The Tickle Chicken is sharpening its claws. On July 31, 2026, Studio Wildcard's Community Crunch 517 dropped a Therizinosaurus TLC (Total Love & Care) preview for ARK: Survival Ascended, the first full pass on one of the game's most iconic creatures. It's paired with a Summer Bash bonus-rates event running through August 5 and the still-live Conquest Season 8 on Genesis Part 1. Here's what's changing, and what dedicated-server owners should actually do about it.
Therizinosaurus TLC: What's Changing
The community won the Therizino TLC through an Extra Life vote, and Wildcard has been clear about scope: this is a refinement pass, not a redefinition. The tickle chicken you know is still the tickle chicken. What's improving:
- Combat responsiveness: the double-swipe stays, but hit feel and animation blending get tightened
- Controls and traversal: mounted Therizinos are getting more agile, which we'll get to below
- Visual progression: no two Therizinos will look quite the same in a working saddle
- Expanded personality: wild ones now telegraph aggression
That last one changes how the wild encounter plays out. Wild Therizinos are more patient. They'll fix you with an unblinking stare, spread those infamous claws, and give you one last chance to reconsider your life choices. Miss the warning and it turns into the same frantic sprint you remember from ASE. Server admins running high-difficulty PvE maps should expect fewer chain-death incidents from oblivious low-level players who wander into a Therizino sightline.
The New Dossier
Wildcard also revealed a fresh in-universe dossier alongside the reveal. The dry stats:
- Species: Therizinosaurus multiensis
- Time: Late Cretaceous
- Diet: Herbivore
- Temperament: Territorial
The temperament shift from the old "Short-Tempered" flavor toward "Territorial" is deliberate. The dossier text notes that "the beast's newfound tolerance works both ways, as tribes no longer see its encroaching populations as an existential threat." Read the subtext: expect wild-spawn logic tweaks alongside the TLC, which will affect Beacon/Loot Table modders and anyone running custom spawn overrides on their server.
Foraging Style, Chipped Claws
The visual variation is the flavor bit players will talk about most. A Therizino you've been running long trees and berry patches with will visibly wear that trade, with chipped, worn "power harvester" claws. One you've kept lean for combat and precision harvesting keeps the longer, sharper "foraging" profile. Same double-swipe attack either way, but different silhouette on the sidebar. It's a nice small touch for tribes that specialise their tames.
Domesticated: More Agile Than You'd Expect
The mounted-Therizino changes are the ones that matter most for gameplay balance. The updated dossier says the Therizino:
…turns out to be more clever and agile than you'd expect, for such a big creature. It can turn on a dime, and hop onto or over obstacles that'd stop an Allo or Rex in their tracks.
For a tame that was already the go-to for cleaning berry farms and thatch runs, adding meaningful mobility over rough terrain could quietly bump it back into the mid-tier PvE roster on maps where turning radius has always been the pain point (Aberration and Extinction stand out).
Summer Bash Bonus Rates (Now Through August 5)
Summer Bash is already running on the Official Network and stays live until Wednesday, August 5. The rate structure:
- PvP / PvE: 2x Harvesting, Taming, Experience, and Breeding
- Small Tribes: 4.5x Harvesting, Taming, Experience + 4x Breeding
- ARKpocalypse: 5x on everything
If you're running a private DoomHosting ASA server and want to match the Official cadence for your tribe, drop these into your Game.ini / GameUserSettings.ini before spinning it back up. Rate multipliers are one of the flags where a private server visibly beats Official: no queue, no rubber-banding from a full cluster, and you can leave the boosted rates on past August 5.
Conquest Season 8 Is Still Live
Wildcard used Crunch 517 to remind everyone Conquest Season 8 is running on Genesis Part 1 across 18 official maps (a 12-server Cluster A with Classic-legacy transfers, plus a 6-server Cluster B). Rates are 5x with Tek enabled but a specific ban list (Tek Grenade, Tapejara / Megalodon / Rock Drake / Mosasaur Tek Saddles, Tek Railgun).
Even if you're not on official, the ruleset is a good template for a private high-rate PvP server: 5x is where wipe-recovery becomes fast enough to keep raiding fun without collapsing into 100x noise.
Nintendo Switch Official Servers Sunset August 31
The one piece of hard news buried in the Crunch: the Nintendo Switch official servers for ARK: Survival Evolved and ARK: Ultimate Survivor Edition shut down on August 31, 2026. Over a million players have logged time on those servers since 2018, and Grove Street Games rebuilt the Switch version in 2022. Unofficial servers and single-player stay fully playable, so if you're on Switch and want to keep a tribe together, an unofficial rental (PC-side, cross-platform crossplay where applicable) is now the migration path.
What This Means for Your Server
The practical checklist for anyone running an ASA dedicated server this week:
- Back up your world save before Summer Bash ends (Aug 5). Whenever Wildcard flips the Official rate multipliers off, boosted-rate PvE breeding chains can look mangled to sanity checks. A fresh backup makes any rollback painless.
- Don't rush to bump your private rates back down at midnight on Aug 5. Nothing about the Bonus Rates event forces private servers to change. Do it when it makes sense for your tribe.
- Watch for a Therizino spawn / behavior config break when the TLC lands. Custom spawn tables and Beacon exports frequently break on TLC drops. Test your spawn overrides on a copy of your world before pushing the update to your main.
- If you have Switch players in your community, spin up a PC-side ASA server before August 31 and see who wants to migrate. Cross-progression for ASA runs through the Wildcard account.
Verdict
Community Crunch 517 is a solid mid-summer update: one substantive gameplay preview, one actual live event, one confirmed server-shutdown notice. The Therizino TLC is the standout. It's a creature the entire ASA population interacts with weekly, and even a modest behavior tune ripples across every PvE build. No release date is attached yet, which usually means "next major patch, but not this week." Keep an eye on Crunch 518 for a firmer timeline.
Host Your ARK: Survival Ascended Server with DoomHosting
Want to run your own ASA server with configurable rates, cross-platform crossplay, and no queue for Summer Bash? DoomHosting's ARK: Survival Ascended hosting runs on Ryzen 9 hardware with instant setup, full FTP access, DDoS protection, and 24/7 support. Hit "deploy" and you're in your own cluster before the Therizino TLC even lands.
