Community Crunch 457: Male Bison Reveal, LiveOps Update, Mods Spotlight & more!

After dealing with an endless parade of mutants, monsters, and elemental nightmares, there’s something oddly comforting about a good old-fashioned angry Bison.

While his nursing counterpart might be busy feeding the next generation, this stubborn slab of muscle is more interested in clearing out threats with sheer brute force.

Don’t expect a graceful fight—do expect a lot of headbutts, ground-shaking stomps, and an unrelenting drive to protect his herd no matter the odds. Whether he's staring down a Rex or tossing an Allosaurus off a cliff, the male Bison will be a force to be reckoned with.

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From grassy valleys to icy cliffs, the Bison is ready to leave its mark when Ragnarok launches June 2nd.

We’ll be re-enabling mesh detection on Official Astraeos Servers starting Monday, May 19. When the map first launched, we temporarily disabled this system while we investigated reports of false positives. With recent adjustments now in place, we’re confident it can return to help protect fair play across the cluster. Thanks for your patience while we worked through it.

At launch, we temporarily increased the player cap on Astraeos servers to 100 to accommodate the wave of interest. Now that player activity has stabilized and server saves have grown, we’ll be returning the max player count to 70 per server on Monday, May 19. This change aligns Astraeos with the rest of the ASA network and helps ensure smoother performance during events and day-to-day play.

Hey Survivors, after careful assessment of our data, we've opted to commence the process of sunsetting a selection of our inactive official servers.

Our goal is to ensure that we're always delivering the best experience possible, and official servers exist to give the community a shared space to play without the need for private hosting. When we launch fresh content, typically, we put up more servers than we need in the long term to match the peak in user capacity; over time, these servers become ghost towns as players have dropped off and are waiting for the next major content release.

On the 20th of May, we will be sunsetting these inactive servers:

We still intend to provide larger capacity at launches as much as possible to meet the higher need during those periods.

We’re working with our partners at Nitrado to offer these saves after the scheduled sunset through Nitrado’s interface. Please stay tuned for more details.

Download & play new custom content created by players, including new maps, creatures, items, and game modes, through a dedicated new Mod-browser directly within the game. Enjoy an endless stream of new ARK content as the creativity and talent of the community is fully unleashed for the first time across gaming platforms and stay tuned as we spotlight more Cross-Platform Mods each week!

This video features:

• Bunker Structure Skins by Blitzfire911 (premium)
• Packed Outfits (Male) by TheAndy445 (premium)
• Ancient Wyvern Costume by Ave
• Busher’s Wyvern Slayer Sword by MinyYamori
• Davii Mullet by MinyYamori
• Arketypes: Scotoharpes by Snappin, ZCI5250
• Xyphias’ Creatures: Megisotherium by Xyphias
• Xyphias’ Creatures: Enantiophoenix by Xyphias
• Xyphias’ Creatures: Mischoptera by Xyphias
• Xyphias’ Creatures: Charnia by Xyphias

This weekend, the Official Network will be receiving bonus rates! It will be active until Monday, May 12.

• PVP/PVE: 2x Harvesting, Taming, and Experience
• Small Tribes: 4.5x Harvesting, Taming, and Experience
• ARKpocalypse: 5x Harvesting, Taming and Experience

Fan Art Gallery | Screenshot Gallery | Artist Feedback Form

Creator: Bemo Guinness
Bemo spends a productive day breeding Maeguanas and Gasbags.
YOUTUBE URL

Creator: Etholdir
Follow Etholdir's guide to build a simple yet efficient Astraeos base.
YOUTUBE URL

Therizinosaurus by @cat22nyaa

Blue Boy by nezasumi

Ice Wyvern by @SoupEvolved

Will you be my mommy? by poisonivie88

Pyromane by BonnieFoxxx

I'm looking forward to seeing the griffin chicks soon. by @k3zk_627

Bleep Bleep FenderFTW is a sheep! by @CharliSpirit

Photo Mode by soittoday

Photo Mode by frozen_soap

Photo Mode by legendofdraguero

A beast that shakes the Earth by cosmicman5455

Photo Mode by eryn_galen

Enjoy your weekend!
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Official Wiki: ark.wiki.gg