One of the main draws of ARK: Survival Evolved, which was released in 2017 by Studio Wildcard and Instinct Games, is the opportunity to experience a sort of prehistoric time capsule, where survivors attempt to carve out their niche in an island wilderness and harness the dangerous wildlife. While the TLC 3 Update is scheduled to drop on November 3rd, the Evolution Event is this week, and players can look forward to a number of general improvements.
The Boss Element reward in some maps will be increased, bringing them into line with expected expansions for the ARK. There will also be an option to customize the radius of turrets, allowing players to more strategically defend their bases from predators. The majority of the changes will affect taming and breeding.
The taming HUD is getting an overhaul. Players can now keep track of creatures' stats much more easily, from basics like gender, health, and hunger to the taming and unconscious progress and, most importantly, the effectiveness of the game's different food items, making the whole process much more intuitive. In addition, a player can now optionally track specific creatures who have already been tamed by using in-world waypoints.
Creature breeders will be happy to know that the Gigantosaurus, which takes over 11 days to mature at present, will reach adulthood post-update in about 10 days. The Megachelon's depth requirement is also getting reduced, allowing for breeding in more ARK maps. Wyverns have had a stat rebalance, and in exchange are now breedable, along with arthropluera (centipedes), moths, mantises, onycs (bats), scorpions, and spiders.
Many players still tweak their ARK: Survival Evolved install pretty heavily for balance, but the quality of life updates are sure to improve things for many players. Thylacoleo and Megalodon will get a bleed attack, and some creatures will feel lighter and their feet, like the Diplocaulus being faster when ridden and the Ankylosaurus's metal weight reduction getting buffed to 85%.
The ARK: Survival Evolved port for Switch scores only 29 on Metacritic largely due to instability, but the developer is planning to take servers down between the 27th and 28th so that it can resolve issues with player data and latency/timeouts across all platforms. The official servers should see significant improvement once the transfer logic has been updated, which should take about 24 hours. More specific times will be announced per platform.
Ark: Survival Evolved is available for Android, iOS, Linux, PC, PlayStation 4, Switch, and Xbox One.
Source: Steam