ARK Survival Ascended settings generator

Pick your rates, tame limits and breeding speeds, or start from the casual or boosted presets, and copy two ready blocks: one for GameUserSettings.ini and one for Game.ini. Paste your current files first and we change only those keys under the right header, because ARK silently ignores a setting in the wrong file, and breeding keys only work in Game.ini.

GameUserSettings.ini: rates and rules

Game.ini: breeding and crops

Pick a preset or change a value to see what to write.

Stop the server first: ARK writes its settings back to GameUserSettings.ini when it shuts down, so edits made while it runs are lost. Both files are in ShooterGame/Saved/Config/WindowsServer/, even on Linux. Anything on the start line beats the file. On a GamezServers server, XP, taming, harvest, wild dino level and PvE are panel settings on the start line, so set those in Settings and use the files for the rest.

How it works

Rates, tame limits and quality of life switches go under [ServerSettings] in GameUserSettings.ini. Breeding, imprinting and crop speeds go under [/script/shootergame.shootergamemode] in Game.ini.

Empty fields leave your file as it is. Pasted files keep every other line, and a missing section is added for you.

The presets are the casual and boosted rates from our best ARK settings guide. Official rates are 1 for every multiplier.

Example

The casual tribe preset writes TamingSpeedMultiplier=3.0, XPMultiplier=2.0 and HarvestAmountMultiplier=2.0 under [ServerSettings], and MatingIntervalMultiplier=0.1, EggHatchSpeedMultiplier=10.0 and BabyMatureSpeedMultiplier=10.0 under [/script/shootergame.shootergamemode] in Game.ini.

Questions

Why do my ARK settings reset?

You edited the files while the server ran. ARK writes its settings back to GameUserSettings.ini when it shuts down. Stop the server, edit, then start it.

Why do my breeding settings do nothing?

Breeding keys only work in Game.ini, under [/script/shootergame.shootergamemode]. In GameUserSettings.ini they are ignored.

Where are the ARK config files?

ShooterGame/Saved/Config/WindowsServer/, even on Linux, because Survival Ascended only has a Windows server build.

What do wild dino levels mean in the ini?

DifficultyOffset 1.0 with OverrideOfficialDifficulty 5.0 spawns wild dinos up to level 150, like official servers. 10.0 gives level 300.

Skip the setup

A server of ours comes online in about a minute with its ports open, its own address and backups.

Pick a game