but once things stabilize this week we’ll be back on track with updating the PC version of the game. From there, we’ll port over those updates to consoles - however PC will still have its rapid development!

Survivor, LAZR asks, “Will there be text chat support? and in regards again to server hosting, how about changing server setting such as taming and day night cycles?”

Quote There is text-chat support! You can access this by holding your left-bumper key and your back button! We’re also going to have tribe-chat setup in the upcoming patch which will be accessible by using the left bumper key alongside the start button. As for changing server settings, you’ll be able to do that in the Host GUI, similar to what’s currently setup on PC for Single Player and Non-dedicated games! Just change the sliders and select the settings to your liking before hosting the game. However, we do need to expose the rest of the server options to the GUI, and expand the range of the sliders, so we’ll be doing that in an upcoming Xbox One update!

That’s it for this week’s ARK Digest! Thanks for tuning in and hopefully you’ve walked away learning something new ;). Thanks for all the support, engagement, and feedback so far!

All the best,

Wildcard Jat & The ARK Survival Evolved Team!

