ARK: Survival Ascended

When are server restarts and animal wipes?

Server restarts are every day at 3:00PM UTC. Animal wipes happen on The Island at 11:00AM , 5:00PM , 11:00PM , and 5:00AM UTC. During an animal wipe, all animals that are not in-progress tames are wiped from the map. If you have knocked out an animal or started a passive tame, that animal will not be wiped.

Why does The Island have animal wipes?

Periodic animal wipes are necessary on The Island because of issues caused by 50,50 and overspawns. Without wipes, The Island's caves will accumulate large packs of as many as 30 or 40 animals.

Why don't other maps have animal wipes?

Wiping animals off the map has the unfortunate side effect of leaving the entire map empty for some time. This leaves caves empty, makes finding tames impossible, and will make boss fights and ascensions glitch out. Due to these issues, and because other maps don't have The Island's issues, wipes are only enabled on The Island.

Can we get things from future DLCs?

Things that are coming in future DLCs won't be added before they're released for a few reasons:

• Two different versions of the same animal can't be bred

  For instance, the Ceratosaurus, Xiphactinus, Deinosuchus, and now Archelon were previously mods. As they became part of base game ARK, the modded animals had to be replaced so that they could be bred with the base game ones.

• Adding things early means there's less to come later

  For things that will come later down the road, adding them earlier than they would've come out means there will be less to do when those DLCs come out. If everything from a DLC is added before the DLC comes out, that only leaves the map itself and nothing new to tame or build or use.

• Adding more mods increases the risk of mods causing problems

  We've already seen at least two mods crash servers or clients following an update. That possibility grows as more mods are added. In this type of scenario, depending on the mod and the nature of the issue, this could result in having to destroy structures, remove animals, remove the mod itself, or leave servers offline until a fix comes out. As you can imagine, this can be very disruptive to gameplay. Limiting the number of mods helps to keep the number of problems to a minimum.

Can we get a new map, animal, or something else not from a DLC?

Absolutely! Join our Discord, head over to the #mod-suggestions channel, and share your suggestions. We're always looking for something to do between map releases and as long as it doesn't cause server issues, we're pretty much open to trying anything out. We put new mods on our test servers before moving them into the main cluster or standing up a new map for everyone to play, and you're more than welcome to help us test things.

What mods have been changed from default settings and why?

To balance progression, maintain rewarding gameplay, and make things generally more enjoyable, we've made a few changes to some of the mods we use:

• Crafting Skill Potion

  • The crafting skill potion costs the same as a mindwipe tonic to bring it more in line with what a mindwipe costs, despite only needing one to do crafting.

• Cybers Structures QoL+

  • The CS nanny, mutator, and propagator require level 110, 120, and 130 respectively, to balance their use with the natural progression of ARK.
  • The dino tracker is disabled as pinpointing dinos trivializes the need to go look for tames and makes the game less rewarding.

• Der Dino Finder

  • The dino tracker is admin-only for debugging purposes as pinpointing dinos trivializes the need to go look for tames and makes the game less rewarding.

• Dino Depot

  • Dinoballs, depot terminals, and dinoball storage have been adjusted to match the level required for their base game counterparts, and half the base game material cost as day one dinoballs for new characters, crafted out of a single crystal, trivializes the dangers of ARK and removes progression.
  • Depot terminals do not collect incubated eggs or grow dinos as when used in conjunction with the CS nanny, makes breeding too easy. Instead, the Oviraptor can collect fertilized eggs, the Dino Depot terminal can be used to incubate, the CS nanny can be used to feed babies and imprint, and the mutator can do growth boosts.

• Inventory Backup Saver

  • The ability to restore backups is admin-only due to it being an abuse vector. If you lost something, reach out to an admin and we'll gladly recover it!

• RR-Homedeco and More!

  • Refrigerated containers (RR-MiniBar, RR-Refrigerator, etc) have had their slot counts adjusted to match their crafting cost and refrigeration amount. Some of the mod's refrigeration times are 10x or 100x ARK refrigerators, which is a bit too good for the same cost.
  • Other crafting stations (RR-Microwave, RR-KitchenStove, etc) have had their slot counts adjusted to match their respective ARK equivalents. They shouldn't have hundreds of slots but cost the same as their equivalent ARK structures.

• Shiny! Dinos Ascended

  • Enraged shinies do not unlock tek engrams when killed as tek engrams are a core part of progressing through ARK that we don't want to ruin.
  • Enraged shinies level multiplier and essence reward has been doubled for increased risk and reward while gathering materials to craft shiny prods and spear bolts.
  • Shiny levels and counts have been adjusted to provide fun gameplay without diluting the value of finding shinies on the map.

• Super Spyglass Plus

  • Night vision, predator vision, and outline vision are disabled as they render the natural camouflage of some animals useless and remove the utility of some tames such as the Snow Owl.
  • Supply drop and item cache info is disabled as it encourages players not opening crates and leaving them on the map.