ARK Lost Colony Outposts on Arat Prime

 

    Lost Colony, the Arat Prime expansion for ARK: Survival Ascended, released December 19, 2025 on Steam, PlayStation, and Xbox for $29.99 — ark.wiki.gg calls it "the first new canonically-progressing DLC Map for ASA." Scattered across that map are Outpost Missions, which the wiki describes plainly as "dynamic missions that grant some valuable loot and are also how to progress the map's main storyline." The source documents exactly three outpost mission types — Defense Outposts, Attack Outposts, and Resource Caches — and this guide sticks to what ark.wiki.gg says about each, flagging anything the page doesn't cover rather than guessing at it.

 

What Outpost Missions Are For

 

    Per the wiki's own "Outpost Missions" entry (a sub-page linked from the main Arat Prime article), these missions sit at the intersection of loot and story progress: succeeding at them is described as one of the ways players push the map's narrative forward, not just a side activity for gear. The page doesn't break down how many outposts exist on the map, where they're located, or how often they respawn — Arat Prime's "Regions" and "Approximate spawn locations" fields on the wiki are both blank, so this guide doesn't invent a count or a location list for them. What is documented is the three-way split of mission types below, each tied to Lost Colony's central conflict: the Lost King and his Thrall army occupying the map's gothic, tiered metropolis.

 

Defense and Attack Outposts: Fighting the Thrall Army

 

 

    The wiki describes Defense Outposts as missions where you "stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the Lost King's Thralls to defend their fortresses against waves of mindless Revenants," succeeding at which "earn[s] the King's favor, lowering his army's hostility towards you, and earning loot." That's a notable detail on its own: in Defense Outposts you're fighting alongside Thralls, not against them — the threat is the Revenants, the reanimated, non-tameable remains the wiki separately describes as "extremely aggressive to anyone and anything in their way."

 

    Attack Outposts flip that relationship. There, the wiki says you "breach the fortified strongholds of the Thrall legions, destroy their command structures, and loot the King's stockpiles to fuel your rebellion" — here the Thralls are the target, not the ally. The page doesn't specify wave counts, enemy compositions, structure-health numbers, or loot tables for either mission type, so none of that is stated here as fact. The narrative context comes from the DLC's own lore section: the Lost King is described as "a tyrannical ruler (voiced by Keith David) who governs the colony and seeks to maintain the broken state of the world to preserve his power" — which is presumably why both fighting for and against his Thralls are separate, documented mission paths.

 

Resource Caches and What Patch 79.5 Changed About Them

 

 

    The third type, Resource Caches, is described as an open-field race rather than a fight against a fortress: "secure your survival in the open field by claiming valuable supply drops before scavenging hordes wild creatures overrun them," per the wiki's exact wording. No specific loot list or timer is given for how long a cache stays claimable before those hordes arrive.

 

    The wiki's Changelog table for Arat Prime does confirm this mission type was tuned twice in one update. Patch 79.5 lists "Added additional locations for resource cache spawning" and, separately, "Fixed resource cache sometimes spawning in the air" — both entries specific to Resource Caches, both quoted verbatim from the changelog. No later patch entry on the page mentions Resource Caches again, so this guide doesn't claim any further tuning beyond 79.5.

 

Lost Colony DLC at a Glance

 

 

    Outside the outpost system, the infobox lists Lost Colony as an Expansion Pack priced at $29.99, released December 19, 2025 simultaneously on Steam, Xbox, and PlayStation. The wiki's Bosses list for the page names two: Lost King and Lost Queen — the same Lost King whose Thralls populate both Defense and Attack Outposts. The page's "Regions" and "Approximate spawn locations" fields are both empty in the source data, which is why this guide can't tell you which part of Arat Prime to check first for any given outpost type.

 

Before an Attack Outpost, expect fortified strongholds with command structures to destroy, per the wiki's own phrasing — bring siege-capable gear, not just a personal loadout. Before a Defense Outpost, remember the Thralls are on your side against the Revenants, so friendly fire matters. For Resource Caches, move fast: the wiki's own wording is "before scavenging hordes... overrun them," implying a race against a timer the page doesn't spell out. None of the three mission types has a documented gear checklist beyond that, so treat general Lost Colony prep (cold-weather gear for Arat Prime's arctic zones, per the map's environmental feature list) as your baseline.

 

Running your own ARK server

 

    Outpost Missions reset or respawn on a schedule the wiki doesn't document, which makes a stable, private world worth more than usual here — you don't want a public server's population or restart schedule deciding when you get another shot at a Defense or Attack Outpost near your base. Running your own ARK server keeps Arat Prime's Thrall fights, your tribe's cache runs, and your progress on the map's main storyline on your own clock, without competing against strangers for the same fortress.

 

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Conclusion

 

    Arat Prime's Outpost Missions boil down to three documented types: Defense Outposts, where you fight beside the Lost King's Thralls against Revenant waves; Attack Outposts, where you breach those same Thralls' strongholds; and Resource Caches, an open-field race against scavenging hordes that was tuned in patch 79.5 by adding spawn locations and fixing caches that spawned mid-air. What the wiki's Arat Prime page doesn't give — outpost counts, specific locations, wave sizes, or loot tables — is left undocumented here rather than guessed, in line with what ark.wiki.gg itself currently publishes about the system.