TargetOne

Hi, Like most, I hate the graphics bug (grainy images, especially with movement) introduced in ASA game client 36.8. Frankly, DLSS is now broken. And there doesn't seem to be any real fix, other than waiting for WildCard to do so. However, I've been playing with my driver settings outside of the game, and figured out how to improve the visuals, at least a little. Note, I have an Nvidia 3060 Ti GPU, so these settings are Nvidia-specific. But AMD cards may have something similar. First, open the Nvidia Control Panel. Navigate to 3D Settings, Manage 3D settings, Program Settings,and select "Ark Survival Ascended". Then,in the list below, turn on Image Scaling. Leave the Sharpness at 50% (you can tweak this later to suit your personal preferences). Launch the game. Go to Settings, General, Video. Make sure Window Mode is Fullscreen, turn off Super Resolution, and set Anti-aliasing to "Native". Then go to Resolution. There should now be several available resolution settings lower than the native resolution of your monitor. (For example, I have a 2560x1440 monitor, and there are now entries in the list for 2176x1224, 2048x1152, 1969x1108, etc.). Select one of these intermediate resolutions, then click Save. The "graniness" of the in-game graphics should be greatly reduced. It won't be perfect, but it's better than nothing. Which resolution you use will be a tradeoff between image detail and frame rate, try them all. What Nvidia Image Scaling does is, it renders the game at a lower-than-native resolution, then upscales it to native. This has the effect of smoothing out the images, while also improving the frame rate a bit. DLSS, when it was working, did much the same thing, only using a far superior method. DLSS would be vastly preferable, of course, but until WildCard fixes it, we're stuck with what tools we have.

Friday.

The trouble is, the "invisible clouds" still affect the game with atmospheric effects (haze and lighting) and associated FPS slowdowns, until/unless you do use the console command to turn them off.

You're not the only one. Something in the last client update (33.49) broke them for many folks.

I do get the "cave" effect whenever I'm near the Volcano. Hear the hollow whistling wind sound of the cave, and all supply crates and their beacons disappear, even the ones ON the volcano. But the crates on the volcano are still accessible, IF I can get close enough without being able to see them. I haven't had anti-meshing happen to me, at least, but then, I don't spend any great deal of time on those parts of the volcano exterior.

I don't think the poll itself has much merit. It's going to be heavily skewed towards Nvidia, just by virtue of Nvidia being the most popular GPU series. I will say that "ark.VertexCountScaling 1" eliminated maybe 99% of my in-game crashes, which were mostly happening when accessing (or especially, exiting) any inventory screen. I can play for hours with out any crashes after that command, regardless of ANY other settings. Edit to say, RTX 3060 TI (8GB) GPU.

No kidding. Temps are going from 125F to 20F and back to 95F within a few hundred feet of each other.

I found I have to turn OFF DLSS on the RTX page in order to adjust the resolution scale OR the anti-aliasing level. Then turn DLSS back ON, if desired.

Dino AI does need more work. I put some tamed dilophosaurs on follow, move away, then watch as they run around in circles, apparently unable to find a way around all the nifty new Nanite-powered grass. (Larger dinos like Allosaurs aren't much better.)

PS - Thank you for your hard work. It's not an easy task you set out to do, and far too many people have been uncivil today.

Mr. LaForge, engage.

The in-game browser has always been a bit limited/broken, and will never show all active servers on any given refresh. Battlemetrics.com is a far better measure of the game's activity. Battlemetrics currently shows over 68000 servers online, with over 13000 players online. And this is after the game has been out for over eight years. Not bad, Ark. Not bad at all. 🫡

I noticed a problem on the new Wiki, specifically on the Resource Map for Fjordur. For many of the resources, the "Surface" and "Cave" toggles are Backwards. That is, if only "Surface" is checked, then resources which only appear in CAVES are shown, and vice-versa. For example, red, blue, and green gems are only found in caves, but are not shown if only "caves" is selected. This problem only seems to affect the caves-only resources, or resources found on both the surface and in caves (eg. crystal). Surface-only resources are fine.

So, on The Island (unofficial server I admin), there was this Titanosaur wandering about between two of our bases. At one point, it walked over the walls of a base as if they weren't even there, and got stuck inside for a bit before finally getting out and going on its merry way. A tribemate had been wanting to tame one for weeks, and finally convinced me to help. So, we got a Quetzal with a platform saddle, made a cannon and a bunch of cannonballs, and set off (one of us riding shotgun on the cannon, the other driving). We quickly learned that hitting a Titan in the head with cannonballs is very hard! Between the Titan constantly moving around and turning its neck, the Quetzal's poor maneuverability, trees getting in the way, and the god-awful interface for aiming the cannon, we wasted lots of cannonballs and were barely making a dent in its torpidity. To make matters worse, the Titan, in its continued wandering, walked over the walls (4 levels high!) of another base, and got stuck in the middle. We were afraid it was going to lash out and take out half the base if we shot at it anymore. We had to move all our tames away from its feet in order to get it moving again, and finally got it out of the base. Out of frustration, we decided I should use my Godlike admin powers, and force-tame it. Only for me to discover, the ForceTame command was NOT working! On the Titanosaur, or any other wild creature. And yes, I was logged in with EnableCheats active. After we gave up, I went out into a clearing filled mostly with herbivores, and started testing the ForceTame command again, as well as the DoTame and ForceTameAOE commands. I finally discovered that the command syntax on the ARK Wiki was WRONG... it's not "cheat ForceTame", it's "admincheat ForceTame" (or DoTame, or ForceTameAOE). Excited that I finally got ForceTame to work, I quickly tried ForceTameAOE... but in my haste, I accidentally added TOO MANY ZEROES to the radius number. As in, "50000" instead of "500". And to our amazement, I tamed EVERY CREATURE IN A TWO-MILE RADIUS. Every Stego, every Dilo, every Parasaur... hell, even the dragonflies, ants, and fish! My tribemate and I spent the rest of the evening laughing our asses off, as we wandered around the area with our Awesome Spyglasses turned on and revealing the tames, them whistling them to follow us and herd them back to the base for the oh-so-necessary culling. The fish are actually still in their original locations, we didn't bother trying to do anything with them. ???

There's been a level 40 wild Giga wandering the Island on my server for a while now, around the mountain in the northeast. Not terribly high level, considering my server multipliers, but still... a Giga. Recently, I was lucky enough to get a decent Giga saddle. So the other day, I was bored, and decided to try my hand at taming that Giga... solo. Yeah, that's right. I figured I could use the same strategy I use for taming spinos: lay out a bunch of large bear traps at the bottom of a (tall-enough) cliff... have plenty of tranq darts, narcotics, and kibble on-hand... ride my Argent, lure the Giga to the base of said cliff, let it get trapped, shoot until KO'd, feed kibble, wait, profit. I would just have to use more bear traps and narcotics than for a spino, right? But I hadn't researched Giga taming enough beforehand, or I would have known to use tranq ARROWS with a crossbow, instead of darts with a longneck rifle. So, my reloading couldn't keep up with its topor drain, and I was using WAY more tranq darts than I had expected. Meanwhile, the bear traps weren't keeping it trapped long enough, and even though I had laid out well over 50 (!) traps, the Giga still eventually broke free. By some stroke of luck, though, it got stuck in some rocks long enough for me to pump still more darts into it, and it finally went down. I flew down with my Argent, plopped narcotics and kibble into the Giga's inventory, then went around and picked up whatever bear traps it hadn't destroyed. But then, I let myself get distracted checking other stuff in my inventory, not realizing just how fast the Giga's topor was dropping. Next thing I know, it's waking up, and I barely escape with my life (and that of my Argent). Naturally, I just had to try again... made more large bear traps (so very much metal!) and tranq darts (still didn't know arrows work better), set up the "killing field" again, lured the Giga back from where it had wandered down the beach this was fun in and of itself, since the damn things are so easily distracted by other prey). And AGAIN, it broke free of the traps before I could KO it. This time, though, it REALLY got stuck in some offshore rocks... couldn't move at all. After pumping it full of tranq darts again, I KO'd it for the second time, and this time I watched its topor levels like a hawk. Long story short, got him tamed... had to use a cryopod left over from holiday event to get him out of the rocks. And now, I have my very own Giga! Here he is, next to some Allosaurs, in the rain, at night: Naturally, if I ever try this again, I'd do it very differently... TargetOne

I ran across a level 240 Castoroides, and tamed it. Great stats except for the carry weight, so I decided to start leveling that up. I went out to the thick forest near my base, used the beaver to harvest the trees until encumbered, then dropped everything from his inventory... wash, rinse, repeat. Half an hour later, this was the result: Nothing like a little total deforestation to make your day!

I play on The Island on unofficial. Yesterday, I decided it was time to get our tribe a second Tapejara. Our first one was tamed by a [now inactive] tribe member, and is fairly high-level (in the 90's now, IIRC). So, I get the necessary supplies together: ghillie suit, allosaur kibble, narcotics, tranq darts, bola, etc. Then hop on an argent and start flying around areas where I've seen them previously (north side of the Redwoods, and the forest just to the east). Well, every time I spotted one, it was either VERY low-level (e.g. 2 to 6), and/or got spooked by some other wild creature and flew off and out of sight before I could even attempt to capture it (I'm looking at you, Level-40!!!). I caught a couple of them as the day progressed, only to have them killed by wild dinos (a measly dilo in one case, a Rex in the second) before taming was done. Finally, was able to KO a level 13 in the eastern forest... protected it by building a ring of wooden spike walls all the way around it. And still, a Bronto and a GachaClaus (yes, event's still running on our server) managed to step or crawl over the spike wall! But at least they were harmless, and nothing aggressive bothered us. So, I got the Tapa fully tamed and led it back to base. Only a level 19 after taming, but at that point, I'll take what I can get!