Apparently, dozens of other contestants trying to murder you at every opportunity, hordes of man-eating lizards, and swarms of stinging giant bees just weren’t enough hazards in Ark: Survival Of The Fittest.
Nope, there’s always something else ready to kill you off before you’ve had a chance to craft a decent weapon or tame a beast to protect your domain.
Besides drowning in rivers or falling off cliffs, the game will also throw a variety of unique environmental problems your way, including randomly placed Evolution Events that can quickly turn the tide of a match either for or against you.
These game-changing Evolution Events are primarily broken down into three types: helpful, harmful, and essentially neutral (or offers a boon to both you and your enemies). In some cases, the lines get blurry, as there’s actually ways to use the neutral or harmful events directly to your benefit if you act quickly and use your head.
Below we outline all the Evolution Events and how they can be used. If you are just getting started with Ark, instead head over and check out our basic strategies guide here.
Good or bad, your destiny will change during an Evolution Event
Hooray Awesome Events!
- Double Taming – Despite the name, this actually halves the time it takes to make creatures into your pets. If you’ve had your eye on a specific dino or mastodon that takes forever to tame, now’s the time.
- Food of the Gods – The central platform where the level starts will now hold a crate featuring super food that tames beasts immediately or heals you to full health.
- Hail to the King – A boon so long as you pick them up first, this event causes a bunch of explosives to fall from the heavens and land within reach of the surviving players.
- Harvest Bounty – Need some crafting materials? Now’s the time to grab ’em, as the resource collection rate just doubled.
- Super Loot Crate – A gigantic spinning crate full of phat loot appears in the central starting platform. Grabbing weapons or items here is useful, but don’t negate using this boon as a beacon. You know where everyone is heading, so why aren’t you lying in wait on the edge of the platform to kill people as they rush towards the loot?
- Supply Overload – Crates appear across the entire Ark island with random resources and items.
A magical super loot crate appears!
Sorta Neutral Events!
- Daytime Swap – Was it day time before? Now it’s night time. And vice versa if the situation applies.
- Herbivore Drop – A random non-carnivore dinosaur drops out of the sky and lands on every single surviving player. While its a good opportunity to tame a creature (or just kill it for the experience), you can also use this as a tracking method if you pay attention to the falling dinosaurs, which effectively reveals the position of other players.
- Mega Fog – Obscuring mist covers large portions of the game area. You can’t see your enemies, but conversely they can’t see you — and neither can the roaming dinosaurs.
- Survivor Reveal – Bright shafts of yellow light mark every single surviving player’s current location – but it doesn’t follow you, so get away from the area as quickly as you can.
- Survivor Tracker – This is just like Survivor Reveal, except that the light actively follows you. Everyone knows where you are, but you also know where everyone else is as well.
Yeah, you want to get out of there quick
Boo Bad Events!
- Acid Rain – Damaging rain falls from the sky across the island, destroying your equipment and lowering your health (although it won’t actually drop you to 0 health). To avoid the rain, get underneath rocks or build a shelter to hide in.
- ARKtic Monkeys – A truly bizarre event, this one sees two mesopithecus apes falling from the sky on every surviving player… and they throw poop at you. If you live you can always pick it up and use it as a crafting component.
- Beast Within – Every animal, even those who normally don’t attack you, go into a wild frenzy and charge at any player within sight.
- Carnivore Drop – This is like Herbivore Drop, except man-eating carnivores fall instead. Usually you will die, but hey, if you can kill them all first that’s some stellar experience!
- Harvest Famine – Hope you didn’t need to craft anything, because resources are collected at half speed.
- Mega Cold – A killing cold falls across the island, slowly draining your health and increasing the rate at which you have to eat food. To avoid the effects, put on heavy armor, stand near bonfires and torches, or hide inside a building.
- Mega Heat – The opposite of Mega Cold, this one drops your health while forcing you to drink more water. To avoid the effects, take off heavy armor, hang out in the river, or run towards cold areas in higher elevations.
- Predator’s Night – If it’s currently day, the time switches to night and all normally hostile creatures become more aggressive.
- The Swarm – Flying creatures appear to attack you, but if you happen to live you can loot some useful resources off their bodies.
Get to safety ASAP!
That’s all the Evolution Events you need to be worried about (unless more get added in as the game leaves early access and sees full release). Let us know your strategies for using these events to your advantage!
