So, I’ve been playing a lot of Ark: Survival Evolved lately, and I’ve kinda been taking over the “What are you Currently Playing” topic with it. I got a message from @shauny this morning about splitting those off into a new topic. So, here’s the topic if any of the @moderators would able to do that for me. Thanks in advance. Any new posts on Ark will be posted here going forward.
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Played a little bit of Ark last night. Got bored waiting for my Wyverns to mature so I jumped over to the Lost Island (the map is based off of Tamriel from the Elder Scrolls series). Found where the wyverns are, but no eggs yet. Will explore some more, finish my little outpost, go from there.
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Next time I get on Ark, I plan to spend a little more time on Lost Island before returning to The Island to finish maturing my Fire Wyverns. After that… probably Scorched Earth to ascend so I can head to Aberation.
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My Wyverns have matured! I’ve bred them and stashed them in cryosleep. Next time I get on, it’s back to Scorched Earth.
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As you have surmised, I really enjoy Ark: Survival Evolved and have been playing it a lot lately. It’s a survival game with dinosaurs and other prehistoric and (in later maps) fantasy creatures. But did you know that Ark has a story? Scattered across the main maps (termed Story Maps)[1] are explorer notes. The immediate effect is that collecting an explorer note grants you an immediate gift of XP as well as an XP boost that stacks[2] if you activate multiple notes in rapid succession. The secondary nature of the explorer notes is that they tell the story of a select group of survivors who discovered the secrets of the Arks and paved the way for your existance.
There are three main characters that stretch across the whole story: Helena Walker (an Australian biologist and palaeontologist from the present day), Edmund Rockwell (a 19th century London chemist who is voiced in the game and Animated Series by David Tennant) and Mei-Yin Li (an Ancient Chinese warrior around the Three Kingdoms Era and the Yellow Turban Rebellion). There are other characters who get explorer notes on the different maps, but these three stretch through the whole story. And that story is really good. Just from reading through the explorer notes you get an amazing sci-fi story with excellent characters. If you’ve played Ark and haven’t bothered tracking down all the notes and reading them in order, you’re missing out. So, for those interested, here’s a fan-made[3] video telling the full story of the first/base map, The Island:
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This game actually sounds quite cool, I might try and seek it out.
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There’s actually two games currently. The original is Ark: Survival Evolved (ASE). It’s made with Unreal Engine 4 and originally came out in 2016. The new version that came out in 2023 and takes a much higher-end machine to play is Ark: Survival Ascended (ASA) which was made in Unreal Engine 5.
I play ASE. As much as I love this game, I’m hesitant to recommend it because the parent company that published it (Snail Games) is a very corrupt company from China. (There are a lot of videos on YouTube detailing all craziness surrounding the announcement and initial release of ASA.) The company that actually made the game seem to be fine, they just got into bed with a shady company. However, feel free to do your own research and make your own decisions. There are no longer any official servers for multiplayer on ASE, but there are still plenty of unofficial ones. I play single-player. Also be aware that there is a bit of a steep learning curve for new players. You will die a lot when you first start out. Hope this helps you make a decision.
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Did a little bit more exploring (needed Red Gems), then settled down to work on base-building. (No pictures yet, it’s not finished.)
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Done with Aberation for the moment[1] and have gotten back on the Island to work on stuff at my base there. Just went and named, leveled and bred all my Allosaurus that I’ve collected (no changing colors). I currently have 11 Allosaurus (7 Males, 4 Females) and have 6 Allosaurus eggs in my fridges. Then, before I hopped off, I put my six Lightning Wyvern eggs in the incubator.
forgot to get a picture of my base to share ↩︎
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Hatched a batch of Lightning Wyverns. Six eggs, six wyverns (no twins or triplets this time). Working towards breeding other tames. Bred my Aberrant Raptor pair, breeding cooldown isn’t up yet for my normal Raptors or Tek Raptors so Raptors stay out, Tek Raptors go back into storage. Got all my Ankylosaurs out for a round of leveling and breeding, plus I’ve got a Rex pair that hasn’t been bred yet. After those are done, I’ll pull another bunch out of storage and maybe hatch some eggs.
Freshly hatched batch of Lightning Wyverns:
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I love Ark: Survival Evolved and have playing it a lot recently (and thus sharing it with you guys), but I’m hesitant to encourage anyone who doesn’t already own it to purchase it. The game was originally created by Studio Wildcard and was released in Early Access in 2015 with a full release in 2017. If I’m understanding things I’ve read correctly, one writer wrote the stories for the first four story maps[1]. At some point it seems that Studio Wildcard was having financial issues and got into bed with the Chinese company, Snail Games.
Things seemed fine until Ark II was announced in December 2020. After that, we’ve gotten very little information except for a couple trailers and a release date that keeps getting delayed. In early 2023, a free Unreal Engine 5 upgrade was teased. This turned into a disaster! Soon, it was no longer free. The price kept changing, sometimes it was bundled with Ark II sometimes it wasn’t. The Ark community is very strong and passionate and has lots of Youtubers. Snail Games was revealed as very corrupt, and seemingly broke.
Around the time all this was going on, a couple tribes launched a raid on the Tea/T Tribe[2] which is made up of Snail Games employees. The Tea Tribe wasn’t that good and were getting wrecked. Every time they seemed to be on the verge of total annihilation, they’d reset the server to a point where they were on top. They accused their attackers of cheating and even used their admin powers as Snail employees to get the individual players banned.
Fast forward a bit. Ark: Survival Ascended releases in October 2023 to more controversy after delays and lack of cross-platform simul-release (PC got it first). It requires super high-end machines to run and bugs that have been in the game since the beginning, that were expected to be fixed, are still there. Plus, the official server network for Evolved where tons of people have spent years of their lives is taken offline back in August for the original Ascended release date.
Fast-forward again to now. In the past few days, a lot has been announced. Studio Wildcard have confirmed they’re still working on Ark II, as well as a new story expansion for Ascended titled “The Lost Colony” (which I’ll check out the videos and explorer notes whenever it eventually drops). In the meantime, for the 10th Anniversary of the game, Snail Games is putting out a paid story DLC for Evolved that went over really well with an aparrent AI trailer and a story that might completely rewrite the original Island through Extinction story.
Several Youtubers who made their names doing Ark content have left, often without any explanation. Neddy the Noodle, who made some excellent lore videos and dramatized Explorer Note videos, is done. The attatched video is from Raasclark detailing that there may be cracks forming between Studio Wildcard and Snail Games. Anyway, there’s plenty of videos chronicling the downfall of Ark if you want to dig (LtBuzzLitebeer is a good one for the ins and outs of some of that). So anyway, that’s why I’m hesitant to encourage anyone to pick up this game at the moment.
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So I hopped back on Ark again tonight. I fully imprinted on my Lightning Wyverns and then went and did some breeding at my other base. I’ve got a lot of eggs now and was wondering if people wanted to help me choose what to hatch next.
- Yes. Tell us all your egg species.
- Yes, but leave out the species that only have one egg to a species.
- No. You make your own choices.
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voters
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So it looks like the people have spoken. Here’s the poll of all the eggs I currently have. The number of eggs I have per species is in parentheses. Everyone gets up to three choices. I leave the poll up for approximately 24-hours.
- Aberrant Raptor (1)
- Allosaurus (6)
- Ankylosaurus (10)
- Argentavis (3)
- Baryonyx (18)
- Carnotaurus (2)
- Deinonychus (10) (Wild Eggs)
- Dimetrodon (1)
- Fire Wyvern (3) (Wild Eggs)
- Fire Wyvern (5) (Bred Eggs)
- Giganotosaurus (2)
- Ice Wyvern (14) (Wild Eggs)
- Morellatops (2) (Fictional Species in the Game)
- Pegomastax (4)
- Pelagornis (1)
- Poison Wyvern (16) (Wild Eggs)
- Pteranodon (4)
- Pulminoscorpius (1) (Giant Scorpion)
- Raptor (5)
- Rex (1)
- Rock Drake (17) (Fantasy Species from Aberration that has a natural invisibility and can climb walls.) (Wild Eggs)
- Sarcosuchus (5) (Giant Crocodile)
- Tapejara (3)
- Tek Parasaur (3)
- Tek Raptor (4)
- Terror Bird (15)
- Thorny Dragon (4)
- Triceratops (5)
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voters
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I guess I was expecting more votes (or at least more votes on the same species). 
At the moment, six-and-a-half hours after launching the poll, we have a clear front-runner in Triceratops. It being the front-runner simply by virtue of being the only species with two votes. 
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So the winners are Triceratops, Sarcosuchus and Rock Drakes. Thanks for everyone who voted. The poll is now closed.
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Played more Ark. Been doing little bits and pieces on various maps. On the Island, I’ve got my Sarcosuchus brood maturing, a batch of Rock Drakes in the incubator and some more creatures out for breeding.
My Aberration Base:
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Went on a resource run with my Argentavis. Now it’s crafting time and then base building time.
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