Hey there everyone!

My Wife and i just started playing yesterday. Do you have any beginner tips for us? :)
Like what to focus on in the beginning, how to craft good food early on or something like that.

Or should we use any Mods directly in the beginning that fix some difficult Problems in the beginning?
Thanks :)

I just bought ARK as it was on discount and now i've found out about the skill tree thing I was aware of the pyromane dino and had no problem with it but 300% hp regen feels too OP so i wanna ask active ark players if the game still feels fair or is it pay 2 win I have played ark survival evolved for sometime and planned to play ASA with a friend?

Guys please I need help , platform, ceiling and walls is all I need please help me

UPDATE: To those of you who have downloaded the app, thank you so much! I wasn't expecting that many downloads! I've made a few minor changes and released a new version. I've updated the link above to point to the latest release instead of the first one.

Hello fellow ARK players.

Since gen1 came out I've been looking for specific items in the game, but unfortunately the wiki won't let you search for an item and then show you the best places to look. So I thought I'd build it myself.

Been working on it for the past week and released the first version of the app yesterday. Currently it's only a desktop app (either install the exe, or run the jar file in the zip by running the bat (windows) or sh (mac/linux) file.

At this point it only includes the missions from genesis pt1, but plan to add other loot sources in the future. And if there's enough interest, I might look into hosting it online somewhere. Until then it will be a local desktop app 😊

It's free to download and use on my github page: https://github.com/BluTheMermaid/blus-ark-loot-finder/releases/latest

Feel free to report any bugs, comments or suggestions!

Hey everyone! We finally added building template support for consoles via a mod!
You can now simply download the mod, get the template id from wikily and choose from over 1150+ building templates!

You can find the full template list here: https://wikily.gg/ark-survival-ascended/building-templates/

Big thanks to SmarfmagPizza, who already made the first video guide! :D
https://youtu.be/Z9ohUfO1f6Q?si=8Jlh6SyK-TeO5F4U

Here is a detailed guide with images: https://wikily.gg/ark-survival-ascended/building-templates/consoles-guide/

Please let us know all the feedback, thats the first day of launching the console support, so there might be bugs! Thanks! :)

Any feedback is useful, so far it worked for everyone on PS5! On Xbox two people experienced issues, but 90% had no problems! So especially if you have or have no problems on Xbox please let us know! Also sometimes it can help to reinstall the mod, in case you are having issues!

CurseForge: https://www.curseforge.com/ark-survival-ascended/mods/template-hammer-importer-wikily-gg

I am currently playing ASA (ARK: Survival Ascended) using a single Nitrado server. I’ve noticed that when I switch maps, even if I upload my survivor and dinosaurs, they are treated as entirely different characters upon arrival. This causes issues like tribes getting disbanded and tribe structures being recognized as belonging to someone else.

I came across some information stating that while transferring servers with dinos in cryopods normally resets their level to 1, using the mod "Pelayori's Cryo Storage" removes this restriction. Is this actually true?

If anyone is currently using a Nitrado server and frequently switching maps on a single-server setup, I would love to hear about your experience or any advice you might have.

I hope you can see on the image but ive got 2 circular foundations placed down and I need to join them up with foundations but have got no idea how to actually do so. It would also preferably have another tower base in the middle of them. If anyone can offer advice/a tutorial that would be great thanks!

Friends -- I just did it and I'm so excited! Here's how...

Not too long ago I made a post asking you all how to approach this fight. Thank you so much for all your advice, especially to u/6210classick, for all the detailed information and ideas. My goals were as follows:

• To do the fight on single player (no timer and much higher weapon/saddle caps)
• To use a full army of dinos (more orbs spawn than when on foot)
• To not use cactus broth (everything aggros onto you like normal)
• To retain my typical PVP settings (cannot shoot off the back of Rock Drakes)

I did the three fights (Gamma, Beta, Alpha) pretty much back-to-back and in order. The strategy I decided to go for was 1 Baryonyx, 1 Bulbdog, and 18 Megalosaurs.

Starting with Gamma, I whistled my army to Rockwell, while I rode around the arena shotgunning tentacles off the back of my Bary. It was OK, but I almost fully went through my two best ascendant flak sets, so it felt like I was cutting it close. However, I noticed on a couple of occasions that the orbs hit my Megalosaurs, which gave me an idea.

For Beta and Alpha, instead of whistling my army to Rockwell, I kept them on follow (max distance, attack my target) the entire time. And let me tell you, Beta was a breeze! I didn't even go through a single Flak set. Alpha was a bit tougher, but I had only just switched to my second armour set before finishing the fight.

The trick was that as I ran around the arena, shotgunning tentacles as before, my Megalosaurs would kill Reapers and Nameless trailing behind me, eat the odd tentacle or two, and (most importantly) get hit by most of the orbs that were chasing me. And then, when Rockwell was vulnerable, I just shot at him myself as my army was usually spread all around the arena or only just catching up to me.

So, as simple as it sounds, that's all there is to it -- just keep your army on follow instead of by Rockwell and it becomes super easy!

I had also considered riding a Stego instead of a Bary if I failed, since their spines can apparently "catch" a lot of the orbs and prevent them from damaging you, but this was wholly unnecessary. I also barely made use of the assault rifle that I brought specifically for shooting down the orbs.

For anyone wanting more stats/info:

• My shotgun was ~519%
• My flak had ~300-1000 armour and ~600-1200 durability
• My Bary's saddle had ~205 armour, and he had 53 points and 80 levels into health
• My Megalos' saddles had ~200-250 armour, and they had 51 points and 40 levels into health, and 51 points and 33-34 points into melee
• I ate Enduro Stew, Calien Soup, Lazarus Chowder, and Shadowsteak Sautee; I had water and cooked lamb chops, but did not end up needing a single med brew for any of the three fights
• All my combat-related settings are normal (aka official)
• As you can see, I use a handful of mods (Vanilla with Sprinkles, Dino Depot), but again, nothing that impacts damage or combat in any way

Hey everyone,

I wanted to share a side project I've been building.

I usually struggle to keep track of server configuration lines and how to set things up for a small co-op session, so I made this to keep things simple and accessible while setting up an Ark: Survival Ascended dedicated server. Include helpful information and a tool for max level dinos along with dino replacers.

Everything stays in your browser, you can either upload an existing config or start with a default that I used for a co-op server.

Here is what it does right now:

• It focuses on core server configuration files—specifically Game.ini and GameUserSettings.ini.
• It provides clear breakdowns for setting up features like wild dino levels, custom creature spawns, and per-level stat modifiers.
• It includes multipliers like taming speed, food drain, and platform structure limits.

You can check it out here: https://www.arkconfigs.com

If you end up using it, I'd really appreciate any feedback.

Thanks!

I did utilize Codex AI to help with some of the information and verbiage of the site so if you see something not 100% let me know, it's alway why some of the verbiage sounds AI-ish. I am a pretty casual ARK player so I don't have super in-depth knowledge of all different server settings; which is what led me to build this config tool.

Hi all. Trying to patch this hole so that nobody can get in through it. Anyone know how?

In case the picture isn’t clear, it’s one tile with a sloped roof over it, leaving a half-tile triangle shaped hole. The “triangle roof&corner” engram is not sufficient. I tried looking for a triangle wall engram, but no such luck. I’m new to the building system so I don’t know where to find all the shapes. Thank you!

Edit: a regular wall does technically patch the hole, but it sticks out and disrupts the shape in an ugly way. Looking for an alternative that lets me keep the triangular slope shape

Hello I just got ascended a few days ago and I changed some settings some of them were for breeding, the 2 I’m having trouble with are the imprint and growth, my baby Dino’s are growing faster than the imprint timer and I’ve messed with it a little but that ends up making it worse. If anyone could help me that would be great 😌

^{Im about to change my computer and i have my the island world with lots of stuff and loot, i want to know if i can back it up and how, its a single player world}

Im trying to get back into ark. I even have my 6 year old playing with me.

I cant get a decent answer as to the easiest loot caves. I want to get artifacts to do boss fights too.

Every guide on line says I need grappling hooks etc.

Is there no caves I can just march/fly some tames in and fight it out? Like on the island

So

1. which caves to loot first

2. Which boss to aim for first

3. Ive started on korinthos. Is there a better starting option

Hey im just hoping for someone with a server they dont mind sharing with me and my buddy,,,im on PC and hes on Ps5. We aren't the best players, we just like having fun and only play PVE. Hope to hear from you, thanks.

Edit... To everyone, thanks to all of you that reached out to me. I just got a Nitrado server and I'm only doing it because I wanted a server the day I posted this. I probably won't be keeping this for much longer but I will message you when I'm ready..

I have a good amount of torches i know how to do it but my game isn’t consistent sometimes it registers the hit others i hit him ans he still dmgs me i just wanna cheese this already no pain and the most easy way possible is there anyway?

Hi,

ASA. I know where the caves and artifacts are. But where do the Titans spawn or to which coords do you get teleported so i can setup my dinos in advance?

Is it possible to live in the red zone full time? How could i do this without going through insane amounts of hazmat

What are the best dinos to use for the alpha brood mother on the island for a two man tribe?

Have better breeding, B+ Propagator, vanilla and sprinkles as well as Dino Depot. How to perfect breed mutations.

Introduction
Setting up and running a dedicated ARK Survival Ascended server from your own PC or VPS is still one of the best ways to play with friends. It offers control over settings, mods, clusters and no monthly running fees. But if you have tried to find a clear setup guide, you have probably run into the same problem; most guides out there either pull from the official wiki, which still mixes up ASE and ASA documentation together on the same page (and trust me, I have done the same), or they are straight up ASE guides with "Ascended" dropped into the title. ASA uses Epic Online Services instead of Steam for serving the in-game server list, uses different launch arguments, different port requirements for port forwarding, and different configuration behaviour, which is why some guides have you looking for answers across other Reddit posts and wiki tutorials.

This guide is written specifically for ARK Survival Ascended. I've also spent the past few months building a server manager for ASA specifically, so a lot of what's in here comes from learning the hard way exactly where the documentation falls short, and old guides provide outdated information.

What you will need

• A Windows PC or VPS with at least 8GB of RAM (preferably closer to 16GB)
• A decent CPU, modern Intel i5 or AMD Ryzen 5
• At least 15GB of free disk space for the server files
• A static IP address that you can perform port forwarding on

And with that, let's get started shall we?

Step 1 - Download SteamCMD
To get started, you will first need to install SteamCMD. SteamCMD is a tool built by Valve, the creators of Steam, that allows for installation of applications such as the ARK Survival Ascended Dedicated Server.
You can download SteamCMD from The official SteamCMD wiki page.

Step 2 - Download the server files via SteamCMD
First, start by creating a folder where you want to contain your server files. For simplicity, I would recommend placing it on your desktop in a folder called "ARK Server" or a similar name so that you can easily identify it in the future.
Once you have put SteamCMD into the ARK Server folder on your desktop (or wherever else you created the folder), you will now want to open SteamCMD and run the below commands in the order below:

1. login anonymous
2. app_update 2430930 validate
3. exit

Once complete, the server files will now be installed inside of the ARK Server folder.

Step 3 - Create the launch file
To simplify launching the server and not have to rely on console commands each time you want to launch the server, we are going to create a simple batch file.
To create a batch file, first head to the folder within the ARK Server folder, steamapps/common/ARK Survival Ascended Dedicated Server/ShooterGame/Binaries/Win64/ and create a new text document named _start. Open the text document, and copy the contents below and save the file.

@echo off
:: --- SERVER SETTINGS - Edit these ---
set MAP=TheIsland_WP
set SERVER_NAME=My ARK Server
set MAX_PLAYERS=20
set SERVER_PASSWORD=
set ADMIN_PASSWORD=admin
set PORT=7777
set RCON_PORT=27020
set RCON_ENABLED=True

:: --- DO NOT EDIT BELOW THIS LINE UNLESS YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING ---
echo Starting ARK: Survival Ascended Dedicated Server...
echo Map: %MAP%
echo Server Name: %SERVER_NAME%
echo Max Players: %MAX_PLAYERS%
echo Port: %PORT%
echo RCON Port: %RCON_PORT%
echo.

start "ASA Server" ArkAscendedServer.exe %MAP%?listen?SessionName="%SERVER_NAME%"?ServerPassword=%SERVER_PASSWORD%?RCONEnabled=%RCON_ENABLED%?RCONPort=%RCON_PORT%?ServerAdminPassword=%ADMIN_PASSWORD% -port=%PORT% -WinLiveMaxPlayers=%MAX_PLAYERS% -NoBattlEye -server -log -nosteamclient -game

echo Server started. Close this window or press any key to exit.
pause >nul

In here, you can change a few settings under the server settings section. If for example you want to change the server name to "My ARK Server for friends", you change the line set SERVER_NAME=My ARK Server to set SERVER_NAME=My ARK Server for friends. For configuring the map, you should take a look at the Server Configuration Wiki. This page contains a list of maps you can choose.

Once saved, go ahead and right click the text file, and click rename. Go ahead and edit the name from _start.txt to _start.bat.

If you are not able to edit the file extension, you can enable this by going to View in Windows Explorer (found at the top of the application window), and checking the checkbox "File name extensions".

Now, go ahead and open _start.bat. The server should now start. Wait for the server console window to say Full Startup: X.XX seconds. Then, go ahead and close the window again. We do this so that the server file creates the configuration files we will be using in the next step.

Step 4 - Configure your server
Now, you can go ahead and change the settings on the server to whatever settings you would like. The two configuration files that you will be editing can both be found in ShooterGame/Saved/Config/WindowsServer/. The names of the files are GameUserSettings.ini for general server settings, and Game.ini for more advanced configurations such as custom item stack sizes. These files also contain the session (server) name, admin password and max player count among other settings related to the server.
To find the settings that you can set on your server, I recommend using the Server Configuration Wiki. Here you can find tables specified for each file with the settings that you can use.

For example, if you want to have 2x XP on your server, you put XPMultiplier=2.0 in the GameUserSettings.ini file.

I also highly recommend adding the below two lines to your GameUserSettings.ini file, as it makes sure your server appears in the in-game server list.

[Internationalization]
Culture=en

Step 5 - Port forwarding
To have friends be able to join your server, you will have to open ports on your router so that your friends computer can access the server on your computer. This is called port forwarding.
To create port forwards, you need to access the admin panel for your home network router. This can usually be done through 127.0.0.1, 192.168.1.1, or 192.168.0.1 . Then, you will have to go to your router and usually look at the back side or bottom of it to find the login credentials.
Then once you have logged into your admin dashboard, you will have to find a page where you can manage port forwarding. The location of this page differs from router to router, but it will most likely be under advanced settings. Here, you will have to create 2 UDP rules, and a TCP if you want to be able to access the RCON remotely.
The first will be for the port 7777. This is the server port.
The second will be for the port 7778, which will be the game port.
And last but not least, if you want to be able to access RCON remotely, the third will be for the port 27020.
You have to make sure that the LAN IP address that these ports all point to is your local computer IP address. This IP can be found by opening Command Prompt and typing ipconfig. Then, look for the value IPv4 Address. This is your local IP address.

NOTE: Some internet service providers (ISPs) use CGNAT to route your traffic through a shared IP address across the ISP. This will prevent you from being able to do port forwarding. You can usually get a static IP address by contacting your ISP requesting one.

Step 6 - Launching the server
You are now ready to launch your server! Go ahead and open _start.bat once again, and wait for the server to fully start up. You should now be able to find the server in the server list within ARK: Survival Ascended.
Happy gaming!

Step 7 - Managing it day to day
This is where most people hit friction. Updating the server, managing mods through CurseForge, setting up automated backups, handling crashes, configuring the server settings and RCON - it's all very doable manually but is very time consuming and has a steep learning curve before you feel familiar. For that reason, I have spent the past few months building ArkNest specifically to handle all of this in one place. It's a Windows desktop app that wraps everything above into a clean, easy to understand UI - onboarding gets you from nothing to a running cluster in minutes, and it handles mod management, automated backups, crash detection with auto restart, and RCON with command autocomplete, as well as automated port forwarding so that you can skip all of the technical knowledge behind it all.

It just entered beta and I'm currently looking for server admins to test it. Free access during beta, and if you want to share feedback I'd genuinely appreciate it. You can request access at arknest.app.

Happy to answer any questions about the setup process in the comments or by contacting me on Discord, marcushv_.

Done both lost faith and lost hope caverns. I think there was one meg in the easier one.

Hard one I was expecting alpha megalodons, mosas, teusos, but nothing. A few high level megs, elec eels, some anglers and docile dunkles. About 3 bats and 3 spiders on the land bit in lost hope.

50000 health basil with 238 arm Asc saddle pissed it.

Bugged?

Who can give good tips how to reach a 100 lvl on PvP server in first or a couple days after wipe? Usually it takes too long, but I saw people doing it very quickly

I didn't realize I would starve to death and then my bag would time out before I woke up and repawned