Ark: Survival Evolved is without question one of the greatest survival games out there. You’ll enjoy many thrilling hours of battling/taming dinosaurs, building your arsenal, and creating your empire. You’ll go from caveman to conqueror. It’s a very exciting journey that you can tackle either on your own, or with friends. However, I think most people will agree that Ark is a lot more exciting with friends.
That’s why I’d like to share some settings with you that will make the experience easier and more fun for you and your friends.
Non-Dedicated Session:
There are two common ways to play Ark with friends. With a Non-Dedicated Session, and purchasing a server. I’d recommend purchasing a server, because you won’t have to deal with the Tether (explained in setting 1).
Non-Dedicated Host Tether Distance: Increase
If you’re hosting a server, ignore this and scroll down to Setting 2. However, if you choose to run a Non-Dedicated Session, then you must learn about this setting.
The tether distance is basically how far other players can be from the host. If the players get too far away from the host, they’ll be teleported. So instead of one player being able to do their own thing on one side of the map, and the host on the other, every player must stay near the host at all times. It can be very restricting.
I remember when I was playing Ark for the first time with my friend, I kept forgetting about the Tether, and I would fly my bird to the mountain. On my way, my friend got teleported to me, thousands of feet in the air and fell to his death… Not great.
Increase the Tether Distance by turning this setting up, so that your friend’s don’t yell at you.
You’ll have to experiment with how much to set this based on how good your computer is, because it can be known to cause lag.
Hosting A Server:
When playing Ark with friends, you get the choice to run a server through many various platforms such as g-portal (my preference), shockbyte, Bisect Hosting, etc.
Hosting a server can have massive benefits to you and your friends. You get tons more settings to have fun with, you get to leave the server online all the time so your friends don’t have to wait for you to get on, and they’re not very expensive.
Basic Settings
Server Password: Set it to whatever you want
When setting up a server, one of the first things you want to do is set up a password. That way no random people can join. Of course if you want to open your server up to everyone, that’s totally okay, but you’ll have to pay for more player slots.
It’ll likely be one of the first settings listed with whatever platform you choose to host your server on.
Admin Password: Set it to whatever you want
Ark: Survival Evolved unfortunately has a lot of bugs, and I don’t mean spiders. I mean glitches and problems. It’s a common complaint in the Ark Community.
My personal rule is, if the game cheats me, it’s okay for me to cheat back. For example, if you’re going through a cave and you suddenly get teleported across the map (yes this happens), or if you die and your stuff is nowhere to be found (also happens). It’s a good idea to be able to turn on admin controls, and use commands like “fly, ghost, InfiniteStats”, etc. You can find a list of commands online to make it easier for you.
Plus you can troll your friends a lot easier. This is one of my personal favourite parts of playing Ark with friends, subtly messing with them. You can do this with or without cheats, but you get so much more power with cheats. For example, you could build a prison and teleport them into it randomly. Be careful with this, you might not have friends after this. Enjoy.
To turn on Admin controls, type enablecheats [password]. Then you’ll have to type “cheat” before every command. For example, “Cheat fly”
Kick Idle Players After x Seconds: 1200 Seconds
Ark: Survival Evolved isn’t a game you should spend much time AFK. It’s happened to all of us at least once. You’re playing Ark for a while, and you go off to lunch. You totally forget you were playing, only to come back a few hours later and realize all your stuff is gone because you died and it despawned.
This will make that a lot less likely to happen. It will kick players before they starve to death (hopefully). 1200 seconds is 20 minutes, if you want to set it a bit lower to be safe go ahead.
Note that sometimes you’ll have to turn on another setting in order for this to work, called “EnablePlayerKick”
World Settings
Resources Respawn Period Multiplier: 0.5
When building some amazing structures in ark, like a mansion that would make Bill Gates jealous, or a dysfunctional rocket ship, sometimes there’s just not enough resources. You have to chop down the whole forest, smash every rock, and collect all the bushes. It's not always enough.
By lowering this setting, you can collect all the resources around you, and then watch them respawn a lot faster. Now you can build quickly, and rest in sweet relief while the world does half the work for you.
Feel free to lower the setting more depending on how much you wanna build, but don’t put it too low, or it’ll create an unfair advantage.
Crop Growth Speed Multiplier: 5
Farming is an excellent way to get ahead in Ark. While everyone else is going around picking berries 1 at a time, and struggling to make their narcotics and dyes, you’ll just sit back while your farm does the work for you.
Unfortunately, one of the cons of farming is that it takes a lot of consistent work. You have to make all the crop plots, set up pipes and water, build an entire greenhouse (if you want it to work fast), and let’s not even talk about the fertilizer. Once all that’s set up, you have to monitor your farm every step of the way.
If you adjust this setting a little bit, you’ll profit a lot more quickly from your efforts, and your crops will grow a lot faster, meaning you can collect a lot more berries/vegetables.
Crop Decay Speed Multiplier: Crank It Up.
Just as you can increase the speed that your crops grow, you can also decrease the speed at which they decay. When your crops run out of fertiliser, they can’t grow anymore, and worse than that, they die and disappear.
Sometimes you’re out on an adventure and you haven’t checked your crops in a while, when you get back they’re all dead and gone. Then you have to go get more fertiliser, find more seeds, and start the nightmare over.
That’s why you should increase the decay speed multiplier (higher equals slower decay), so that you won’t have to monitor it as much, and it can produce some nice crops for you while you go exploring.
Of course, if you run out of fertilizer, it won’t be producing any berries or crops, but at least you can rest assured that it won’t just up and die.
Supply Crate Loot Quality Multiplier: 2
Supply Crates can be amazing. A charitable offer of items sent from above to help you in your journey. It can give you better versions of items than you could get on your own. However, it’s barely worth it when set to 1.
The amount of times I’ve gone around collecting all the drops around, only to get useless compass blueprints and GPS’. That’s why I personally like to set it to 2. It makes the hunt for items actually probable, fun, and it won’t be a waste of your time.
I wouldn’t put it much higher than 2 though, or it can be way too broken way too early. It takes the fun out of the game.
DisableWeatherFog: Up To You
I don’t know if it’s just me, but I hate the fog in Ark. It’s like it’s out to get me. I’m just minding my own business, working on something important, and next thing I know… I have to wait for this fog to be over, because I can’t see two feet in front of me. Don’t even get me started on flying through fog.
I personally turn this off every single time. However I understand how it can make the game feel more natural, and present a simple challenge to the game. So this is entirely your call.
Structure Settings
Disable Structure Placement Collision: On
You absolutely must turn this setting on. It saves so much effort and time. Building on Ark can be annoyingly difficult, because the game doesn’t always like to cooperate with your ideas. But by turning on this setting, it makes everything so much easier.
This setting allows you to place structures down, even if it clips to something else. This is useful for a number of reasons. 1: it allows you to be a lot more creative with your builds, by not being restricted, and 2: it allows you to be more strategic. For example, you can stack about 10 beds into one with this setting. That way I can set 10 spawn points while only taking up the space of one bed. I think you’ll enjoy seeing what’s possible when you turn this setting on.
Always Allow Structure Pickup: On
Oh boy, this is heaven sent. Once you turn this setting on, you’ll never go back. Normally once you place a structure/object, you have 30 seconds to pick it up, and then you never get that option again. Instead you’re forced to destroy it, giving you back a fraction of the resources that you spent.
Turning on this setting allows you to place structures down, and then pick them up whenever you want. You wouldn’t think it would make much of a difference, but it’s a game changer.
You end up relying on this setting without even thinking about it countless times. For example, if you move bases, you can take everything with you instead of leaving it there or destroying it. You can also use it to create mobile dinosaur traps to help you tame easier. Just build the trap, tame the dinosaur, and then pick the trap right back up and take it with you.
Allow Platform Saddle Multifloors: On
Certain creatures like Quetzalcoatlus, Plesiosaur, Mosasaurus, etc get something called a Platform Saddle.. This means you can create secondary bases or stations that are mobile.
Unfortunately, Ark doesn’t allow you to build more than one floor on a platform saddle anymore. Until now. When you turn this setting on, you can create a much more impressive, and multi purpose travelling base.
You could build a mobile storage unit, or a giant flying building with turrets ready for war, or an underwater mobile base filled with extra scuba gear and treasure. The possibilities are endless, and with this setting turned on, you simply get more. And who doesn’t want more.
Character Settings
Disable Friendly Fire: Up To You
It’s really nice to know that this option exists. This stops you from being able to damage your allies/friends. Don’t mind the photo above, just me and a friend.
Now I’m a little bit biased, because I love trolling my friends. Sometimes when I’m bored, I’ll just shoot them with a tranq dart, make them fall asleep, and then load them with narcotics (they do not like it haha, be careful if you try this). So personally, I leave this setting off.
However, if you’re running a server and you have a friend like me, who loves trolling people and making things a little bit more difficult, It’s a great idea to consider turning this setting on, disabling that possibility.
Show Creative Mode: Up To You
Creative Mode is a very powerful tool in Ark. It allows you to have unlimited stats, and craft any item without requiring the materials.
Of course, this setting isn’t meant for a survival playthrough, as that would be cheating, and I’m not advising that. However, it’s definitely great to know that this setting exists, depending on how you’re playing the game.
Sometimes you want to build some really cool things in ark, but it would take years to do it in a survival playthrough. You could build a big cool house for your survival playthrough and then turn this setting off. Or you could create a new world and build a giant parkour course for a fun challenge. The possibilities are endless.
So while I don’t recommend using this to cheat, as you’d only be cheating yourself. It’s really good to know that this setting exists for fun.
Note, you will need to have admin permissions in the server in order to enable creative mode. See setting 3.
Chat Settings
Always Notify Player Joined: On
Imagine you’re playing Ark, and you think you’re playing alone, so you just keep to yourself, but 2 hours go by, and you realize that your friend was online the whole time. You could have been talking to them and having a great time.
This would absolutely suck. That’s why this setting should be turned on, you’ll see when they join and get the opportunity to say “Hey. Great to see ya. Let’s build a cool base together.”.
It’s a simple setting, but it can make a huge difference. You can also turn on a notification that tells you when people leave the game.
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