Ark: Survival Evolved update adds dino babies and breeding

Ark baby dinos

D'awww, look at the wickle baby dinosaur, eating...eating my arm OH GOD NO. Ark: Survival Evolved's latest update adds tiny toddler dinosaurs like the above, plus the ability to breed dinos together. You'll be able to selectively breed better, faster, stronger, killier dinosaurs by doing this, which will be good news for us humans, I reckon.

The update notes are here, and also make mention of a colossal new dinosaur that's been added as part of this patch. Mosasaurus, AKA 'The Terror of the Deep', AKA Mos to his mates, is now the largest creature in Ark's ocean. But I reckon you can take him. I mean, you've crafted that wooden spear and everything. Apparently, you'll be able to build "mobile aquatic bases" on Mosasaurus' back, which certainly sounds like something someone should try.

Here's a bit more on breeding, from the link above.

"We are very excited to announce our first pass of creature breeding and baby dinosaurs being pushed to the live game! Survivors will be given the opportunity to pair two members of the same species together, even across Tribes if you’ve got a particularly well endowed creature, and the resulting offspring will have random selection of traits from both parents, along with a degree of arbitrary mutation! Your new tiny friends will grow dynamically in real time and will need to be cared for to reach their ultimate potential.

"You’ll be able to selectively breed for your desired qualities and we hope to see some hardcore survivors progressively raising generations of Dinosaurs that have more refined collections of high-end traits than that which could ever be found in the wild - though be warned survivors, as this rewarding process cannot be accomplished with minimal effort. With the dangers that exist in the ARK, incubating an egg and then raising a small helpless baby Dino in real-time from hatchling to adult is no tiny task!"

Tom Sykes

Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.