Building and taming in ARK: Survival Evolved are some of its most well-loved features. Today, we are thrilled to make building and taming an even more creative experience by bringing the Homestead update to Xbox players! Homestead is a free update to ARK that vastly improves pre-existing structures and their placement options, as well as offering a myriad of additional pieces to utilize in any way your imagination can conjur. Triangle floors, half walls, angled pieces and much more provides players a whole other level in creative potential. Every building made from beginning to end can now look as unique as its builder. Homestead also delivers a complete rework of our existing Kibble system (the most efficient way to tame creatures) to be even more user and server friendly.
Originally known as Structures Plus (S+), Homestead began as a player created Sponsored mod by Orionsun and was chosen to be officially added to the ARK base game itself. Integrating such a game-changing and mechanic-altering mod into ARK was not an easy task. We divided the mod’s many features into categories, as some of the features would not be suitable for our official server environment. Once we had a feature list to work from we slowly began integrating these changes into the game, starting with the ability for players to pick up structure pieces after placing them for a short period of time. We were careful to ensure the preservation of player’s existing buildings while adding all new snap points, alternate versions to structure pieces, and entirely new structure pieces. These new options allow triangular building, stairs, ramps, reworked pipes and cables, and much much more!
Reworking the Kibble system required a careful eye and lots of iteration. Previously the Kibble system worked like a tree, the egg of one creature being used in a kibble to tame the next creature in line. Often these kibbles didn’t make sense in terms of game progression and became more redundant with each new creature. It also meant that many of the same egg-laying creatures were required to collect enough kibble for the purpose of taming. We first introduced this new Kibble system in the ARK: Extinction expansion and now we have completely rebuilt it from the ground up to be simplified across all ARK content. Each creature now falls into one of six categories, and that creature’s egg can be used to tame any creature within that specific category. Instead of having 50+ different kibbles all requiring a different specific egg, it is drastically reduced to: Basic, Simple, Regular, Superior, Exceptional, and Extraordinary kibbles.
Alongside a lengthy and thorough iteration process with our internal quality assurance team this Homestead update is the first time we’ve utilized a public beta process. We know this live testing was important due to the game-changing mechanics at the core of the game. We also believe it will provide a greater level of satisfaction to all players and result in fewer issues as the update reaches the live game. We are particularly excited to bring Homestead to Xbox players, who will be able to utilize these changes and features for the very first time!
We invite you to watch our Homestead trailer to see the variety of structures that are now possible. All of the builds featured in the trailer are player-created. It has been an amazing experience for us to see our dedicated players create things we could have never imagined! We hope these changes to ARK: Survival Evolved inspire players to turn their wooden shack on the beach into the fortress of their dreams.
See the rest of the story on Xbox Wire
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Source: Xbox Blog
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