A new Dino Dossier has been revealed, this one is everyone’s flaming fire flyer, the Phoenix!

Common name: Phoenix
Species: Unknown
Time: Unknown
Diet: Flame Eater
Temperament: Elusive

Wild:

Among the most mysterious of all flying creatures, much of what is known about the Phoenix exists in legends which have been told through generations. These myths have often changed through the passing of time, but one constant is the belief that fire represents cleansing and renewal. The Phoenix embodies this process through its everlasting cycle of death and renewal.

Extreme heat-waves in the desert seem to initiate the rise of the Phoenix, while the end of this so-called "Super Heat" precipitates the creature's reversion into ashes. While the Phoenix seems ambivalent to most wildlife, if provoked, its ferocity is evident in its ability to set targets aflame with a single bite.

Domesticated:

Attempting to pacify a Phoenix is, quite literally, playing with fire. The Phoenix must be continually set ablaze in order to be tamed. I've seen many turned into dust and ash in the attempt. After it has been pacified, the Phoenix will regain its vitality when it is aflame! Although its compact size prevents the Phoenix from being ridden, its aggressive enflaming has proved to be invaluable in battle. Plus, it can quickly roast up tasty cooked meat and refine raw ores at any time, as a living furnace!


Here is our question and answer session with Lead Designer, Lead Programmer, Co-Creative Director of ARK: Survival Evolved, and Co-Founder of Studio Wildcard: Jeremy "Drake" Stieglitz!

Survivor Monics asks, “When it comes to game performance in general... The game has come a long way I believe, optimization wise... But still, is missing quite a bit. What are your plans moving forward regarding these specifics?â€

A lot of server-side work in particular, more physics threading and more efficient networking. For clients, one of the biggest areas for potential improvement currently is faster rendering of large bases: using instanced meshes to render hundreds of structures in a single draw-call. After that, general profiling. DX12 is still of interest, but we need to do more analysis to make sure it’s a real benefit to players -- the gains were small last time we checked, and the drivers were unstable, though I imagine a lot has improved over the past year, so will be taking another look at it!

Survivor DangerPlayz asks, “Hey Jeremy! I play a lot of Single Player and am very happy with the changes you have made recently! However, can we please get an option to remove the engram points system and unlock all engrams at a certain level, when we reach said level. Thanks!â€

Will do, easy enough.

Survivor Caseybear asks “Will the small CrossArk cluster servers be gaining access to Ragnarok and other future content? If so, any idea when?â€

Aye, it should be added when we allocate more server machines at launch.

Survivor IGNWhyt asks, “Will you please address the issue where the game takes up 100+GB? Is this intended? Are there any plans on reducing the size?â€

It’s intended. In essence, much of the content exists in two forms: seekfree (for fast-loading of the basic game), and non-seekfree for support of Mods and Total Conversion to use individual assets. That said, there is a strong argument the non-seekfree files necessary for Mods should be contained in an optional “Mod Support†DLC pack, and not part of the immediate base game. Will consider this in the days ahead.

Survivor RaifuForLaifu, asks “Can we get a damage reduction on The Dragon's fire breath pretty please with extra sprinkles on top? 25% feels a tad ridiculous. Thank youâ€

It shall be done!

Survivor Blackwolfe asks, “You earlier mentioned that you were reworking the kibble tree. Will this also affect the kibbles asked for when imprinting dinos? Beacuse kibble for imprinting I think is a large part of why people feel forced to have a lot of dinos (together with the kibbles needed
for taming).â€

Yes, we have a tentative rework of the Kibble Tree that will be going live on the post-retail-launch “Experimental†branch for public feedback.

Survivor GamerPerfection asks, “Can you make the Tribe Logs record your Tames/Turrets kills? I find it frustrating not knowing what they've actually killed when i'm not around.â€

It shall be done!

Survivor Mendoza asks, “Can we get Sun Glasses added to the game to help reduce glare?â€

Yep.

Survivor iAmE asks, “Do you plan on hiring any additional support staff? I would figure any number would be nice, as you would seem to be going up from what appears to be zero (4-6 Month ticket turn arounds hurt this game an immense amount.â€

Yeah, as we get into retail launch and beyond, more Support Staff is going to be needed and we’ll be getting that buffed in the coming weeks.

Survivor Touhma asks, “As A server Admin I want an option that can allow me to have a full customisation on Taming time / ressources Any chances to have this options :

* TamedDinoCharacterFoodDrainMultiplier -> To avoid the consumption of ressource after taming ( when foodDrain is up )
* WildDinoCharacterFoodDrainMultiplier -> To tweak the speed of taming whitout affect the tamed dinos ( when foodDrain is up and avoiding the effect on tamed dinos )
* WildDinoTorporDrainMultiplier -> To have a use of narcotics ( because of TamingEfficiency make narcotics almost useless en taming time is less than offi )
* PassiveTameIntervalMultiplier -> To adjust the interval between 2 feeding tentative for passive tame dinos ( because if the foorDrainMultiplier is greater than 2 the dino is dying when trying to tame it )

Why I want these changes: https://survivetheark.com/index.php?/forums/topic/225312-something-wrong-with-taming-settings-on-custom-server/“

Those are good, and we’ll get it done!

Survivor CottonCandy asks, “1) Is there any chance we'll see an option to enable NVIDIA Ansel on servers that don't care about people using it to cheat, etc?â€

Yeah, we’ll just add the capability to use Ansel if you’re an admin :-P

Survivor PaladinKong asks, “Will those who have the game now in early access be able to get the physical items that come with the collectors edition, like the dossier book, without having to buy another copy of the game?â€

The company that manufactures & distributes the Collector’s Editions (which is not us directly) has told us that when they sell out, they can manufacture more that are CE-only (and thus cheaper) without the game included. I think we’re close to selling out, so we’ll bug them about it now.

Survivor johnm81 asks, “Prim+ players have been told that load times for pc version can't be addressed till after alpha. Now that alpha is over what are the plans to lower the 5-15min load times for this total conversion?â€

Yep, we need to do give it a proper Seekfree cook which would then have the same load times as the base game. We’ll do so soon. The problem is that it has to then be updated (recooked) more often as well, but I think we can handle it. We may also provide Dev Kit authors with the option to do a (large but super-fast-loading) Seekfree cook.

Survivor legendaryc4 asks, “can console players get the option to hold back the left stick to slow flyers down? Very big here for me as building high up can be a pain.â€

Yes, we’ll add this. Been on the todo list for a while but darn the limited buttons available on gamepad. What you suggest seems like a good way to go with it.

Survivor Lowly asks, “Can we get some sort of flame retardant suite, firefighter suite, racing driver type flame retardant suite, to fit into the modern technology side of scorched earthâ€

Yes, Bio/Hazard Suit is incoming.

Survivor Dustiest-Ninja asks, “On a scale of 1-Incredible Hulk how much did dealing with the PhysX Engine for the tek ATV-jeeps make you rage?â€

It was… interesting. In all fairness, we actually had to modify the lowest-level PhysX code in order to make it work halfway-decently :-P I hope to do more with that soon.

Survivor Syntac asks, “Will you guys ever implement the Hive, the creature in the dev kit that looks like a giant beetle?â€

After the Phoenix ;)

Survivor Gelantious asks, “Any news related to Vulkan? Still having hopes you guys will move over to it and ditch the idea of dx12, since it would help Linux users as well and all windows users, not just the windows 10 players.â€

Unreal 4’s own official Vulkan integration was only like half-functional when I last reviewed it a few months ago. I’ll take a look shortly to see if it’s farther along. Once Epic has got it going fully well (fully matching the functionality and pipeline of DX11 & Shader Model 5), I’d like to try to incorporate it into ARK.

Survivor tolle79 asks†lets be serious the question of all quetions is why doesnt the doedicurus gather berries? Like how does it survive in the wild?â€

It ought to gather berries! :-P

Survivor LordMaxilos asks, “TEK: Is there any chance that some sort of TEK Bow will be introduced to the game? As well as a TEK Arrow who will split up into three when you shoot it or something?â€

Tek Bow isn’t a question of “ifâ€, just a question of “whenâ€!

Survivor Redstorm8616 asks, “Growable Cactus Sap?â€

Hmm, could be fun. <*Ouch, prickly!*> In all seriousness, we should totally do it and will. Would be fun to have more growable crops.

Survivor mleii asks, “Can we get some videos showing what the Xbox One X will look like in game?â€

Soon -- the Xbox One X runs at 1440p 30 FPS using “PC High†settings, or 60 FPS 1080p using “PC Medium†settings (we’ll provide the Option for either High or Medium modes). Also because the Xbox One X has so much available RAM, ARK for Xbox One X has a new 4k texture pack (free DLC) and when the a non-dedicated multiplayer host is Xbox One X, the clients don’t have a distance-tether! It was shown behind-closed-doors on August 8 Xbox One X event at Microsoft, so I think we can take some video from that build.

We have some very important news for Survivors playing on our official servers. This coming Tuesday (August 22nd) we will be posting the list of servers that will be taken down on our launch day and re-purposed for the new servers, while all other existing servers become Legacy servers. For those who decide not to migrate, the saves for these servers will be uploaded and provided, which you can then download and use to host your own unofficial servers with all of your stuff intact.

Closer to release date we will also be communicating how these servers will be allocated, so you can prepare to take over a new server!




Survivors across ALL Platforms will be receiving a special Evolution Event+++ perk this weekend! It's already live now and will remain active until Monday the 21st at 12PM EST. All Official Servers will be undergoing this evolutionary change which includes:

3x Harvesting Rate
3x Taming Rate
3x EXP Rate
3x Maturing
3x Hatching
3x Gestation
3x Faster Mating Interval Rates

Reminder: this 2x bonus is on top of the 2x rates that are now standard on our official servers!

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To read the rest of the Community Crunch this week, check out our announcement post on our official forums.[survivetheark.com]

Keep on surviving!