Jen

Happy Tuesday, Survivors!

It's PC patch day and we've got two exciting things to chat about that we are currently working on.

Structures Plus:

Now that Extinction has been officially released, the team will be dedicating some time to the integration of Structures Plus. Pulling S+ into ARK's already existing structure system without causing issues with current structures is very important to us. There are also many features that exist in S+ that we cannot integrate into official servers without taking into consideration the impact on game balance.

The plan is to integrate S+ on a feature by feature basis, prioritizing features that are compatible with the official game. We may integrate additional features gated by options for unofficials as time permits. 

Our first bit of integration starts immediately in today’s PC patch where we introduce the ability to pick up undamaged structures for free if it was placed in the last 30 seconds. You can pick up a placed structure by looking directly at the structure and pressing the interact key (E). This change will be included in the next patch for console, due later this week.

Kibble Rework:

Extinction's kibble setup (known as Augmented Kibble) was phase one of our kibble rework. We are currently in the process of assigning these new kibble types to all of the remaining ARK creatures across all maps. 

All eggs will be assigned a value based on the size and rarity of the egg. These sizes include: Extra Small, Small, Medium, Large, Extra Large, and Special. The eggs are then used in a recipe to create kibble of a coinciding value: Basic, Simple, Regular, Superior, Exceptional, and Extraordinary. This new system will make it so that creature kibble desires are based on the quality levels instead of specific creatures.

We plan to introduce these changes on an experimental beta branch before letting it loose into the wild population at a later date. We’re excited to tackle this much needed rework!

NOTE: These plans are subject to change.

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Hey Survivors! Welcome to the latest edition of the Community Crunch! 

Winter Wonderland Is Returning!

Have you been Naughty or Nice this year? I've heard whispers from the elves and reindeer that a certain Mr. Claws may be dropping gifts for all of the good survivors this holiday season, and coal for the naughty ones too.  

We'll have more information on this in the coming weeks!

Dev Diary!

This weeks diary entry is brought to you by Lead Programmer, Chris Willoughby. This weeks dev diary is about Extinction-related game balance and also about the big fixing process of Extinction since it's initial release.

Quote

ARK, at its core, is successful because it offers the best and most diverse survival experience that it can to each player who plays it, and the many options that we provide allows that to happen. There are many, many players that play our game over multiple platforms and each of them has a different definition of what’s most important to them, what ARK does well, and what it should do better. Early on we made a decision to offer a vast array of options, modes, maps, servers, and mods to get as close as we could to being the best survival game for everyone. This creates a major challenge when it comes to development however, as each piece of content or change is used in a large number of different ways. The many play modes are likely to be at odds with each other and are competing for the same development resources, so we have to make a number of tough decisions and pick our priorities. This can result in mechanics that feel less than ideal for your setup or bugs that only appear in certain modes. I do believe it’s better than the primary alternative - not offering or supporting these options at all.

In this industry we need to develop and introduce new content and mechanics to keep our game interesting and relevant. When we set out to develop something with the size and scope of Extinction, we first sit down and figure out what new experiences we could bring to the table. We brainstorm far and wide, documenting and elaborating on ideas before scoring them. We try very hard to introduce features that either have broad reach and appeal across our play modes or add a high amount of depth to one. The things that resonate the most through this process are grouped together into creatures, items, or features that become the key features for the expansion. Generally when we do this we’re intentionally trying to shake up the meta to breathe new life into the game. Often times it’s hard to predict exactly how the new features will be used by players, and just how much they’ll shake things up. 

On the other side of the coin, testing changes to a game like ARK is quite difficult. Stepping back, it’s really a numbers game. Let’s say, for example, that you have 10 QA testers, and they’re testing 50 hours a week, that’s 500 hours of testing per week. Next, let’s say that you have 3 months to fully test your changes. Multiply the 500 by 12, and you get 6,000 hours of serious, in-depth testing. That can seem like a lot, but it’s nothing compared to the amount of time that players put in. ARK averaged ~50k users for November on PC. If you multiply that by 30 days and 24 hours, you end up with a rough estimate of 36,000,000 hours of ARK played in November. That’s 6,000 times as many hours as in the example above. There were approximately 1,200,000 hours of ARK played in the first day of Extinction. There were 50,000 hours played in the first hour after release. 10 minutes after Extinction released, players had already played 10,000 hours of Extinction, eclipsing the amount of testing done by the 10 testers above. Suffice it to say that when you experience problems when playing a game just after release this is a big reason why.

Obviously we don’t like it when our game has problems, so we focus much of our testing on critical areas and we test them over and over again and prioritize the issues we find. As you can imagine, this is a lot easier in a single player game with a fixed path through a scripted storyline. Once you start multiplying out all of the options and variables, however, it quickly becomes a monumental challenge. As illustrated above, it’s impossible to test every experience that a player is going to have in a game like ARK within a reasonable timeframe. Our volume of players means that players will always have for more time playing ARK than us. When you combine this with the fact that most of those players are playing competitively you realize that many of them are looking for a way to get a leg up on their competition. Very quickly they’re using things in ways that you didn’t intend or even think about, and it’s up to strong systems and well placed testing to make sure that they stay in a healthy place. Sometimes you experience breakdowns in one or two of the above and you have to turn around a fix as fast as possible.

When we built the Titans, for example, we balanced them against dinos, items, each other, and bases. We wanted each of them to feel different and wanted them to have roles almost like classes in a class-based shooter. We wanted them to be somewhat slow and predictable, and ultimately squishy when faced with organized and concentrated fire. We felt very early on that they should be able to do a lot of damage to an endgame base, if left unchecked. Beyond countering this strength, we wanted to limit how fast people could tame and transfer in Titans, and make it a difficult decision to make - so we went for cooldowns on transfer and starvation. Of course, players discovered a way around starvation (kibble?!?!?!), so that broke a big piece of their cost completely. Last week we released a patch that brought this back closer to where we envisioned it, but it’s unlikely that it’s the end of balance changes to the Titans.

Meks were built to counter Titans. Generally, the math that we used when developing the Titans and Meks was that approximately three Meks should be able to make short work of a Titan, and we set out to arm the Meks with abilities (like the rocket pack) that would allow them to take the Titans on. In this regard, our primary focus was on the defensive capabilities of the Mek. Unfortunately, in our efforts to nail the defensive-side of things we overlooked a few issues that could occur on the offensive side; especially related to base raiding. The reality is that this was a mistake. Players discovered within the first few days that they could be used to dismantle bases by bypassing most of their automated defenses. Once something like this is discovered we need to act quickly - we ask ourselves if we feel like the mechanic is overpowered. Then we ask if it fits with the design of the creature. We ask what the counter is and talk through the best way to balance it. Ideally, we’d have all of these discussions and make all of these decisions early in development. When faced with the numbers game above, however, you realize how likely it is that a few of these slip through the cracks to the final game. We work diligently to to step up and resolve the issue the best way that we can, as fast as we can.

If I were to step back and put on an Idealistic hat, I’d want to reshape ARK such that none of these bugs ever made it through to our players. I’d want to test and retest every interaction, every spot in every map, every scenario that a player could find themselves in. The reality, however, is that it would take a very large team, a very large amount of time to develop something as broad as ARK and deliver it flawlessly. Large enough on both fronts, that the likelihood of success drops dramatically. And even then, that game would have bugs. Yes, ARK is not perfect. However, we enjoy working on a game that delivers a broad, good experience to many players over one that offers a narrow but perfect experience to only a few or takes ten years to make. We strive to minimize the number of problems. We pride ourselves on recognizing and resolving them as fast as possible. As we continue to work on Extinction issues, long standing issues, previous promises, and whatever is next for ARK (stay tuned!), we’ll continue to approach it from that perspective. Our job is to provide the best experience we can to the highest number of players we can reach, as fast as we can. Sometimes there will be bumps in the road, but they’re a necessary part of making the things we make at the scale that we make them. We think it’s worth it.

PC Patch Tomorrow!

Tomorrow at 10am PST there will be a PC patch. There will also be another post tomorrow here on the community forums going over some of the changes coming up and things currently being worked on by our development team.

Mod Community Updates!

Hello, fellow modders. You'll be happy to know we have a manual devkit update ready that includes all of the extinction content!

https://forums.unrealengine.com/development-discussion/modding/ark-survival-evolved/62293-12-2-ark-dev-kit-v287-1-is-now-on-google-drive

I also have a new tutorial ready for you, this time we're finally going to get started on some graphs for this mod. Specifically how to convert our tamed creatures into the sentry crystals that will be used elsewhere by the mod.

Fanart of the Week!

Ark Survival Evolved Carbonemys Wallpaper by Malabar!

Evolution Event!

Survivors on all platforms will be receiving a special Evolution Event perk this weekend! It will be active from Friday the 7th of December at 1 PM EST until Monday the 10th of December at 3 PM EST. All Official Servers across each platform will be undergoing this evolutionary change which includes:

2x Harvesting Rates
2x Taming Rates
2x EXP Rates

That's it for this post guys! As always if you’ve got anything to share you can find us at:

Twitter: twitter.com/survivetheark
Facebook: facebook.com/survivetheark
Reddit: reddit.com/r/playark
Instagram: instagram.com/survivetheark
Twitch: twitch.tv/survivetheark
Steam: steamcommunity.com/app/346110
Youtube: youtube.com/survivetheark

All the best,
Studio Wildcard

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All gameplay footage for this trailer and screenshots below were captured using the Nintendo Switch.

ARK: Survival Evolved is launching worldwide for Nintendo Switch™ today! Everyone here at Studio Wildcard is beyond excited to be officially welcoming Switch survivors to the tribe!

Get ready to tame dinosaurs, conquer enemies and create enormous structures anywhere - on the couch, in bed, on a bus or even at school. Stranded on a mysterious prehistoric island, you must explore its vast biomes as you begin to hunt, harvest, craft tools, grow crops and build shelters to survive. Use cunning and skill to kill, tame, breed, and even ride Dinosaurs and other primitive beasts living on The ARK. Advance your technology from primitive stone tools to T-Rex-mounted laser cannons, as you team up with hundreds of players online or enjoy a solo Jurassic experience.  

Developed in conjunction with Abstraction Games, the handheld mode provides a fantastic new capability for survivors who want to immerse themselves in the vast worlds of ARK fully! ARK: Survival Evolved on Nintendo Switch includes the complete contents and features of the original game; from the massive and mysterious ARK island with many prehistoric and fantasy-inspired creatures. Hundreds of hours of exploring, crafting, survival and combat await players as they go it alone, or group up with thousands of other Survivors to explore the island and solve the mysteries of the ARK!

Nintendo Switch features include:

• Free Exploration: Explore the entire ARK Island!
• Capture and Tame Beasts: Over 80+ prehistoric and fantasy-inspired creatures and dinosaurs such as the T-Rex, Giganotosaurus, Direwolf, and Yeti.
• Harvest, Hunt, and Build: Cut down trees and turn them into a basic biome, hunt for meat and scavenge for plants, or start your own garden. Quickly develop these survival skills, as hunger, thirst, basic safety, and protecting yourself from the elements are all part of the game!
• Customization: The extensive ARK crafting system allows players to mix and match materials scavenged from around the island, while also modifying the colors, textures, shapes and styles.
• Mystery of The ARK: Solve the mystery of The ARK as you wander around the massive island, discovering explorers’ notebooks and clues everywhere to piece together the puzzle!

ARK: Survival Evolved scheduled to show up on the Nintendo eShop at 12pm in your local time in the following regions:

• Americas (US, Canada, Mexico)
• Europe/Australia (Austria, Cyprus, Finland, Hungary, Lithunaia, Norway, Russia, Spain, Australia, Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Ireland, Luxembourg, Poland, Slovak Republic, Sweden, New Zealand, Bulgaria, Denmark, Germany,  Italy, Malta, Portugal, Slovenia, Switzerland, Croatia, Estonia, Greece, Latvia, Netherlands, Romania, South Africa, United Kingdom)

Supported languages include: Japanese, Italian, English, German, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Russian. Simplified Chinese will be supported once the Day 1 Patch is applied.

We will also be looking at added support to the Asia region (which will include Hong Kong) in the near future.

The last of the Nintendo Switch official servers will go online at 10am PST. EU/AU servers are already online!

We are truly thrilled to have our Switch survivors with us and hope you enjoy The Island in all its mystery. Just remember, you don't have to outrun that T-rex, you just have to outrun your next slowest tribe mate.  

Keep on surviving!

You can keep up-to-date with the latest in ARK news by following us on Twitter @survivetheark or by joining our community forums right here on survivetheark.com.

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Post-Launch Extinction Updates!

Hello Survivors! We don't have much new information to share with you all in this weeks crunch, but we did still want to keep you in the loop of what we've been working on and what things look like going forward for us in the near future.

It's been a whirlwind as we released Extinction on Xbox, PS4, Windows 10, and Max & Linux all last week. We had our highest number of peak players ever on PC last Sunday which we were thrilled to see. Extinction was the cumulative effort of many people and many hours, and to see the response from players about their experience on the map and with the creatures has been very rewarding for us.

There have been some concerns from the community regarding bug-related issues and balance issues. We want to let everyone know that we are absorbing as much feedback from our players as possible through our many social channels, as well as videos and streams from survivors as well. 

Here are some key issues we are currently tackling:

• Primitive Plus not working on PS4 and Xbox.
• The Center map missing terrain on PS4.
• Supply drops missing on other maps.
• Meteors doing damage where they should not.
• Wyvern and Rock Drake eggs missing/not being visible.
• Tek Rock Drake Saddle missing on PC.
• Mek's and Enforcers being re-added to PS4/crash fix.
• And many others.

We are looking to get our console players up-to-date with the PC version in the near future, and will keep you posted as we make our way through the certification process on those. It is worth taking a look at what changes have been made to the PC version of ARK to be aware of changes coming to console in the near future. As always, we appreciate all of your feedback and your patience with us during this time as we address all platforms simultaneously.

Next week we will have a Dev Diary with our lead programmer Chris, who will be chattting about some of the balance decisions that have been made on Extinction thus far and changes going forward. In the mean time, we hope you continue to enjoy the expansion! Keep on surviving!

ARK on Sale!

Xbox:
ARK: Survival Evolved
ARK: Explorer's Edition
ARK: Season Pass
ARK: Scorched Earth
ARK: Aberration

Steam:
ARK: Survival Evolved
ARK: Season Pass
ARK: Scorched Earth
ARK: Aberration

Fanart of the Week!

Managarmr by Shockal!

Evolution Event!

Survivors on all platforms will be receiving a special Evolution Event perk this weekend! It will be active from Friday the 23rd of November at 1 PM EST until Monday the 26th of November at 3 PM EST. All Official Servers across each platform will be undergoing this evolutionary change which includes:

2x Harvesting Rates
2x Taming Rates
2x EXP Rates

That's it for this post guys! As always if you’ve got anything to share you can find us at:

Twitter: twitter.com/survivetheark
Facebook: facebook.com/survivetheark
Reddit: reddit.com/r/playark
Instagram: instagram.com/survivetheark
Twitch: twitch.tv/survivetheark
Steam: steamcommunity.com/app/346110
Youtube: youtube.com/survivetheark

All the best,
Studio Wildcard

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Due to the overwhelming popularity of our recently released Conquest Servers, we have decided to release a new Conquest Cluster this weekend for PC! There will be 42 new game instances that breakdown as follows:

• 10 for Extinction 
• 10 for Aberration
• 10 for Ragnarok
• 4 for Scorched Earth
• 4 for The Center
• 4 for The Island

Transfer Ruleset:

- These servers will be fully open to transfer between each other.
- Extinction and Aberration servers are character transfer in only and items can only be transferred out (standard ruleset for these maps).

Rates:

• 3x for 25 days after launch and then 2x going forward

After 25 days, the new cluster will merge with the already existing cluster at which point rates will be reduced from 3x to 2x and transfers will be enabled. We can’t wait to bring you more of this great gameplay mode!

Be sure to read our previous post for more details on Conquest servers. 

Enjoy Survivors!

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Extinction Server Information - Console!

ARK: Extinction will be launching tomorrow on November 13th at 10am PST on Xbox and PS4! We are expecting the Xbox download to be approximately 20gb download for the base game and 9gb for expansion pack. We do not currently have a PS4 estimate, but they are typically quite a bit smaller than Xbox patch sizes.

On launch you'll be able to transfer your existing character from your current server into Extinction. You will not be able to transfer items or tames. You can however transfer characters, items, and tames out of Extinction onto other maps. If you were around for the release of Scorched Earth or Aberration this is the exact same process those servers underwent. 

There are no disabled engrams in Extinction like there was at Aberration's launch, meaning things such as Tek Teleporters are allowed. Creatures like flyers are also enabled on Extinction.

We will be releasing an initial start batch of servers, and bringing more servers online as needed so please be patient for us during this period. The servers will be the standard 70-player cap. Extinction will be included in all CrossARK clusters (except 'TheHundred'), as well as Small Tribes servers. Extinction will not be supported in Primitive Plus on launch, but it is something we will consider looking into at a later date. Extinction will also not have NoTek/NTek-NoTaming, Primitive, or TheHundred servers for those currently playing on those subsets of gamemodes. The legacy network will get a few servers, however they will be in small supply. 

Stay tuned to our Twitter account for the most up-to-date information on Extinction official servers going live, but they will start to be available around the time the expansion pack is available for download. Please be aware that PS4 will go online first, with Xbox following closely after.

Important note: PS4 single-player will launch with an element vein bug that can cause structures to be removed when built in the area of a vein. This is planned to be patched out on Wednesday. Other modes/consoles will not be affected. Console and PS4 build remain one week behind PC, which means they will not launch with any changes that were made in v286.103. The Windows 10 version may be slightly delayed, but we will provide further info on that as we have it.

Extinction Launch Day Stream!

Josh and Jen will be streaming some Extinction gameplay from the Xbox One X at 12pm PST tomorrow! That will be two hours after the updates go live on PS4 and Xbox. Join us on our Twitch channel for some gameplay and casual chat with the devs!

Modding Community Updates!

Hello modders, I just wanted to give a heads up that it will be a while before a new devkit update is ready. Because of this some of you may be experiencing issues with your mods including crashes. Some of the core class code has had some changes that could be resulting in mismatches to cause these errors. My recommendation is to disconnect any code that is causing issues until the devkit update is ready.

I also have a new modding tutorial ready for you today. We're going to cover the setup of our structures and getting them to be something physically in the game. You can check it out below!

ARK on Sale!

Xbox:
ARK: Survival Evolved
ARK: Explorer's Edition
ARK: Season Pass
ARK: Scorched Earth
ARK: Aberration

Steam:
ARK: Survival Evolved
ARK: Season Pass
ARK: Scorched Earth
ARK: Aberration

PS4:
ARK: Survival Evolved
ARK: Explorer's Edition
ARK: Season Pass
ARK: Scorched Earth
ARK: Aberration

Fanart of the Week!

Flying with Gasbags artwork by evekajander!

Header image of mom and baby Gasbags by BlueDragon.

Evolution Event!

Survivors on all platforms will be receiving a special Evolution Event perk this weekend! It will be active from Friday the 16th of November at 1 PM EST until Monday the 19th of November at 3 PM EST. All Official Servers across each platform will be undergoing this evolutionary change which includes:

2x Harvesting Rates
2x Taming Rates
2x EXP Rates

That's it for this post guys! As always if you’ve got anything to share you can find us at:

Twitter: twitter.com/survivetheark
Facebook: facebook.com/survivetheark
Reddit: reddit.com/r/playark
Instagram: instagram.com/survivetheark
Twitch: twitch.tv/survivetheark
Steam: steamcommunity.com/app/346110
Youtube: youtube.com/survivetheark

All the best,
Studio Wildcard

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Hello Survivors!

Today, Studio Wildcard is proud to announce ARK’s third expansion pack, “Extinction”! 

AVAILABLE NOW!

Steam on PC/Mac/Linux/SteamOS:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/887380/ARK_Extinction__Expansion_Pack/

ARK: Extinction will be available for PlayStation®4 and Xbox One starting November 13th.

Finish your journey through the worlds of ARK in ‘Extinction’, where the story began and ends: on Earth itself! An Element-infested, ravaged planet filled with fantastical creatures both organic & technological, Earth holds both the secrets of the past and the keys to its salvation. As a veteran Survivor who has conquered all previous obstacles, your ultimate challenge awaits: can you defeat the gigantic roaming Titans which dominate the planet, and complete the ARK cycle to save Earth's future?

ARK: Extinction is an entirely new map that promises to deliver the long-awaited climax to the ARK storyline, returning to where the story began and now ends: on Earth itself! Visit the ruined world that’s rampant with Element-corrupted creatures, scour the land for Orbital Supply Drops, tame exotic creatures, and build a Mek powerful enough to defeat the colossal, tameable Titans dominating the landscape.

A PLANET IN DISTRESS

Extinction brings survivors back to where the mysterious journey all started; Earth. What was once a lush and thriving home world is now a corrupt, hostile and desolate shell of its former self. Venture into the diverse landscape where ruins of a past civilization reveal clues to Earth’s demise along with the keys to reviving its future. At the heart of this bleak and foreboding terrain is an overgrown, deserted technological metropolis that rises amidst the waste.  Discover and explore long abandoned micro-biospheres which served as the early prototypes for the ARKs of today. 

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Patch notes for 285.104:
- Extinction Expansion Pack!
- Removed Bodybags exploit!
- Group ranking number increased by 5

TAME NEW CREATURES

Capture, tame and craft powerful and unusual organic and mechanical creature types different from anything previously seen in the ARK universe. Increase situational awareness by flying and controlling robotic surveillance drones. Harvest valuable resources by taming and feeding organic transmutation machines. Reach new heights and remote locations by climbing and teleporting with the ultimate security bot. Ensure your survival by building and piloting your own customizable battle Mek to victory!

CRAFT UNIQUE ITEMS

Ensure mastery on this forsaken world with many new and exotic craftable items. Keep your tames where you want them with a creature leash, use taxidermy tools to enhance your home decor with trophy mounts from your most memorable kills, span and traverse previously uncrossable gaps with a Tek bridge, store and preserve your favorite friendly creature in a portable cryopod for reuse later, utilize Tek gravity grenades to attract or repel foes to your advantage, and autonomously airlift loot back to your base with an airborne delivery crate!

CONQUER NEW CHALLENGES

As Element runs rampant across Earth, corrupting and mutating all that it touches, Survivors must be prepared for the unique challenges fueled from these cataclysmic events. Engage in epic battles of titanic proportions when encountering the colossal Titans that rule this hostile planet as the ultimate apex predator. Scour the wastelands for orbital supply drops and protect the precious cargo they contain while fending off an onslaught of Element-corrupted monstrosities barely resembling their former selves. Survive and shelter from environmental anomalies such as Element eruptions, eclipses and meteor showers.

Return to Earth and complete your conquest of the ARK universe, gain sought after answers to advance the storyline, discover the fate of the original explorers, determine the true purpose of the ARK network, and unravel the remaining mysteries of the Homo Deus!

Haven’t yet explored the thrilling world of ARK? Jump into the adventure today during ARK’s Free Weekend on Steam, where the base game ARK: Survival Evolved is available to play for free now - Sunday, Nov 11th, paired with massive discounts to own ARK and its other expansion packs, Scorched Earth and Aberration.

Stay tuned to our Twitter account for the most up-to-date information on Extinction official servers going live.

PSA: Mac/Linux build will not be available today.

ARK on Sale!

Xbox:
ARK: Survival Evolved
ARK: Explorer's Edition
ARK: Season Pass
ARK: Scorched Earth
ARK: Aberration

Steam:
ARK: Survival Evolved
ARK: Season Pass
ARK: Scorched Earth
ARK: Aberration

PS4:
ARK: Survival Evolved
ARK: Explorer's Edition
ARK: Season Pass
ARK: Scorched Earth
ARK: Aberration

View full article

Extinction Server Information!

As we all know by now ARK: Extinction will be launching tomorrow on November 6th on Steam (Nov 13th for consoles). We are expecting the download to be approximately 10-20gb in size for PC. The information below pertains to PC ARK servers that will be brought online tomorrow at approximately the same time as the expansion pack becomes available. 

On launch you'll be able to transfer your existing character from your current server into Extinction. You will not be able to transfer items or tames. You can however transfer characters, items, and tames out of Extinction onto other maps. If you were around for the release of Scorched Earth or Aberration this is the exact same process those servers underwent. 

There are no disabled engrams in Extinction like there was at Aberration's launch, meaning things such as Tek Teleporters are allowed. Creatures like flyers are also enabled on Extinction.

We will be introducing North American and European Extinction servers first. We will be releasing an initial start batch of servers, and bringing more servers online as needed so please be patient for us during this period. The servers will be the standard 70-player cap. Extinction will be included in all CrossARK clusters (except 'TheHundred'), as well as Conquest and Small Tribes servers. Extinction will not be supported in Primitive Plus on launch, but it is something we will consider looking into at a later date. Extinction will also not have NoTek/NTek-NoTaming, Primitive, or TheHundred servers for those currently playing on those subsets of gamemodes. The legacy network will get a few servers, however they will be in small supply. 

ARK: Survival Evolved will be free to play for a week, starting November 6th through November 11th! On-board your friends and family who have not experienced to give them a taste of The Island, Ragnarok, or The Center yet for no cost during those few days. And consider buying it if you enjoyed your time on the ARK to keep on surviving!

Extra Life 2018!

25-hours later, our Extra Life charity stream has come to a close and thus another chapter of our Extra Life journey does as well.

There were so many great and funny moments throughout the stream. Members of the ARK dev team battled it out in several games that resulted in the loser receiving a penalty. There were wigs, there were hats, there were costumes and hair adornments. There were a special unicorn that managed to steal the show on multiple occasions as well.

There were also special previews and discussions regarding our upcoming expansion pack, ARK: Extinction. We showed off taxidermy, Ice Titan taming, Cryopods, Orbital Supply Drop gameplay, and a few creatures that you'll be able to get your hands on soon.

This is our fourth year participating in this event and it also happens to be the 10th anniversary for Extra Life as a whole. We were thrilled to learn that on this 10th anniversary we were able to surpass our total donations raised in the past four years to over $100,000! As an individual member (not including team member contributions) we've reached $112,246.44 and counting! As a team we have raised $188,782.75 over the last 4 years (and counting as today is still on-going!).

This year was our highest ever personal amount raised. Previously our record was $23,805 and we are sitting at $45,122.27 at the time of writing this post. This was also our highest ever team goal. Previously we had raised $62,004.01 and right now we're sitting at $76,536. Our original goal when we began the stream was hoping to reach $30,000 and we more than doubled that amount, with $11,000 raised before the stream had even begun at 9AM. With all of those numbers, we're currently sitting at rank 7 globally as an individual and rank 6 globally as a team for donations to Extra Life this year!

We would like to give special recognition to our top streamers and top individual donators who were a big help in assisting us to our goals this year. We could not have done this without you!

Top Streamers (in order of amount raised):

• LazyCat
• Xastus the Mad King
• RoyaleWithCheese
• Ryan S.
• FistofTheWalrus
• Belle
• Syntac
• Kara_dee

Top Donators:

• Pavan
• Fred316
• vl_darkangel_lv
• Helldiver,
• Anthomnia
• SurvivalServers.com
• Eric K.
• Jerryn
• tribe of bozo
• JustPixie
• Pac-Man443 family
• KageRamen
• Pip, Acidic
• songtao ke
• Eric P.
• Jesse P.

If you want to contribute to the campaign it's not too late, you can do so right here!

Congratulations and thank you again to all of the survivors who joined us at any point during our stream. We'll see you again next year!

Modding Community Updates!

If you didn't catch it during the Extra Life stream we played some of "The Hunt", it was a ton of fun and it will be interesting to see how this mod continues development.

The winners of the contest were also announced last week, with "Valguero" taking first place and securing a grand prize of $15,000! There was a ton of feedback that came out of this contest and we will be taking all of it and reviewing the system before the next one to see where we need to make adjustments.

We also had two new mods enter the sponsorship program, "Malfunktion" and "ARK Additions".

Lastly, I'm sure the modding community is on the edge of their seats to hear about any new mod functionality in Extinction that they will get to play with. There some goodies that I think everyone will like and I will try to cover them with new tutorials once a devkit update is ready with all of the new content.

Fanart of the Week!

Amazing artwork from Jamiegogo!

Evolution Event Update For This Weekend!

There will not be any Evolution Event on PC this weekend due to the massive rates awarded by Extra Life, the launch of Extinction, and the free week that begins tomorrow. We'll be back with more Evo very soon though!

Console survivors will be receiving a special Evolution Event perk this weekend! It will be active from Friday the 9th of November at 1 PM EST until Monday the 12th of November at 3 PM EST. All Official Servers across each platform will be undergoing this evolutionary change which includes:

2x Harvesting Rates
2x Taming Rates
2x EXP Rates

That's it for this post guys! As always if you’ve got anything to share you can find us at:

Twitter: twitter.com/survivetheark
Facebook: facebook.com/survivetheark
Reddit: reddit.com/r/playark
Instagram: instagram.com/survivetheark
Twitch: twitch.tv/survivetheark
Steam: steamcommunity.com/app/346110
Youtube: youtube.com/survivetheark

All the best,
Studio Wildcard

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Hello Survivors,

Today we have some important news regarding the launch of ARK: Extinction on console (Xbox and PS4). After careful consideration, we have decided to move our release date for the console release of Extinction to no later than November 13th. 

This change does not affect the Steam release of Extinction, which will still be available for purchase on November 6th, at 10am PST.

We know this news will come as a disappointment to our console survivors, but we believe that this extra time will result in an improved experience for everyone who plays Extinction on console. 

Thank you for all your patience and support - we know that Extinction will be worth the wait!

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Hey Survivors! Welcome to the latest edition of the Community Crunch! 

Extinction Creature Teaser Tomorrow!

Be sure to tune in to the Xbox channel on Mixer at 11am PST tomorrow (Tuesday) to see a teaser of one of the creatures coming in Extinction during their ARK stream!

Last week we introduced you to the cutest cow caterpillar, the Gasbags. 

TwitchCon and Paris Games Roundup!

Over the weekend Studio Wildcard had a presence at Paris Games Week and at TwitchCon. Cedric, Jen, and John showcased a new gamemode coming to ARK: Extinction called Orbital Supply Drop. Survivors were greated with the first experience of Extinction play tested outside of the dev team and the team was excited to see the very positive reception of OSD. 

If you were not able to attend either event, don't fret. We'll be showing some more OSD this weekend on stream too!

Extra Life Stream - Nov 3!

Save the date! Extra Life this year is on November 3rd and we'll be streaming for 24-hours straight to raise money for sick kids hospitals. We'll be dropping some Extinction teasers along the way and boosting our official server rates as our Extra Life team gets closer to our goal. Scroll down for more info on the special Evolution Event details this weekend. We'll be sharing our schedule the day of the stream and you'll be able to find all of the stream info on our page:

https://survivetheark.com/extralife2018

Note: This page will not be active until Saturday, November 3rd.

Be sure to tune into our Twitch channel on the 3rd! See you there!

Mod Community Updates!

The contest has almost come to a close! On November 1st we will be officially announcing the contest winners as well as the new projects that will be joining the sponsored mod program.

I also have another tutorial ready for you today. We're continuing with our Virtual Sentry System project and getting some of the basic file setup taken care of. 

Fanart of the Week!

Raptor Trip by Moalbatraoz!

Exta Life Special ARK: Evolution Event!

If you joined us for Extra Life last year you'll already be familiar, but this weekend our Evolution Event will be a bit different than normal. As we're raising money for charity the rates for official servers will rise. We will begin at 1.5x rates at the beginning of the stream (9am PST). For every $5,000 raised the rates will increased by 0.5x up to a maximum of 8x rates. The rates will only last during the 24-hour livestream, so be sure to take advantage of them while they last!

Increased Harvesting Rates, Taming Rates, EXP Rates, Breeding Rates, Gestation/Egg Hatching Rates, & Raising Rates!

That's it for this post guys! As always if you’ve got anything to share you can find us at:

Twitter: twitter.com/survivetheark
Facebook: facebook.com/survivetheark
Reddit: reddit.com/r/playark
Instagram: instagram.com/survivetheark
Twitch: twitch.tv/survivetheark
Steam: steamcommunity.com/app/346110
Youtube: youtube.com/survivetheark

All the best,
Studio Wildcard

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ARK: Survival Evolved is launching worldwide for Nintendo Switch™ on November 30th!  

Get ready to tame dinosaurs, conquer enemies and create enormous structures anywhere - on the couch, in bed, on a bus or even at school. Stranded on a mysterious prehistoric island, you must explore its vast biomes as you begin to hunt, harvest, craft tools, grow crops and build shelters to survive. Use cunning and skill to kill, tame, breed, and even ride Dinosaurs and other primitive beasts living on The ARK. Advance your technology from primitive stone tools to T-Rex-mounted laser cannons, as you team up with hundreds of players online or enjoy a solo Jurassic experience.  

The handheld mode provides a fantastic new capability for survivors who want to immerse themselves in the vast worlds of ARK fully! ARK: Survival Evolved on Nintendo Switch includes the complete contents and features of the original game; from the massive and mysterious ARK island with many prehistoric and fantasy-inspired creatures. Hundreds of hours of exploring, crafting, survival and combat await players as they go it alone, or group up with thousands of other Survivors to explore the island and solve the mysteries of the ARK!

We look forward to welcoming Nintendo Switch players to our tribe at the end of November!

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Hey Survivors! Welcome to the latest edition of the Community Crunch! 

Extinction Creature Teaser Tomorrow!

Be sure to tune in to the Xbox channel on Mixer at 11am PST tomorrow (Tuesday) to see a teaser of one of the creatures coming in Extinction during their ARK stream!

Last week we introduced you to our adorable giant sloth friend, the Gacha. 

ARK Digest 55!

Thank you for all of your questions for this digest, Survivors! Here is our question and answer session with Lead Programmer Chris Willoughby. This week we've covered some of the very popular questions we've received regarding Extinction.

Survivor Asher asks, "Will extinction have an ocean, or at least a large body of water for some bigger aquatic creatures?" and survivor Alex asks, "All Extinction related pictures you've published were mostly on land. Is Extinction is going to be a map like Scorched Earth with no sea or is it a map with water creatures?"

Quote

Extinction does not have a large body of water. As you can imagine, the surface of the Earth has undergone some dramatic changes, one of which is that most of the water has dried up. That said, we did build the Extinction creatures with water in mind, and there should be a few surprises waiting for you when you take them to other maps!

Survivor Caleb asks, "Is the dev team currently working on a long-term solution to improve the quality of life/tame cap issues on PVE? If so, could the team provide us with some details?"

Quote

We think that Cryopods coming in Extinction should help with this problem directly. When a creature has been captured into a Cryopod, it does not count against the tame cap of the server. In addition, Cryopods can be kept forever in a Cryofridge with power, arming players with a powerful tool to work around the limitations of the cap.

Survivor Nattix asks, "As you mentioned in the previous digest, titans are going to be temporary tames. Will titans have more uses for PVE players who aren't looking to go to war or are they going to be solely for PVP like titanosaurs?"

Quote

Our hope is that Titans bring a new type of PVE encounter to the game with in-world boss fights and interesting new mechanics that are interesting in themselves. Once tamed, Titans are very powerful. They can clear space and take down lots of dinos quickly making them good for area cleanup or meat runs. In addition, we’ve worked to make each of them fun to ride. I enjoy exploring the various maps on them for that reason.

Survivor Thomas asks, "In a previous teaser we saw some Defense Units roaming the land, this time without their supreme leader summoning them. Could this be the time we finally are able to get our chance to befriend the buggers instead of ripping them apart limb-from-limb (or at least, put them back together again :P)?"

Quote

The Defense Units found within Extinction are part of the automated force that served and defended the city before it fell into disarray. These days they like to roll around and punch Dodos. They aren’t craftable like the other Robots found within the city (such as the Scout or Enforcer), but we felt like they brought a missing piece to the ecosystem there, namely punching Dodos.

Survivor Thomas asks, "Since we already have seen a glimpse of some Wyvern-action on the land below, can we then confirm that Extinction will have some more creatures from previous expansions living on earths crust and if so, will they be living under similar conditions as they were on their respective arks accordingly?"

Quote

There are a number of creatures that make their return in Extinction, and they exist in biomes/environments that you’d expect to find them in. In addition, a number of existing creatures have been corrupted by Element and they roam the wasteland. These creatures will not behave as they would traditionally, instead destroying anything that gets in the way of their hunt for additional Element to consume.

If you have a question you want answered by the ARK dev team please submit your questions with the Subject "ARK Q&A" to our email address: arkfans@studiowildcard.com

Community Livestream Update!

There won't be a community livestream this coming Thursday, but it's because we're super busy poreparing for our TwitchCon event coming up this week, and our yearly Extra Life stream AND the launch of Extinction falls shortly after! These next few weeks sure will be busy. Jen will be present at our special TwitchCon event this year along with ARK producer John. To those of you that RSVP'd to attend we look forward to seeing you there and we hope you enjoy getting to be the first to play Extinction!

In case you've missed our last couple of mentions of it, Extra Life this year is on November 3rd and we'll be streaming for 24-hours straight to raise money for sick kids hospitals. We'll be dropping some Extinction teasers along the way and boosting our official server rates as our Extra Life team gets closer to our goal. Be sure to tune into our Twitch channel on the 3rd and we'll have more details about this next week.

Mod Community Updates!

Over the last two weeks, we managed to spotlight almost every mod in the contest. If you missed any and would like to see what all of the mods have to offer, the streams have been sliced and put into convenient episodes, all of which can be found in this Twitch collection.

Public voting for the Mod Contest has concluded but technical evaluations are still being finalized so rankings may still continue to change until the winners are announced on November 1st. The current Rankings can be found here:

https://survivetheark.com/index.php?/modding/contest-home/

The start date for the next contest has not yet been determined, the management system will be taken offline during the winter months for some updates and adjustments based on feedback from the current contest. Once a date is determined everyone will be made aware of it.

Fanart of the Week!

Frost Titan by WYF!

ARK: Evolution Event!

Survivors across ALL Platforms will be receiving a special Evolution Event perk this weekend! It will be active from Friday the 26th of October at 1 PM EST until Monday the 29th of October at 3 PM EST. All Official Servers across each platform will be undergoing this evolutionary change which includes:

2x Harvesting Rates
2x Taming Rates
2x EXP Rates

That's it for this post guys! As always if you’ve got anything to share you can find us at:

Twitter: twitter.com/survivetheark
Facebook: facebook.com/survivetheark
Reddit: reddit.com/r/playark
Instagram: instagram.com/survivetheark
Twitch: twitch.tv/survivetheark
Steam: steamcommunity.com/app/346110
Youtube: youtube.com/survivetheark

All the best,
Studio Wildcard

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Happy Patch Day, Survivors! It's Tuesday and ARK's latest patch is live on all platforms.

First off, be sure to tune in to the Xbox channel on Mixer at 2pm EST today to see a brand new Extinction creature teaser during their stream!

We're also sharing some more previews of our upcoming expansion pack ARK: Extinction. Check out the images below for a sneak peak at what you can expect to see on planet Earth!

In Extinction, Earth has become an Element-infested planet filled with fantastical creatures both organic and technological. Element has ravaged the planet and corrupted both the landscape and some of its inhabitants, causing mutations in the creatures and plants that can be found there.

This will be the last Extinction Chronicles related event and screenshot teasers on patch day before Extinction release. We hope that you've been enjoying them, and we're very excited to be sharing the entirety of Extinction with you very soon.

Our Extinction Chronicles V event is going on right now, including new Corrupted skin, Explorer Notes, and Tek dinos. You can read all about it in yesterdays Community Crunch announcement: 

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Hey Survivors! Welcome to the latest edition of the Community Crunch! 

Extinction Chronicles V!

Tomorrow there will be a client and server side update that will bring Extinction Chronicles V to survivors on PC, Xbox, and PS4! 

Leading up to the release of Extinction there will be monthly drops of Extinction-related Explorer Notes on The Island, Scorched Earth, and Aberration. Once collected these notes will unlock new Extinction-related skins! 

There will also be the appearance of more powerful Tek-themed Dinosaur variants within the ARKs each month. These Tek Dinos are permanent additions (meaning they will continue to spawn even after the event is over), with a new one beginning to appear each month.

• In Extinction Chronicles I we released three Explorer Notes, the Corrupted Helmet and the Tek Rex.
• In Extinction Chronicles II we released three Explorer Notes, the Corrupted Boots and the Tek Stego. 
• In Extinction Chronicles III we released three Explorer Notes, the Corrupted Pants and the Tek Raptor.
• In Extinction Chronicles IV we released three Explorer Notes, the Corrupted Shirt and the Tek Parasaur.

And now, tomorrow we're excited to bring you three new Explorer Notes, the Corrupted Gloves and a new Tek creature, the Tek Quetzal!

In addition, special colored dinos will be populating the ARKs. You'll be able to find creatures sporting black, red, green, purple, and white up until the launch of Extinction, beginning tomorrow. Be sure to take advantage of these special colors before they're extinct!

Last but not least: just like we did last month, you can expect to see some more extinction screenshots tomorrow here on our forums! Be sure to check back for that.

Patch Notes!

Here are the full fixes and notes coming in tomorrows Extinction Chronicles V update (PC, console notes to come).

Quote

- Extinction Chronicles V
            - Added Tek Quetz
                * New breeding line
                * 5% chance to spawns
                * 20% higher base level
            - Added new color set (black, red, green, purple, white, blue)
            - Added 3 new Explorer Notes and matching unlock (Corrupted Gloves)
            - Increased maximum player level by 1
- Climbing pick meshing fixes
- Better handling for low fps server dino attacking
- Fix for failure to cleanup structure placers
- Pre-emptive API for server structure cleanup improvement
- Increased damage range for players/dinos on surface of Aberration

Community Livestream #9 Roundup!

On October 11th we had our seventh Community Livestream. Thank you to all of those who attended and participated! The community team had a lot of fun and we hope you did as well. If you weren't able to catch the stream you can watch the video-on-demand on our Twitch page or by clicking on the video below.

This we toured a map called Fractured, a fantastical setting of floating islands far above the sea. This map created by TheAlchemist is in early access, but features many floating islands that appear to have once been joined, but torn apart by something... very large.

We were also joined by special guest Zunit, a PVP player and Twitch streamer. This podcast-style discussion had us chatting about the different types of player experiences on our official network such as 6-man experience versus Conquest, as well as diving into some fond memories of times past.

We are accepting any type of ARK related fanart to be featured in the Showcase section of the stream and entries are always open. This can be drawings, videos, builds, ANSEL screenshots, handmade crafts, anything ARK related!

You can submit your ARKwork to our streaming email address: arkfans@studiowildcard.com

Be sure to follow us on our Twitch page so you don't miss a stream! twitch.tv/survivetheark

We'll be hosting our next Community Live Stream on Thursday, October the 25th at 1PM EST! We hope to see you there

Mod Community Updates!

Hello Survivors!

The modding contest voting period is still open! If you've been on the fence about what mods to vote for, we have been doing spotlights over on our Twitch channel. If you happened to miss any, they are conveniently gathered into a collection that can be viewed at any time. It's not over though, we are only halfway through the contestants. There is still another full week of spotlights to do! So drop by and hang out while we take a dive into the mods offered up by the community.

Don't forget to vote, mod authors spend uncountable hours creating content for others to enjoy just out of a love for the game.
https://survivetheark.com/index.php?/modding/voting/

I also have a new tutorial ready for you. We're going to be starting on a full project; so the first thing we need is a design document. So let's lay out the plans for our "Virtual Sentry System".

ARK Digest Next Week!

We'll be doing another ARK Digest post in the next Community Crunch! If you have a question you want answered by the ARK dev team please submit your questions with the Subject "ARK Q&A" to our email address: arkfans@studiowildcard.com

Fanart of the Week!

Amphicyon Dossier by Nokryn!

ARK: Evolution Event!

Survivors across ALL Platforms will be receiving a special Evolution Event perk this weekend! It will be active from Friday the 19th of October at 1 PM EST until Monday the 22nd of October at 3 PM EST. All Official Servers across each platform will be undergoing this evolutionary change which includes:

2x Harvesting Rates
2x Taming Rates
2x EXP Rates

That's it for this post guys! As always if you’ve got anything to share you can find us at:

Twitter: twitter.com/survivetheark
Facebook: facebook.com/survivetheark
Reddit: reddit.com/r/playark
Instagram: instagram.com/survivetheark
Twitch: twitch.tv/survivetheark
Steam: steamcommunity.com/app/346110
Youtube: youtube.com/survivetheark

All the best,
Studio Wildcard

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The ARK Conquest servers (on PC) are a special initiative by our partner Snail Games to shake up the current PvP meta and playstyle. Now that these Conquest servers are up and running, we will be handing control of these servers over to them. 

Effective immediately, the Conquest servers will be wholly operated by Snail Games and any future changes will be made by them. As part of this hand off, their team will be completely responsible for enforcement of the Code of Conduct, including the management of a unique global ban list separate from the main Official Network. Enforcement for the Conquest servers will be driven through the Conquest Discord and future updates and news will be found here.

In addition, we will be adding 9 new servers to the Conquest cluster this week. These new servers will have transfers disabled for two weeks and increased rates (3x) during that time. After the two-week introductory period, server transfers will be enabled and the rates will be reduced to match the rest of the cluster (2x). This is to help tribes build up quickly in order to be at a competitive level against other players on Conquest servers.

We thank you for your patience during this transition period!

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Hey Survivors! Welcome to the latest edition of the Community Crunch! 

Extinction Chronicles V Next Week!

On October 16th Extinction Chronicles V will be released on all platforms. As usual survivors can expect a new tek dino, new Explorer Notes, a new cosmetic, increased level cap, and special colored dinos on all ARKs!

Developer Diaries!

This weeks diary entry is brought to you by Lead Programmer, Chris Willoughby. This weeks dev diary is about undermeshing, a hot button issue within our official server community. Rest assured that we’re listening and are hard at work on the issues that you have surfaced through our various channels. We thought it would be worth taking an opportunity to share our thoughts on the issue, some of the reasons it exists, and why it’s so challenging to resolve.

Quote

Undermeshing refers to the ability to get to where you aren't supposed to by moving outside of the playable space. Almost every game is susceptible to undermeshing in some form. Most speed runs rely on undermeshing, for example. It's effectively impossible to solve completely, at least automatically. The approaches taken to prevent it are usually a tradeoff between how much freedom you want the player to have, how complex your world is, and how much processing time you can afford to spend on physics. Generally, when there's an instance of meshing, it's caused by bad collision setup, improper level geometry (holes), or a problem with the algorithm used to move the character through the world. In some instances, you place kill volumes in locations that you want to guarantee that the player doesn't end up, but that isn’t a global solution.

The collision setup for our objects varies based on their complexity. For very simple objects, we use a basic primitive shape (box, sphere, capsule) that matches the shape of the object. It's very good if you're able to take this approach, because natively the physics system can treat that individual object as water tight - ensuring that another physical object will never end up inside of it, and that you'll always detect it if you're already inside. When constructing a modern game, however, it's very likely that you need to use shapes that are more interesting to look at and interact with than a simple box or sphere - so you use mesh based collision. Mesh collision treats the surface of the mesh as the collideable surface, but it cannot be treated as watertight, and the physics system cannot guarantee that you don't pass through it. You might ask why, then, don't you try to represent that larger object as a bunch of smaller watertight ones? We do that in a small number of instances, but quantity of primitives is also a major concern, so it is not feasible to do this for the entire world. Take the ground under your feet, for example, at any given moment you'd be surrounded by thousands of primitives to approximate the surface of a natural looking ground, and yet it'd be less smooth than the pure mesh shape. In addition, a guarantee to not end up inside of a single body isn’t a guarantee that you won’t end up between them even if they’re tightly clumped, leading to more instances of getting stuck.

When we lay out our levels - we construct them in the way that is interesting and optimize them for efficiency so that we can maximize quality and quantity. What that means is generally the world outside of the space you're meant to play in is empty - we spend our resources on the spaces where players are at. In addition - we reuse assets many, many times - rotating a rock different ways to make it look different before shoving it into the terrain at various depths to mask the reuse and keep it visually pleasing. Technically, the physics for these objects overlaps, and if you get past the surface of one, you'll stand on the next one down. While that sounds like it would help, it’s actually the meat of the problem. Adding more meshes doesn’t help, because once you can get past one, you can get past the next one. That said, there have been many instances where we’ve flagged the collision on an object incorrectly, or left a minute hole that we can and do address through Level Design.

Nearly every game uses custom physics for characters. Much of ours is built on the out of the box simulation that you get from UE4. Fortunately for our players, our game is one where the world is vast and complex, and players have the freedom to build many objects and have many dinos. Unfortunately for us, this pushes all of these algorithms to their breaking point. We've had to augment, rework, and add additional tests in many places that affect the simulation to improve our core player experience. In addition, we've built many gameplay mechanics that don't exist out of the box. Wall climbing, for example, requires a completely new set of physics tests to understand and hug the wall surface. When we set these up, we build them to be as flexible as possible, but it can be difficult to predict how the player base will use something when they get it in their hands. In many cases, this is a good thing - we’re delighted with the creative things that our players do, but sometimes they’re able to abuse mechanics in unintended ways. When we find problems with them, we have to find solutions that won't break the mechanic completely for the many other use cases, sometimes an impossible feat! This is also why we aren’t quick to completely disable a feature - we evaluate how much harm versus good it is doing across the entire experience.

We do use kill volumes at a broad scale - usually high in the air, or far below the surface. Far outside of the playspace, to segment specific areas. The reality, though, is that when someone is meshing, they're usually not out in that empty space around the world, they're running around on the insides of overlapping shapes or physical surfaces that are just below the real surface. In order to implement kill boxes in these places, we'd have to go back to every location in the map and place a kill volume just below the surface that will kill someone that touches it. As with the terrain example above, it would require entirely too many objects to cover the entire world in these accurately. In addition, a major downside to this approach is also the fact that it will detect and kill something that may have a good reason to be below the mesh - on a Basilisk? You just got killed by the kill volumes. Misjudge where the surface is, and a bunch of players are being killed erroneously and losing their stuff.

As with all aspects of making a game, it's all a balancing act. We try to spend our time on the things that are most valuable to as many of our players as possible - which means attacking holes in the world in waves and making algorithm changes when it's become obvious that they're having a large enough negative effect on the experience for our players. The reality is that there is no silver bullet, no automatic solution - so it continues to be a problem that our game (and many others) continue to fight throughout their lifetimes. Recently, we’ve fixed a bunch of holes across all of the maps and did a pass at removing Climbing Pick exploits. Going forward, our best bet is to remain diligent about resolving issues as they arise and improving the experience over time. The good news is that we like solving hard problems - and exploits like these are some of the more interesting ones to try and tackle!

Upcoming Server Maintenance!

At 1pm Eastern on October 11th we will be taking down some of our NA and EU servers for maintenance on PS4 and Xbox. We expect maintenance to last for approximately 2 hours. During this time the servers will not be running therefore time will not progress. Once the servers are back online, they will require re-adding to your favorites list as they will have new IP addresses. At the list below is a list of all affected servers.

Mod Community Updates!

Today marks the start of a two-week streaming schedule to spotlight all of the mods entered into the contest. You can vote now for your favorite mods as they compete for a Grand Prize of $15,000!

https://survivetheark.com/index.php?/modding/voting/

You can follow the rankings with hourly updates as well!
https://survivetheark.com/index.php?/modding/contest-home/

Meanwhile, I will be streaming from the ARK twitch channel showcasing all of these mods, every weekday for the next two weeks! You can find the full schedule here:

Come check out some mods and support your fellow community members that give so much of their time to make these fantastic creations!

Community Livestream #9 This Thursday!

This Thursday October 11th the community team will be doing another biweekly livestream!

During these livestreams Zen Rowe, Chris, and Jen bring you ARK news, celebrate modding, and the community as a whole every other week. We mix it up between playing ARK, showing off mods, and showing off your community creations for all to see. Survivors are invited to join us in the chat (and sometimes even in-game) to play and talk with the community team.

We are accepting any type of ARK related fanart to be featured in the Showcase section of the stream and entries are always open. This can be drawings, videos, builds, ANSEL screenshots, handmade crafts, anything ARK related!

You can submit your ARKwork to our streaming email address: arkfans@studiowildcard.com

Be sure to follow us on our Twitch page so you don't miss a stream! twitch.tv/survivetheark

We'll be hosting our next Community Live Stream on Thursday, October the 11th at 1pm EST! We hope to see you there

Fanart of the Week!

Dodorex by Spooky Python!

ARK: Evolution Event!

Survivors across ALL Platforms will be receiving a special Evolution Event perk this weekend! It will be active from Friday the 12th of October at 1 PM EST until Monday the 15th of October at 3 PM EST. All Official Servers across each platform will be undergoing this evolutionary change which includes:

2x Harvesting Rates
2x Taming Rates
2x EXP Rates

That's it for this post guys! As always if you’ve got anything to share you can find us at:

Twitter: twitter.com/survivetheark
Facebook: facebook.com/survivetheark
Reddit: reddit.com/r/playark
Instagram: instagram.com/survivetheark
Twitch: twitch.tv/survivetheark
Steam: steamcommunity.com/app/346110
Youtube: youtube.com/survivetheark

All the best,
Studio Wildcard

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Hey Survivors! Welcome to the latest edition of the Community Crunch! 

Mysterious Mysteries: Introducing ???????

What an intriguing discovery survivors, can you guess what this creature is?

???

Mod Community Updates!

The ARK Modding Contest submission period ends in 5 days. Make sure to get your entries in before the end of the day on October 5th! After that, we'll begin the voting phase which will last for two weeks, so get your communities ready to vote on their favorite mods.

Enter the contest here!

I also have a new tutorial prepared for you today. We need to cover bitmasks before we start dealing with custom structures. After this we'll be moving on to a new project that builds on some of the concepts from our Dino Shrine mod, so look forward to the Virtual Sentry Mod that will be the focus of coming tutorials.

PS4 (EU) Sale!

ARK: Survival Evolved

ARK: Explorer's Edition

ARK: Season Pass

ARK: Scorched Earth

ARK: Aberration

Fanart of the Week!

Beautiful camp scene by ScutalTheLizard.

ARK: Evolution Event!

Survivors across ALL Platforms will be receiving a special Evolution Event perk this weekend! It will be active from Friday the 5th of October at 1 PM EST until Monday the 8th of October at 3 PM EST. All Official Servers across each platform will be undergoing this evolutionary change which includes:

2x Harvesting Rates
2x Taming Rates
2x EXP Rates

That's it for this post guys! As always if you’ve got anything to share you can find us at:

Twitter: twitter.com/survivetheark
Facebook: facebook.com/survivetheark
Reddit: reddit.com/r/playark
Instagram: instagram.com/survivetheark
Twitch: twitch.tv/survivetheark
Steam: steamcommunity.com/app/346110
Youtube: youtube.com/survivetheark

All the best,
Studio Wildcard

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What is Conquest?

Conquest is a new PvP player experience for PC players which focuses on large-scale PvP while avoiding the problem of mega tribes. Increased rates will allow tribes to set up and establish themselves quickly and enable them to rebuild after potential losses instead of being wiped completely.

Conquest Breakdown:

• Experience gain, taming, gathering, breeding, hatching, and raising rates have been doubled compared to our standard Official Servers (2x).
• Tribes are set to 25 players max.
• Tribe alliances are disabled, though informal alliances are allowed.
• Servers have a maximum player count of 100.
• There will be 36 servers in total on the Conquest cluster.
• Server transfers are enabled.
• Conquest servers are unaffected by Evolution Events.

Enforcement:

Our Enforcement team will be expanding to patrol this new cluster actively. We are testing this type of active enforcement and while we know this presents a challenge, we hope to be able to maintain this program while working alongside players. We desire to actively patrol and get to know the players of each server. The leader of each large tribe on Conquest will be able to submit a request to join a Discord server (to be announced at a future date) with access to the Enforcement team. We hope that this style of active enforcement and cooperation from the Conquest players will ensure that the servers are fair, fun, and competitive. 

The Enforcement team consists of both English and Chinese support, with expansions coming to Russian and Portuguese in the near future. Failure to comply with our Code of Conduct will result in consequences, including but not limited to a tribe, item, structure, and dino wipe by the Enforcement Team. Players should be aware that all reports submitted to Enforcement are taken seriously.

Tribe Spotlight Program:

It is our goal that your tribe in Conquest will become your identity on this cluster, a team name that you’ll carry with you into battle like a badge of honor. We will be offering clean/validated tribes (via the Discord) opportunities to brand themselves within the community. Tribes will have the opportunity to be spotlighted in articles on SurviveTheARK and will also receive opportunities to be promoted on our social media (such as retweets for content creators). This program is still in development and will be further fleshed out in the weeks to come.

The Conquest servers will be spun up and available for PC players on September 28 at 10am PST. We'll be monitoring the success of the cluster and then evaluate bringing them to console at a later date. We encourage PvP players to check these new servers out for a fresh experience!

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Hey Survivors! Welcome to the latest edition of the Community Crunch! 

Conquest PVP Servers!

Today we have some exciting news to bring our PvP official players. We are introducing a new server cluster called: Conquest.

In contrast to our successful 6-man tribes servers, Conquest will focus on big tribes (25=player limit per tribe) and big battles. In order to fuel this large-scale fight these servers will have 2x rates compared to other official servers (unaffected by Evolution Events). This will allow tribes to build up faster, gain experience faster, raise, breed, and tame creatures faster, allow more focus directly on battling other tribes. The servers will also be capped at 100 players per server instead of 70. Server transfers will be enabled between servers within the cluster. There will be 36 servers total within the cluster, offering all map types to play on. 

This batch of Conquest servers will provide a fertile grounds for big tribes to come and play!

The Conquest servers will be spun up and available for PC players on September 28. We'll be monitoring the clusters success on PC and then evaluate bringing them to console at a later date. We encourage PvP players to check these new servers out on Friday!

ARK Digest 54!

Thank you for all of your questions, Survivors! We're excited to be bringing back the ARK Digest as it's been quite awhile since we had one. We plan to do these approximately once a month going forward so Digest 54 will take place near the end of September.

Here is our question and answer session with Lead Programmer Chris Willoughby!

Survivor Thomas asks, “Will the Titans of the land be a temporary tame (like the Titanosaur's on these Islands in the sky) or will we be able to properly keep them in our collection forever? Will we be able to ride them?”

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The Titans will be temporary tames in a similar vein to Titanos - there can only be one of each type on a map at any given time. That said, in singleplayer, they’ll be a permanent tame, but you’ll have to sacrifice it to summon another!

Survivor Caleb asks, “Will there be another dino TLC pass? If so could you provide more details about it? Examples of dinos that could benefit from a TLC pass would be the Carnotaurus, Dimetrodon, and the Sabertooth among others.”

Quote

Right now we’re very focused on Extinction. If it makes sense to do another TLC pass post extinction, then we’ll do that. That said, we’re intentionally not making promises about this right now, because we don’t want to break them later.

Survivor Caleb asks, “If Rockwell is trapped/killed on Aberration, which takes place before Extinction in the story, does this mean we will not receive new additional recipes on Extinction due to the fact that Rockwell is the creator of the recipes?”

Quote

There will be new recipes, and of course all of the previous ones will be available. We’re also planning to rework a few existing things to change up the meta!

Survivor Jacob asks, “Will you guys do another live stream of the new dlc Extinction like what you did with aberration?”

Quote

Jen here to answer this question! Yes, we will be doing some streaming things for Extinction. We are also planning to do some fun stuff for Extra Life this year. If you’re not familiar, Extra Life is a 24-hour charity livestream event in which we help raise money for Children’s Hospitals. We’ve taken part the last few years and are definitely looking forward to participating again this year. It just so happens to line up very well with the release of Extinction happening a few days later. We’ll have some reveals to show as we reach donation milestones so if you’re looking forward to Extinction, you’ll want to check out that stream. We’ll provide more information on it as we get closer to the date, but Extra Life takes place on November 3rd.

Survivor Lorenzo asks, “Will the scout in extinction also be able to tag wild dinosaurs and are there going to be more relevance and new features regarding PvE?”

Quote

It can tag wild dinos and allies, opening the door to a comprehensive view of the dinos on the battlefield.

Survivor Cyrus asks, “Will Extinction have a similar transfer system that Aberration had during the first few months? Will we be able to download items, Dino’s, or pre existing characters onto the Extinction map?”

Quote

We are planning limited transfer into Extinction servers to start. We haven’t finalized the details yet, but it’s likely that it’ll be in the similar to Aberration.

If you have a question you want answered by the ARK dev team please submit your questions with the Subject "ARK Q&A" to our email address: arkfans@studiowildcard.com

STA Chinese Language Support!

SurviveTheArk.com 现在提供简体中文支持以及简体中文举报系统！用户可以在网页最下方选择语言。在更改语言后，系统将会自动翻译相应部分。

SurviveTheArk.com now offers Chinese language support and Chinese PC Abuse System support! You can select your language from the very bottom of the website. Once the language is changed, the PC incident report fields will automatically translated.

Mod Community Updates!

We just have a couple reminders for the mod community today.

There are two weeks left for submissions on both the Mod Contest and the Sponsored Mod Program. Get your entries in soon, because the deadline is October 6th. After that, we enter the voting phase; so this might be a good time to get people to try your mod and see what it has to offer.

We're also nearing the end of the month so I will be reviewing bounty requests and claims soon. If you are looking for any specific tutorials please make sure to take a look at the bounty request form.

Community Livestream #9 This Thursday!

This Thursday September 27th the community team will be doing another biweekly livestream!

During these livestreams Zen Rowe, Chris, and Jen bring you ARK news, celebrate modding, and the community as a whole every other week. We mix it up between playing ARK, showing off mods, and showing off your community creations for all to see. Survivors are invited to join us in the chat (and sometimes even in-game) to play and talk with the community team.

We are accepting any type of ARK related fanart to be featured in the Showcase section of the stream and entries are always open. This can be drawings, videos, builds, ANSEL screenshots, handmade crafts, anything ARK related!

You can submit your ARKwork to our streaming email address: arkfans@studiowildcard.com

Be sure to follow us on our Twitch page so you don't miss a stream! twitch.tv/survivetheark

We'll be hosting our next Community Live Stream on Thursday, September the 27th at 1pm EST! We hope to see you there

PS4 (EU) Sale!

ARK: Survival Evolved

ARK: Explorer's Edition

ARK: Season Pass

ARK: Scorched Earth

ARK: Aberration

Fanart of the Week!

Spinosaurus painted with Indian ink by Anna!

ARK: Evolution Event!

Survivors across ALL Platforms will be receiving a special Evolution Event perk this weekend! It will be active from Friday the 28th of September at 1 PM EST until Monday the 2st of October at 3 PM EST. All Official Servers across each platform will be undergoing this evolutionary change which includes:

2x Harvesting Rates
2x Taming Rates
2x EXP Rates

That's it for this post guys! As always if you’ve got anything to share you can find us at:

Twitter: twitter.com/survivetheark
Facebook: facebook.com/survivetheark
Reddit: reddit.com/r/playark
Instagram: instagram.com/survivetheark
Twitch: twitch.tv/survivetheark
Steam: steamcommunity.com/app/346110
Youtube: youtube.com/survivetheark

All the best,
Studio Wildcard

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Happy Patch Day, Survivors! It's Tuesday and ARK's latest is live. 

In celebration of the patch today we're sharing what we have been working on: some more brand new previews of our upcoming expansion pack ARK: Extinction. Check out the images below for a sneak peak at what you can expect to see on planet Earth!

In Extinction, Earth has become an Element-infested planet filled with fantastical creatures both organic and technological. Element has ravaged the planet and corrupted both the landscape and some of its inhabitants, causing mutations in the creatures and plants that can be found there.

We look forward to sharing more in the months ahead as we work towards our Extinction release!

Our Extinction Chronicles IV event is going on right now (PS4 coming soon), including new Corrupted skin, Explorer Notes, and Tek dinos. You can read all about it in yesterdays Community Crunch announcement: 

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Hey Survivors! Welcome to the latest edition of the Community Crunch! 

Extinction Chronicles IV!

Tomorrow there will be a client and server side update that will bring Extinction Chronicles IV to survivors on PC, Xbox, and PS4! 

Leading up to the release of Extinction there will be monthly drops of Extinction-related Explorer Notes on The Island, Scorched Earth, and Aberration. Once collected these notes will unlock new Extinction-related skins! 

There will also be the appearance of more powerful Tek-themed Dinosaur variants within the ARKs each month. These Tek Dinos are permanent additions (meaning they will continue to spawn even after the event is over), with a new one beginning to appear each month.

• In Extinction Chronicles I we released three Explorer Notes, the Corrupted Helmet and the Tek Rex.
• In Extinction Chronicles II we released three Explorer Notes, the Corrupted Boots and the Tek Stego. 
• In Extinction Chronicles III we released three Explorer Notes, the Corrupted Pants and the Tek Raptor.

And now, tomorrow we're excited to bring you three new Explorer Notes, the Corrupted Shirt and a new Tek creature, the Tek Parasaur!

In addition, special colored dinos will be populating the ARKs. You'll be able to find creatures sporting black and green for the next month beginning tomorrow. Be sure to take advantage of these special colors before they're extinct!

Last but not least: just like we did last month, you can expect to see some more extinction screenshots tomorrow here on our forums! Be sure to check back for that.

Patch Notes!

Here are the full fixes and notes coming in tomorrows Extinction Chronicles IV update.

Quote

- Extinction Chronicles IV
            - Added Tek Parasaur
                * New breeding line
                * 5% chance to spawns
                * 20% higher base level
            - Added new color set (green and black)
            - Added 3 new Explorer Notes and matching unlock (Corrupted Chest)
            - Increased maximum player level by 1
- Hole fixes on The Island, Ragnarok, Scorched Earth, The Center, Aberration
- Windmills are no longer affected by electric storms
- Decreased Cliff Platform build radius by half

Community Livestream #8 Roundup!

On September 13th we had our seventh Community Livestream. Thank you to all of those who attended and participated! The community team had a lot of fun and we hope you did as well. If you weren't able to catch the stream you can watch the video-on-demand on our Twitch page or by clicking on the video below.

Chris and Jen took on the stream without Josh this week who was moving apartments, and they were joined by the creators of the Dragonpunk Roleplaying Server. 

The server utilises many mods from our Sponsored Mods program. It also has its own lore with the players actively contributing to its story and the progression of the server with everything they do!

Chris and Jen then played a game of Hangman with the chat, utilizing in-game mechanics to send the guesser into the lava if they guessed wrong. Spoiler: Jen is much better at Hangman than Chris is.

Things concluded with looking at fan submissions, including an amazing ARK cosplay!

We are accepting any type of ARK related fanart to be featured in the Showcase section of the stream and entries are always open. This can be drawings, videos, builds, ANSEL screenshots, handmade crafts, anything ARK related!

You can submit your ARKwork to our streaming email address: arkfans@studiowildcard.com

Be sure to follow us on our Twitch page so you don't miss a stream! twitch.tv/survivetheark

We'll be hosting our next Community Live Stream on Thursday, September the 27th at 1PM EST! We hope to see you there

Mod Community Updates!

Good day modders, I have another tutorial prepared for you today; but before that, I want to remind everyone that the entry period for the contest is still open. You can continue to enter until October 6th! I have also received some questions about the video that was posted last week for the sponsored mod contest and I want everyone to know that the mods featured in it are not necessarily contestants. The mods shown were some of the great projects that the community has created and featured to get people interested in making mods if they aren't already, to show what has been possible thus far.

By popular demand, very popular demand actually, we're going to cover some information on version control. Now, this is not a comprehensive tutorial on version control, as that would likely mean its own miniseries, but it should get you going so that you can feel more secure about your projects.

ARK Digest Next Week!

We'll be doing another ARK Digest post in the next Community Crunch! If you have a question you want answered by the ARK dev team please submit your questions with the Subject "ARK Q&A" to our email address: arkfans@studiowildcard.com

The Great Migration #4: Inactive Legacy Server Removal

This is the last reminder that we will be removing some of our lower population legacy ARK servers on Xbox and PS4 from our Official legacy network. This takes place next Monday!

Here is a quick breakdown on how this process works:

Taking Down Low Pop Servers
With calculations based on sustained player-count as well as the popularity of game mode, we will be removing lower population legacy servers, most of which retain a 0-1 player concurrent population. These servers will be taken offline on September 24th. Any existing server that is not considered a low pop server and is not taken down at this time 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 Deprecation
Below is a complete list of the LEGACY servers that will be deprecated come September 24th. 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.

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.

Server Saves of Deleted Servers
We will make the save files available as soon as we can. 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.You can see a list of our currently available depreciated official servers on this webpage: https://survivetheark.com/index.php?/server-backups/

Fanart of the Week!

Check out this awesome JW-style Allo done by milokamilo! Very impressive!

ARK: Evolution Event!

Survivors across ALL Platforms will be receiving a special Evolution Event perk this weekend! It will be active from Friday the 21st of September at 1 PM EST until Monday the 24th of September at 3 PM EST. All Official Servers across each platform will be undergoing this evolutionary change which includes:

2x Harvesting Rates
2x Taming Rates
2x EXP Rates

That's it for this post guys! As always if you’ve got anything to share you can find us at:

Twitter: twitter.com/survivetheark
Facebook: facebook.com/survivetheark
Reddit: reddit.com/r/playark
Instagram: instagram.com/survivetheark
Twitch: twitch.tv/survivetheark
Steam: steamcommunity.com/app/346110
Youtube: youtube.com/survivetheark

All the best,
Studio Wildcard

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Hey Survivors! Welcome to the latest edition of the Community Crunch! 

Extinction Chronicles IV Next Week!

On September 18th Extinction Chronicles IV will be released on all platforms. As usual survivors can expect a new tek dino, new Explorer Notes, a new cosmetic, increased level cap, and special colored dinos on all ARKs!

Developer Diaries!

This weeks diary entry is brought to you by Lead Programmer, Chris Willoughby, as he talks about the process for designing gameplay mechanics for Extinction.

Quote

Hello Survivors! Today, I'd like to talk today about what goes into designing and building new gameplay mechanics. For brevity, I'll focus on the Scout, a creature that we've revealed as part of our upcoming Extinction expansion.

Quote

When we approach designing gameplay mechanics we start by brainstorming interesting ideas that would make a compelling addition to our sandbox. The Scout started as a desire for the ability to fly around the battlefield with a drone. We have several members of the team who enjoy flying drones, so collectively we fell in love with the idea of remote piloting early. We also had another gameplay mechanic that we were interested in that finds its origins in another franchise - the ability to tag enemies to reveal them to your allies. This idea was also high on our list, and through further brainstorming, we found it was a natural fit for the Scout, so they came together in the brainstorming phase.

From there we seek to match those abilities up with concepts that fit well into the world we're building. This one was pretty easy. We knew that we were building a futuristic city for Extinction, and immediately we latched onto the idea of some kind of automated security force that patrols it. It took several more sessions to land on the idea of the interplay between Scouts and Enforcers, and the way that the Scout is deployed, but we're happy with where it landed.

Quote

Next, we'll build the mechanic and iterate numerous times, using multiple weekly gameplay review sessions to nail the fine details. The Scout was deployable from a grenade and had remote viewing baked in pretty early on. Originally it's tagging mechanism was a projectile that it fired. This was very difficult to use, so we switched to more of a raygun. The tags originally lasted a very short time, so they weren't very useful. We've since upped the time that they last - making the Scout a key target for the other team to take out. In addition, we didn't originally allow the tagging of allies, but this slotted in naturally as a way to give a more complete view of the battlefield.

Finally, we turn our experienced set of player testers loose to hammer on the mechanics until they fit well. This process is underway for the Scout and for Extinction as a whole as I write this. We've got nearly all of the mechanics playable and we're iterating on the roles that they play individually and collectively within Extinction and within the larger game. As such, the abilities described above represent a snapshot of where they are as I'm writing this. These can and likely will change before launch! This is part of the reason that often times when we talk about something early on it doesn't match up with what the final product becomes. However this iteration process is necessary to deliver the best playing experience that we can.

Thanks for reading, survivors!

Upcoming Server Maintenance!

This Wednesday, September 12th at 12pm EST we will be merging the PC ARKpocalypse servers into one cluster. It is important for players on those servers to note that during this process any items or creatures uploaded into the Obelisk will be lost. Therefore it is strongly encouraged that you download anything in your cloud to ensure nothing is lost before Wednesday.

You can follow us on Twitter to keep up-to-date with this server process.

Mod Community Updates!

The ARK Modding contest is now in full swing, and we've been getting some good entries, but I still want to encourage anyone that has ever considered making mods for ARK to dive in and participate. The submission period will be open until Saturday, October 6th so polish up those mods and let's have some fun. After that, we'll move into the voting phase where we'll post all the mods in the contest publicly and let everyone try them out and vote on their favorites.

We've also received a couple tutorial bounty claims for chat commands and map optimizations and I have added a bunch of new bounties to the board ready to be claimed. You can find all of them here:

We're going to need some new tutorial requests too, and please check the list in the form to see if the request already exists, as I choose new bounties based on demand which can only be counted if everyone submits the form using one of the items from the drop-down.

Next week I'll have a new tutorial ready. I've been getting a ton of requests for a tutorial on version control, so I'm going to show everyone how to use Git with the devkit.

Happy modding!

The Great Migration #4: Inactive Legacy Server Removal

Once again it is time to remove some of our lower population legacy ARK servers on Xbox and PS4 from our Official legacy network. 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. 

Here is a quick breakdown on how this process works:

Taking Down Low Pop Servers
With calculations based on sustained player-count as well as the popularity of game mode, we will be removing lower population legacy servers, most of which retain a 0-1 player concurrent population. These servers will be taken offline on September 24th. Any existing server that is not considered a low pop server and is not taken down at this time 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 Deprecation
Below is a complete list of the LEGACY servers that will be deprecated come September 24th. 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.

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.

Server Saves of Deleted Servers
We will make the save files available as soon as we can. 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.

You can see a list of our currently available depreciated official servers on this webpage: https://survivetheark.com/index.php?/server-backups/

Community Livestream #8 This Thursday!

This Thursday September 13th the community team will be doing another biweekly livestream!

During these livestreams Zen Rowe, Chris, and Jen bring you ARK news, celebrate modding, and the community as a whole every other week. We mix it up between playing ARK, showing off mods, and showing off your community creations for all to see. Survivors are invited to join us in the chat (and sometimes even in-game) to play and talk with the community team.

We are accepting any type of ARK related fanart to be featured in the Showcase section of the stream and entries are always open. This can be drawings, videos, builds, ANSEL screenshots, handmade crafts, anything ARK related!

You can submit your ARKwork to our streaming email address: arkfans@studiowildcard.com

Be sure to follow us on our Twitch page so you don't miss a stream! twitch.tv/survivetheark

We'll be hosting our next Community Live Stream on Thursday, September the 13th at 1pm EST! We hope to see you there

Fanart of the Week!

We would like to give a special shout out this week to creature paint artist Sharkcat for their Jurassic World raptor paints!

ARK: Evolution Event!

Survivors across ALL Platforms will be receiving a special Evolution Event perk this weekend! It will be active from Friday the 14th of September at 1 PM EST until Monday the 17th of September at 3 PM EST. All Official Servers across each platform will be undergoing this evolutionary change which includes:

2x Harvesting Rates
2x Taming Rates
2x EXP Rates

That's it for this post guys! As always if you’ve got anything to share you can find us at:

Twitter: twitter.com/survivetheark
Facebook: facebook.com/survivetheark
Reddit: reddit.com/r/playark
Instagram: instagram.com/survivetheark
Twitch: twitch.tv/survivetheark
Steam: steamcommunity.com/app/346110
Youtube: youtube.com/survivetheark

All the best,
Studio Wildcard

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Hey Survivors! Welcome to the latest edition of the Community Crunch! 

Mod Community Updates!

Hello, modders! As many of you noticed, early Saturday morning the ARK Modding Contest became officially open for entries, where you can compete for a grand prize of $15,000! Further, something I didn't really say before is that the contest is planned to occur on a regular schedule, multiple times a year!

The application for sponsorship also opened up at the same time. ?

There have been some questions that have arisen from the modding community though, and so I will try to answer here some of the common ones I have received so far.

Quote

Can I apply for both sponsorship and enter the contest?

You can! While it is true that we made actively sponsored mod authors ineligible for the contest, these two systems (the contest and sponsorship program) are not in any way linked. You can enter the contest and apply for sponsorship at the same time as long as you are not currently sponsored already, but the results of the contest do not influence or inform the decision of sponsorship. The winner of the contest is not a guarantee of sponsorship or an indication of likelihood. They have different objectives in terms of what they are looking for.

Quote

Can we submit our projects every time the contest or sponsorship application period opens?

No, we have set a limit on how many times a calendar year you can enter a project to twice. We want people to give serious consideration to when they will submit for these events and how.

Quote

Will we be able to find out what other mods have entered a given contest?

Not until the entry phase has concluded and voting begins, after that point all entries will be made public and their rankings updated hourly on the main contest page.

Quote

Can we update our mods after entering them into the contest?

Yes, you can! We understand that sometimes things sneak by; however, once a Wildcard evaluation has been made it probably won't be re-evaluated based on a new update to the mod. It is best to make sure that your mod is as clean as possible before the voting phase begins.

Those are the most common questions I have been receiving. If you have any others feel free to ask me, most of you know how to contact me on discord or twitter, you can also send questions to ModProgram@studiowildcard.com

I also know that a number of you have been waiting to hear about tutorial bounty claims. Now that I am back from PAX I will be getting to those this week.

Good luck fellow modders and I hope that we can all keep an environment of good sportsmanship for these contests!

Community Livestream #7 Roundup!

On August 30th we had our seventh Community Livestream. Thank you to all of those who attended and participated! The community team had a lot of fun and we hope you did as well. If you weren't able to catch the stream you can watch the video-on-demand on our Twitch page or by clicking on the video below.

The stream started off with our special guest GG Fizz who is a returning guest. We also has a special WC guest joining us for the first time, Seggzy, who does QA here at Studio Wildcard. Unfortunately due to some technical issues our building contest ended up a little one sided, with Jen and Fizz on one time and Zen left to build on his own. The competition required each team to build a cliff platform base that included an area for a Rock Drake, a zip line, and a bed. The winner was then decided by the chat. There may have also been an addition special guest, though an unintentional one at that.

Zen Rowe then took us on a journey around the modded map Amissa. The map was created by Sicco0803 and is a fantasy styled map with beautiful terrain and several cities dotting the landscape. If that sounds liken something you'd be interested in definitely check it out on the Steam Workshop!

Things wrapped up on stream with showcasing your fan submissions and talking about the ARK Modding Contest in further detail, which is open now for submissions! 

We are accepting any type of ARK related fanart to be featured in the Showcase section of the stream and entries are always open. This can be drawings, videos, builds, ANSEL screenshots, handmade crafts, anything ARK related!

You can submit your ARKwork to our streaming email address: arkfans@studiowildcard.com

Be sure to follow us on our Twitch page so you don't miss a stream! twitch.tv/survivetheark

We'll be hosting our next Community Live Stream on Thursday, September the 13th at 1PM EST! We hope to see you there

The Great Migration #4: Inactive Legacy Server Removal

Once again it is time to remove some of our lower population legacy ARK servers on Xbox and PS4 from our Official legacy network. 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. 

Here is a quick breakdown on how this process works:

Taking Down Low Pop Servers
With calculations based on sustained player-count as well as the popularity of game mode, we will be removing lower population legacy servers, most of which retain a 0-1 player concurrent population. These servers will be taken offline on September 24th. Any existing server that is not considered a low pop server and is not taken down at this time 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 Deprecation
Below is a complete list of the LEGACY servers that will be deprecated come September 24th. 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.

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.

Server Saves of Deleted Servers
We will make the save files available as soon as we can. 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.

You can see a list of our currently available depreciated official servers on this webpage: https://survivetheark.com/index.php?/server-backups/

Fanart of the Week!

We would like to give a special shoutout this week to artist Mysterious Mandrill  for their hilarious ARK comic!

ARK: Evolution Event!

Survivors across ALL Platforms will be receiving a special Evolution Event perk this weekend! It will be active from Friday the 7th of September at 1 PM EST until Monday the 10th of September at 3 PM EST. All Official Servers across each platform will be undergoing this evolutionary change which includes:

2x Harvesting Rates
2x Taming Rates
2x EXP Rates

That's it for this post guys! As always if you’ve got anything to share you can find us at:

Twitter: twitter.com/survivetheark
Facebook: facebook.com/survivetheark
Reddit: reddit.com/r/playark
Instagram: instagram.com/survivetheark
Twitch: twitch.tv/survivetheark
Steam: steamcommunity.com/app/346110
Youtube: youtube.com/survivetheark

All the best,
Studio Wildcard

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Hey Survivors! Welcome to the latest edition of the Community Crunch! 

Mysterious Mysteries: Introducing ???????

What an intriguing discovery survivors, can you guess what this creature is?

Mod Community Announcements!

We have two important announcements for the modding community!

The first is that we are making some changes to the sponsored mod program. Previously it was more challenging to get eyes on the potential candidate projects as we would have to scour the workshop, discords, and forums; we could only see projects in their current public state, and what information the mod author chose to include. We will instead be moving to a more structured system.

Starting on September 1st, you can fill out this application to apply for sponsorship. This will help ensure that only the projects that are interested and ready for sponsorship are being brought to our attention and allow those mod authors to provide some additional information about where they are planning to take their project.

The program will also be moving to a more regular pattern, the application will be open for a period of five weeks starting in the months of January, March, May, July, and September at which point there will be slots opening in the program. Sponsorship periods will be capped at a year, but it is possible to re-apply for sponsorship after that period.

These changes will lead to a more predictable schedule of the program and give a more clear route to sponsorship for all interested mod authors.

Now for something a bit more exciting...

The ARK Modding Contest is back!!!

That's right; your eyes are not deceiving you, the ARK Modding Contest will return on September 1st! We have $28,000 in cash prizes for mod authors to compete for, and the Grand Prize is a whopping $15,000!!! So saddle up those Dev Kits, ready the mod cannons, and prepare for battle!

This will be our third modding contest, and the modding community as a whole has come a long way in terms of skill and creativity since we held the last one.

There will be a five-week entry phase followed by a two-week voting phase where players can show support for their favorite mods. Head over to ark.gg/ModContest for more information on the contest and to start preparing. This will take you to the main contest page where you can find out current information about the contest as it progresses, including hourly updates on rankings once we enter the voting phase.

The Great Migration #4: Inactive Legacy Server Removal

Once again it is time to remove some of our lower population legacy ARK servers on Xbox and PS4 from our Official legacy network. 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. 

Here is a quick breakdown on how this process works:

Taking Down Low Pop Servers
With calculations based on sustained player-count as well as the popularity of game mode, we will be removing lower population legacy servers, most of which retain a 0-1 player concurrent population. These servers will be taken offline on September 24th. Any existing server that is not considered a low pop server and is not taken down at this time 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 Deprecation
Below is a complete list of the LEGACY servers that will be deprecated come September 24th. 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.

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.

Server Saves of Deleted Servers
We will make the save files available as soon as we can. 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.

You can see a list of our currently available depreciated official servers on this webpage: https://survivetheark.com/index.php?/server-backups/

Community Livestream #7 This Thursday!

This Thursday August 30th the community team will be doing another biweekly livestream!

During these livestreams Zen Rowe, Chris, and Jen bring you ARK news, celebrate modding, and the community as a whole every other week. We mix it up between playing ARK, showing off mods, and showing off your community creations for all to see. Survivors are invited to join us in the chat (and sometimes even in-game) to play and talk with the community team.

We are accepting any type of ARK related fanart to be featured in the Showcase section of the stream and entries are always open. This can be drawings, videos, builds, ANSEL screenshots, handmade crafts, anything ARK related!

You can submit your ARKwork to our streaming email address: arkfans@studiowildcard.com

Be sure to follow us on our Twitch page so you don't miss a stream! twitch.tv/survivetheark

We'll be hosting our next Community Live Stream on Thursday, August the 30th at 1pm EST! We hope to see you there

Fanart of the Week!

We would like to give a special shoutout this week to artist Djaymasi for their amazing fanmade Koolasuchus Dossier!

ARK: Evolution Event!

Survivors across ALL Platforms will be receiving a special Evolution Event perk this weekend! It will be active from Friday the 31st of August at 1 PM EST until Monday the 3rd of September at 3 PM EST. All Official Servers across each platform will be undergoing this evolutionary change which includes:

2x Harvesting Rates
2x Taming Rates
2x EXP Rates

That's it for this post guys! As always if you’ve got anything to share you can find us at:

Twitter: twitter.com/survivetheark
Facebook: facebook.com/survivetheark
Reddit: reddit.com/r/playark
Instagram: instagram.com/survivetheark
Twitch: twitch.tv/survivetheark
Steam: steamcommunity.com/app/346110
Youtube: youtube.com/survivetheark

All the best,
Studio Wildcard

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Hey Survivors! Welcome to the latest edition of the Community Crunch! 

ARK Digest 53!

Thank you for all of your questions, Survivors! We're excited to be bringing back the ARK Digest as it's been quite awhile since we had one. We plan to do these approximately once a month going forward so Digest 54 will take place near the end of September.

Here is our question and answer session with Lead Programmer Chris Willoughby!

Survivor Tiny Hippo asks, “I'm getting the feeling that Extinction will be a no-flyer map like Aberration was. The new cryo-chamber system, the climbing Enforcer, the drone, floating boxes, and the Gasbags seem like things that would replace flying, so I just get the idea that there may not be fliers on Extinction. Would you please clarify if there will or won't be?”

Quote

Fliers are allowed on Extinction! There will be a number of existing fliers that spawn in Extinction, and we’re working on a few more to add to your collection. That said, there will be new challenges for fliers on this map that we’re excited for you to discover and contend with.

Survivor Max K asks, “Any news on the kibble tree rework?”

Quote

While imperfect, a lot of thought and work went into building the kibble tree as it stands now. A number of us internally would like to make major changes to this, potentially rebuilding it from the ground up. The reality is that this represents a significant undertaking, and would be very disruptive to the game. If we decide to tackle this, it will be post Extinction.

Survivor B Anthony asks, “Will there be artifacts in Extinction? And will the Obelisks still be used to go to the boss's room in Extinction?”

Quote

We’re still hammering out the exact summoning mechanics, but the Titan battles in Extinction will take place on the live map. There will not be separate boss fight arenas for them.

Survivor Caleb H asks, “Is there a scheduled frame of time that the S+ mod mechanics will be implemented? If so, when could we expect to see them? I'm sure the community would love to see the progress you have made.”

Quote

S+ is a shining example of the benefits of releasing mod tools to the community. It contains a number of improvements to the building system that we’d like to integrate. That said, it also contains a number of features and mechanics that circumvent systems in the game. Given this, we aren’t planning to integrate the mod wholesale. We are, however, examining and tracking individual improvements that would make sense to integrate. Any improvements in this area would come after Extinction launches.

Survivor Kim R asks, “Have you definitely decided for or against whether some mechanics from the expansion packs might carry over to other maps? I'm thinking of the cliff platforms that would be cool to build on the Island or other maps.”

Quote

When we set out to build an expansion, we seek to add gameplay that adds to the core experience. Our goal, then, is to allow those mechanics to be used in all the places that make sense. Cliff Platforms work on all maps, for example. A number of the features we’re adding in Extinction are meant to be used across all of the other maps. They’re meant to change things up on multiple levels.

Survivor Kim R asks, “Is it, or will it be, possible to run multiple events as a server owner? For example, both the Easter Event and the ARKaeology Event?”

Quote

Unfortunately, no. When we set out earlier this year to rebuild the event system in a way that they would persist, we decided not to ensure compatibility between them. Largely they modify many of the same bits, so making them fully compatible would take a significant amount of work and lower the likelihood that we could implement cool things like the bone pile spawning in the ARKaeology event.

Survivor Austin K asks, “With Extinction being the biggest DLC you've done yet, can we expect most if not all dinos in the game to be featured on the map?”

Quote

A number of our previous creatures will inhabit the Extinction map. As with our other expansions, we’ll bring across the ones that make the most sense and incorporate them. In addition, we’re adding the highly aggressive corrupted versions of a number of creatures to provide new challenges.

Survivor BrokenRealm asks, “Will there be another Ark: Fear Evolved?”

Quote

We like creating new and interesting events for our players. Unfortunately, most of our effort at that time will be focused on ensuring a smooth and enjoyable launch for Extinction. Doing a Halloween event and wrapping the expansion at the same time would have a negative impact on both, so we’ll be skipping Halloween this year. 

Survivor Dave M asks, “Will there be any new mods coming out for console players?

Quote

We’re aware that our console players would like to see more in this space. We don’t have anything specific to announce at the moment, but stay tuned.

Survivor Joaquin S asks, “If you had to describe Extinction in one to three words, what would they be?”

Quote

Prodigious, challenging, fresh. The Titans bring a number of new elements to the core experience through public boss fights and taming of even larger creatures. The new in-world event system we’re building will bring new gameplay to both PVE and PVP servers. Finally, the introduction of the city brings a whole new dynamic to exploration and building. I’m really excited about these new elements.

If you have a question you want answered by the ARK dev team please submit your questions with the Subject "ARK Q&A" to our email address: arkfans@studiowildcard.com

Community Livestream #6 Roundup!

On August 16th we had our sixth Community Livestream. Thank you to all of those who attended and participated! The community team had a lot of fun and we hope you did as well. If you weren't able to catch the stream you can watch the video-on-demand on our Twitch page or by clicking on the video below.

This stream we were joined by the creator of the mod Auction House, Ghazlawl. Auction House allows you to create, bid on, and purchase auctions for items, weapons, blueprints, skins, dinos, etc, from players on your server or players on other servers who are also using the mod. On top of that, modded items and dinos are supported! The mod has its own intuiative UI to allow for easy trading.

Chris, Zen and Jen then went on a taming adventure to find a Tek Raptor, which was newly introduced last week in our Extinction Chronicles III update. It was an eventful journey around the island full of action, and by action we mean being pounced on by every raptor except a Tek one.

After a suggestion from chat our adventurers made their way towards the volcano and it was on the way that they finally spotted a female Tek Raptor and tamed her, later dubbed "Raptotron" by chat. Success!

We are accepting any type of ARK related fanart to be featured in the Showcase section of the stream and entries are always open. This can be drawings, videos, builds, ANSEL screenshots, handmade crafts, anything ARK related!

You can submit your ARKwork to our streaming email address: arkfans@studiowildcard.com

Be sure to follow us on our Twitch page so you don't miss a stream! twitch.tv/survivetheark

We'll be hosting our next Community Live Stream on Thursday, August the 30th at 1PM EST! We hope to see you there

Mod Community Updates!

Hello everyone! Zen here. It's that time again for some mod news and reminders.

I have been getting some suggestions about changes to make for the tutorial bounty board. I will be thinking about those and consider the proper way to achieve the things people want to get from those suggestions. There are some claims that have been declared this month as well so I will be reviewing them shortly... or at least I should be, but I am actually in the middle of moving into a new apartment, so the bounty claims might be a bit delayed as I will be quite busy from now until the end of the month. I will get to them though, don't worry. The next workshop video will likely be delayed as well since my recording setup may not be ready in time.

I also have another Wildcard Workshop modding tutorial ready for you. I got some asks recently to cover event dispatchers, so here we go. These things are pretty useful so I would give it a watch.

Fanart of the Week!

We would like to give a special shoutout this week to artist Frillface for their amazing ARKwork created in MSPaint!

PS4 (EU) Sale!

ARK: Survival Evolved

ARK: Explorer's Edition

ARK: Season Pass

ARK: Scorched Earth

ARK: Aberration

ARK: Complete Your Season Pass

ARK: Evolution Event!

Survivors across ALL Platforms will be receiving a special Evolution Event perk this weekend! It will be active from Friday the 24th of August at 1 PM EST until Monday the 27th of August at 3 PM EST. All Official Servers across each platform will be undergoing this evolutionary change which includes:

2x Harvesting Rates
2x Taming Rates
2x EXP Rates

That's it for this post guys! As always if you’ve got anything to share you can find us at:

Twitter: twitter.com/survivetheark
Facebook: facebook.com/survivetheark
Reddit: reddit.com/r/playark
Instagram: instagram.com/survivetheark
Twitch: twitch.tv/survivetheark
Steam: steamcommunity.com/app/346110
Youtube: youtube.com/survivetheark

All the best,
Studio Wildcard

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