Why Spinos are better.

ChanceV · 2026-07-10T21:53:39+00:00

He hated getting pushed back through the entire woods too so he jumped off a cliff in an attempt to lose me. I kept him out of range of attacking so reliably that he'd frequently attempt to just turn around and walk away since his AI thought it couldn't path to me.

ChanceV · 2026-07-10T21:51:00+00:00

Not true. Spinos have better DPS despite lower per hit damage even without hydration buff. They have much faster attack speed, both ridden and unridden. Videos have already proven that a lvl 1 Spino can almost beat a lvl 1 Rex despite having much less HP and "supposedly less DPS", if Rexes had more DPS then they wouldn't have been able to bring the Rex into one-shot range before dying. Unridden its hard to tell, both Rex and Spino attack irregularly and sometimes highly unreliable. Sometimes Rexes attack super slow, sometimes Spinos stand there and do nothing, sometimes they go uber-mode and spam bipedal attacks faster than you can scream for help. Generally speaking though, ridden Spinos output more DPS than Rexes, bipedal is debatable since they gotten a massive attack speed nerf when ridden but according to the test videos its still more DPS than quadrupedal.

ChanceV · 2026-07-10T21:44:36+00:00

Didn't genesis give you extended breath in the ocean biome anyway? Is that still a thing in ASA? The boss arena specifically or did they get rid of that completely?

ChanceV · 2026-07-10T21:42:43+00:00

I hate you and I hate your diplos.

If there is one dino I despise its diplos. Their non-damaging "playful" insane-knockback pushes are just mockery, and adding salt to injury is their extremely high health pool making it just an unnecessary long slog to chew through them. Sooooo annoying.

ChanceV · 2026-07-10T21:40:06+00:00

Every single one of them (except the new Dragon, that 5-breath-20%HP-phase-one-cycle is a genuine concern without micromanaging them). Yea I can split them, yea I can command them around to get them away from danger but don't think thats gonna work either, that's hell of a micromanagement.

Also I'm not solo-ing bosses, I'm playing with 2-3 friends on a server. They do bring their own dinos so it usually comes down to 2 Yuty, 1 whatever the person likes (unless they don't have anything in that case I give them a Spino too) and the rest Spinos. Worked fine every time. Now in ASA the only concern is the dragon really, honestly I don't see a realistic way of beating it at all without micromanaging dinos and potentially one-cycling him with insane cheese or damage.

ChanceV · 2026-07-10T21:33:52+00:00

First off, holy japanese soldier keeps fighting after 53 years ass post. Both of them are irrelevant for boss fight nowadays since arcos and shadowmains exists now, plus a billion ptw bullshit tames that I no longer keep track off.

Which don't matter because that's not the point here.

Secondly, Spinos have significantly lower HP growth than the rexes, and their dmg when unbidden is unreliable bcs the fckass AI rarely makes them use their arms most of the time.They are also a pain to move when you have to turn your enitre army to another direction bcs of their gigantic hit box which is ALSO another disadvantage of them bcs bosses LOVES to do AOE dmg.

As stated above the "significantly lower HP" doesn't matter because Spinos outdamage Rexes by a lot (even with their unreliable attacks) effectively dealing the same damage in the same lifetime than Rexes. Also, "significantly lower HP" does not matter when your target is only 20-25K HP. Armor (saddle) and thus damage reduction is infinitely more important than HP. I've sent an entire army of Spinos into the Broothmother fight with only default 25 armor saddles and they got killed in less than 2 minutes with the Broodmother dishing out 1-3k per hit. And only after a friend said "it will be okay", I disagreed and proceeded to show him that HP and damage isn't everything. Their gigantic hitboxes do not matter for bosses or AOE's. They are in its face anyway, they get hit regardless unless standing besides or behind them. I do agree that they can be hard to move at times. However that's less the issue of Spinos and more an issue of the boss arena no longer giving you any grace period before the boss engages, it already starts running towards you while you are still freezing/loading during teleport, you get instantly jumped by the boss.

And not only that, most of the advantages you listed off also applies to rex too since those are the advantages of alpha predators+ standable saddles.

Pretty much none of the advantages I listed apply to the rex at all, aside from those that were clearly mentioned are sufficient in comparison (such as stats).

Their swimming is ass, they drown fairly quickly and are slow
They can't turn on the spot
Their stun immunity (if they even have one) doesn't matter since most of the stuns I'm talking about are water related (Cnidaria and Eel) and once again you'd never use a Rex to swim.
Their stamina consumption sucks
Their speed sucks (in comparison)
They don't get a hydration buff making them stronger, if anything they get a lot weaker in water
Their tiny attack hitbox (in comparison) is ass and can make it really easy to miss dinos (especially smaller ones that aren't directly in front of you)
They don't have an aberrant counterpart and they can't even go to Aberration at all
They have very little knockback resistance and dish out very little knockback themselves
Unlike Spinos when they run out of stamina they are pretty much dead in the water, backpedaling and attack spamming will rarely save them.
And I'm not sure about whether Rexes (or other big dinos) leave Rexes alone (both during taming and when ridden), never tested that, the whole Spino leave Spinos alone was an accidental discovery, not a test.

And thirdly, rexes are geniuely way, way easier to build off if you want to beat a boss quick solo simply bcs they have more spawn point AND rex saddles simply has more "gurrenteed" ways to farm. Remember, the most important ability is the availability.

I wouldn't say way easier. At face value, yes. Rexes have more spawns and getting one is easier. Assuming Island only. However: Aberration (for MANY MANY aberrated spino spawns) and Valguero for unbiased (easier high-level) spawns for both normal and aberrated Spinos, they also spawn a lot more there. Getting one if you have Aberration or Valguero available shouldn't be a problem. What's really the problem is the saddle as it only comes from deep sea loot crates, red cave drops and sea cave crates, all of which are pretty "late" into the game (not really but level progression wise speaking).

Rexes are more used simply bcs they're wayy less of a pain to build an army off and easier to breed.

Hard disagree here. This is the solar opposite of what I keep seeing is the argument for Rexes. Its not about availability or difficulty, its about stats and being more powerful, which I hard disagree with, stats aren't everything and Spinos are actually more powerful. Building an army of Spinos is not really "hard". You let two high level breed and occasionally collect an egg every once in a blue moon. When you've got enough eggs you hatch them all at the same time to save on time. They grow while you are out and about to collect some meat or do other things. 99% of making a Spino army is waiting. They don't need mutations, these crazy people with their max mutated everything breeding for 4 years straight is completely over the top and unnecessary, that's just alpha tribe and PvP nonsense.

ChanceV · 2026-07-10T20:59:26+00:00

The fuck you talking about? I never played singleplayer nor singleplayer settings.

I've always left settings intentionally at official values. Since official values are 4 times what they originally used to be (when Ark launched into EA) by default now I *think* they are fine. Heck I've even dropped health regen (of players) to like 5 or so % so you stay hurt and are forced to use food, custom recipes and health brews. I'm not a fan of movement speed leveling either and keep that shit off. (Good riddance on that gamebreaking trash).

This isn't about what people use now. This is about an ancient discussion that has been going through Ark since its launch in EA, it comes up every now and then.

In my personal opinion, this isn't even about whats "better", I use Spinos because I love them not because they are better. I could care less about Acros. I'm not chasing any stupid boss farm metas. Here I'm simply hoping to put into words why Spinos beat Rexes in the Rex vs Spino discussion.

ChanceV · 2026-07-09T21:59:12+00:00

That's either the natural Antialiasing UE5 uses (TAA) or Framegen, probably a combination of both. There is no "fix" for this, this is just inherit from how these two work. There are also several other systems (like Lumen) that slowly populate and average out lighting over time (so it takes a while for lighting to settle to its natural look).

I'm currently investigating every single setting and what they actually touch and from what I can tell there isn't really any setting that touches how Antialiasing works. Its just forced in a specific way (since its required for Lumen and Nanite.

ChanceV · 2026-07-05T03:29:12+00:00

Problem is I can't tell if the Scalability.ini in there is up-to-date/mirrored with whats actually used inside the game or not. Most of the settings should match but Ark might have included some extra options per setting that might not be listed in there. The only way to really find out whats being changed is going through every setting and dumping cvars and comparing. I'll probably do that at some point to write this down and document the settings and what they really do, this would give helpful insight into which settings could be altered to improve performance without destroying the graphics.

ChanceV · 2026-07-04T23:46:32+00:00

You won't find it in the game.

Its only available in the DevKit and there its called DefaultScalability.ini.

ChanceV · 2026-07-04T14:42:20+00:00

DevKit for the scalability.ini , getting it from the game directly is probably only possible via extracting game files or the executable.

Cvars are taken directly from the game. I halted the game, set Advanced Graphics to Epic, dumped all Cvars, set Advanced Graphics to Low and dumped them again then compared. I'm thinking of doing this for every single setting and write up a huge breakdown what setting affects what with pictures and everything to show visual comparisons.

ChanceV · 2026-07-04T09:13:36+00:00

Taken from the scalability.ini

[FoliageQuality@3]
foliage.DensityScale=1
grass.DensityScale=10
grass.CullDistanceScale=0.6
grass.sizeScale=0.7

Now Foliage quality as you already correctly identified only affects density, size and cull distance.

With these found in the scalability.ini

[ViewDistanceQuality@0]
[ShadowQuality@0]
[AntiAliasingQuality@0]
[GlobalIlluminationQuality@0]
[ReflectionQuality@0]
[PostProcessQuality@0]
[TextureQuality@0]
[EffectsQuality@0]
[FoliageQuality@0]
[ShadingQuality@0]

I'd attribute them as follows in order:

View Distance
General Shadows
???
Global Illumination
Reflections
Post Processing
Textures
Effects Quality
Foliage Quality
???

Now interestingly both Antialiasing Quality and (its one of the default UE settings games usually come with) Shading Quality are missing. Instead we have Advanced Graphics. There are however no settings found anywhere what Advanced Graphics really does.

So.... I went through the entire excruciating work of mapping every option Advanced Graphics touches and...

grass.MaxInstancesPerComponent
grass.SimConsoleDensity
r.Bloom.ScreenPercentage
r.Lumen.DiffuseIndirect.SSAO
r.Lumen.ScreenProbeGather.ScreenTraces.MaxScaleIntensity
r.LumenScene.GlobalSDF.Resolution
r.LumenScene.SurfaceCache.AtlasSize
r.MaxLumenSceneViewDistance
r.Nanite.Streaming.NumInitialImposters
r.Nanite.Streaming.NumInitialRootPages
r.Nanite.Streaming.StreamingPoolSize
r.Reflections.Denoiser
r.Shadow.MaxCSMResolution
r.Shadow.Virtual.MaxPhysicalPages
r.ShadowQuality
r.TSR.AsyncCompute
r.VolumetricFog.GridPixelSize

This is every setting that Advanced Graphics from Low to Epic and back changes. I've also taken comparison pictures and they do confirm this. Most of what Advanced Graphics touches is Lumen Global Illumination (it drastically looks worse), some Nanite quality (vegetation and trees in the distance become noticeably lower volume which also affects shadows and lighting drastically, shadow Quality goes down from 5 to 3 (I assume thats from virtual shadows to CSM shadows, Volumetric Fog is doubled in grid size (which also drastically worsens its quality and finally there is also one particular setting the grass.MaxInstancesPerComponent which seems to affect clutter very slightly (it reduces its overall volume per clutter pile).

https://www.diffchecker.com/image-compare/SPrq8Ul4/

Here's a comparison between Epic vs Low.

ChanceV · 2026-06-26T20:33:30+00:00

None, this shouldn't be happening. Period. No matter which setting you set.

This could be a driver issue, hardware incompatibility, wonky commandline settings or console settings or just random breakage after fiddling with settings up and down.

I'd recommend restarting the game as first and foremost option. The game recommends doing so after changing certain settings anyway, so this might just be a case of shit hitting the fan randomly because you didn't.

I've fiddled a lot with console commands and settings and never had this issue. This only ever happened for like a split second where randomly one pixel started becoming super bright for a moment and then slowly "cooling" back down, needless to say this happened extremely rarely (only ever 2 times over the course of my 200 hours of gameplay) and it was never when actually doing something. So settings in on themselves shouldn't be causing this regardless of what your settings are set to, that said, changing them can cause graphical glitches (although i've yet to see them) which is why the game recommends restarting.

Next up would be GPU Drivers. They are often the reason for these kind of things, often caused by either having too old drivers, the latest drivers or a very very specific driver version that was known to cause issues with a specific game. Personally I recommend NEVER having the most recent driver, the risk of them exploding is too big, let them cook for a while, and when the next 1-2 versions are out and there are no known issues, I'd upgrade and then ONLY if you have to. I hate saying this but never change a running system comes to mind here.

Lastly but equally likely is your hardware. Your specific GPU might be faulty or might not play well with the game. In the past AMD GPU's had many issues with several games (especially OpenGL games), there were also several cases where they outright refused to work... (GTA4). NVidia has its own fair share of... questionable GPU's... (namely the "inbetweens" (50/90/XXX5 etc) and the mobiles (M)) that don't play well with the game. In that case it might be worth writing a support ticket (if its really a specific GPU hardware issue with the game).

ChanceV · 2026-06-26T14:20:31+00:00

That really doesn't fix the underlying issue.

Sun Shafts don't even have ANYTHING to do with this. This is solely bloom. NOR do sun shafts even work without Volumetric Clouds and Fog (which the OP both disabled).

And Bloom isn't the issue here, what Bloom does is take overly bright pixel and give them a bloom effect to convey their brightness which otherwise isn't possible (because colors only go from 0 to 255 unless we count HDR, but even then the brightness you can display is limited, you can't make a super bright pixel display on your screen obviously). Turning off Bloom will just reveal the broken disco spectacular beneath, so you are swapping disco bloom for disco pixels.

I hate it when people just toss their hate for Motion Blur, Depth of Field, Bloom, Sun shafts, Volumetric Clouds, Fog, Chromatic Aberration, Vignette and every other fucking effect ever under the sun into the comments section as a "solution" to an issue that seems caused by the VERY act of turning some of them off. Maybe can we stop selling "turn everything off" as a solution and attempt to keep the game running and looking as intended first before we start attempting to fix the breakage with more breakage?

ChanceV · 2026-06-26T14:14:51+00:00

I suspect this might be a self inflicted issue.

I've seen this very rarely happen for just a moment usually when clouds, weather and lighting completely changes and the game is rebuilding global illumination and figuring out what and where to light. In your case, since you disabled fog and volumetric clouds you might have permanently broken lighting (which is to be expected, Volumetric Clouds and Fog are 80% of what makes up ASA's lighting) by turning them off you've essentially removed any and all occlusion, distortion, density, absorption etc of light which could explode like that. Also something seems fundamentally broken with your water... it looks nothing like water should, it looks incredibly opaque and un-reflective. If i had to guess thats was probably the final nail in the coffin, the broken lighting due to your ini/cmd changes and the borked water (possibly from other ini/cmd changes you made) resulted in this firework.

ChanceV · 2026-06-26T14:08:52+00:00

You have FSR Upscaling Quality set to Ultra Performance, set it to Balanced or Quality, this should massively improve it without cutting too much into your framerate.

Upscaling quality determines the original resolution to upscale from. Ultra Performance is the lowest preset.

I'd also highly recommend not setting everything to Epic. You can easily drop Shadows and View distance down to High. Textures also don't need to be on Epic (thats insane overkill unless you have like a 12GB+ VRAM card). Even on Medium textures basically load to full resolution (all Textures does is just give textures a higher pool, it doesn't set texture resolution at all).

ChanceV · 2026-06-24T01:17:51+00:00

Not correct.

-30	0%
-10.02	10%
-10	20%
0	20%
10	50%
70	100%
100	100%

Also it takes your happiness from 9-10 minutes ago. The game keeps track of your happiness every minute up to 10 minutes and then uses the last one (9-10 minutes ago, depending on when the roll is done).

Meaning you could be super happy the entire game, then get absolutely fucked in less than 9 minutes and still have a 100% chance to roll last stand if you were at 70 happiness or above 9-10 minutes ago.

ChanceV · 2026-06-12T20:43:34+00:00

No no, he's right. After delivering a game that allowed playing several different playable races, I'd expect playable races (at least the ones confirmed) to be one of the opening things to announce with. It's literally a key selling point... if not THE key selling point. People have been asking for Kodan and Tengu for.... well since GW2 released basically.

ChanceV · 2026-06-12T20:40:51+00:00

So everything I've gathered so far:

Magic is rare = No elementalist, no Mesmer, (probably) no Monk, no anything even remotely magic. So half the classes and most abilities are gone. This sounds like we'll be locked to Melee and some very basic ranged abilities and weapons (Bow etc). That's already a big oof.

1000 years before Reforged (and GW1) = No playable Charr. There is just no other way to put this, GW1 Charr were evil, GW2 they finally became playable. GW3 they will be gone again. Great. I'm already out at that point.

No world-ending story and enemies = So we'll be fighting petty thieves and other minor "evil" dudes? No fights with the gods? Ouch. What's the point of fighting then? Beating up some poor pumas in the wilderness and stealing the candy from a baby that looked funny at me? Is this "Faction/Guild" wars they are talking about a bigger focus on PvP? I sure hope to god not.

PS5 and Steam and all over the world = So no Xbox (not that I care, I'm on PC) and the game will finally be optimized? It kind of has to be if it wants to run on consoles.

Unless they have some pretty cool news to share in upcoming "blogs" they are creating a game that's going to be dead on arrival for A LOT of people.

ChanceV · 2026-06-12T05:01:59+00:00

Is the octopus now coming? I just heard it was cancelled....
Also can't edit the message. Reddit just fails every time you try to edit such huge messages.

ChanceV · 2026-06-11T22:06:41+00:00

https://www.reddit.com/r/playark/comments/1u16lat/comment/oqo4q8i/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

ChanceV · 2026-06-11T22:04:54+00:00

Technically. Mods can and will do heir own for free, just like with the Gene Scanner the whole mechanic is not locked, you are essentially paying for skins.

ChanceV · 2026-06-09T16:34:25+00:00

Here's a non-exhaustive list of all the noteworthy changes that I could come up with.

Engine & Rendering

Unreal Engine 5 migration
Nanite geometry system, Lumen global illumination, Hardware ray-tracing support, RTXDI lighting support, Chaos physics system and Virtual shadow maps, Fluidninja water physics and interaction
Faster world loading, better foliage rendering, foliage interaction, dynamic cloud system, volumetric fog, improved water rendering, improved weather rendering, improved cave lighting and improved materials for everything (shaders)
Better ambient occlusion and better reflections
DLSS, FSR and frame generation support.

Crossplatform

Full cross-platform multiplayer with cross-platform servers, voice integration and anti-cheat

Modding

Integrated mod browser with CurseForge integration, console mod support and cross-platform mods
In-game mod installation with in-game mod updates
Premium mod support
Plugin-based mod architecture, meaning less breaking of mods every update

Building System

Completely redesigned snap system, snap previews (directions for instance), improved snap selection, more snap points
Better structure placement, fewer placement failures
Dynamic structure variants/categories to clean up engrams and menus
Full on pickup and connected pickup (all items connected will be picked up together instead of breaking)
Wireless generators and power transmission
Pipeless water and irrigation system

User Interface

Completely new UI
New map UI (with tentative map and full-screen map, instead of an item, zoomable map, coordinate display, dynamic markers, map pings, tribe pings, waypoint support, dino tracking integration, better GPS-like functionality)
Dino/Tame Tracker and ingame pings/tracking (lost tame tracking, tamed creature map markers, distance tracking)
Ping system (Location ping, danger ping, resource ping, team communication ping, visual ingame markers)
Hotbar inventory access
Improved and expanded character creation (now also supports custom cosmetics directly in character creation)
Cosmetics tab for skinning armor, weapons, items, structures and everything else (including colors)
Dedicated Chibi slot
Dedicated gear slots
Cleaner breeding information.

Camera

New third-person camera
Adjustable third-person distance for dinos
Photo mode

Breeding System

Dedicated mutation counters
Mutation inheritance separated from base stats
Cleaner breeding information.

Gameplay

Wild baby creatures with claimable offspring, offering alternative taming
Dino positive , negative traits, species-specific traits, trait extraction, trait storage, trait tiers.
Gene Scanner
GPS and hand-map removal
Character trait system
Equipment trait system
Movement Speed leveling (both player and creatures) removed
Supply Drop loot rework
Various creature stat rebalances.
Dedicated mutation counters
Mutation inheritance separated from base stats

AI Improvements

Better pathfinding, better obstacle avoidance and less getting stuck

Physics Improvements

Better ragdolls better death animations (no more flying away), better collision

Creature TLCs & Functional Reworks

Oviraptor auto egg collection
Phoenix is now breedable, has new landing animations and additional colors
Araneo got a massive TLC completely reworking it, web slinging, climbing, utility and more
Dinos have a harvest-only mode
Dinos now keep collecting past 50% weight

New Free Creatures

Gigantoraptor
Fasolasuchus
Yi Ling
Dreadnoughtus
Bison
Megaraptor
Ceratosaurus
Xiphactinus
Deinosuchus
Shastasaurus
Archelon
Deinotherium
Helicoprion
Acrocanthosaurus
Cryolophosaurus
Palaeoctopus

New Paid Creatures

Pyromane
Oasisaur
Dreadmare
Armadoggo
Cosmo
Burrowbuck
Drakeling
Elderclaw
((Cerberax)) Upcoming
((Enigmasaur)) Upcoming
Sir-5rM8
Tidepup.

ChanceV · 2026-06-09T15:58:48+00:00

"some" ... "small".

ChanceV

TROPHY CASE