ARK server: tutorials & guidesMaps, rates and mods for ARK: Survival Evolved

ARK: Survival Evolved is one of the most demanding games you can host yourself - and the reason is rarely the number of players. What really challenges the server is what players leave behind: tamed creatures, sprawling bases, hundreds of storage boxes and the map itself. A tribe with a fully built fortress and a zoo of dinos puts more load on the server than a handful of extra players who just join in. That is exactly why, in ARK, choosing the right plan is a question of the map and the play style.

The second special feature is how configurable the game is. Practically the entire experience lives in two files: the GameUserSettings.ini holds the server name, passwords, the active mods and the big multipliers for experience, taming speed and harvesting. The Game.ini goes into detail - breeding, incubation and maturation times, engram points, experience curves. Change a few lines and months of grinding turn into an adventure for a few evenings; leave everything alone and you play vanilla.

That leaves the map. The Island is the classic starting point, Ragnarok the evergreen for groups, Aberration the challenge for advanced players - and each map keeps its own save, so switching starts a new world without losing the old one. Mods come from the Steam Workshop and are added via their numeric ID; your fellow players download them automatically when they connect. Backups stay self-service: you download the world file, player profiles and tribe data yourself via WebFTP or SFTP, ideally before every larger change.

The guides below are sorted in the order in which the questions usually come up: first the basic decisions about edition, map and memory, then the two configuration files, then maps and mods, then day-to-day operation with admin rights, RCON and restarts. At the end, you will find troubleshooting and the buying advice for everyone who has not ordered yet. All guides refer to ARK: Survival Evolved, the edition our plans are built for.

Getting started

The decisions that come first. Which edition you play determines the mod library and the hardware requirements; the map determines how much area and how many creatures the server has to simulate - and with it, how much memory you should plan for from the start.

Configuration

Two INI files decide almost everything. The GameUserSettings.ini holds the big sliders and the rules, the Game.ini the fine-tuning. Both are edited in the config editor of the web interface or via WebFTP and SFTP - always with the server stopped, because a running instance overwrites your changes when it saves.

Maps & mods

What changes the server's content. The Workshop is one of the reasons ARK has lasted so long - but mods and map changes also touch the save, so a backup belongs in front of every step here.

Administration & operation

What keeps a server stable over months. ARK has no tiered roles - whoever has the admin password can do everything - so it pays to think about who gets access, which tasks subusers in the web interface can take over instead and how restarts are announced in good time.

Troubleshooting

ARK is notorious for servers that seemingly do not show up. In most cases, the server is simply still loading, or the browser has not listed it yet - the fixed server address made of IP and port gets you in regardless.

Before you order

The buying advice. For ARK, the map and the age of the world decide which plan fits - not the number of players.

Frequently asked questions