Amidst the hustle, bustle, and blinding chaos of E3, Studio Wildcard has very quietly announced a big bit of Ark: Survival Evolved news: A release date of August 8, worldwide and across all platforms.  "During the past two years, millions of Ark players have built gigantic bases, captured and trained armies of dinosaurs, crafted armories full of weapons and eaten billions of pounds of Jurassic creature-kabobs. With their help, we’re about to reach the completion of core content for Ark: Survival Evolved and release the full game to the world," studio co-founder and co-creative director Jeremy Stieglitz said.  "For those players who were excited with every update during Early Access, Ark’s going to become even more fun with surprise new content at launch & beyond, as we will continue to have a staggering amount of additional gameplay, creatures, and story elements in the works."  Studio Wildcard also announced that the modder-made map Ragnarok is being released today on Steam as the game's first official expansion, and also the first mod to be integrated into Ark through the sponsored mod program. The new map will feature: 

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You're going to see a lot of my poop in this story, but if it's any comfort to you, the amount of poop you're going to see is far, far less than I saw while creating it. Ark: Survival Evolved is probably the poopinest game ever made, with dinos and humans constantly dropping turds all over the map. It's not just for laughs: dung is used in the creation of fertilizer for farming, but having to pick up all that poop with your bare hands and carry it around in your pants is a little gross. Especially human poop. A little bit of civilization arrived in Ark in the last update: namely, functioning toilets. Naturally, I wanted to build myself a bathroom: there's something nice about the idea of being able to use a proper toilet instead of just having a doot fall out of me while in the midst of a conversation or task. I have a little house (it's more of a box) on an island I share with my friend and tribemate, Katie, and I've decided to add a restroom to it. I begin by building a couple of interior walls and a door to serve as a tiny bathroom, and then get to work crafting the toilet. Naturally, this being Ark, the crafting ingredients are ludicrous, requiring 40 units of crystal. For what?

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Achievement hunting on Steam is serious business. While Valve's storefront might not have Xbox's Gamerscore or PlayStation's Trophies, there are still plenty of PC gamers who appreciate the way Steam achievements challenge them to play games in new and interesting ways. Then there's the satisfaction of knowing you're one of just a small percentage of players who've explored every nook and cranny, maxed out every stat, or earned every gold medal a game has to offer.  The thing is, a lot of Steam achievements are kind of boring. Kill 10,000 enemies, hit level 99 in every class, finish the game on Ultra Nightmare Hardcore difficulty—most of the objectives feel like they've fallen straight out of a free-to-play MMO's quest log. Even the rarest achievements are often little more than tedious grind fests, requiring you to play 500 online matches in a multiplayer game with no active player base, or fight alongside a game's developer when that developer has long ago moved onto their next project.  These achievements aren't particularly fun to earn, let alone read about. But buried in Steam's massive catalog of games are some truly obscure, brutally difficult achievements that less than 0.1 percent of players have

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Ark's next patch, v257, was due at the end of April, but it's been pushed back to May 3 both to give Studio Wildcard time to finish their work and so players can move any bases or structures they've built inside the dormant volcano. The volcano, see, is going to receive "an active remodeling" which I presume means a bunch of lava is going to start flowing. Any player-made structure within the highlighted borders (see image below) is toast, so grab the nearest Quetz and get packing. A small client-side patch was pushed out today that displays the borders in-game as well, so you'll be able to tell which structures are in the danger zone. The patch, when it does arrive, will also bring four new dinos (including a giant bee), new Tek features (including a cloning chamber) more UI changes, hairstyles, and new music tracks. Also coming: "Ascension" game progression, which sound like end-game systems and bosses. This post by Jat on the Steam forums sums up the Ascension process rather succinctly: "It involves beating all the bosses, going into the volcano,

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If you're not hip to the whole Ark scene, here's a quick catch-up: the latest patch to the dino survival game included some pretty drastic changes to flying dinosaurs, and many players aren't too happy about it. In particular, the winged dinos' flying speed was greatly reduced and capped. There were also reductions to stamina and carry weight. Birds got nerfed, in other words. For example, my own personal Argy—Argentavis, basically an enormous eagle I can ride—had its pre-patch speed leveled up to about 250%, meaning it was a swift beast to get around on. Post-patch, its speed is not only reduced to 100%, but capped there. The big bird, now none-too-fast, won't ever get any faster, even upon leveling it up. (Note: those points I put into speed have been refunded, and I can use them for other attributes.) This is going to be a real adjustment for me, and all I use my flyers for is transport: many of those who take great pains to breed their birds into powerful super-beasts are now staring glumly at a stable of greatly lessened creatures. Flying dinos are also a major factor on PvP servers (I don't play PvP), so entire tribe wars are going to have to be rethought. Well, there's a beacon of hope for those of you who are miserable with

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Second update: The patch has been delayed one day, and is now scheduled for Friday, March 31. Update: Here's a peek at the new menu, via Jeremy Stieglitz on Twitter (you can enlarge the image by clicking the top right corner for a better look): Original story: I've chosen a picture of one of Ark: Survival Evolved's giant snails for this particular news story. That's because Ark's next patch, v256, will among other things apparently provide a long, long, long overdue 'total inventory menu redesign' according to recently added notes to the Steam discussion post and this tweet from Studio Wildcard's Jeremy Stieglitz: Seriously, Ark's menus and UI are kind of the pits, and while I understand Early Access provides games in an unfinished state and while I'm sure there were bigger coelacanth to fry during the development process, a redesign of the menu is quite welcome, late as it may be. Hence, the snail. Snails are slow. For the record, here's a list of what else planned

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