Author: Krim

ARK Digest #9 Summary – Industrial Grills, Offline Raiding, New Bows and more

It’s Barbecue Time! At least that’s what the latest ARK Digest would have us believe. Confronted with the question of whether there was a better cooking-device coming up, community manager Jat announced the “Industrial Grill”. It will allow us to “cook meat much quicker and at a larger scale” and is due to arrive later this week.

Dino Dossiers

Another question that many of us had pondered about was also answered: With all those dino-dossier releases, when will the dinos actually be released in the game? Jat pointed out that their goal was to release a Dino every one and a half to two weeks. That means that all the creatures which were announced until now will be released before the end of this year.

Primitive Only Servers

As many of you might already have noticed (and those who read the patch-notes here will already know), there are now primitive-only servers. On those, you’ll have to play ARK without the comforts of modern technology. Saddles and Metal Tools are the most sophisticated tools available there.

Archery

One of the common themes to many of the answers in the current digest-feature was the extension of archery. We’ve already given you an overview of the developments around the composite bow, and how it’s not to be confused with compound bows. Now there’s going to be another variant: The Underwater Crossbow. Due to arrive next week, it will be a great alternative to hunting with spears. While we’re at it, one feature that’ll certainly let the heart of any archery-fan beat higher, and that’s shooting from dinosaurs. Thanks to the upcoming building-on-dinos feature, you’ll be able to have an entire squad of archers on the back of a Brontosaurus wrecking havoc on anyone below. Isn’t that awesome? (And yes, that’s an open invitation for any of you artists reading this to paint that scene!)

Painting and Breeding

Though, come to think of it, there’s one thing missing here. This already hilarious situation would certainly benefit from an oddly-coloured Dino, wouldn’t it? Gladly that’s also going to be possible, because as the developers announced, “When breeding you can definitely expect the colours to blend (..among other things!)”. To complement those, per-pixel-paintable signs will also arrive in the next weeks.

Offline Raiding Notifications

To top this off, there has been talk of offline raiding notifications. Many of us have already suffered from at least one attempt wreck havoc on our base while we’re soundly asleep, so this should be interesting news. Two avenues to base-security are being pursued. For one, there will soon be several different kinds of traps. Moreover, a primitive version of the Auto-Turret will also be available for lower levels. The other approach handles the cases when you’re offline. You’ll get a notification when your base is being raided, though the specificities of that system haven’t been announced yet.

Smaller Announcements:

  • An Elevator for Dinos is in the planning. No time has been announced yet.
  • Boats are being looked into.
  • Decorations
  • More dye colors by next week.
  • A dino gate for flyers.

(You can find the full feature here.)

 

We’re interested in your comments on this format. Should we continue the summaries? What would you like to change? More detail on the smaller changes? Less detail? More quotations or rather an indirect summary? Share your thoughts below.

ARK: Survival Evolved Patch 185.3 – Patchnotes

These are the changes of ARK: Survival Evolved’s Patch 185.3, grouped into categories for clarity. If not otherwise indicated, they’re quoted from the relevant Steam Thread.

UI Changes

  • Server Passwords now appear as Asteriks’ in Admin Managment UI (soon you’ll be able to change this dynamically via the UI), and “message-of-the-day changing in the UI” crash is fixed

Bugfixes

  • Fixed various mods crashing — any which used custom Materials, such as Apako Island: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=469987622&searchtext=
  • Fixed a Chatbox crash
  • Eliminated some Snapshot_16 “permanent” hangs if banned or missing communication from server during connection

Performance

  • Improved speed of background loading core game data while at main menu

(Original Announcement on Steam)

Here are the patchnotes of the previous patch (185.2)

ARK: Survival Evolved Patch 185.2 – Patchnotes

These are the changes of ARK: Survival Evolved’s Patch 185.2, grouped into categories for clarity. If not otherwise indicated, they’re quoted from the relevant Steam Thread.

Bugfixes

  • Server-side vaults that are lowered due to destroyed foundations now retain their pin-code/lock settings.

(Original Announcement on Steam)

Here are the patchnotes of the previous patch (185.1)

ARK: Survival Evolved Patch 185.1 – Patchnotes

These are the changes of ARK: Survival Evolved’s Patch 185.1, grouped into categories for clarity. If not otherwise indicated, they’re quoted from the relevant Steam Thread.

Bugfixes

  • Fixed C4 ammo problem. Very sorry about that!

(Original Announcement on Steam)

Here are the patchnotes of the previous patch (185.0)

Server Admin UI

The Server Admin UI allows you to manage your server through a nice in-game menu instead of the console. To open it, open up the ingame conosle and authenticate by typing

enablecheats YourAdminPassword

afterwards you can open up the Server Admin UI by entering

ShowMyAdminManager

The window to the left allows you to see the server settings. Those are editable in your Server-INI.

The middle one displays all connected players. Their survivor name and their level are shown, as well as their Steam Name. You can use the same menu to kick, ban or whitelist players. The “message”-input allows you to broadcast a message to the entire server.

The Cheat-Manager will allow you to execute the cheat of your choice.

If the UI isn’t to your liking, you might be interested in our tutorial on server administration via RCON.

RCON Tutorial

Patch 185.0 introduced the RCON-Feature. It allows you to execute commands on your server without having to be in-game. That is a huge improvement over the previous mechanic, because it allows you to automate commands, and generally do stuff on machines where you can’t simply start up the game.

Setup

To enable RCON you will have to add the following to your server startup command line

?RCONEnabled=True?RCONPort=32330?ServerAdminPassword=YOURPASSWORD

Replace “YOURASSWORD” with the password of your choice. Specifying the password in the command line is only neccessary if you haven’t already set an admin-password for your server in the configuration.

Usage

Windows

To receive text and enter commands you will need a client software on your computer.

EDIT: There now is a graphical RCON client for ARK. Check out our Mod-Spotlight to learn more.

For Windows, you could use mcrcon, though that’s only a suggestion. Execute the launch.bat and enter the connection data (server IP, port and password) there and you should be able to connect. Once you’re in there you can use the commands like you would in the ingame console. To exit your console simply type exit

Linux

Finding a good linux client is quite another matter. For use on your server, we can recommend this code. Download it, use

gcc -o rcon rcon.c

to compile it (if you haven’t installed gcc already, you’ll have to install that too, or any other C compiler). You can then use

./rcon -PYOURPASSWORD -a127.0.0.1 -p32330 listplayers

to execute the command of your choice (in this example listplayers). It will automatically exit after it sent the command. To connect to a remote server you’ll have to fill in the correct information for IP (-a) and port (-p), and make sure that your firewall permits the connection.

Dino Dossier: Doedicurus Custosaxum

Today a new dinosaur was announced. It's tough, heavy and strong. Just look at it, armor to every side and an internal fat-reservoir to get through the tougher climates, this creature doesn't have to fear anyone. All the bigger are the benefits for those daring souls who manage to tame one, because they will be able to employ its spiked tail in quarry-work. There isn't a rock on the island which can withstand repeated strikes from such a monumental weapon.

Common Name: Doedicurus
Species: Doedicurus Custosaxum
Time: Plestiocene – Holocene
Diet: Herbivore
Temperament: Docile
Domestication
Tameable: Yes
Rideable: Yes
Saddle: Doedicurus Saddle
Command: admincheat summon Doed_Character_BP_C
  • Wild: Doedicurus Custosaxum is one of the island’s non-aggressive herbivores, generally found on mountains and grasslands. Large and well-armored, it has a supply of fat under its plates to keep it warm and fed in the cold. Doedicurus has adapted well to the dangers of the island, perhaps even better than the Ankylosaurus.
  • Domesticated: Doedicurus is a highly prized work animal on the island. Its spiked Tail is ideal for quickly swattering the large rocks, so Doedicurus is a very efficient quarry worker. And in case their quarry gets raided, Doedicurus-Riders have a very difficult-to-kill mount!
  • Known Information: Doedicurus has two very different reactions to predators. Against smaller foes, it generally uses its spiked tail to inflict as much damage as possible. Against larger predators, however, it pulls its tail underneath itself to form a solid armored ball that is nearly impossible for creatures to pierce.

Video

Drops

  • Raw Meat

Base Stats and Calculator

Level Base + Lvl =

Check Doedicurus in Taming Calculator

Harpoon Gun, Composite Bow and more to come soon

composite_bowAs announced by developer “Drake” on Steam today, there’ll soon be a composite bow and a harpoon gun in the game. In real life a composite bow takes advantage of the many different types of wood available. Those are combined into a single bow which is smaller, lighter and more powerful than the other varieties currently available in the game. That will undoubtedly make it the most expensive bow, at least for the time being. There have already been rumours of a compound bow (two similar names but different meanings), which will in all likelyhood end up being the non-plus-ultra in terms of archery. All together this would allow for a very natural progression through historic bow-construction.

Moving from low-tech to high-tech, the harpoon gun is quite another kind of weapon.  There are multiple conceivable variants here, from a bow-like construction to a pressurized mechanism, so it’ll be quite interesting what the developers would opt for. On the one hand a low-tech version could be very interesting in that it’s comparably simple construction would allow for cheap manufacture at medium levels. On the other hand, a high-tech-harpoon would be a welcome toy for the people who’re at the highest attainable levels at the moment.

The involvement of eggs in taming affinity could potentially be very interesting too, however, at the moment there isn’t much information on the specificities of that process.

[Question by a user] So with 3 kinds of water critters now and more planned will you be fixing up the green obelisk to upload the water dinos, or maybe adding an underwater one somewhere?

[Answer by Drake] Yes, expect that in the next major map revision that will also be adding the Swamp Biome and various swamp creatures 🙂

In a comment in the same thread Drake also announced the upcoming swamp biome. It, as well as the corresponding dinosaurs will apparently arrive in the near future. That would mean the Dimetrodon would be released, among other things. For those who haven’t gotten their dossier collection handy, it’s the huge air-conditioning dino with a sail!

ARK: Survival Evolved Patch 185.0 – Patchnotes

Item Changes

  • Air Conditioning units are 100% more powerful insulation and 100% more range
  • Two new tripwire traps:audio alarm and gas bomb
  • Audio-Alarm Away & Offline raiding notifications, Phase 1!
  • Doubled the # of inventory slots in the fridge

 

Bugfixes

  • Picking up a tripwire object now gives you the tripwire object and doesn’t detonate the other end of it
  • Fixed a bug with dinos that were in-taming process becoming super slow if tame process was finished after a reload
  • Ceiling replacement no longer becomes obstructed by objects on the ceiling
  • Fixed case where in-ground Pillars were not being considered “Foundations”
  • Fixed collision on Stone Foundation/Ceiling so that you can properly fit through the Stone doorway in between them.
  • Reduced OP cat-tail foliage resource giving

 

Modding

  • ARK Dev Kit Game Data Override: Create your own survival game with total capability to override the core “gamedata” of ARK in your mod: everything can then be changed, from Engrams to Items to Character States to Dossiers.
  • Mod makers can now override the minimap and spawn regions
  • Mods can now force the player to spawn-in rather than displaying the respawn map

 

Server Changes

  • Removed caps for Play Local menu: you can now enter any values you like into the various options’ text fields and they’ll be saved/used properly.
  • RCON for Server Admins. Add these to your server commandline ?RCONEnabled=True?RCONPort=32330?ServerAdminPassword=123 (only need to specify a server admin password if you’re not already doing so). Then you can run any console commands that you see in the in-game ShowMyAdminManager, some useful ones include for example: 
    
listplayers
banplayer PlayerName
unbanplayer PlayerName
exit
broadcast messageWhateverItIs

    Note we don’t currently send all chat back out through RCON, but we should so you can expect that shortly.

  • Server Administration UI:
    To use this, use the console commands in-game:
    enablecheats AdminPassword
    then
    ShowMyAdminManagerIn there you’ll see all of the server settings, stats, connected players, whitelist and ban list management, message of the day, and all of the executable console commands that you can run through the GUI (which are also runnable via RCON so it’s a good way to learn the RCON commands!).
  • Eliminated issue where large amounts of structures could cause client disconnection or bandwidth starvation (mega lag)
  • You can now run primitive-only servers by using a mod rather than changing every setting in the INI yourself.

Dino Dossier: Compsognathus Curiosicarius aka Compy

Today the developers announced the new "Compsognathus Curiosicarius", the latest addtion to a proud series of animals with increasingly unpronounceable names. Called "Compy" for convenience, it's going to be a charming companion when alone. Be wary though, because when it teams up with its fellow Compys it will remember its lust for blood.

Common Name: Compy
Species: Compognathus curiosicarius
Time: Late Jurassic Period
Diet: Carnivore
Temperament: Curious
Domestication
Tameable: Yes
Rideable: No
  • Wild: One of the smallest predators on the island, Compognathus Curiosicarius can be seen as a pet, a pest or a threat. While alone, Compsognathus is not dangerous or aggressive. In larger packs, however, it remembers its carnivorous nature. After a group of Compsognathus grows to a certain size, their pack mentality always seems to embolden them to "attack".
  • Domesticated: Compsognathus's can be tamed quite easily, so some tribes keep them for little more than friendly companionship. However they gain increasing significant attack power and speed when close proximity to other Compsognathus, as their pack aggression takes over their behavior. Additionally their distress call carries quite far, rapidly alerting the tribe and its pets to danger more efficiently, and increasing the likelihood of forming a so called 'Compy Gang'.
  • Known Information: For some reason Compsognathus is not naturally afraid of humans. Rather it seems to be quite curious of humans and their instruments of survival. They tend to be drawn toward humans out of this curiosity, and then call their pack mates to help explore their discovery. This usually leads to the aforementioned pack aggression.

Drops

  • Raw Meat
  • Hide

Video

Base Stats and Calculator

Level Base + Lvl =

Check Compy in Taming Calculator

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