We are moving to a unique dual PVE-PVP cluster, consisting of two sets of all official maps (9 PVE & 9 PVP) along with the Astral ARK map acting as the central hub. This will bring us to a total of 19 servers, soon to be 21 with the Genesis II release.
All players joining the cluster will initially only be able to access the Astral ARK map. After spawning, you will need to choose a path, either PVP or PVE. Once selected, you will be restricted to only joining servers of that game mode and cannot change without admin intervention. This whitelisting ensures normal PVE and PVP play remains separate, but still allows for a combined cross chat, shared events and cross cluster trading via the central Astral ARK map.
To facilitate these changes, we have purchased brand new high-performance servers and have added two new areas to the Astral ARK map: a small starter area to provide instructions on how the cluster works, and Traders Bay which will act as a central trading area for the whole cluster.
Unfortunately, this amount of change does mean that we need to wipe our existing cluster to make this possible, including all maps and characters. Those who have been with us for many years will already know how rarely we wipe, so hopefully understand we would not do it without a very good reason.
Why the change?
While this has been a tough decision to make, we ultimately feel that this is the right direction for Astral ARK’s future. We have always wanted to host a PVE cluster alongside our existing PVP one, however doing this would have meant splitting our time and efforts between them as they would have had to remain separate. The custom plugin we will use allows us to maintain the separation between PVE and PVP but does not need us to split our time and effort. For example, we can run events for both PVE and PVP players at the same time.
When is this happening?
The current cluster will be shut down on Wednesday 16th, at which point all maps and players will be erased. We will then have a period of downtime which will be used to install new hardware and prepare the dual cluster ready for launch. We understand this is short notice, but there is never a good time to announce a wipe. In this particular case, it had to happen, so we felt sooner was better especially with the Christmas break coming up and people having more free time to play.
We aim to have the dual cluster going live on Friday 18th at 8PM UK time.
What else is changing?
There will be several other changes to the existing server rules, settings, mods and plugins. The full details of which are still being finalized but will be available before or on launch. The points below are all subject to change and only a portion of what we have planned.
Rules
Dual Cluster
There will be a small number of rules around the new dual cluster system to help maintain balance above what the plugin will already provide.
PVE and PVP players are free to interact, communicate and trade with one another but should not involve themselves in each other’s cluster issues. For example, if a PVE tribe purposefully supplied dinos, weapons and ammo to a PVP tribe to fund a war, that would not be allowed and liable to get you banned. There will be restrictions applied to cross-game mode trading.
We will have a restriction on how often you can apply to change from one game mode to another and this will require admin approval. There will also be restrictions on what you can or cannot bring if you do change.
Tribes cannot be split over PVE and PVP clusters, you must all be on one or the other. After we relaunch, if you are part of a tribe and wish to swap game modes, you would need to leave your existing tribe entirely.
General
We have historically taken a light touch with things that happen and are said outside of our platforms. However, unfortunately a small portion of the community have used this as a loop hole to go beyond the normal PVP animosity and taken to abusing, baiting and antagonising other players, staff and the servers elsewhere.
The result has meant that some toxic and nasty behaviour has continued to affect the community but kept out of the public eye to avoid any rules being broken. In future, we will weigh up all information we receive equally when making decisions about player actions and behaviour so long as it concerns our community. Players interacting with the community and its members should behave the same no matter where they do it.
PVP
We have been working on this for a while alongside the moderator and support team, the aim being to provide a more complete view of what is and is not allowed during PVP and to hopefully clear up some of those grey areas. These will be available on launch.
PVE
We will have a full set of rules published on launch for the PVE side of the cluster.
Mods
Structures + & Super Structures
We will be removing SS from the cluster due to the number of bugs, exploits and unintended gameplay that it brings. In its place, we plan to add S+ as it has several improvements over SS. However, this will be significantly cut down; no S+ equivalents of the vanilla structures will be usable and some of the QOL items will be removed.
This ensures that if we need to remove the mod for any reason, your bases and all your loot will not be wiped (as happened in the past). There will still be a level of QOL brought by the Hatchery, Nanny, Item Collector and the S+ continuous structure placement. It will also help reduce the number of exploits and unintended behaviour inherent with S+ or SS.
Auction House
We plan to use an auction house style mod, which will only be available on the Astral ARK map, to help facilitate trade and interaction between the whole community.
Settings
All the main settings such as rates, quality and quantity will be identical across both PVE and PVP sides of the cluster. This ensures fairness and allows for trading.
Items/Armor/Saddles
The dual cluster will enforce a quality cap in line with officials to ensure balance is maintained on both the PVE and PVP sides of the cluster. This will for example prevent extremely high damage weapons or armoured saddles.
Plugins
Shop
Your existing shop points will be retained from the old cluster as they are held separately. However, the shop itself will remain empty at launch to ensure everyone has a fair start. You will still earn shop points while playing and all the normal subscriber bonus points will be the same.
We will then look to re-open the shop a bit later down the line, at which point your old and newly accumulated points will be available for use.
Tribe Enforcer
This new plugin will work alongside our new rule to ensure tribes have the same name and members across the cluster. More information will be available before we relaunch.
New Server Hardware
The dual cluster will run across the 3 new high-performance servers listed below. The result being a smoother gaming experience for you all and greater flexibility for us to add new maps, such as Genesis II for both PVE and PVP when it is released.
Astral01
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5950X
RAM: 128GB Memory
SSD: PCIE 4.0 M.2 Drives
Astral02
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5950X
RAM: 128GB Memory
SSD: PCIE 4.0 M.2 Drives
Astral03
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5950X
RAM: 128GB Memory
SSD: PCIE 4.0 M.2 Drives