‘ARK: Survival Evolved’ Disease And Quetzal Starving Issues Fixed With Patch 242.3


The ARK: Survival Evolved patch 242 released on Thursday to the PC introduced a huge amount of changes to the open-world survival game. Unfortunately, it also introduced a large set of issues, starting with the new Disease feature and another issue that starves highly valuable Quetzals to death. Studio Wildcard quickly responded to the outcry from the community with the release of the 242.3 update on Friday morning that comes with performance improvements.

As previously covered, ARK: Survival Evolved PC gamers quickly discovered the food consumption of Quetzals was extremely high following the release of patch 242, even when idle. The amount of food consumed by the massive bird was such that it required players to spend their time harvesting meat just to keep them alive. The 242.3 update released this morning returns food consumption back to its original rate for the creature.

The introduction of the Swamp Fever Disease and Leeches turned into another major issue for ARK: Survival Evolved players. The ingredient requirements for Lesser Antidote was heavily stacked against lower level players while transmission of the Disease from player to player was far too easy and all tamed animals were impacted as well.

ARK: Survival Evolved Leeches
[Image via Studio Wildcard Lead Developer Jeremy Stiegliz / Twitter]

Studio Wildcard has altered the ingredient requirements of the Lesser Antidote to replace the Wooly Rhino Horn with Narcotic. This makes the cure for lower level players much easier as just reaching and surviving in areas where Wooly Rhinos roam is a huge challenge for them.

Additionally, Leech Blood is now more common when harvested from Leeches to further improve the chance of gathering the ingredients needed for the Lesser Antidote while Leeches will no longer commit suicide by attacking wild predators. The Leech Blood also had its spoil time increased to 3 hours and can be stored in Fridges to last longer.

Lesser Antidotes still cannot be stored in fridges or preserving bin yet, per a Twitter post from Studio Wildcard Community Manager Jat. He explained, “Right now it’s not something we’re keen on, will result in stock-piling and making disease less of a thread – but we’ll consider.”

Meanwhile, the effects of Swamp Fever have been altered to increase movement speed by 20 percent while food, water, and oxygen consumption are reduced by 50 percent and there is no additional Stamina drain effect. Additionally, only Tamed Dodos can now be infected versus all tamed animals, the disease can no longer be transmitted through walls, and Bug Repellant can be used to keep Leeches away from both players and tamed animals.

Studio Wildcard also introduced some new server options for ARK: Survival Evolved owners who run their own dedicated server or play locally. New options allow for Disease to disappear at death and there is the ability to completely disable the disease mechanic. There options can be found in the GameUserSettings.ini file.

ARK: Survival Evolved Leech
[Image via ‘ARK: Survival Evolved’]

Community Manager Jat admitted things were messy with the release of the 242 patch, and there were “screw ups” with its release, in a Reddit post. He went on to explain that feedback from the ARK: Survival Evolved community on Diseases and other items will continue to shape the game.

“We’ll keep on iterating based upon your feedback and what we see in game. There has been some pretty solid ideas and in future passes hopefully we’ll be able to expand the system some further and possibly incorporate some of those ideas. I know it sometimes may seem like you don’t think we read the feedback, but we definitely do and hope that you continue to provide it so we’re able to make changes,” he wrote.

You can find the complete patch notes for ARK: Survival Evolved PC patch 242.3 below. Xbox One owners can look forward to these changes and more in the coming weeks.

  • Unversioned Hotfix: Fixed issue with Leech Blood not being storable in Icebox/Preserving Bins. Requires Server Update.
  • Performance improvements to server yielding 20-25% perf increase. Also improves Client CPU utilization.
  • Changed Rhino Horn requirement to Narcotic on Lesser Antidote. Made Lesser Antidote Disease Immunity last 3 minutes.
  • Leech Blood now spoils after 3 hours (Stackable in Quantities of 50), can be stored in Fridge. Made leech blood more common to harvest.
  • Made Swamp Fever increase movement speed by 20% and decrease rate of food, water, and oxygen consumption by 50%.
  • Made Swamp Fever not able to be transmitted through collisions/walls.
  • Among current non-human creatures, now only Tamed Dodos can be infected with Swamp Fever. (as intended). Any existing infected dinos are cleared on sever launch.
  • Bug Repellent now repels Leeches and bug repellent now works when applied to your Tamed Dinos
  • Attached Leech no longer drains Stamina.
  • Reduced rate by about 70% of Diseased Leeches in Swamps, as intended.
  • Water/Amphibious creatures are no longer targeted by Leeches. (swamp native ?
  • Dinos will not play the eat animation so often when autonomously eating
  • Fixed another value that was increasing rate of Quetz food consumption, is now fully back to original values.
  • New Server Options
    • ?NonPermanentDiseases=true – This will make Diseases not permanent (you will then lose them if you respawn).
    • ?PreventDiseases=true – This will completely disable Diseases on the server. (thus far just ‘Swamp Fever’).
  • Fixed appearance of “blue fog” on the Cave-water material.

What do you think of the quick turn-around on fixes to Leeches and the Disease mechanic in ARK: Survival Evolved? Sound off in the comments below.

[Image via Studio Wildcard]

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