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Ark: Survival Evolved update adds new creatures, Dragon Boss and Birthday fun

Studio Wildcard are celebrating the one-year anniversary of Ark: Survival Evolved with a Birthday Event and two new creatures tossed into the mix.

Cover image for YouTube video

Ark: Survival Evolved update adds new creatures, Dragon Boss and Birthday fun

During the event, which runs for one week, candles from Supply Crates can be found and used to craft Ark Birthday Cakes.

When each candle is blown out, a special message will appear along with exclusive items. These include party hats for both the player and dinosaurs and Birthday Suits which make the character appear naked. All mommy and daddy bits will be pixelizated, though.

Players can also eat said cakes for a major XP buff.

Two new creatures have also been added. One is the slow but sturdy Diplodocus which can carry up to 10 simultaneous players. Consider it a bus, basically. The other is the Leech, which carries diseases and will attach to players en masse. These new diseases can be cured though.

Along with the birthday celebrations and new critters, Patch 242 has been deployed and it comes with the new Dragon Arena and Dragon Boss Fight which you see in the video above.

Other contents in the patch include the following:

  • Breeding Mechanics Phase 2: Interactive Baby Raising (cuddle with your dino babies, pet, walk, and hand-feed them for extra benefits and greater affinity for whoever raised them once they grow up!)
  • The new structure Training Dummy displays floating Damage Per Second values indicating how strong each dino attack actually is.
  • Permanent Diseases & Cures, enables players to deliberately infect Dodos to use them as Disease Vectors! If you get a permanent disease, it persists even beyond respawn and you need to cure it with an antidote to get rid of it.
  • Optional RPG Stat Mode: Displays floating in-world damage numbers for all Player-Related Damage Events.
  • Added 'Follow Range' (Low/Medium/Far) Setting Per Tamed Dino
  • Added option for PvE Servers to disable building around critical resource node regions
  • Added server option to override per-Item Crafting costs
  • Added server option to override the loot tables for each kind of supply crate
  • Added server option to limit number of members in Tribes. Default: no limit.
  • Multi-Seat Saddles (Galli, Diplodocus, etc). Dinos now have an option to enable public seating. Dino Taxi service, ahoy!
  • Servers can now optionally enable an "offline raiding prevention" mode which will make Dinos/Structures invincible if no owner is logged-in (indicated via the head whether the owner player/tribe is logged-in or not). Recommend that server owners utilize this with care, as it may have undesired side effects in a competitive environment
  • Tribe Groups Phase 2: Support for Limited Non-Admin Invites and promotions/demotions per group! Also "Prevent Dino Unclaiming" checkbox, and other new per-rank options
  • Added Alpha Mosasaurus (contains lots of Black Pearls)
  • Alpha creatures XP reduced by 45%
  • Auto-Turrets can no longer be built on Quetz/Sauro/Mosa/Plesi/Paracer platforms (Plant turrets can't be grown on them). Any existing turrets on such platforms will no longer fire. Otherwise they're now only allowed on Rafts and non-moving Bases.
  • Plant Turrets now consume Fertilizer per shot, and also will not shoot if no water is in the crop plot.
  • Approximate +100% increase to Sauropod and Paraceratherium respective Weight stats.

More information can be found through the latest developer blog on the Ark: Survival Evolved Steam community page.

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Stephany Nunneley-Jackson

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Stephany is VG247’s News Editor, with 22 years experience (with 15 of them at VG247). With a brain that lacks adhesive ducks, the ill-tempered, chaotic neutral fembot does her best to bring you the most interesting gaming news. She is also unofficially the site’s Lord of the Rings/Elder Scrolls Editor.

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