I have a bit of a pet peeve when it comes to Christmas events in games. Often times the excuses people use to not spend time with their family in real life. Filled sometimes with some crazy time intensive event with “must have” items. I’ve been one of “those” people – now a day I just don’t care for it.

With that said I really like the implantation of Ark’s holiday event.

First and foremost it’s optional update for dedicated servers! Those who have extremely modded servers or feel an event will break whatever immersion their server creates can skip it. Also if you are someone who is Christmas fatigued from the holidays starting before Thanksgiving dinner was even the oven your server can choose not to have it.

It also has elements that are both in your face and a break period. According to the patch notes between the in-game hours of 12 am to 5 am for one of the events (1). I would say more time then not me and my friend are afk during those hours normally so if the extra flashy lights around our screen and music get to us we tend to afk during the night time anyways. During that time you get a decent boost loot crate drops and a chance for cosmetic items in them.

What is really fun is the small chance of Christmas colored dinosaurs! The spawn rate is not so high that it’s all you see. Which makes it special enough when you do see one you just want to tame in.

Last night I was crafting up metal building materials for us to have an outpost near a nice spawn of Direbears and some other things. This morning I woke up and went over to an outpost being Finished and that is where I have gotten all my Christmas colored dinosaurs from so far near some nice mountains and woods.

My friend a big fan of Argentavis so I picked this festive looking one as a gift to him.

I’m a big fan of Direbears. I just love their speed, carrying weight, and all around usefulness. They are my go to and I happened upon this beauty in its special white winter version. I’m really hoping to get a few more during the event.

This triceratops was already packed up in a ship transporter we built and has this amazing pattern on its body.

I call them bird brains. I despise them! The Pteranodon tamed as some creatures moved in to attack. Naturally, it just flies off while I was whistling-- don’t do that! Perhaps we will find it again in the mountains somewhere. For now, we know it’s still alive.

You can also get some hat skin drops from certain dinosaurs.

While the event might be considered a way to causal for some. I think they did it right. Enough there for people to spend some time and have fun. Not too much or extremely important to ones pixel life that it not overriding real life events.

Have a great Christmas!

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All Screenshots were taken by @enjar in the game Ark: Survival Evolved. If you are thinking about getting this game and are looking to support me further consider using my Epic Games creator code: enjargames at check out or using this referral link to be sent to the store's pages.

Disclosure: As a creator in the Epic Games’ Support-A-Creator Program, I may receive a commission from certain purchases.