‘ARK: Survival Evolved’ Next Xbox One Update Dated, The Center Changes Hits Beta

The next ARK: Survival Evolved update for the Xbox One was detailed by Studio Wildcard Tuesday. The developer plans to release the latest PC content to the console version of the open-world survival game with dinosaurs and add some always welcome performance improvements. Meanwhile, the popular The Center maps have some changes coming as well that just hit beta on the PC.

Update Details for Xbox One

Xbox One update 737.0 is currently targeting a Tuesday, June 14 release per the latest Studio Wildcard patch notes. It’s important to remember the studio does not always meet its estimated release dates partly because of the Microsoft certification process and partly because of the development process.

The 737.0 ARK: Survival Evolved update includes all the new content and features from the 242.0 PC patch released last week. This includes several hot fix patches released to squash bugs, close exploits, and correct some truly unfortunate issues with the release. This is part of the benefit of the console version of the game being updated later. PC players deal with some huge pain points that are corrected in time for the console update.

The details of the 242.0 PC patch were covered here along with some of the changes to the Swamp Fever Disease and Leeches in this article. At a high level, ARK: Survival Evolved received the Diplodocus and Leech as new creatures in the game world. The former can be tamed and equipped with a saddle that holds up to 10 players. Meanwhile, the Dragon arena was added along with the new Dragon boss for Survivors to battle.

The Disease mechanic was added to ARK for the first time and was quickly tweaked by Studio Wildcard. You can get the details on how Swamp Fever is contracted, how to cure it, and how to survive in this guide.

Other new features include Breeding Mechanics Phase 2, which allows you to cuddle with your dino babies to get “extra benefits and greater affinity” when they become full grown. The Tribe Groups manager receives some tweaking, the ability to tell tamed dinos how far to follow has been added, and players can now craft a Training Dummy to see how much damage their weapons and dinosaurs can do.

There are some controversial changes too. Auto-Turrets and Plant X turrets can no longer be placed on platform saddles for the Quetzal or any of the land animals like the Brontosaurus and Paracer. Manned turrets can still be placed, however. Additionally, Plant X turrets now consume approximately 50 fertilizer with every shot. Each bag of fertilizer holds 54,000 fertilizer, so that is 1,080 shots per bag minus whatever is used to keep the plant going.

Some of the Xbox One specific changes with the 737.0 update to ARK include a 15 percent client and server performance boost. The game is still technically in alpha and highly un-optimized, so any performance improvements are welcome.

More server options are being added for dedicated server owners, such as allowing flying tamed dinosaurs in caves and to disallow offline raiding. Studio Wildcard is also introducing an automated backup and restore option for those that run their own dedicated servers.

Currently, there is no mention of Primitive Plus being released with this update. The full patch notes can be found at the bottom of this article.

The Center

Map maker Ben Burkart has not been sitting on his laurels with The Center map. The official release of the larger custom-built map has seen a flood of players jump servers for new homes. Meanwhile, he has more additions coming and just released an official beta to Steam for ARK: Survival Evolved PC players to test.

Burkart plans to do regular beta releases of The Center with each focusing on a specific area. It’s not recommended to use as a regular map as it could introduce game-breaking bugs or destroy any structures built.

“This Beta release has almost exclusively been focused on adding a rather large cavern system to The Center. There are currently 2 entrances to this new area that connect it to the underworld, one underwater and one footpath. There are also two other entrances, one located in the deepocean, and one located in the jungle passageway in the southern jungle.”

Current list of feedback items I’m looking for:

1. Have you been able to find the new artifact location in the water?
2. How do you like the jumping puzzle, is it too hard too easy? Is the reward too much too little for completing it?
3. Are you able to find absolutely any way outside of cheating to get to the end of the jumping puzzle without completing it properly?
4. How are the overall enemy spawns in the caverns? Too many, too hard too easy etc?
5. Are there any game breaking issues?
6. Any misc bugs found in the caverns, anything broken, can get out of the world, etc…
7. Were the new caverns fun to explore or interesting overall?
8. Any suggested changes overall?

Xbox One 737.0 patch notes

• Approx +15 percent client and server performance boost! Major CPU and GPU gains due to increased multithreading.
• All PC Content up through v242 (Diplodocus, Leech, Dragon Arena, Training Dummy, RPG stat mode, Offline Raiding Prevention Option, Baby Imprinting, Everybody’s Favorite Diseases, Adjustable Follow Ranges, Exploit Fixes, Biome Area Update Markets, etc). Details:
• All extended PC game options exposed through Host Settings menu (Flyers in Caves, etc etc)
• Likely fix for Player Dedi Server crashes, but also an auto-backup/restore for Player DediServers to avoid ever totally being locked out of your save data in the future.
• Likely fix for certain PlayerDedi’s not appearing in the Sessions List

[Image via Studio Wildcard]