Ark: Ultimate Mobile Edition - Features, Ark Pass & Everything Included

Ark: Ultimate Mobile Edition is the newest addition to the world of Ark games, bringing something closer to the Ark PC and console experience than ever before to mobile platforms. Ark first made its way to iOS and Android in 2018 with the launch of Ark: Survival Evolved Mobile, an impressive port in some regards that still came with significant compromises. Most significantly, Survival Evolved Mobile never received any of the game's expansions, leaving it with one map and far fewer creatures than other versions of the game.

With Ark: Ultimate Mobile Edition, the limitations of the older mobile version should hopefully be left in the past. Announced on December 18, the new version includes expansion packs and additional features that can be purchased standalone or accessed through a subscription. Not all planned content is available at launch, but the current schedule sets the end of 2025 as the deadline for the availability of all expansions.

What Is Ark: Ultimate Mobile Edition?

An Ambitious Survival Experience On Mobile

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Like its mobile predecessor, Ark: Ultimate Mobile Edition is available as a free-to-play mobile game in its basic form, which provides access to the standard island map that the original game launched with. The gameplay experience focuses on survival in a hostile environment full of dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures. Although players start out without resources or advantages, it's ultimately possible to thrive, embrace technology, and tame powerful creatures to bend the world of the island to their will.

Related 10 Best Dinosaurs To Tame Early In Ark: Survival Ascended Taming dinosaurs is the most important component of Ark: Survival Ascended, and a handful of creatures are best suited for the early hours of a save.

With paid investments, Ark: Ultimate Mobile Edition also includes access to the expansion packs Scorched Earth, Aberration, Extinction, Genesis Parts 1 & 2, and the community-created Ragnarok, which add new maps and creatures based around different survival themes and challenges. These expansions originally released over the course of five years from 2016 to 2021 for Ark: Survival Evolved. The redux game Ark: Survival Ascended is in the process of re-releasing them, with Genesis still on its way.

Everything To Know About Ark Pass Subscription

Expansions & In-Game Benefits

One method of accessing Ark: Ultimate Mobile Edition's expansions is through the Ark Pass Subscription, which costs $4.99 a month or $49.99 a year. The subscription guarantees access to all expansions available both now and in the future along with a number of monthly bonuses that mostly give players a way to get an edge in the game. The noted features given as examples are as follows:

God Console - single-player console commands

Bonus XP in all game modes

Monthly drops of free 'keys' - Ark's in-game currency

Exclusive access to servers

The value of Ark Pass might depend heavily on the planned length of use and how attractive the bonus features (which are also available for individual purchase) are. Buying standalone expansions might make more sense for long-term players uninterested in other perks, but those picking up Ark: Ultimate Mobile Edition off and on might come out ahead when subscribing for a month here and there, especially if expansions follow anything close to the $19.99 to $34.99 price range established in the original PC and console releases.

What To Expect From Ark: Ultimate Mobile Edition

Version Differences & Available Expansions At Launch

Developed by Grove Street Games, the studio behind the Switch version of Ark: Survival Evolved, Ark: Ultimate Mobile Edition should be taking advantage of optimizations originally made to bring the game to Nintendo's hybrid platform. The game's launch trailer shows some graphical downgrades compared to Survival Evolved and especially Survival Ascended, but it should still serve as an improvement over the older mobile version.

Related 10 Biggest Differences Between Ark: Survival Ascended & Survival Evolved Ark: Survival Ascended is a graphical revamp of Survival Evolved using UE5, but questions of what else has changed are worth exploring.

Scorched Earth and Aberration are the two expansion packs available at launch. The former focuses on desert areas and introduces fantastical creatures like dragons, while the latter heads to a bizarre underground world to escape intense on the surface. Extinction should be the next to come, adding a map based around the mysterious ruins of an advanced civilization.

Ark: Ultimate Mobile Edition could be a good destination for those looking for a robust survival experience on mobile. It also serves as another surprise release to keep the Ark brand going as the long-promised Ark 2 continues to delay its appearance, presumably on course to miss its most recently established 2024 launch window. Ark: Ultimate Mobile Edition might not be the release that some Ark fans were waiting for, but it could still be a fun new way to venture into the world of Ark.