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.

As 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!