Ark veteran here. Installed it (1660ti/i5-11400F), lowered settings to lowest at 1080p, got 50fps with some noticeable stutters. Game looks far worse on lowest settings than ASE and I could run ASE on med-high settings and get 100+ fps when not in a huge base.
Can't say this is a complete fail if you have a powerful PC and haven't already paid for ASE and all the expansions but as a vet who has, this is NOT worth it. Not even close. This should have been a 15euro expansion for ASE so that the community wouldn't be so divided. My god, wildcard you screwed the pooch hard on this one.

Edit:
I ended up upgrading to a RTX 4060ti and bought the game again.
Put in few hundred hours and am at the endgame right now, having done explorer note grind, bosses and about to do ascensions.
The game looks Amazing with some disclaimers.
if you want to always be above 60fps (120-150 when not near any base) A 4060ti (not exactly a cheap card) will only run this comfortably at 1080p and even then, with most settings at low/off.
Lighting effects are incredibly taxing and some settings require commands (found online, not ingame) to tweak which is incredibly annoying..
Besides poor performance, making this game inaccessible to so many PC players, is the problem of crashing.
There are far too many random crashes that happen and some game breaking bugs which waste stupid amount of time for you. As an example, I started the Alpha Dragon fight and he was invisible making coordination hard and couldnt shoot him in the air to try forcing a landing. So... lost high lvl tames and VERY expensive saddles. 3-4 days worth of farming resources gone down the drain. Even the tributes to start the fight would take a few hours to get and that's a total waste.

I obviously love this game from it's ASE time but I can already see that if they don't fix performance and crashes, this game will spike in population for the new maps and then fall lower than even now (barely reaching 10k on steam).

Wildcard, for your loyal fans, please fix the graphical errors, performance and crashes and stop wasting time on less breaking things like exploits and DLCs which will only make people resent you more. You have such a loyal playerbase, mostly adults with money that spend that money if the product actually improves.

Still leaving this as not recommended, especially as a new player. It'll be very hard to pick this game up and actually enjoy it.

Ark veteran here. Installed it (1660ti/i5-11400F), lowered settings to lowest at 1080p, got 50fps with some noticeable stutters. Game looks far worse on lowest settings than ASE and I could run ASE on med-high settings and get 100+ fps when not in a huge base. Can't say this is a complete fail if you have a powerful PC and haven't already paid for ASE and all the expansions but as a vet who has, this is NOT worth it. Not even close. This should have been a 15euro expansion for ASE so that the community wouldn't be so divided. My god, wildcard you screwed the pooch hard on this one. Edit: I ended up upgrading to a RTX 4060ti and bought the game again. Put in few hundred hours and am at the endgame right now, having done explorer note grind, bosses and about to do ascensions. The game looks Amazing with some disclaimers. if you want to always be above 60fps (120-150 when not near any base) A 4060ti (not exactly a cheap card) will only run this comfortably at 1080p and even then, with most settings at low/off. Lighting effects are incredibly taxing and some settings require commands (found online, not ingame) to tweak which is incredibly annoying.. Besides poor performance, making this game inaccessible to so many PC players, is the problem of crashing. There are far too many random crashes that happen and some game breaking bugs which waste stupid amount of time for you. As an example, I started the Alpha Dragon fight and he was invisible making coordination hard and couldnt shoot him in the air to try forcing a landing. So... lost high lvl tames and VERY expensive saddles. 3-4 days worth of farming resources gone down the drain. Even the tributes to start the fight would take a few hours to get and that's a total waste. I obviously love this game from it's ASE time but I can already see that if they don't fix performance and crashes, this game will spike in population for the new maps and then fall lower than even now (barely reaching 10k on steam). Wildcard, for your loyal fans, please fix the graphical errors, performance and crashes and stop wasting time on less breaking things like exploits and DLCs which will only make people resent you more. You have such a loyal playerbase, mostly adults with money that spend that money if the product actually improves. Still leaving this as not recommended, especially as a new player. It'll be very hard to pick this game up and actually enjoy it.