ARK: Survival Ascended's Therizino TLC lands alongside Cerberax and Gargantar

Studio Wildcard released a sizeable ARK: Survival Ascended update overnight into 1 October. It reworks the Therizinosaurus, adds two new creatures and fixes a long list of bugs, including several server crashes.

The Therizino rework is a TLC, ARK’s term for an overhaul that keeps a creature’s job but improves how it fights, moves and looks. Players picked it in an Extra Life vote. The most noticeable change is in the wild: a Therizino now stares you down and spreads its claws before it attacks. Back off and keep your distance and it will tolerate you. Step closer or hit it during the warning and the fight starts at once.

Tamed ones get a new model and animations, all 6 colour regions, a jump and a turn-in-place toggle. The patch notes also list:

• Power and Delicate Harvesting repeat while you hold the input
• claws and posture change with the harvesting levels you invest
• Cross Swipe, a new two-claw attack with heavy damage and a larger radius that knocks back small and medium creatures but harvests nothing

Giganotosaurus is next in line for a TLC, according to the announcement.

The Cerberax arrives as part of Fantastic Tames Season 1, alongside the Burrowbuck and Enigmasaur. It is a three-headed hound with fire, venom and electrical attacks. Each head has to be won over separately: one wants a wrestling match, one responds to food, and the third wants to hunt with you. It spawns on The Center, Scorched Earth, Lost Colony, Ragnarok, Extinction, Valguero, Astraeos and Genesis.

Gargantar is a dragon that inhales creatures, trees and resources and gets harder to kill the more it swallows. Allies can shelter in its stomach, while enemies get the contents back as acidic spit. It can be tamed by anyone who owns ARK: Dragontopia. Cryolophosaurus spawns have also been added to the snow regions of six maps, The Island among them.

For anyone running their own server, the interesting line is a new GameUserSettings.ini setting, AllowVariantDinoPacks, which defaults to false. Set it to true and variants of the same creature count towards each other’s pack or gang, so Raptors and Aberrant Raptors can run together. Separately, alliance creatures now count as packmates too, with same-tribe creatures taking priority when the pack is full.

The patch notes also mention fixed server crashes, a Bounty Board that now works on modded maps, and Wyvern breath damage that no longer varies with the server’s frame rate. None of that applies until you update and restart your server.