These are the changes of ARK: Survival Evolved’s Patch 181.0, grouped into categories for clarity. If not otherwise indicated, they’re quoted from the relevant Steam Thread.

Official Servers

• Re-enabled Official ARK Server item uploads to Steam Inventory: Had disabled it due to a dupe bug which is now fixed.
• Official Servers are now upgraded to the equivalent of “2.0” difficulty, rather than 1.0

New Items / New Structures

• NEW DINO: Plesiosaurus (with custom saddle!)
• NEW DINO: Ichthyosaurus (with custom saddle!)
• NEW STRUCTURE: Poison Gas Trap

Dino Changes

• Nonviolent Taming method for Ichthyosaurus (will follow-up with implementation for all Herbivores soon)
• Sabertooth level-up damage scaling ramp reduced by 50%
• Taming with Higher Taming Affinity now increases base level of dino up to 50% if 100% effectiveness, improving its base statistics (previously wasn’t doing much, was only generally increasing their damage)

Game Changes

• Added two more player and dino levels, to get more engrams for the new goodies.
• Players are no longer allowed to carry more than 20% over their maximum Inventory Weight, as this was otherwise exploitable when standing on Dinos.
• Structure Paint effect looks much better and fully covers the surfaces
• Preparation for tomorrow’s Mac & Linux game releases 🙂
• Removed Weight limits on Smithy, Fabricator and any other Structures which accidentally still had them
• Obelisk terminals no longer get an auto-demolish timer
• In online PvP, use of sleeping bags now triggers cooldown to all your sleeping bags nearby.
• Using spyglass now shows Floating HUD of Dinos, Players, or Structures that you are _directly pointing at_, for long range reconnaissance
• C4 can now be placed & detonated underwater
• Mod makers can now override the minimap and spawn regions
• Clamped how much harvesting damage you can do to a resource to the remaining health of the resource (so that, for example, chomping a tiny dilo with little resource remaining in it with a massive T-Rex bit wouldn’t give you way more meat than it could reasonably have had). This may have the effect of reducing harvesting amounts in some cases, but is a necessary fix to what was essentially an overflow bug. Will consider re-scaling harvesting amounts accordingly as we proceed.

UI Changes

• NEW FEATURE: Emote Wheel!

Server Features

• AFK kick Timer at spawn/respawn screen: server configurable, default 40 minutes
• Configurable server auto save interval

Bugfixes

• Shader Model 4 (DX9, DX10) mode now looks a TON better, with proper light intensities, shadows and night lighting and dynamic lighting
• Pipes/cables are no longer considered “enemy” foundations that prevent building nearby
• Added missing mammoth dossier
• Buff timers no longer ‘appear’ to reset when you relogin
• Dragging a body no longer removes your FPV hands (bug required players to manually switch to weapon and then back to hands to restore their hands 😛 )
• Various minor bug fixes

(Original Announcement on Steam)

Here are the patchnotes of the previous patch (180.42)