Community Crunch 518 covers three things ARK: Survival Ascended players actually care about: the first concept art for the Giganotosaurus TLC, a firm date for transfers onto Genesis Ascended Part 1 Official servers, and the ruleset for Conquest Season 8. A bonus rate weekend on the Official Network rounds it out. If you run third-party software, the TLC is the item to keep an eye on — creature reworks touch models and internal data, and that is exactly what external tooling reads.
The Giga is being rebuilt around fear
Wildcard’s framing is nostalgic: the Giganotosaurus used to be the undisputed king of the ARKs, and its roar alone sent experienced Survivors running. New apex predators eventually diluted that status, and the TLC is meant to restore the creature’s presence and identity.
The mechanical hints are deliberately vague, but they point in one direction:
- the closer the Giga is pushed to death, the more dangerous it gets;
- that fury is described as contagious to nearby creatures;
- smaller creatures crowding its feet will get a crushing answer;
- once its temper snaps, allies are as exposed as enemies.
No release window, no numbers, no stat sheet — just concept art and a promise that the king is on its way back.
Genesis Ascended Part 1 opens up
Transfers on Genesis Ascended Part 1 Official servers go live on September 4, with no restrictions on items, creatures or characters. The date was chosen to overlap with the Genesis Part 1 Expires servers, which shut down on September 18, leaving roughly two weeks to move everything across.
Conquest Season 8
Conquest, brought to ASA by Snail Games, is built for large-scale PvP with boosted rates so tribes can establish quickly and rebuild after losses instead of being wiped out entirely. Official Conquest servers run on PC, Xbox and PlayStation.
Season 8 specifics:
- 18 maps, all of them Genesis Part 1;
- Cluster A: 12 servers that had transfers enabled with Classic before it shut down;
- Cluster B: 6 servers with transfers limited to those six for two weeks;
- cross-cluster transfers open July 17 at 10 AM PT;
- 5x rates;
- Tek enabled except the Tek Grenade, the Tapejara, Megalodon, Rock Drake and Mosasaur Tek Saddles, and the Tek Railgun.
Separately, the Official Network runs bonus rates until Monday, August 10: 2x harvesting, taming, experience and breeding on PvP and PvE; 4.5x harvesting, taming and experience plus 4x breeding on Small Tribes; 5x across the board on ARKpocalypse.
What this means for players using software
A TLC is never cosmetic. Expect a new mesh, a new skeleton, reworked animations and adjusted creature data. In practice that means ESP creature filters may stop labelling the reworked Giga correctly, and bone-based aim assistance breaks first, because bone indices are the most fragile thing any external build relies on. Nothing to do today — the patch isn’t out — but treat the TLC build day as a day where half your creature-side features are unreliable until the developer ships a fix.
The usual ASA rule applies regardless: every client update recompiles the executable, so offsets shift and outdated builds either crash or render garbage. Give it a day, wait for confirmation from whoever maintains your build, and check the software update statuses before you load in.
The September window is the part worth planning around socially. Mass transfers and expiring servers mean contested territory, more eyes on your base and far more reports than a quiet week generates. Bonus rate weekends behave the same way: peak population equals peak reporting, and Official Network ban waves usually land after the traffic spike, not during it. On a main account, an HWID spoofer is basic hygiene here rather than overkill.
For Conquest, 5x rates devalue grinding and inflate the value of information. Knowing where a raid party is staging, tracking enemy movement and reading base layouts beats faster taming every time, so prioritise vision and positioning features over farm helpers — the ARK: Survival Ascended page lists what fits that role.
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