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Update 261 Brings the Best and the Downright Worst Changes to Ark

Update 261 has dropped on PC as well as the corresponding Xbox update (PS4 will have to wait unfortunately) and it brings a decent amount of changes, but has been lenient on the quantity of notes this time, but the impact has increased.

For one, underwater and cave beacons drop 2 items, however from my testing, deep sea loot crates (at least on the island) drop 4 items. This may be a bug or intended, but grinding for that good loot just got a whole lot easier.

Following up on the good changes, Onycs now have a 10% chance to inflict mega rabies. This might not be good for average cave dwelling, but it now gives a purpose to taming them. Now the developers just need to make them breedable.
Other changes include the ability to mount torches to saddles, a fix to the console "origami dinos," and a rare mushroom and flower rework.

Now to the "questionable" changes:

The small one is wyverns now eat "intended" amounts of food. Which I've heard rumors of players saying they eat more now, about 25% more to be exact.
The big one is the hard caves of the island (Ice and Swamp) got a spawn change to the creatures. The ice cave was arguably made easier, one could practically parachute their way through the cave, or just use grapple hooks with the removal of bats.

However, the swamp cave has been made virtually impossible. The reason behind this is the removal of scorpions (which would've been a great change alone) and the addition of arthropleuras, leeches, and titanoboas. The arthropleuras is the main issue of this change. The swamp cave requires one to have expensive gear to withstand the poisonous fumes, the arthropleuras ability to spit acid at the player can absolutely destroy one's armor though, so the player would last a minute in the cave if spat on. Even if this wasn't an issue, they also have acid blood that reflects damage back to the player or creature the player is riding. With level of these monstrous centipedes going up to 300, its almost impossible to kill one without killing oneself. This change has made me personally wonder if the developers even tested this themselves with realistic and official settings because the cave is now, in all respects, impossible to go through. Even if one did manage a way through the cave, the time and resources could've been redirected for better things. This change is bound to be reverted, if not the Island is crippled yet again when it comes to resource gathering. The swamp cave was the only saving grace of the Island to gather cementing paste when the Center has superior gather rates in general. One could only hope the developers don't do anything asinine and keep this change.

A full list of patch notes can be found here

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