ARK: Scorched Earth Ascended
Studio Wildcard
Enter the deserts of ARK’s Scorched Earth DLC. Form a tribe, tame & breed hundreds of unique dinosaurs and primeval creatures, explore, craft, build, and fight your way to the top of the food-chain. Ride fantastical creatures that have evolved to survive the Desert’s harsh conditions, including… DRAGONS!
Ark: Survival Ascended is the remake of Survival Evolved, specially created for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series S/X. It’s a complete remake of the original game released in 2015 but wasn’t compatible with the current generation consoles. Naturally, the developers decided to remake it. Its important to note that Ark: Survival Ascended is a remake and not the Ark 2 sequel that was announced in 2020.
Now that you’re all caught up – lets dive into the Scorched Earth DLC. Following the Ark remake pattern, this expansion version is called “Scorched Earth Ascended” instead and unlike the original, Scorched Earth Ascended is a free DLC for those who own Ark: Survival Ascended. This DLC brings a whole range of new features to the game for all players to enjoy without being locked behind a paywall.
Whoever played the original will know what to expect from this expansion. It brings a brand new layer of difficulty to the game. The main island of Ark is abundant in essential resources like water and food, but the harsh desert of Scorched Earth removes such luxuries, brings an unforgiving desert landscape to explore, with plenty of new dangers in terms of environment and dinos, over 50 new items to craft, and a high-level boss fight against a manticore!
Pros
Massive multiplayer PVE or PVP
6 new unique biomes and ecosystems
New creatures to tame and battle
Over 50 new items to craft
New environmental challenges
Survival Game at its best
Cons
Not for new players
Increased survival difficulty
Unforgiving storm system
Less map variety than other ARK maps
Alongside the release of Scorched Earth DLC, we’ve got a paired DLC too called Bob’s Tall Tales: Frontier Showdown. Bobs Tall Tales is a small add-on pack that introduces some unique quests styled around this hardcore survivalist called Bob. You’ll find useful craftable items to help you transport resources in the style of a Wild West-style train. You’ll also discover pieces, a wagon, a shovel to dig up buried treasure, and a massive oasisaur zurzura that can carry a small community on its back.
If you’re a member of ARK’s community, then you’ll know that Scorched Earth was the least favourite of all of ARK Survival Evolved’s DLC however if you’re a veteran of ARK or survival games in general then you’ll appreciate this new challenge and the graphical power of Unreal Engine 5.
Either way this is a beautiful addition to ARK: Survival Ascended only the first of several such planned DLCs, with more coming for the Island, Aberration, and Extinction DLCs later!
