Studio Wildcard are set to launch a new ARK Survival Evolved update on PS4, Xbox One and PC in the coming weeks.
The development team have revealed that a major patch will be released on August 28, as part of the official release of the game.
Fans can also look forward to the ARK Ragnarok mod being launched on consoles, as well as at least one new creature for the base game.
The Phoenix was recently revealed by Wildcard, which will require some unique taming methods.
“Attempting to pacify a Phoenix is, quite literally, playing with fire. The Phoenix must be continually set ablaze in order to be tamed.
“I’ve seen many turned into dust and ash in the attempt. After it has been pacified, the Phoenix will regain its vitality when it is aflame!
“Although its compact size prevents the Phoenix from being ridden, its aggressive inflaming has proved to be invaluable in battle. Plus, it can quickly roast up tasty cooked meat and refine raw ores at any time, as a living furnace.”
While Wildcard’s description confirms that the Phoenix cannot be flown, it appears that this might change before its launch.
“Thinking about making Phoenix rideable,” Jeremy Stieglitz, the co-founder of Studio Wildcard teased.
“It’s a fun bird but maybe even better that way 😛 Will meditate on this important question tonight.”
There’s also the question of how Studio Wildcard plan to improve the game’s performance in the future, with Stieglitz confirming that server tweaks were inbound.
Answering questions on further optimisations options, the co-founder explained: “A lot of server-side work in particular, more physics threading and more efficient networking.
“For clients, one of the biggest areas for potential improvement currently is faster rendering of large bases: using instanced meshes to render hundreds of structures in a single draw-call. After that, general profiling.
“DX12 is still of interest, but we need to do more analysis to make sure it’s a real benefit to players — the gains were small last time we checked, and the drivers were unstable, though I imagine a lot has improved over the past year, so will be taking another look at it.”
Back to the Ragnarok mod and Wildcard recently launched a new PC update for the popular mod.
It included a massive map expansion that doubles the land to explore.
While available on PC, it’s not finished and will likely require a fair few update like the one mentioned above before it is.
That’s due to the development team building a 144 sq kilometer map, designed to be explored by land/sea/air with most places accessible by foot.
Unlike the full game, Ragnarok has been developed by the former creators of popular ARK mods Valhalla and Umassoura.