What an intriguing discovery survivors, can you guess what creature it is?


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 JozaSeraf asks, “So now when titanboa's are tameable, is there possibilaty to add them some sort of turret mode? Like they only bite until target is unconscious? That way we can have pits full of snakes and drop dino's in.â€

Yeah, we’ll add a general AI option for dinos to only attack Conscious targets.

Survivor TranqRex asks, “You’re not able to Scorched Earth on a Player Dedicated Server unless you own the DLC. Will this be changed, as you can host on PC without.â€

Unfortunately not, because we can’t download the necessary content files onto the game client without the player having ownership of the DLC itself.

Survivor Hazelnut20 asks, “Could you create a 'flee' aggression status, so that if something hits your dinosaur, that it runs away, instead of standing in direct line of fire?â€

Sure, we’ll add that -- no guarantees as to how effective it’ll be against a determined attacker, however!

Survivor Hosscat asks, “Being an achievement hunter and enjoying some of the challenges ARK gives to obtain some of the achievements I was excited to see The Center map had its own specific achievement. Will more achievements for other maps be released, such as Scorched Earth or Ragnarok only achievements?â€

Yes, when Ragnarok is done, we’ll add Achivements for it. Scorched Earth and Aberration will also be getting achievements.

Survivor AbeHikura asks, “are the future expansions already decided by the team (hence the season pass) or are you guys carefully monitoring us for inspiration? Will these expansions be the same or larger than Scorched earth (content wise)?â€

We’ve got the third Expansion in early design phase -- though much of its content is yet to be determined and will also be in response to continued feedback. Beyond that, we’ll be in continuous brainstorming mode :)

Survivor Mendoza asks, “Have you considered any further the decision to make above ground beacon drops fully random?â€

We’ll be adding a configuration option for this in the very near future.

Survivor TheGamingGomer asks, “Will we get splitscreen on console player dedicated servers? My brother and our friend would like to be able to play together without having three consoles or all getting on at the same time.â€

We can’t do it because the tethering logic is necessary for splitscreen to function properly, and the tethering logic only runs in non-dedicated mode.

Survivor Ulkusus asks, “Command/execute on starting ark: scan your steam achievements and update your local profile accordingly so one can get skins back after a reinstall of the game?â€

Yes, we will do this. Probably doesn’t need to be a command-line either, can likely just run upon each startup. Will investigate ASAP.

Survivor EternalUniverse asks, “Can we please have a respawn protection (ya'know when you respawn and you are into that animation that takes a long time to finish and then you get spawn killed by a dino?)â€

We’ll make a respawning player not targetable by Wild Dino AI’s.

Survivor Nightmare2772 asks, “Will Aberration feature a new plant species? Plant Species Z maybe? I like the idea of a huge carnivorous plant.â€

It will, and it’s called Plant Species Z :-P

Survivor KraziestKraken asks, “This is kind of a random question, but is the woman riding the raptor on the box art Helena? I've always thought so, but i'd like confirmation. “

As a matter of fact, she is.

Survivor NeckRipper asks, “Will the dlc content of Aberration carry over and be usable in the other Arks like the island, center and rag?â€

Yes, just like with Scorched Earth.

Survivor Nch1418 asks, “First, are there plans to expand the story into the newly announced Aberration expansion and the other expansion coming in 2018? Second, will we be getting Explorer Notes from any new characters besides the six already introduced? Third, any small hints on what the 2018 DLC is going to involve or what it will be centered around (e.g. further story content, etc.)?â€

The story continues in Aberration and reaches a climax in the third DLC, where All Is Revealed in an epic conclusion. Each Expansion introduces new characters and raises the stakes, while continuing the story of the characters who have survived previous ARKs (they might not make it out alive from subsequent ARKs though!).

Survivor Gibsy asks, “Are you guys still going ahead with the revamp of the older dinos? If so when are we likely to see itâ€

We have our design plans worked-out here for the Dino TLC pass, and it will be implemented and released this year.

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 18th at 12PM EST. All Official Servers will be undergoing this evolutionary change which includes:

2x Harvesting Rate
2x Taming Rate
2x EXP Rate
2x Maturing
2x Hatching
2x Gestation
2x Faster Mating Interval Rates

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

Keep on surviving!