Community Crunch 419: ‘Steampunk Ascent’ Cosmo Concept

Hey survivors! We hope you’re all soaking up the summer sun!
We’ve got some news that’s ready to jump right into your day. Meet Cosmo, our latest creature for Bob’s Tall Tales: Steampunk Ascent!

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“It’s hard to squish a friend who jumps into your heart as well as your hand.” – Bob (probably)

Cosmo, a little beacon of light in a dark and aberrant subterranean land, will be available as your loyal companion in the Aberration edition of Bob’s Tall Tales: Steampunk Ascent!

Buy the expansion pass now on Steam, XBOX or PlayStation!

We’re currently targeting the release of the Unreal Engine 5.4 upgrade as part of the Aberration and Bob’s Tall Tales: Steampunk Ascent on September 4. UE 5.4 improves the efficiency of the rendering system, making it much more parallelized for an approximate 20% overall performance boost on all platforms. It also improves memory management, reduces hitching/stalling, and provides more forward-looking graphics improvements, such as better, longer-range Lumen results – which will all be immediately noticeable when the upgrade is released. If the upgrade is delayed past September 4 due to risk management, the Aberration release will proceed as planned, and the ASA UE 5.4 upgrade will be released as soon as possible.

Simultaneously, we’re also working on preparing an AMD FSR 3.1 integration for the September 4 release on all platforms. It is a better, cross-platform version of “frame generation,” which uses AI to interpolate frames, resulting in a perceived doubling of framerate with minimal artifacting – and it works on both AMD AND NVIDIA cards. It will be enabled by default when we release it, but it can, of course, be turned off. We will deprecate support for NVIDIA Framegen once FSR 3.1 releases, as FSR 3.1 works on consoles and, thus, is a better technical focus for our team.

When these two features are released, we expect ASA will run far better and have lower system requirements. Finally, by the end of the year, we’ll release a “low system requirements” launch option, which will, with some graphical sacrifices, lower the effective 30 FPS system requirements down to the NVIDIA 1080 series of cards.

Download & play new custom content created by players, including new maps, creatures, items, and game modes, through a dedicated new Mod-browser directly within the game. Enjoy an endless stream of new ARK content as the creativity and talent of the community is fully unleashed for the first time across gaming platforms and stay tuned as we spotlight more Cross-Platform Mods each week!

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Transfers on The Center Official servers will open at 10am PST/1pm EST July 26th allowing players to move items, creatures, and characters onto the map without restriction! Get your Fasolasuchus ready to explore the majestic Red Woods!

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On April 8th, we deployed a new type of server across the network (for the various game types) that we refer to as “Expire” (which is what you can search for in the session filter).

These servers will be online until 10 am PST / 1 pm EST on August 3rd. We’re preemptively using our allocation for Aberration to host some additional sessions that players can travel onto to farm, tame, and experience The Center Gameplay. The same transfer restrictions apply in that you are only able to download your character, but you can freely take anything off. This is to help reduce load off some of the other servers, or provide players an option for those who just want to jump onto The Center temporarily.

Please note that these servers will no longer exist after 10 am PST / 1 pm EST on August 3rd, so if you intend to use them, remember to transfer your items/creatures/characters off before that date, as nothing will be saved beyond that time period.

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We’ve hit a snag with the Genesis Part 2 release and are unfortunately delaying the release to July 31st, alongside the Rhyniognatha, which will be found spawning around The Island.

The DLC and patch have passed certification with Nintendo, but some backend issues are preventing a smooth launch. We know this is not exciting news to hear but it’s important to ensure all players around the globe can play upon its release. We thank you for your patience.