‘ARK: Survival Evolved’ Xbox One ‘Under The Map’ Exploit Fixed
ARK: Survival Evolved players on the Xbox One fretting about their base and animals being destroyed by an exploit can breathe a sigh of relief. Studio Wildcard deployed an emergency fix Thursday to prevent the exploit from being used again.
The exploit in question allowed players to travel underneath the ARK: Survival Evolved map. While this happened to some players accidentally, others were taking advantage of the glitch in various game-breaking ways.
One way bad actors would use the exploit was to pick up a player and/or their dinosaur mounts and drop them in a place where they can become trapped under a map. Others discovered a way to travel to other tribe’s bases under the map and were able to kill tamed animals. One Reddit user reported losing “about 30 tames” to a pair of players who found a way to get a boat under the map with ladders reaching up towards the surface. Another player reported exploiters getting a War Quetzal under the map equipped with rocket turrets.
Aside from exploiters, multiplayer players reported their animals falling through the map in various spots. This caused players to scramble to find ways to rescue their trapped animals before they died.
Thankfully, the under the map glitch and exploit has been fixed with an update delivered to ARK: Survival Evolved on the Xbox One today. Studio Wildcard has not updated the official patch notes with any information yet, but this appears to be a server-side fix.
Community Manager Jat Karunakaran announced the fix for traveling underneath the map was being deployed at around 12:45 p.m. via Twitter. The ARK: Survival Evolved servers for the Xbox One were brought down for approximately 20 minutes before being brought back online. So far, there have not been any reports of players and animals being able to go under the map.
Meanwhile, PC players are eagerly awaiting the release of the ARK: Survival Evolved patch 237 currently scheduled to be released on Friday, March 25. As previously covered, this adds two new sea creatures to the game along with a new land animal.
The sea creatures include the Eurypterid, which is like an underwater version of the Giant Scorpion. It cannot be tamed, but it is a good source of Chitin and Silica Pearls. It will also likely provide the rare Black Pearls, which have not been covered by Studio Wildcard yet.
The second sea creature is the Dunkleosteus, a tamable and rideable armored fish. It has a powerful set of jaws that can harvest stone and oil resources in the ocean or simply chew through other animals. It drops Raw Prime Meat and Chitin when killed.
The new land animal is the Wooly Rhinoceros. It drops Pelt and Keratin when killed, but taming potentially sets a player up with a powerful attack. It comes with a charge attack that increases in damage based on how fast the animal is moving at the time of impact. It will likely be found in the Whitesky Peak area of The Island along with some of the grassland regions.
In addition to the new animals, patch 237 for ARK: Survival Evolved will add the Snow and Swamp caves that were removed from the previous patch at the last second. The second phase of Breeding Mechanics will also be introduced, although there are no details surrounding that. Finally, players will be able to set tribe rankings for members along with privileges based on the rank.
Xbox One player should expect to see these changes arrive in approximately two to three weeks based off of previous updates.
Meanwhile, some ARK players may have noticed the Basilosaurus mentioned in a recent Studio Wildcard promotional video. Co-founder Susan Stieglitz shared a Twitter post stating the large sea mammal is on the way. Jat added a clarification that it will arrive in eight days. Coincidentally, that’s Friday, April 1. We’ll have to see if the Basilosaurus is included in the next ARK: Survival Evolved patch then, or if Studio Wildcard is doing an April Fool’s joke.
[Image via Studio Wildcard]
