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An Update on G enesis Part 2

As we gear-up for the epic conclusion of ARK: Survival Evolved’s storyline with ARK: Genesis Part 2, we’re checking in with the community on its progress. Near the beginning of this year, the studio transitioned to working remotely. While the development of Genesis Part 2 has been ongoing throughout, and significant progress has been made, going from a highly collaborative in-office workflow to remote comes with specific challenges.

Upon further evaluation, we now have a better sense of the production timeline for Genesis Part 2. The new locked-in release date is now March 2021 simultaneously on all platforms. We understand that you are eager to get into it, and this news is disappointing; however, we are passionate about delivering something genuinely special, memorable, and suitably epic. This additional time allows us to ensure a better and unique experience and is well worth the investment.

We’ll be showing an extensive first-look at Genesis Part 2 later this year, revealing more details about completing your quest for ultimate survival; the forthcoming preview will reveal some of the new creatures, items, locations, features, and more!

We do however have other significant updates locked-&-loaded for this year! Just over the horizon, you can look forward to:

‘The Crystal Isles’ Free DLC on console: This includes the map in its entirety as well as three new tamable and breedable Crystal Wyverns. We are planning to release this significant update during the last week of August 2020.

Tender Love and Care Pass 3: This patch will overhaul two classic creatures with a new makeover containing updated models, animations, visuals, and new gameplay functionality for them. We’ll also be doing further general quality of life, balance, and gameplay changes to the core-game in this update. Our much anticipated TLC 3 pass is planned for a simultaneous release on all platforms in October 2020! More on that a little later

On behalf of the broader Wildcard team, we want to thank you for your ongoing support. We are continuously humbled and appreciative of the community’s creativity, passion, dedication! We’re looking forward to sharing ARK’s next chapter with you and a very exciting 2020 & 2021!

Studio Wildcard
 

Upcoming Balance Pass

We’ve spoken a lot about what players can look forward to in the future for ARK, now let’s talk about the present! This Thursday, July 30th, we’ll be releasing a minor version update on PC, Xbox, and PS4 which will contain a number of quality of life and balance changes. Here’s some of what you can expect to get your hands on. We’ll share the full set of notes on patch day:

Creatures

Basilosaurus - Increased deep-sea-depth value at which damage taken by approximately 30%
Bloodstalker - Reduced armour penetration by approximately 35% - Reduced durability damage by 50%
Carno - Added 30% armour penetration to the Left Click attack - Added a Bleed effect to the right click attack which does up to 5% of targets health over 10 seconds, cannot be stacked but the timer can be reset.
Carbonemys - Increased resistance to TEK Turrets by 10%
Dunkleosteus - Reduced weight of Obsidian in inventory by approximately 75% - Reduced weight of metal, stone, crystal, and black pearls by approximately 50% - Increased swim speed by approximately 20%
Liopleurodon - Increased buff timer from 30 minutes to 6 hours
Megachelon - Reduced Shell Resistance by 30% (from 80% to 50%) - Reduced Health Per Level gains by approximately 15%
Paracer - Reduced Health Per Level gains by approximately 15%

Breeding

 - Reduced Mosasaur maturation time (now matches Yutyrannus) - Reduced Basilosaurus maturation time (now matches Gacha) - Reduced Tusoteuthis maturation time (now matches Yutyrannus) - Reduced Plesiosaur maturation time (now matches Gacha) - Reduced Compy maturation time (now matches Otter) - Reduced Equus maturation time (now matches Procoptodon) - Reduced Quetzal maturation time to approximately 5 and a half days - Reduced Phiomia maturation time (now matches Ovis) - Reduced Ichthyosaurus maturation time (now matches Roll Rat) - Reduced Dunkleosteus maturation time (now matches Mammoth) - Reduced Jerboa maturation time (now matches Otter) - Increased Rhino maturation time (now matches Doedicurus)

General

 - Flying creatures will prioritise picking up friendly-creatures rather than dismounting friendly riders - Baby Creatures will no longer auto-wander when hatched - Mounting a flying creature will no longer instantly cause it to take off - Cryopods in a player’s inventory will now charge if a player is sleeping in a TEK Pod. - TEK Helm will now provide players with the Gas Mask bonus, protecting them from the Poison Wyvern and Basilisk spit. - TEK Turrets now require double the amount of shards per bullet - Metal Ingot stack size has been increased to 300 - Raw Metal stack size has been increased to 300 - Spoil time on Lesser Antidote has been increased to 3 days - Spoil time on Prime Meat and Prime Fish have doubled - Gasbags will no longer push Dinos around in PVE when landing to prevent griefing and exploits - HLNA and Chibi Creatures no longer disable the protection against Bees buff. - Yell and Whisper can now switch between the following modifier keys on PC: Left Shift, Left Ctrl, and Left Alt - Added an additional 15 seconds to all race missions on Xbox and PS4 - Added Event Emotes to the Hex Store at the cost of 50,000 hexagons - Boss Fight timer on Valguero has increased from 20 minutes to 30 minutes. - We are also adding a configurable GameUserSettings.ini which allows server hosts to limit the amount of gateways that can be placed on platform saddles. This configuration is not retroactive, so applying this change will require some manual administration work to clear up any pre-existing platforms that exceed the limit.      MaxGateFrameOnSaddles=2 We’ll be enabling this on our Official PvP Network and setting the limit to 2, on all platforms. Official PvP players will have approximately 30 days to adjust their current existing platforms to remove any that exceed the gateway limit.

Official Rates

We’ve heard you loud and clear!

Since March, our Official Networks across those 3 platforms have been under the effect of an Evolution Event as these increased rates have now become the norm and we are happy with the results, it’s time to make it a permanent change!

Going forward, we’ll be doubling the fun by doubling the Official Rates across PC, Xbox and PS4 as standard, along with some changes to our specialty servers. From the next major version, Official Server rates will now have increased default rates for Harvesting, Taming, and XP. What was previously ‘2x rates’ prior to today, will now become the new base rate (1x). 

The increased 2x rates will be implemented directly in the game build itself. This means that Non-Dedicated Servers, Single Player Sessions and of course Unofficial Servers will also feel the increased rates. Therefore, if you’re currently using customized rates, it’s something you will want to keep in mind before this change is in place — specifically upon the release of the next Major Version on each of your respective platforms, you may wish to reduce your server/game rates by 50% to have the same effective values as before.

Official rates will be adjusted accordingly:

• Standard Official Servers: 1x harvesting, taming, and XP (which is equivalent to 2x when considering our old values)
• Small Tribes Servers: Smalls will have their taming, harvesting, and XP changed to 2.5x (which is equivalent to 5x when considering our old values)
• Apocalypse Servers: These will remain at 3x harvesting, taming, and XP (which is equivalent to 6x when considering our old values)

P.S — This is actually the second time we’ve increased the default rates if we look back to the early access days of 2015. So for you old timeys, it’s technically 4x . Inb4 comments ‘back in my day, it took us two weeks to build a wooden 4×4’.

EVO Event

As mentioned above, the Official Network rates will be increasing to 2X following the next major version update.  Following the update, we’ll have more information on EVO events.  Until then, we’ll be using the EVO event system to apply the bonuses.

Community Fan Art

Fan Art Cutscene by @Nightshade_404

Rock Drake by @DiN-the-Painter
 

Child Who Likes Rain by @sis_6193

Wear Your Mask by @PicturesofArk
 

Japanese-Style Castle by @sam_stimo

Who’s Playing Crystal Isles by @DudeSolo1
 

Kanata Castle by @forbanana

El Galeón Capitán Archer by @RikerPlays

See you next week!

Studio Wildcard 

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