Studio Wildcard ended the week with a little anticipatory surprise for ARK: Survival Evolved players on the Xbox One. A new update will hit the console next week to bring two fun additions to the game plus the first test run at making animals different sizes in the open-world dinosaur survival game.
ARK: Survival Evolved update 732.0 will be released to the Xbox One sometime during the week starting Monday, February 29, according to a Studio Wildcard announcement on Twitter . This will bring the console version of the game up to PC patch 235, which added the Terror Bird, Grappling Hook, different Coel fish sizes, and Tribe Alliances among other items.
Xbox Survivors! Patch 732 will be deployed next week and will introduce the Terror Bird + Grappling Hook! https://t.co/hBCEldcJzI #playARK
— ARK: Survival Evolved (@survivetheark) February 26, 2016
The Terror Bird is the latest ridable prehistoric animal added to ARK: Survival Evolved . Those who watched 10,000 BC film may remember the towering birds antagonizing the hero and his friends during one scene in the otherwise forgettable film.
In ARK , the Terror Bird is an aggressive avian standing as tall as 12 feet. Generally speaking, it is in the same class as the Raptor, Carnotaurus, and Tyrannosaurus Rex in terms of utility as a mount to attack other dinosaurs and humans as well as explore the island. The differentiating factor with the big bird is its ability to jump and glide short distances. It cannot fly, but it will be able to get to places the other two-legged carnivores can’t.
Meanwhile, the small Coel fish will appear at varied sizes up to “super-large” and provide an appropriate amount of meat. The PC version showed some as large as a human.
Meanwhile, the Crossbow will have some utility added to it with the addition of the Grappling Hook. The attachment allows Survivors to scale cliffs, hook on to a flying beast and hitch a ride, and wrangle small animals and human players. ARK players have already come up with creative uses for some of the game’s items. It will be interesting to see how they test the limits of the Grappling Hook.
The Tribe Alliances feature is finally being added to both PVE and PVP servers. This will allow smaller Tribes to band together in-game to take on larger ones without being forced to merge.
This is actually the first fast turn-around for an ARKupdate to Xbox One. The 731.0 updatetook longer than Studio Wildcard’s originally planned release every two weeks due to the addition of split-screen play. This feature caused extra development work that pushed the time between releases to approximately a month. It will be a little over two weeks between the last update to the console and the new 732.0 update.
Now the question is, what Xbox One specific additions and tweaks Studio Wildcard will make with this latest update? The previous update included some performance improvements along with an increase for the tether distance when playing on a non-dedicated server, not to mention the split-screen addition. However, some expected features like more server settings being accessible were pulled at the last minute. Presumably, they will be included in the next update.
Studio Wildcard has not provided any patch notes for the ARK 732.0 update yet. The developer typically has provided a preview of sorts of what is in development, but this has also caused some restlessness in the game’s community, particularly when items get pulled.
ARK: Survival Evolved is still considered to be in alpha by the developer as part of Steam Early Access and Xbox One Game Preview Program. As such, things may break from time to time and releases may not have all expected content. Studio Wildcard has been good about delivering hotfix patches for any items that make the game difficult to play, such as when the UI slider for the Xbox One was broken.
If the Xbox One version of ARK can keep with this pace, console players should see the recently added Giant Beaver from patch 236 sometime between mid and late March.
ARK Guides:
- Understanding Status Indicators and Effects
- Xbox One Tips and Tricks
- How To Tame and Use the Gallimimus
- How to Tame and Use the Dung Beetle
- How to Tame and Use the Dimetrodon
- How to Tame and Use the Giant Beaver
[Image via Studio Wildcard]