Ark: Survival Evolved mutates again with its new v257 patch released on Friday. Among other things, it adds lasers to sharks. About time honestly.
The patch also introduces new creatures, including giant bees, something called a Liopleurodon Magicus, and “hell pigs,” as well as a cloning chamber and of course the mysterious Tek cave dungeon hidden within the now active volcano. Inside the cave players can access the Ascension mechanic allowing them to level up and prepare for the game’s new, more difficult content. Of course, before they can ascend, they’ll need to defeat whatever creatures await them down there.
Studio Wildcard also briefly outlined a number of other features getting added or updated:
- More UI overhauls
- New Hairstyle and Facial Hair
- Approximately 20+ New Explorer Notes
- 15 new music tracks, per-biome and situational
- 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
To celebrate the latest patch, a weekend long event ending tomorrow around noon will give players bonuses to harvesting, taming, and EXP rates. Ark also got a big update at the end of March, showing that it truly is evolving all the time.
You can find out more details about patch v257 here.