Ark Survival Ascended’s Lost Colony adds recruitable thralls — and Wildcard wants RTS control next

Why this matters: Lost Colony could change how you play Ark

Lost Colony isn’t just another map drop – it’s the first original expansion made for Ark Survival Ascended, and it arrives with systems that change what “surviving” means in Ark. Recruitable thralls, RPG-style skill trees, and a huge new map already shift the gameplay loop. But what caught my attention was Studio Wildcard saying it wants to bring a Genesis Part 2-style top-down, RTS-inspired control mode into the mix. If that actually lands, Lost Colony could feel like two games stitched together: survival sandbox and light strategy layer.

Key takeaways

• Lost Colony adds a massive new map (Arat Prime), 12+ creatures, RPG skill trees, base upgrades and recruitable thralls – real gameplay weight, not just cosmetics.
• Thralls are a major new loop: they defend, harvest, sort inventories and can be directly controlled as scouts or combatants.
• Wildcard hopes to add an RTS-style top-down control mode (inspired by Genesis 2’s Exo-Mek) to manage thralls, but it wasn’t ready at launch.
• ASA briefly overtook ASC’s old player numbers on Steam after launch – this expansion might be the tipping point Wildcard needed.

Breaking down what Lost Colony actually brings

Lost Colony’s Arat Prime mixes winter, gothic and trippy biomes and ships in a roster of quirky creatures — from the monstrously scaled Gigadesmodus bat to the fox-like Veilwyn that can evolve “Pokémon-style” into the demonic Malwyn or angelic Solwyn. The addition of a traditional RPG skill tree is notable: Ark’s always been about player skill and equipment, but passive and active unlocks shift progression toward long-term character investment rather than pure gear and dinos.

The biggest mechanical shake-up is thralls: recruitable NPCs that can be convinced to join by assaulting or defending procedurally generated outposts. They’re multipurpose — base defense, inventory management, harvesting, and even combat companions you can gear and mount. Studio Wildcard’s Jeremey Stieglitz points out the scouting utility specifically: “you can directly control them as well to kind of use them as a scout… if they’re killed, well, there’s always another thrall.” That’s a new safety valve for survival runs and a neat way to delegate risk.

Why the RTS idea matters — and what could go wrong

The RTS-style mode Stieglitz references comes from Genesis Part 2, where piloting the Exo-Mek flipped the camera to top-down and let you order dinos around. It was never full-blown strategy, but it introduced a god-mode perspective over your forces. Bringing that back to Lost Colony as a thrall-management tool would let players micromanage defense and scouting at scale — compelling for big tribe play and server metagame depth.

There are clear risks: Genesis 2’s mechanic felt like a novelty more than a polished system, and integrating top-down controls into a live survival sandbox is UI and performance heavy. Stieglitz admits they “didn’t get that in in time” for launch because “it had too many issues.” That candidness matters — it’s an honest signal that Wildcard wants the feature right rather than rushed. But it also raises the question of whether the studio will prioritize polish over shipping extra monetizable features.

Context: why now and what this indicates for ASA’s future

ASA’s launch has been rocky compared to Ark Survival Evolved, and the player base has been slow to migrate. Since Lost Colony went live, ASA briefly overtook its predecessor on Steam — the first notable stretch since ASA’s initial release. That’s a meaningful sign: the combination of remasters plus genuinely new content is starting to convince players to switch. Lost Colony looks like the follow-through Wildcard needed to stop being “just an engine upgrade” and become the living Ark ecosystem players expect.

Wildcard’s balancing act is obvious: push big, ambitious systems to keep veterans engaged while avoiding the spaghetti-launch reputation Genesis 2 earned. Stieglitz calls Lost Colony “on a par with Genesis 2 in terms of ambition” but says its rollout has been “much smoother.” That’s progress, but not perfection — and players should expect updates, hotfixes, and potential content additions (like the RTS mode) down the line.

What this means for players

For solo survivors, thralls as disposable scouts and base helpers change risk calculus: you can push farther with less fear of permadeath. For tribes, an eventual RTS mode could deepen siege play and base management in ways that matter for server politics and PvP metas. If Wildcard nails the top-down control without sacrificing performance or making the feature paywalled, Lost Colony could become the expansion that finally shifts the community’s momentum toward ASA.

TL;DR

Lost Colony is a substantial expansion that gives ASA new progression, creatures, and recruitable thralls — and it may get an RTS-style top-down control mode down the line. That addition would be a big quality-of-life and meta change if Wildcard can implement it without killing performance or the core survival feel.