The survival-crafter Ark: Survival Evolved is bursting at the seams with available content for players to indulge their dinosaur-centric fantasies. Whether it’s hosting their own servers, installing hundreds of mods, and a slew of available DLC, Ark has plenty to do. With this content can come some confusion, however, as the DLC titles are packaged in a seemingly incongruent manner.
With a total of eleven available maps, and the canonical maps being locked behind DLC, players will need to pick up two separate season passes in order to experience the entirety of the storyline within Ark: Survival Evolved.
Ark: Survival Evolved Season Pass
This season pass is the first offered by Studio Wildcard. This season pass offers three DLCs, with three canonical maps:
- Ark: Scorched Earth
- Ark: Aberration
- Ark: Extinction
The vague naming convention left many confused: this season pass only covers the initial three DLCs for Ark, which fleshes out the storyline as it stood from the map, The Island. Players should play through these three maps in the aforementioned order to better understand the story of Ark. These three DLCs also introduce new tools and materials that can be brought to other maps.
Related: What order to complete maps in ARK: Survival Evolved
Ark: Genesis Season Pass
This is the second season pass offered by Studio Wildcard for Ark: Survival Evolved, and it officially ends the storyline of the survival-crafter. This season pass contains two separate DLCs:
- Ark: Genesis Part 1
- Ark: Genesis Part 2
Also included within this second season pass are two Chibi pets (a Noglin and Shadowmane), the Tek Exo-armor set cosmetic pack, and the HLN-A cosmetic pet.
The second season pass takes a notable detour from the pacing of the first, as missions and zoning are used consistently to various effects that force the player through a story. While far more hands-on than what many expect from Ark, the worldbuilding and stories that take place in this second pack bring with it a more direct approach to gameplay.
