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ARK: Survival Evolved News

Community Crunch 248: The Game Awards


We've prepared a special announcement for ARK fans that you won't want to miss. It all starts at The Game Awards on December 10th!

Classic PvP Season 3

Classic PvP is a competitive player experience for PC players which focuses on the PvP experience from the days of old. Next week we'll be kicking off Season 3 of Classic PvP (bringing an end to our Conquest season). If you're unfamiliar with what Classic PvP is, there's a quick breakdown below.

[h2]Classic PvP Breakdown:[/h2]
  • 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
  • Classic PvP servers are unaffected by Evolution Events
  • These maps will be available: The Island, Scorched Earth, Ragnarok, Valguero, and The Center
  • Tek dinos (Tek Parasaur, Tek Quetzal, Tek Rex, Tek Raptor, Tek Stego), Paracer, Tapejara, and the Titanosaur are not available for taming on Classic PvP
  • All Aberration and Extinction content is unavailable on Classic PvP
  • Scaling of weapon damage has been reduced
  • No TEK Engrams
  • No cave building
  • Cryopods enabled


Prior to the launch of Season 3 next week, we'll share more details on the launch and timing.

EVO Event


Survivors on all platforms will be receiving a special Evolution Event perk as part of the Turkey Trial event! It will be active from Tuesday the 24th of Nov at 4 PM EST until Thursday the 10th of December. All Official Servers across each platform will be undergoing this evolutionary change which includes:
  • 2x Breeding/Maturing/Egg Hatching
  • 2x Harvesting
  • 2x Taming
  • 2x XP


Fan Art


DodoRex by Silatria


It’s a pink Argy by Beastboy (Discord)


The Kings Call by FoxFox87


Therizinosaurus by kawarayane


Face Off by nikout13 (Discord)


Giganotosaurus at the Meadow by Cucumberg


We can't wait to catch up with you at The Game Awards!
Studio Wildcard

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

Community Crunch 247: Turkey Trial

Turkey Trial 4


From Tuesday, November 24th through Tuesday, December 8th grab your tribe and flock over for Turkey Trial 4. Go on the hunt for the unforgiving “Super-Turkeys” and harvest wishbones to gain new chibis, cosmetic items, event-themed skins, and all new emotes!

[h2]Event Details[/h2]

This event can be manually activated with the server arg parameter: -ActiveEvent=TurkeyTrial

Dates: November 24th to December 8th

[h2]Rates[/h2]
  • 2X Breeding (mating interval, egg hatch speed, and maturation)
  • 2X XP
  • 2X Harvesting
  • 2X Taming


[h2]Event Creatures[/h2]
  • Super Turkeys (Untamable creature)
  • DodoRex (Craftable Temporary Tame)


[h2]Event Skins[/h2]
  • 2 Thanksgiving-themed Sweater Skins
  • NEW*
  • 2 Thanksgiving-themed Swimsuit Skins
  • NEW*
  • 2 Hawaiian-themed Shirt Skins
  • NEW*
  • Bonnet Hat
  • Chieftan Hat
  • Pilgrim Hat
  • Turkey Hat
  • Dodo Pie Swim Bottom & Top
  • Meat Swim Bottom & Top
  • Turkey Swim Bottom & Top
  • Pitchfork
  • Turkey Leg


[h2]Event Chibis (acquired via killing Super Turkey's for Wishbones)[/h2]
  • Tuso
  • NEW*
  • Broodmother
  • NEW*
  • Bonnet Otter
  • NEW*
  • Mantis
  • NEW*
  • Dunkleosteus
  • NEW*


[h2]Event Items[/h2]
  • Wishbones (acquired from killing Super Turkey's)
  • Thanksgiving Dino Candy


[h2]Wild Creature Colors[/h2]
  • MediumAutumn
  • NEW*
  • LightAutumn
  • NEW*
  • BurntSienna
  • NEW*
  • DarkMagenta
  • NEW*
  • DarkViolet
  • NEW*
  • Vermillion
  • NEW*
  • MidnightBlue
  • NEW*
  • BlackSands
  • NEW*
  • DarkBlue
  • NEW*
  • Orange
  • NEW*
  • Brown
  • Dark Red
  • Dino Dark Red
  • Dino Albino
  • NearBlack
  • Red
  • Light Brown
  • Black
  • Dino Darker Grey




Live-Ops Update


A message from our Product Manager:

While gamers can sometimes squabble over the little things, like which console is better, the ARK community is nonetheless tightly-knit. It's no surprise then, that when the community loses one of their own, fellow players are eager to reach out and honour the player that has passed away

Over the years, we have received some very touching messages from players who have lost fellow tribe members, family members and friends and chose to share their ways of paying tribute to them in-game with us.

Many of us at Wildcard were touched by a player’s story shared on Reddit about his lovely wife Heather, who passed away suddenly. He and his sister made a tribute to her on Valguero (her favourite map) and shared this screenshot with the community



We put our heads together to come up with a way we could add a lasting memorial to the game for, not only Heather, but for all of the Survivors who have Ascended.

Jackson Lawrence, one of our talented Level Designers, kindly offered to spend his own time creating a lasting memorial and I think his work is just beautiful! I’m humbled to be able to share our new addition to the Valguero map with the community.

Thank you for not only allowing us to entertain you but also for inviting what we created into your lives. As a bunch of people wanting to make something exciting and immersive, we’re honoured when players take that beyond anything we can possibly do to forge their own connections with the game. Our world may not be real but your sentiment and attachment to it is.



We hope our small gesture brings some comfort to players who have lost loved ones.

- Dollie and the Studio Wildcard Team.

[h2]DDoS Mitigation[/h2]
Improving the health and stability of our network infrastructure is a huge priority for the team. One of the biggest hurdles we've faced stem from DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacks. These are malicious attacks on our network which lead to server issues such as downtime, poor performance, or not being able to connect. While these attacks are impossible to prevent entirely, the team has spent a considerable amount of engineering time on mitigating these attacks with our hosting partners to reduce the impact they have on your playing experience.

As of the past few weeks, we have deployed some serious enhancements to the system and have such seen a dramatic decrease in server issues related to DDoS attacks on PC, Xbox, and PS4. Although things have improved, we will continue to monitor the overall health of the Official Network and work on advancing the technology to mitigate these attacks.

[h2]Character Loss caused by Rollbacks & Auto Restoration[/h2]
Preventing character loss remains of utmost importance to us. We've recently implemented the technology (and have had it running live on our Official Network) to auto-restore characters in the event that a server has experienced a rollback. Specifically, if a player has recently transferred to a server and for some reason, that server has done down without saving the world (crashed/restarted), upon it's next start up that character (presuming it hadn't left the server), will be automatically restored. We'll continue to monitor for character loss reports and identify opportunities to advance the auto-restoration technology.

[h2]Disconnection Issues for Xbox and Win10 clients.[/h2]
We have identified and fixed the issue causing players to regularly disconnect from Player Dedicated & Non-Dedicated servers on Xbox/Win10 every 30 minutes. The fix will be rolled out the upcoming Turkey Trial update on the 24th of November.

[h2]Beginner Server Wipe[/h2]
Just a friendly reminder that we're close to the next reset date on Beginner servers, which will take place on December 1st. For those not familiar, Beginner Official Servers are an experience for new ARK players to test the waters without the threat of thoroughly developed tribes.

Unlike our regular servers, these have undergone some changes and will wipe every 8 weeks. First of all, there have been some limitations on how much a player or dino can progress. Player levels hit their cap at 44 and the highest encounter possible for wild creatures is level 30. Tamed creatures can receive up to an additional maximum of 30 levels. Due to the progression limits, some engrams are not achievable through leveling up but are found via supply crates. Some other changes include the disabling of alliances and tribe sizes have been limited to 5 members maximum.

Below are the subsequently planned wipes based on the 8-week wipe schedule:
  • January 26
  • March 23
  • May 18
  • July 13
  • September 7
  • Nov 2
  • Dec 28


Black Friday Sales


Don't miss your chance to grab ARK for up to 80% off in the XBOX Black Friday Sale



Get started on your Black Friday shopping with ARK while it is up to 80% off in the Playstation Black Friday Sale!

EVO Event


Survivors on all platforms will be receiving a special Evolution Event perk this weekend! It will be active from Friday the 20th of Nov at 4 PM EST until Tuesday the 8th of December at 3 PM EST. All Official Servers across each platform will be undergoing this evolutionary change which includes:
  • 2x Breeding/Maturing/Egg Hatching
  • 2x Harvesting
  • 2x Taming
  • 2x XP


Fan Art


Poglin from ImEnFuego

Brontos Grazing from RoxaneLapa

Parasaurolophus from Drekaava

Crystal Isles: A quiet sunset by Melina799

Reaper Queen from Bob van Dorst (Discord)


From MrMEOLA


Catch you next week!
Studio Wildcard

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

Community Crunch 246: Live-Ops Update

What an eventful week it's been! We hope you had a chance to check out the Extra Life charity stream that happened this past Saturday. A tremendous thanks to the ARK community for helping us raise over $180,000 for sick children. Year after year, the ARK community continues to come together to support a great cause.

Speaking of the Extra Life live stream, In case you missed it we've detailed all of the Genesis 2 reveals below. From Noglin, to the Egg Incubator, the community is having trouble identifying a favorite.

Genesis 2 Extra Life Reveals

During the Extra Life live stream we also revealed that we'll have a special announcement for the ARK community at The Game Awards on December 10th. Be sure to tune in for a special treat from Jeremy and Jesse!

Live-Ops Update

We recently deployed a patch that made changes to structure placing and demolition to help increase server performance.

Previously when replacing a structure, the server had to do complex calculations involving checking all snapped structures to the structure being replaced to verify structural integrity. That calculation has now been eliminated as it is a replacement rather than the placement of a new structure in a new area. This will really only be highly noticeable on servers with large save files

The change to demolishing structures reduced how much is being calculated. It's less complex which makes it less intensive and "cheaper" on the server's performance thereby reducing lag, stalls and/or server drops when demolishing.

EVO Event


There will be no EVO event this week.

Fan Art


The pinnacle of mankind's ingenuity by TheShadowStone

King Of The River by SoldierofFortuna

Snack? by Omgods1

Trashcan McGee (Discord)

DodoRex - Lisalyulf (Discord)

The Noglin by ARION


Nezuyu (Discord)

Catch you next week!
Studio Wildcard

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

Ark: Survival Evolved expansion includes new story missions and David Tennant

During its Extra Life 24-hour charity stream, Studio Wildcard revealed Ark: Genesis Part II, the newest expansion for Ark: Survival Evolved. A teaser trailer broadcast at the start of the stream featured some pretty stunning new visuals to eyeball, as well as a release window - oh, and news that Genesis Part II will include a voiceover from David Tennant, who many will recognise from his time as the tenth Doctor on Doctor Who.


The expansion revolves around the final confrontation between Sir Edmund Rockwell (David Tennant) and HLN-A (Madeleine Madden) on a colony ship making its way through deep space. Players must possess enemies using creatures called "Noglins", which have brain-controlling powers, ride on the skateboard-like Hoversail, and manage bases in order to stop Rockwell's nefarious plans.


New biomes, story missions, and exotic creatures will be introduced to the dinosaur game's new expansion when it launches in March 2021. A second trailer was also shown during the Extra Life charity stream giving fans a look at TLC pass 3. The woolly mammoth and stegosaurus look even more deadly with their visual updates and the ability to breed insects and wyvern should prove a refreshing change to the title.


Read the rest of the story...


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