ARK One Year Anniversary and Patch 242: Enter the Dragon!

Exciting news Survivors! The Dragon makes its debut in ARK: Survival Evolved on it’s Birthday Week as players can now face off the mighty beast and it's fearsome flyer minions in their epic treacherous volcanic lair! Patch 242 also introduces additional tribe member settings, a training dummy, diseases and cures, interactive baby raising, two new creatures, the Dilplodocus, the Leech and so much more!

On Thursday, the 2nd of June, ARK: Survival Evolved will officially turn One Year Old! Exciting right?! Already a year has gone by and we’d like to celebrate that with you by running a special one-week “ARK Birthday Event” where players can find Candles from Supply crates to craft ARK Birthday Cakes! When each candle is blown out, a special message to the players occur and exclusive items are gifted, including: Player and Dino Party Hats, Fun “Birthday Suits” (censor-pixelization of course ;)), and finally, as everyone knows there’s no party without a cake - a giant ARK Anniversary Birthday Cake which can be consumed for a major XP Buff!

Despite being one of the island’s larger creatures, Diplodocus Insulaprincep is among the Island’s smaller sauropods which allow it to offer maximum speed and greater endurance compared to its giant brethren!

After taming, many tribes equip the beast with a large saddle which allows the Diplodocus to carry as many as 10 passengers! These passengers often use ranged weapons to protect the creature and attack nearby enemies while on the move.

Diplodocus has shown to be a strange creature due to it’s overly trusting nature, which has proven to be quite detrimental to its life. It usually doesn’t flee from predators until after they’ve attacked it repeatedly, preferring instead to make numerous fruitless attempts at friendship. For some strange reason, Diplodocus trust humans so much that it doesn’t seem to fight back against them, ever!

The Leech is one of the more detestable creatures of the island. The disease-carrying blood-sucker, Haementeria Iaetus has practically no intelligence, and merely attaches to any nearby living flesh in an attempt to drain that creature’s blood. Not tamable, the Leech does not provide much of a resource for any tribe, though some have been known to keep them around in order to create antidotes: When process carefully, Haementaria venom can be made into powerful anti-venom!

Removing Haementeria requires precision bladework, or access to an open flame! Both can be nearly as dangerous to the host as to the leech itself. Once the Leech attaches to a host, its drain blood at a rapid pace, and the host will suffer from hunger, loss of health and reduced stamina. Some Haementeria are also carriers for a dangerous disease known as ‘Swamp Fever’, which persists permanently beyond the Leech’s own lifespan.

Alongside the special event and the new creatures, players will be able to take advantage of the new structure: Training Dummy which will display floating Damage Per Second values indicating how strong each dino attack actually is, while the new mechanic, Permanent Diseases & Cures, will enable players to deliberately infect Dodos to use them as Disease Vectors! If you get a permanent disease, it persists even beyond respawn and you will need to cure it with an antidote using the blood of the leeches!

And now for all the juicy details about today's patch!

• Dragon Arena & Dragon Boss Fight

• Breeding Mechanics Phase 2: Interactive Baby Raising (cuddle with your Dino babies, pet, walk, and hand-feed them for extra benefits and greater affinity for whoever raised them once they grow up!)

• Optional RPG Stat Mode: Displays floating in-world damage numbers for all Player-Related Damage Events.

• Added 'Follow Range' (Low/Medium/Far) Setting Per Tamed Dino

• Added option for PvE Servers to disable building around critical resource node regions

• Added server option to override per-Item Crafting costs

• Added server option to override the loot tables for each kind of supply crate

• Added server option to limit number of members in Tribes. Default: no limit.

• Multi-Seat Saddles (Galli, Diplodocus, etc). Dinos now have an option to enable public seating. Dino Taxi service, ahoy!

• Servers can now optionally enable an "offline raiding prevention" mode which will make Dinos/Structures invincible if no owner is logged-in (indicated via the head whether the owner player/tribe is logged-in or not). Recommend that server owners utilize this with care, as it may have undesired side effects in a competitive environment

• Tribe Groups Phase 2: Support for Limited Non-Admin Invites and promotions/demotions per group! Also "Prevent Dino Unclaiming" checkbox, and other new per-rank options

• Added Alpha Mosasaurus (contains lots of Black Pearls)

• Alpha creatures XP reduced by 45%

• Auto-Turrets can no longer be built on Quetz/Sauro/Mosa/Plesi/Paracer platforms (Plant turrets can't be grown on them). Any existing turrets on such platforms will no longer fire. Otherwise they're now only allowed on Rafts and non-moving Bases.

• Plant Turrets now consume Fertilizer per shot, and also will not shoot if no water is in the crop plot.

• Approximate +100% increase to Sauropod and Paraceratherium respective Weight stats.

So it’s a big one guys! We hope you have a fantastic time with the update and enjoy the special event, we are so grateful for all the support you show us and hopefully we’ll be able to celebrate many more special occasions together, in our Birthday Suits!

All the best,

Wildcard Jat and the ARK: Survival Evolved Team