Tournament Update!

Hello Survivors!

First of all we’d like to thank you for participating in the final tournament for our prototype game mode ‘ARK: Survival of the Fittest’ before we begin on it’s Official Development! There have been a lot of questions and concerns about the game mode prior to the tournament, so I’m here to share some information with you that will hopefully clear some things up!

We’ve had some discussion and have decided in the interest of having the best final player experience possible in the Championship game, we’d like to introduce our finale-patch early among with some new information about how this Pre-Championship period will go. Note that all of the Pre-Championship rounds will be live-streamed, including the first on Sunday October 18th at 2pm EST by the acclaimed cameraman and always-hilarious shoutcaster, BikeMan! If you’re not playing, be sure to tune in at that time, www.twitch.tv/survivetheark!

Pre-Championship Structure

Instead of 2 servers a day, we will launch 3 servers in total, with just 1 per day.
The first server will be launched on Sunday the 18th at 12PM EST. It will be able to hold a total of 240 players! The game will launch at 2PM EST, and it will be a 5-hour session lasting until approximately 7PM EST.. You will have two hours to sort out your Tribes in the pre-match, and it will be on a first come, first serve basis. If you do not qualify from this round, you will get a second attempt to join the Losers Bracket Server on Wednesday the 21st at 12PM.

The second server will be launched on Tuesday the 20th at 12PM EST. It will be able to hold a total of 240 players. The game will launch at 2PM EST, and it will be a 5-hour session lasting until approximately 7PM EST. You will have two hours to sort out your Tribes in the pre-Match and it will be on a first come, first serve basis. If you were knocked out of the tournament on Sunday, then you will not be able to participate in this round. If you do not qualify from this round, you will get a second attempt to join the Losers Bracket Server on Wednesday the 21st at 12PM.

The third server, also known as the Loser Bracket Server, will launch on Wednesday the 20th at 12PM EST. It will be able to hold a total of 240 players. The game will launch at 2PM EST, and it will be a 5-hour session lasting until approximately 7PM EST. You will have two hours to sort out your tribes in the pre-Match and it will be on a first come, first serve basis. If you were a tribe that was eliminated on Sunday, you will be permitted to join this server, along with anyone else who has yet to play, as a last chance to get into the grand finals.

It is in your best interest to attend the Sunday day if possible, as that’ll potentially get you 2 shots at getting to the grand finals, but again this is on a first come first serve basis.

This approach allows us to not only iterate on the game build balance for the Finale to see if any crucial changes need to be made, but also ensures that everyone will be able to get a shot at qualifying (assuming they show up) and notify us of any underlying issues we may not have been aware of previously.

Only players who have participated and Qualified through the Preliminaries will be able to join these servers.

Game Changes

This version of Survival of the Fittest: The Last Stand will be the extended 5HR~ version of the game mode.
There will be specific balance changes made to gathering rates, EXP rates, boss appearance times, how long they last and some changes made to the evolutionary events.
Changes to note:
* The following Events will no longer occur during Sudden Death: Harvesting Bounty, Harvesting Famine, Double Taming, Day & Night Switch, Predators Night & Beast Within
* Hail to the King will onlyb occur during Sudden Death
* Acid Rain will no longer reduce your health to below 20%. It will still damage your armour, however you will not be able to be killed directly from Acid Rain
* Taming Speeds have been reduced by 40%, XP earning has been reduced by 33%, and harvesting has been reduced by 20%
* The Boss Monsters tame time have been further increased by approximately 33%
* The Boss Monsters now last 25 minutes after being Tamed, rather than 15 minutes previously
* All three bosses will appear at particular times into the match, these are the times:
----- The Broodmother will arrive 1 Hour into the game mode
----- The Megapithecus will arrive 2 Hours and 15 Minutes into the game mode
----- The Dragon will arrive 3 Hours and 30 Minutes into the game mode
* When a tribe has been eliminated, all of their structures become CLAIMABLE!
* War Paint is now activated by holding down the E key, as opposed to pressing it. We love anyone who uses custom Survivor or Dino paint jobs :)

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Dry Run

We will be hosting a 240-player open-entry 5-hour-long dry-run session on Saturday October 17th starting at 5:00pm EST and will launch the game at 6:30PM EST. Anyone can play, not just qualifying players! We’re using this as an opportunity to test initial performance and game balance prior to starting the Pre-Championships. During this time, all other Official SotF servers will be shut down to help ensure we get 240 players! We encourage anyone especially Prelim qualifying participants to join up in this test session, to practice and get an initial taste of the 5-hour game balance! DarkDolphin has graciously offered to stream this test round as well, so if you’re inclined you can tune it at www.twitch.tv/survivetheark and see how things are going!