Studio Wildcard has Released an Update to the ARK: Survival Ascended Development Kit

Good news to all Survivors! Studio Wildcard has introduced an update in ARK: Survival Ascended that's sure to make the modding community happy. A major update has been implemented for the ARK Development Kit that's going to give creative modders more ways to reshape the game. There's a lot so we'll take a quick look into each one.

Custom Cosmetic System

The first one is the Custom Cosmetic System where the Survivors can now dynamically apply not only player-generated costumes to players and dinos, but also skins to armors and weapons. They can even apply skins to all the structures in the game. In addition, all of these can be dynamically added onto any server, which includes Official Servers.

Five examples are now ready for download and for use on Official Servers and these are the Steamboat Willie Cosmetics, Clean Glass Wall, Party Lamp Post, Tic Tac Toe Table, and Gun Rack. More advancements in Custom Cosmetics are planned to be released in the near future like the ability to add new hairstyles and emotes.

Simple Game Framework

The second change is the introduction of a powerful and flexible framework where creators get to build entirely new games from scratch inside of ARK. Not only that, but these can also even be created as cross-platform mods. The update released comes with a fully playable cartoon platformer-game built in the framework along with the source for it in the ARK Dev Kit.

Official Transfers

Survivors should also be happy to know that they can now move items, creatures and characters onto the map without restriction. For now though, transfers are only for Official Servers. However, the studio is working on making that functionality available on Unofficial Servers.

What did you think of these new changes?

ARK: Survival Ascended is available for $44.99 on the PC via Steam along with consoles PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X/S. This version recreates and redesigns the artwork and worlds of the original ARK game while also featuring Unreal Engine 5 graphics and even cross-play. The game has players create a Survivor, form a tribe, and then tame, train, breed & ride dinosaurs, all within a living ecosystem.