Latest ARK News and Updates

Winter Wonderland 2018! https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/957475467226700473/6DF34CB6E9F659F41083801D4A1CFFE4E376FD0B/ Winter Wonderland is almost here! This winter-themed holiday event begins tomorrow at 10am PST and will last through until January 7th. All of our maps are supported in both single player and multiplayer. The event will automatically activate on any map, even on your modded map servers. Raptor Claus will be sailing across the night sky in his sleigh, air-dropping presents filled with high-end loot as well as Mistletoe, and Coal for those naughty Survivors. https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/951847254334283465/C3B28E5007927BEE6394AD47D81CCC033CAF4AFE/ Raptor Claus won't be alone this year. He is joined by Gacha Claus who will be roaming all maps in a dashing Santa Hat and sporting holiday-themed colours to help out the very busy Raptor Claus. He will be accepting your coal and in exchange will gift you holiday themed items, or you can trade in your mistletoe for weapons and armor! Gacha Claus will also have a random chance to gift you with a new special dino holiday candy when given mistletoe. This candy appears to have a strangely festive effect on any creature that eats it however. Better give it a try and see what happens. Bon appetit! https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1594036744 Survivors can stay warm this season in their festively decorated homes with the holiday lights, decorative Christmas tree, wreaths, stockings, snowmen, and wrapped presents they receive from trading with Gacha Claus. Be sure to spread the holiday cheer wherever you go while it lasts! https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/543046747436236601/2F35D049A73F1924718E844EC14F83F12642B05B/ Be sure to send us all your holiday-themed pictures, videos, and artwork on survivetheark.com or on Twitter as we'd love to see them! In addition to the holiday event, we've included a bevy of fixes that we're launching simultaneously across all three platforms. We're starting to reach into the backlog and fix issues that you've been asking for starting with improvements to commanding flyers and better AI for the Manticore. Patch Notes: Winter Wonderland! - Raptor Claus - Flies over any map between 0am and 2am in-game (with event enabled) - Drops Holiday Gifts    - Gacha Claus - Spawns where you'd find Parasaurs on all maps - Has holiday colors and wears a Santa Hat - Cannot be tamed - Doesn't like being near other wild dinos - Accepts Coal * Gives Holiday Items in return * Drops Dino Candy * Feed this to a tamed dino for a strange effect   - Accepts Mistletoe * Gives Items in return     - Colorization - 20% of wild dinos will spawn with Holiday colors - Uses the ActiveEvent system - ActiveEvent=WinterWonderland - Cleans up after ActiveEvent is reset - Auto applies to all non-TC sessions from 12/18-1/7 (UTC) - Run with ActiveEvent=None to disable Extinction - Fix for King Titan environmental effects starting again after boss despawned - Fix for other bosses interrupting King Titan environmental effects - Cave entrance cooldown display bug fix - Increased radius of city meteor shield - Improvements to dome shaders - Reduced meteor impact damage to 750 - Improvements to height fog in desert biome Titans  - Increased Mek sword damage to tamed titans approximately 9x - Increased Mek pistol damage to tamed titans approximately 3x - Increased turret damage multipliers to tamed Titans - Changes to Titan downloading - Titan is disabled for 15m after download - Titan takes increased damage during this time     - Increased Titan download cooldown to 6+ hours - Fix typo in vertical Can't Damage message Orbital Supply Drop - Buffed Legendary Drops in difficulty and quality of loot - Can now be claimed by a tribe in PVE - Only that tribe can disable shield, eject items, gather loot - Fixed bug that eventually only allowed 1 event at a time in a session - Improvements to shield behavior on low FPS servers - Improvements to attacker pathing and behavior Element Vein - Can now be claimed by a tribe in PvE - Only that tribe can harvest element - Fixed bug that eventually only allowed 1 event at a time in a session - Improvements to attacker pathing and behavior Desert Titan - Increased damage when it strikes itself with lightning - Improvements to Desert Titan follow to address flying away - Fix for flocks not defending properly - Improvements to tail attack accuracy - Made tail attack damage consistent - Disabled cryoing the flock - Fixed encumbered movement when walking on a Desert Titan Dropped Items   - Improvements to dropped item interpolation on low fps servers (less poking -through ground) - Prevented dropped items from falling through structures on load - Prevented dropped items from ghosting through structures if thrown close to them Eggs - Improvements to egg interpolation on low fps servers (less poking through ground) - Prevented eggs from falling through structures on load - Prevented eggs from ghosting through structures if thrown close to them - Fix for invisible Rock Drake and Wyvern eggs Velonasaur  - Increased accuracy of AOE attack - Reduced AOE damage to compensate for increased accuracy - Wild Velonasaurs will no longer shoot for too long - Fix for Wild Velonasaurs not doing damage in PvE - Improvements to desyncs between spines and damage - Reduced hovering when walking - AOE attack will no longer loot victims Managarmr - Fixed anim bug related to Ice Breath - Fixes for several orientation desyncs - Fixes for desyncs when moving on low fps server - Minor buff to landing damage - Improvements to ice breath targeting - Added message when you are unable to dive - Slowed down baby Managarmrs Enforcer - Fixed instances where Enforcer could teleport to a non-existant wall - Fixed instances where it could jump back to its last jump position Scout - Improved Scout tagging accuracy - Improvements to player inspection mechanic - Scout will now show floating damage text when damaged Item Balloon   - Fixed instances of it not going to the correct destination - Fix for cases where balloons didn't explode after landing - Improvements to weight calculation Gacha - Fix for unclamped loot quality - Fix for incorrect UI when taming is interrupted Ice Titan - Fix for broken dino animations related to Ice Breath - Increased collision radius for shoulder Corruption Flyers  - Improved flyer following when in water - Added Whistle Land Flyer command - Commands a flyer to land nearby Crash Fix low frequency crash Manticore - Improvements to landing logic Performance - Improvements to server performance Map Markers - Add support for decimal values Snow Owl - Slowed down baby food consumption rate Daedon - Disable healing when frozen Modding Community Updates! A reminder for mod authors that the sponsored mod program will be opening up applications again on January 1st. If you would like to apply for sponsorship you will have five weeks after the application period starts, so make sure that your submissions are ready! In the meantime, I have received a couple questions about the sponsorship applications that I would also like to address. While this is is not all encompassing of the process of selection, in regards to the application process itself I hope that this helps you ready your submissions with more confidence. One thing that has been a common request is for feedback on why a given project isn't selected. While I would like to be able to give feedback on projects, it is extremely time consuming to prepare these, especially with the volume of applications I receive. I want everyone to understand though that not having your project selected does not necessarily mean that there is something wrong with it, there are simply limited slots available with each application period. So don't let it discourage you from applying in the future. The other question I have received rather frequently is for what kind of information you should include in your applications and design documents. How you choose to organize your design documents is up to you, but here is a very general explanation of what I am looking for. First is that you have a plan for the duration of sponsorship; the more detailed this plan, the better. After looking at the design documents and learning about what you do with your project, I then look at the mods as they currently are available on the workshop and try to determine whether or not the content available shows a good probability of being able to deliver on that plan. I might also look at other projects in your workshop to help determine that information. I look forward to seeing what everyone puts forward in January. Happy modding! Be sure to read the weekly Community Crunch over on our website, survivetheark.com!