Since Ark’s release players have been screaming out for Ark balance & quality of life updates, often complaining about the number of new content additions and DLC’s whilst issues and imbalance still exist.
You’ve likely heard the recent news about the official release date for Ark Genesis part 2 by now, whilst we will have to wait a bit longer it’s not all bad news as the calls for resolutions to Ark’s many balancing & quality of life issues are being answered.
I take my hat off to Studio Wildcard staff, as the official statements say, all staff are currently working in lockdown due to COVID-19, which means all updates and DLC are being worked on remotely, so to set a release date and make some decent updates remotely is good going.
Creature Updates:
Basilosaurus
– Increased deep-sea-depth value at which damage taken by approximately 30%
Bloodstalker
– Reduced armour penetration by approximately 35%
– Reduced durability damage by 50%
Carno
– Added 30% armour penetration to the Left Click attack
– Added a Bleed effect to the right click attack which does up to 5% of targets health over 10 seconds, cannot
be stacked but the timer can be reset.
Carbonemys
– Increased resistance to TEK Turrets by 10%
Dunkleosteus
– Reduced weight of Obsidian in inventory by approximately 75%
– Reduced weight of metal, stone, crystal, and black pearls by approximately 50%
– Increased swim speed by approximately 20%
Liopleurodon
– Increased buff timer from 30 minutes to 6 hours
Megachelon
– Reduced Shell Resistance by 30% (from 80% to 50%)
– Reduced Health Per Level gains by approximately 15%
Paracer
– Reduced Health Per Level gains by approximately 15%
Breeding Updates:
– Reduced Mosasaur maturation time (now matches Yutyrannus)
– Reduced Basilosaurus maturation time (now matches Gacha)
– Reduced Tusoteuthis maturation time (now matches Yutyrannus)
– Reduced Plesiosaur maturation time (now matches Gacha)
– Reduced Compy maturation time (now matches Otter)
– Reduced Equus maturation time (now matches Procoptodon)
– Reduced Quetzal maturation time to approximately 5 and a half days
– Reduced Phiomia maturation time (now matches Ovis)
– Reduced Ichthyosaurus maturation time (now matches Roll Rat)
– Reduced Dunkleosteus maturation time (now matches Mammoth)
– Reduced Jerboa maturation time (now matches Otter)
– Increased Rhino maturation time (now matches Doedicurus)
General Updates:
– Flying creatures will prioritise picking up friendly-creatures rather than dismounting friendly riders
– Baby Creatures will no longer auto-wander when hatched
– Mounting a flying creature will no longer instantly cause it to take off
– Cryopods in a player’s inventory will now charge if a player is sleeping in a TEK Pod.
– TEK Helm will now provide players with the Gas Mask bonus, protecting them from the Poison
Wyvern and Basilisk spit.
– TEK Turrets now require double the amount of shards per bullet
– Metal Ingot stack size has been increased to 300
– Raw Metal stack size has been increased to 300
– Spoil time on Lesser Antidote has been increased to 3 days
– Spoil time on Prime Meat and Prime Fish have doubled
– Gasbags will no longer push Dinos around in PVE when landing to prevent griefing and exploits
– HLNA and Chibi Creatures no longer disable the protection against Bees buff.
– Yell and Whisper can now switch between the following modifier keys on PC: Left Shift, Left Ctrl,
and Left Alt
– Boss Fight timer on Valguero has increased from 20 minutes to 30 minutes.
– We are also adding a configurable GameUserSettings.ini which allows server hosts to limit the
amount of gateways that can be placed on platform saddles. This configuration is not retroactive, so
applying this change will require some manual administration work to clear up any pre-existing
platforms that exceed the limit.
MaxGateFrameOnSaddles=2
We’ll be enabling this on our Official PvP Network and setting the limit to 2, on all platforms. Official
PvP players will have approximately 30 days to adjust their current existing platforms to remove any
that exceed the gateway limit.
– Added an additional 15 seconds to all race missions on Xbox and PS4
– Added Event Emotes to the Hex Store at the cost of 50,000 hexagons
Official Rates Update:
Since lockdown started back in March the game has been in a permanent state of an Evolution event, however, Studio Wildcard has stated they will now be keeping this as a standard.
The rates will be officially coded into the base game during the next major update, but they will still be in force using the evolution event for now.
So not only are we getting news about Genesis part 2 as well as Ark balance & quality of life updates, but also a permanent increase to rates, not a bad announcement.
It will be interesting to see if they change the format of future Evolution events or if they will just add further increased rates for them, I guess only time will tell.
Interestingly, the announcement featured a P.S near the end of the post stating:
P.S — This is actually the second time we’ve increased the default rates if we look back to the early access days of 2015. So for you old timeys, it’s technically 4x ?. Inb4 comments ‘back in my day, it took us two weeks to build a wooden 4×4’.
Studio Wildcard
If like me, you played the early days of Alpha Ark, you too will remember all too well how true this statement is.
Not only did it used to take a ridiculous amount of time to build even the most basic structure, but taming was a full-time job. I remember having to take it in shifts with many dinosaurs, simply due to the sheer amount of hours required to tame them.
Genesis Part 2:
We will touch on Genesis Part 2 in more detail in another post, but for now, in case you hadn’t seen the news already, I wanted to let you know the official release timelines.
Genesis Part 2 will be releasing on Steam, Epic, PS4, and Xbox One on the same date: 03.2021 (March 2021).
If you’re yet to experience Ark Genesis part 1, or you’re eager to get your hands on Genesis part 2, you can buy the Ark Genesis Season Pass here which will give you access to both games.
That is of course depends on Wildcard not making any further delays, whilst I do love Ark and most of the expansions, they don’t particularly have a great record of keeping to announced release dates.
In fact, even the release to console was delayed by almost a month. But, 2021 is still some way off yet, so hopefully, they have learned from past mistakes and given themselves enough time to fully prepare and hit deadlines this time.
Looking for something new to do in Ark whilst waiting for Genesis Part 2? Why not check out our Ark’s best building mods list and see how you can get creative.
