With years of Early Access service under its belt, ARK: Survival Evolved spread its wings to other platforms before becoming a complete game. With the end not visible in the distance, the PC version of the dino survival sim has climbed up to update #252 - somewhat of a landmark achievement when it comes to software support.
So with such a high number of updates spanning over the years, it's only fair to suggest you won't be seeing a 'complete' changelog here right now. Instead, we're starting with the latest update and will strive to keep this page updated with every patch detail - big or small - throughout the foreseeable future. So what's new this time around? Lets take a look;
ARK: Survival Evolved Update - 258
Another month - another set of new creatures added to ARK: Survival Evolved. Like always, a new patch means a surge in new players rushing to figure out the server system and realise they need a couple more maps before the game really lets them do anything. Be nice to the newbies, folks.
Changelog:
- New Weapons
- Harpoon Gun + Tranq Bolts
- New Creatures
- New Dino: Hesperonis
- New Dino: Megatherium
- New Dino: Megalania
- New Dino: Yutyrannus
- New Structures
- Toilet
- 2 New Hairstyles
- Memory reductions, texture memory & mesh optimization
- Greater Achievement set, with various cosmetics, hairstyles, & emotes unlocked as you get Achievements.
- New client Options to disable giving cosmetics on respawn, and to disable menu music tracks.
- Re-added the ATV vehicle as work-in-progress "easter egg" for singleplayer and custom servers:
- Massive update to Primitive+
- Fixed various gameplay exploits and edge cases.
- Direwolf now has pack logic with pack buff
- Fixed bug where Alpha Wild creatures were sometimes improperly buffing enemy (tamed) creatures
- Updated various new UI's to the new style
- 66 new Explorer Notes! (between The Island and ScorchedEarth)
- Ballista/Harpoon Bolt now has significant piercing properties akin to the Composite Arrow
- Redid The Island's ambient sounds and various gameplay sound effects
- Explorer Notes subtitle option button, Explorer Notes translations are WIP
- Various misc map fixes
ARK: Survival Evolved Update - 257
Waiting for an ARK patch feels like waiting a lifetime. They come every month - give or take - but that regularity only means each individual week feels longer than the last. It's more TEK tier, though, and that's never a bad thing.
Changelog:
- TEK Tier Updates
- TEK Turret
- TEK Grenade
- TEK Cloning Chamber
- TEK Cave
- Dossier
- Apis Lithohermaea
- Daeodon Comedentis
- Liopleurodon Magicus
- Kentrosaurus Aethiopicus
- Other
- More UI overhauls
- New Hairstyle and Facial Hair
- 15 new music tracks, per-biome and situational
- Approximately 20+ New Explorer Notes
- Full Gamepad input pass (i.e. console gamepad functionality)
- Fixed issue with Cave spawns not functioning properly in singleplayer
- The Center mega-update!
- New Emote
- Engram Tree Revamp
- Alpha Megalodon
- All Alphas have their own APEX Items
ARK: Survival Evolved Update - 256
Another month, another update. This one is big in a different way, however. Since the inception of ARK: Survival Evolved, it's been known to have one of the most horrendous GUIs in the whole industry - at least by our standards. After years of hopes and dreams, they're finally being replaced. First comes the inventory - then comes the rest.
Changelog:
- TEK Tier Changes
- New Structure: TEK Teleporter
- New Structure: TEK Mosa Saddle
- New Structure: Tek Power Generator
- Tek Underwater Bases
- New Dinos
- New Dino: Equus!
- New Dino: Leedsichthys!
- New Dino: Ichthyornis!
- New Dino: Iguanodon!
- General
- Aquatic & Amphibious Creature Breeding
- Flyer Nerf
- Reduced Vault Size
- Limited one C4 attached per dino
- Sheep now have a "Slaughter" option when you have a club, sword, hatchet etc equipped, also works on PvE
- 1 New Hairstyle and 1 New Facial hairstyle (male and female variants)
- 20+ new Explorer Notes
ARK: Survival Evolved Update - 255.1
There's always more walking to be done in ARK. Set out to find 30 more explorer notes and don your new favorite facial hair style to line up with a dramatic re-emergence from the jungle looking like Tom Hanks from Castaway before being eaten by a dinosaur.
Changelog:
- New Dinos
- Electrophorus
- Microraptor
- Ammonite
- Thylacoleo
- New Structures
- Tek Forcefield
- Tek Tileset & Tek Doors
- New additional head head hairstyle and additional facial hairstyle
- 30 new Explorer Notes
- C4 now does approximately 70% more damage to Structures than Rockets. Rocket Launcher can no longer have Item Stats (though its base Damage has been increased 20% to compensate). Rocket Turrets now take a slight amount of damage when they fire, and can not fire under 5% HP.
- C4-carrying Flyers now move at a fixed slow speed.
- Item Stats on all Official Servers are now clamped to negate the old no-longer-achievable OP items generated by then-unbalanced Fishing Rod.
- Added option for per-Tribe Dino Tame limit, enabling on Official PvE servers with a max of 500 Dinos Per Tribe (with on-screen indicator of Tribe Dino count). To use it, run with ?MaxPersonalTamedDinos=Number
- Added option to auto-destroy claimable decayed dinos on load, rather than have them remain around as Claimable. To use this, run with ?AutoDestroyDecayedDinos=true. Official PvE servers now have this enabled.
- Various network optimizations. Major rendering and threading optimizations to come in subsequent minor version update.
- Fixed issue seeing the tooltip for Fertilized Eggs
- Fixed issue with MaxPersonalTamedDinos value not decrementing when Unclaiming Dinos that were loaded from save data.
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ARK: Survival Evolved Update - 254.0
The Tek Tier 1 update is finally here! Accompanying its long-awaited release, ARK: Survival Evolved is now at its cheapest for a limited time. As promised, the first wave of the new Tek Tier end-game progression system came with a few other noteworthy additions. Facial hair, Jousting and a few more beasts to tame.
Changelog:
- Tek Tier Phase 1: Tek Engram system, Element Resource system, Tek Replicator, Tek Rifle, Tek Helmet, Tek Visor, Tek Jetpack, Tek Boots, Tek Gloves, Tek Rex Saddle, Tek Transmitter, and more.
- New Dinos:
- Ovis Aries!
- Basilosaurus!
- Baryonyx!
- Purlovia!
- New Item: Lance (for jousting of course!), and you can now also use a Shield when Weapon-Riding (provided you are using an appropriate Weapon).
- Alliance-Chat channel! (open with 'Home' or cycle thru all chat modes with Tab)
- Admin Command Logs & Chat Logs file-output options
- New Admin Cheats:
- Troodon Scout now has an option to look for Corpses & Caches
- Tamed Dinos now have an option to disable their resource-harvesting
- Holding Left or Right when dismounting a Dino will now dismount you in that direction
- Significantly increased Scorched Earth Loot Drop Quality
- Added 5 more Player and Dino levels
- Fixed Allosaurus spawning inside bases
- Fixed issue with being able to clip through World Geometry
- Fixed Supply Crates respawn logic (would previously have stopped some cave crate spawns)
- 16 more Explorer Notes
- Soups/Beers can no longer be eaten by Dinos
- SteamOS version works properly again, and memory savings on Linux & Mac
- Audio system is now fully streamed. Hundreds of MB saved, slight potential perf loss. If you want to use the old system (memory-intensive), launch with -oldaudio
ARK: Survival Evolved Update - 253.0
If you've ever wanted to take pictures of the varied landscapes of your server, now you can! There's a fancy pictograph box in ARK's 253.00 update, so break out the smiles, get your comrades together and get a nice shot before someone blasts you with a rogue arrow. Network gains, new Dossier updates and underwater caves arrive this time, too. But the Tek Tier update won't make the grade until the next one.
Changelog:
- Dossier Additions:
- Cnidaria Omnimorph
- Pegomastax Fructarator
- Therizinosaurus Multiensis
- Troodon Magnanimus
- Tusoteuthis Vampyrus
- Two brand new underwater progression-oriented caves to TheIsland
- Take Pictures with a camera and paint them on canvas
- Additional network performance gains
- Various new ARK DevKit features and hooks
- BattlEye has been enabled by default for Dedicated Servers
ARK: Survival Evolved Update - 252.0
What better way to celebrate Thanksgiving than discovering a massive, tamable snail? 4 new creatures make it into ARK's enormous monster library - Achatina, Megalosaurus, Moschops, Pachyrhinosaurus - and a lot of the original island caves have received a vast redesign to bring them more in-line with current conten. There's more over here, but here's the rough idea:
Changelog:
- ARK: Turkey Trial 2! New challenge and cosmetics! Earnable Emote! (this system also enables Mods to add more Emotes to the game!)
- New Mechanic: Breeding Phase 3 with Random Mutations and Family Trees.
- VFX Indicators for Whistle Commands: Move To, Attack, and Group-Selected Units.
- Explorer Notes: Two new mythos Explorer Notes for each character
- A huge increase in server performance
- Whistle Ordering Groups! Create groups by class, or specific-dino!
- New Whistle Type: “Move To”, Attack, and Group-Selected Units.
- Extra Option to “stream” in “Far” map sublevels, for large memory and performance gains (but reduced visual quality & draw distance).
ARK: Survival Evolved Update - 250.0
Halloween is over and you can now tweak the colour of your interior lighting by simply painting a light-bulb. Server hosts should notice a considerable drop in the time required to generate a new procedural world and Alpha Mosasaur's are the go-to aquatic creature to quell for a decent fishing rod. What else? The full changelog is posted below straight from the Patch Note Wiki:
Changelog
- Conclusion of Fear Evolved event: the Fear Evolved Structures will be removed, but any earned Cosmetic Items and ZombDodos/ZombWyverns remain!
- Fix of Procedurally Generated ARK crashes, massive reduction in generation and loading time, fix for PGM's on Linux Servers and Mac & Linux Clients. (Wipes saved v1 PGM's, now is v2)
- 1 new mythos Explorer Note for each character
- "Ignore All Whistles" option for Dinos
- Per-Alarm-Tripwire Option for Tripwire Alarm Trap to not be set-off by Tribemates or Allied Tribes. (defaults to not be set off by Allies)
- Alpha Mosasaurs now drop quality fishing rods
- Preserving Bin now has 24 item slots
- Alpha Fire Wyvern and Alpha Deathworm Trophy heads
- Platform Dinos now add 20% of the inventory weight from creatures/players standing on them (previously was 0%)
- Imprinted baby walking now respects the server's "AllowAnyoneBabyImprintCuddle" setting
- Homing Underwater Mine no longer target wild dinos
- You can now paint the bulbs of electric lamps which will colorize the lighting which comes from them
- Fixed issue where you could upload engram-crafted items to Cross-Server and they would disappear
- Fixed issue with Industrial Cooker not properly using up water container when crafting
- Fixed an issue with unstasising structuctures occasionally being invisible on client
- Sloped Roofs now properly used for indoors calculation
- Redid all 3D Dino Dossiers to look & be more accurate to original 2D concepts
- Fixed longstanding issue of movement getting stuck on trees in permanent Falling physics state
- Snap Point Cycling! Press Q ('give default weapon' key) or Z ('defecate' key) when placing to cycle thru all nearby Snap Points :)
