‘ARK: Survival Evolved’ Xbox One 741 Patch Brings Performance Boost, Birds, And Night Vision

ARK: Survival Evolved for the Xbox One is now mostly caught up with the PC version once again. Studio Wildcard released update 741.0 Thursday night, which brings two new flying dinosaurs, Night Vision Goggles, various fixes, and some performance improvements to the prehistoric survival game.

The 741.0 update to ARK: Survival Evolved is actually two updates if you’ve purchased Scorched Earth. The main game patch weighs in at 5.7 GB while the expansion update is 3.4 GB. It includes three performance improvements, which will hopefully help the game’s performance on the console. The first is a 30- to 40-percent performance improvement in rending structures. Those familiar with the game know well how massive player-built structures can drag down ARK‘s frame rate.

The second performance improvement is a little more interesting as Studio Wildcard makes an Xbox One specific change. The developer is now using the console’s EDRAM (or ESRAM) to help render objects. For those that don’t know, this is a small 32MB cache of memory meant to provide higher bandwidth output for objects that are rendered frequently.

The final performance improvement is dedicated to the Scorched Earth expansion. Studio Wildcard promises improvements to rendering performance for the DLC, but doesn’t provide a target of how much.

The last patch upgraded ARK: Survival Evolved‘s in-game graphics to 720p and the UI to 1080p. Studio Wildcard appears to be putting more effort into optimizing the game. It will be interesting to see if another resolution bump and a frame rate that is at or above 30 fps on a more consistent basis can come in the next few months leading to the official launch.

Unfortunately, the long-awaited update to The Center map to add the Redwood Island and the new Edge of the World content was not included with this update. ARK: Survival Evolved players on the Xbox One will have to wait for a later update, which may be for the best. The Center map has been experiencing high memory usage issues on the PC since its more recent patch and Studio Wildcard has not been able to fix it completely yet.

Additionally, fixes made to the PrimitivePlus mod in the last PC patch were also not included with this release. That means the Allosaurus saddle engram is still missing. Don’t expect to see a saddle for the new Tapejara either.

On the new creature front, ARK: Survival Evolved adds two tamable flyers: Tapejara (guide) and Archaeopteryx. Both creatures will be available on The Island and The Center, and will both be added to the new Scorched Earth expansion later, per a Twitter post from lead developer Jeremy Stieglitz. They might be a little hard to find on The Center, however, until The Center update arrives.

The Tapejara is the first tamable flying dinosaur, with a saddle that is designed to hold more than one person. In fact, its saddle is capable of holding three Survivors. It is similar to the Gallimimus (guide) in that the driver sits in the middle while another sits at the front and a third sits in the back.

The Tapejara brings another unique aspect not seen in other ARK creatures. It is able to attach itself to the side of Redwood trees or cliffs and can provide a mounted position for the riders to fire from.

The Archaeopteryx is a smaller bird that players can’t ride. Instead, is a companion bird that Survivors can hang from its legs and glide down from high places. It also has the unique capability of replacing Tree Spas. When left to wander, the Archaeopteryx will fly from Redwood tree to Redwood tree and collect sap for players to collect later.

The lone new usable item is Night Vision Goggles. These high-end items allow players to see in the dark, a la Sam Fisher from the Splinter Cell franchise. It will be interesting to see how these are ultimately used by larger and smaller tribes alike.

Here are the complete patch notes posted on the ARK: Survival Evolved website for update 741.0.

• 30 percent to 40 percent rendering performance improvement of Structures
• 15 percent overall rendering performance improvement by moving all Render Targets to fast EDRAM
• Significantly improved rendering performance of Scorched Earth environment
• Fixed some crashes with the Game List UI
• Fixed dynamically installation of Scorched Earth DLC (so that you don’t have to restart the game application after installing it)
• Fixed Giganotosaurus damagetype issue
• New Item: Night Vision Goggles
• New Dino: Tapejara!
• New Dino: Archaeopteryx!

[Image via Studio Wildcard]