ARK: Survival Evolved players can download the game's Valentine's Day update right now. The event features boosted mating, holiday-themed Dino colors and more. Also as a part of console update 1.87, the patch includes a wide variety of fixes for Titan and creature balance, exploits, memory allotment and more. Full details are availablein Studio Wildcard's patch notes below:
ARK: Survival Evolved 1.87 Valentine's Day Update Patch Notes
Valentine's Day Event!
- Auto Activates from February 12 through February 18 for non-TCs
- Run with ActiveEvent=vday to toggle manually
- Event Rates:
- 2x Mating/Mate boost Range
- 3x Mating Speed/Mating Recovery
- 3x Baby/Egg Maturation Speed
- 1/3rd Baby Food Consumption
- Event Details:
- Dino color spawns: Creatures have a 20 percent chance to spawn with holiday-themed colors (red, pink and white)
- When mating, creatures have a 25 percent chance to drop an item. That item has a 50/50 chance to be one of the following:
- Valentines Chocolate: Restore full HP, or knock 40 percent off a Dino's Tame Bar
- Valentines Candy: Random dino colors
Managarmr
- Ice Breath damage is now scaled by distance to the target
- Improvements to situations where Managarmrs float away
- Whistle Follow or Whistle Stop will order the Managarmr to stop their active ability and return to ground
- Reduced Ice Breath freeze amount
- Increased time between Freeze Debuffs
Exploits
- Fix for exploit related to Rafts
- Fix for exploit related to Tek Gloves
- Fix for exploit related to Owl and babies
- Fix for exploit related to Owl
- Fix for exploit related to Desert Titan lightning
- Fix for exploit related to Ladders
- Fix for exploit related to Chairs
Extinction
- Environment memory improvements
Ice Titan
- Have Ice Titan consider more targets as a leapable-enemy
Desert Titan
- Fix for Desert Titan sometimes freezing/refusing to move during boss fight
- Fix for Desert Titan occasionally flying out of world bounds
- Untamed Desert Titan ground targeted lightning attack will now have a variable delay
- Removed Burning debuff that the lightning field puts on enemies
Titans
- Reduced damage to structures from melee attacks
Mating
- Added "Enable Mating" under Behavior dial on Dinos, wandering is no longer required to mate
- Change dino hover UI to read "Enable Wander or Mating to Mate" instead of "Enable Wander to Mate"
UI
- Moved chatbox down to lower left corner
Inventory
- Increased Bullet/Arrow stack size to 100 (from 50).
Turrets
- Reduced Auto/Heavy turret inventory size roughly 40 percent, to accommodate ammo stack change (results in slight increase of max # of bullets they can store)
Tribes
- Finish increasing tribe group rank limit from five to 10
- A player can not accept alliance invites unless they are tribe admin
- Alliance invites and new tribes added or removed from alliances is now logged in the Tribe Log.
Cryopod
- Tooltips now contain the stats of the dino
- Mating timer now advances while in a Cryopod unless the Cryopod is transferred, then it is reset to respect the new server's MatingIntervalMultiplier
- Baby aging is paused while in a Cryopod
- Baby imprinting is paused while in a Cryopod
- Baby gestation is aborted when entering a Cryopod
Air Conditioner
- Reduced Air Conditioning SFX radius
Plant Y
- No longer affects Quetz and Karkinos
Plant Z
- Stun cooldown increased vs dinos, five seconds -> 7.5 seconds
Megalania
- Halved torpidity decrease rate
Bola
- You can now struggle to get out of bola faster
Experimental
- Added [ServerSettings] ItemStackSizeMultiplier to allow increasing or decreasing item stack size
- Added [/Script/ShooterGame.ShooterGameMode] ConfigOverrideItemMaxQuantity to allow manually overriding item stack size on a per-item basis
Mesh Memory Optimizations
- Doedicurus
- Parasaur Saddle
- Rex Saddle
- Sauropod Saddle
- Various Particle Meshes
Particle Memory Optimizations
- Dino Leash
Skins
- Fixed missing Bionic skins
As far as the Valentine's Day event is concerned, it's more or less the exact same package survivors have enjoyed over the past few years. Especially if you have two high-level Dinos you'd like to mate, now's the best time to do it. Just make sure to compare stats carefully so you can get the best possible result from each mix. The only possible downside is the lack of purple coloring, which has traditionally been a part of the festivities in the past. Because past events used it, however, Wildcard may have opted to change things up.
In terms of fixes, the changes for the Managarmr are probably the most significant. That creature has been a little bugged for the past few weeks, so it's nice to see Wildcard respond to community requests to ensure remaining bugs with expansions are actively investigated. The changes here aren't quite as extensive as the major memory overhaul from late January, but there's enough here to prove this patch is more than a slight seasonal shift.
ARK: Survival Evolved is available now on PC, Xbox One, PS4 and Nintendo Switch. The Valentine's Day event is not available on Nintendo Switch.
What are your thoughts on this latest ARK event? Is there enough here to get you in the Valentine's Day spirit? Tell us in the comments section!
