‘ARK: Survival Evolved’ PC Update Puts Limits On Tribes And Tamed Dinos, Lets You Tame Snakes

Studio Wildcard is still in bug fix mode for ARK: Survival Evolved but released a new PC patch Wednesday that adds some interesting new things. The open-world survival game’s giant snakes can be tamed now plus the free Ragnarok map gets a major expansion. The developers also added some welcome quality of life improvements for Survivors while new limits on tribe and alliance sizes plus tamed dinosaurs may prove controversial.

ARK: Survival Evolved patch 256.0 is now available to download for PC players. The update should reach the Xbox One and PS4 versions of the game within the next week or so heading into the game’s new official launch date of August 29.

Tamed Titanoboas

The giant snakes in ARK: Survival Evolved called Titanoboas have been one of the few creatures that players could not tame. This was due to the impact the complex nature of their movement had on the game’s performance. Studio Wildcard is confident that recent optimizations have removed this issue and have added the ability to tame the creature.

How to tame the Titaonboa is the question though. Studio Wildcard isn’t dropping hints beyond Community Manager Jen letting everyone know via Twitter that it is not a knockout tame, and the process is unlike any other creature in the game.

Tribe Limits

Studio Wildcard added tribe and alliance limits to ARK: Survival Evolved in what appears to be an attempt to limit the impact of mega-tribes. Official servers now have a default tribe member limit of 70 players. Additionally, tribes will only be able to form alliances with up to 10 other tribes.

These tribe and alliance limits can be adjusted on player-run servers. Studio Wildcard has added new server options for admins to adjust to their preference.

Tamed Dino Limits

While the new tribe limits will only impact mega-tribes, new dino limits stand to affect mid-sized tribes and likely small tribes, particularly true on consoles and PC PvE servers. A tribe may now only have a maximum of 40 platform saddles. Additionally, each equipped platform saddle now takes 19 tamed dinosaur slots, which means a tamed dinosaur like the Quetzal and the platform saddle will eat up 20 tamed dinosaur slots.

This change will force PlayStation 4 and Xbox One tribes to think carefully about the makeup of their tamed dinosaur horde. The consoles are limited to a total of 200 tamed creatures per tribe. Meanwhile, PC PvE servers are limited to 500 per tribe.

These new limits are clearly aimed at improving the performance of ARK: Survival Evolved. Tribes with many tamed Quetzals and Brontos sporting platform saddles put a strain on both client and server performance.

Ragnarok Opens the Southwest

The developers behind the free Ragnarok map have been furiously working to try and get the map finished in time for the ARK: Survival Evolved release on August 29. Today’s update opens up the southwest portion of the map for PC players.

The southeast section of Ragnarok is still a work in progress and players will not have access to it. However, the northern half of the map is playable along with the southwest.

The Ragnarok developers have also fixed several bugs, map issues, and exploits with this update. You can check out the full patch notes for the official mod posted to the ARK: Survival Evolved forums.

PlayStation 4 and Xbox One owners can currently expect the Ragnarok map to be released for consoles on August 29.

Quality of Life

Studio Wildcard slipped in many quality of life improvements with the ARK: Survival Evolved 256 patch. For example, fertilizing plants can now be done without looking into their inventory, turrets can target dino riders instead of dinos, the egg hatching and gestation UI now has countdown timers and more.

Check out the full patch notes posted to the ARK: Survival Evolved official website to see them all.

[Featured Image by Studio Wildcard]