The action-adventure survival game ARK: Survival Ascended is adding a free new expansion called The Center, and it’s a big one. It’s double the size of a standard ARK island, has a classic fantasy aesthetic, and adds tons of areas to explore and surprises to uncover.
If you haven’t had the chance to dive into the series yet, ARK: Survival Ascended is a remake of the 2015 game ARK: Survival Evolved, rebuilt with Unreal Engine 5 and available in early access now for PC, Xbox Series X/S, and PlayStation 5. You must survive after being stranded in an open-world environment with dinosaurs, other prehistoric creatures, and other people that are all trying to kill you.
To protect yourself, you can gather weapons, craft, and build a base. But the dinosaurs are the series’ calling card. You can tame hundreds of different dinos and use them as mounts, giving you access to special abilities like flight or fast swimming while also fighting beside you in combat. You can breed tamed dinosaurs and raise their offspring from a hatchling, potentially giving you a powered up version of its parents. You can play in single-player or online multiplayer modes, and multiplayer allows you to form tribes with other players and share your tamed dinosaurs with each other.
If you played ARK: Survival Evolved, then you might be familiar with The Center, but it’s been enhanced thanks to Unreal Engine 5. It adds multiple biomes with diverse scenery, including flowing lava rivers, mist-covered islands floating in the sky, massive mountains, underwater ice caves, and more. For those looking for a challenge, it adds endgame boss encounters that give you special rewards when defeated.
It also adds new ways to explore and interact with the world. There’s an underground area that has its own ecosystem and sun, and it’s big enough to build huge cities in. You can dive deep into the ocean and find air bubbles that let you build an underwater base. There are massive ancient ruins and unique cave systems, some of which are underwater. All the areas of The Center are drawn by hand — there’s no auto-generated content, so they’re packed with detail, and the advancements in Unreal Engine 5 allow them to pop even more.
The Center update also adds a dinosaur that is brand-new to series veterans and newcomers alike: the Shastasaurus, which won an ARK community vote. It’s a huge underwater beast that looks scarier than it really is. It’s very curious about humans and will swim up to you without attacking. Like all dinosaurs in ARK, there’s a unique process to tame it. If you bring along some Ichthyosaurs (the Shastasaurus’s cousin), they’ll keep it entertained while you scrape the barnacles off it. It will be thankful for the help, and from then on, you’ll have a new partner to ride into deep waters.
The Shastasaurus makes for an excellent beast of burden, capable of carrying an incredible amount of weight. It has a special saddle that is essentially a submarine, allowing anyone inside to breathe and survive the intense pressure of the deep ocean. The saddle also comes equipped with a submarine scope to see enemies above water, as well as torpedoes, whose heavy explosive damage makes them essential for underwater combat.
The Shastasaurus isn’t the only new creature to get in on the fun. The Center update also adds the Pyromane, the first member of Fantastic Tames, a new premium class of creatures with incredible unique abilities. So what’s the Pyromane’s unique ability? It can transform from a tiny shoulder-mounted kitten to a full-sized rideable lion.
When in its kitten form, it can be used as a flamethrower. You can then toss it to transform it into its lion form, which you can ride safely across lava fields and set enemies on fire. It can also dash through targets, leaving burning fire trails in its wake while drinking in the flames of fiery foes to fuel its final form. It also has other uses outside of combat — it can cook raw meat, keep jerky fresh, and fuel forges. It’s an incredibly versatile addition to your team of tames.
The Center recently launched across all platforms. ARK offers cross-platform play, so you can form tribes with players across PC, Xbox, and PS5. The new map will use its own save data, and you can reset your data for individual maps while keeping your progress in others. If you’re intrigued by the dinosaur-taming world of ARK: Survival Ascended and want to know more, you can check out our top 10 reasons to play it.
