Looking at the settings before starting a session in ARK: Survival Ascended can feel overwhelming sometimes. What do the words mean? What will happen if I change the game rules drastically? You really just end up going with whatever the game has by default during your first run.
However, curiosity will always have its way. If you’re looking to start a fresh adventure with better settings or make a few changes to your current one then read the guide below. We have all the info you need to make the island more forgiving.
Single Player Settings Guide
Once you go back to the main menu, you’ll be greeted by at least five tabs, each with their own subcategories. The first thing you’ll see will be Arks.
This is where all of your progress gets saved for both Story and Modded playthroughs. Make sure that you have a file selected if you wish to modify one of your runs before moving on to the next tab.
Mod Settings
Select a file or start a new game and you’ll be looking at Mod Settings next. Here you’ll see two more tabs: Active Mods and Available Mods.
Active mods are your mods that are currently loaded into the session you’re playing. Available mods will bring you to a catalogue of mods via the workshop. From there, you’ll see everything that can be added right in.
Some mods may require more time than usual as they still have to be downloaded from the workshop. You can activate or deactivate any installed mods you have anytime while you’re on this page.
Game Rules Player
This section is where the meat of your session will go along with Advanced. Just like the previous settings, subcategories will be present here as well.
Player settings affect you, the player directly. These are the boosts or detriments you can give to yourself depending on how much pain you enjoy taking in.
Hovering over any of the settings here will open up a slider. The default value for all settings here will always be a flat “1.” Move the slider to the right if you want to increase the value of bonus you get. Moving specific settings to the left will make things more difficult for you.
For example, moving damage to the right will increase your damage output. However, if you move stamina, water, or food drain to the right, then you’ll always find yourself hurting for resources.
Game Rules Creature
Up next, we have Creature, this one directly affects the world around you. This is where you try to avoid going crazy with the slider, especially if your PC can barely hold itself together. We’ll go further into detail regarding the settings that sound a bit too vague:
- Max Count – The scaling factor for the creature spawns. A higher value will increase the total number of creatures spawned throughout the ARK.
- Damage – Multiplier for the damage the local fauna will do to you. Values higher than 1 will do more damage.
- Resistance – The overall resistance to damage various creatures receive when attacked. For some reason, higher values decrease resistance. Your damage per attack will increase and turn everyone with a functioning set of limbs into vegetables.
- Food Drain – Will affect the taming of your dinos if you increase or decrease the values. Most of the time it’s best to leave this on 1.
- Harvesting Damage – Creatures will deal more damage to resources if values are increased. Perfect fi you want faster collection.
Stamina Drain and Health Recovery are pretty much self-explanatory for the creatures. Turret Damage will affect how much your turrets can defend themselves against hostile creatures. You would also like to keep Disable Taming and Riding turned off. Otherwise, why even bother with the local fauna?
Game Rules Structure
Moving on to Structure! Here you’ll find values that directly affect the structures you put down. For example, if you set a higher value for Damage then your Spiked Wall will do a better job at defending your base. Don’t set it too high, otherwise you won’t have anything left to do:
- Resistance – Decreases when you increase the overall value. This is rather confusing as you would expect your structures to last longer instead and survive more hits. To simplify things, your structures will get weaker if you increase the value above 1.
- Damage Repair Cooldown – Adjusting this will set the amount of time required before you can repair any damages dealt to your structures. Setting it to zero will disable the feature and let you repair whenever you want.
- Disable Structure Placement Collision – Keep this turned on. It will allow you to place structures wherever you want, however you want. The last thing you want is not being able to close off a gap in your base because you left this off by accident.
Game Rules World
World settings will take a bit of time to explain so buckle up.
- XP Multiplier – The entire scaling factor for total experienced received. This affects you, your tribe, and the creatures around the island. A higher value than 1 will translate to faster levelling. This will also affect other multipliers in the game. So if you want to keep things simple, make changes to this setting only.
- Taming Speed multiplier – Feel free to set this to a value of at least 2 or 3. That will shorten the time it takes for you to tame a creature, perfect for single player runs.
- Harvest Yield Multiplier – Any value above 3 will be considered too overpowered. This increases the amount of resources you get from plants or crops.
- Allow Speed Leveling – Enables the ability to level movement speed in Players and Creatures.
- Allow Flyer Speed Levelling – Enables the ability to level movement speed for flying creatures, only if speed levelling is enables.
- Maximum Difficulty – Forces the max creature level to 150 regardless of the map you’re on.
- Difficulty Level (if not maximum) – Controls the levels of creatures in the world, as well as the quality of loot drops.
The rest of the World settings are easy to get. PVE mode disables PVP, Hardcore mode will make you hate yourself when enabled, and Allow Unlimited Respecs will let you receive the full benefit of a Mindwipe tonic without having to level up in between uses.
Game Rules – Rules
Rules is the last subcategory of the Game Rules tab. These settings are mostly server based and don’t really affect your solo session.
If you’re hosting however, then you would want No Survivor Downloads, No Dino Downloads, No Item Downloads, and No Tribute Downloads turned on.
That way no one will bring their own endgame stuff to the session you recently created. No fun allowed. One more important note, turn on Disable Friendly Fire if you have friends. To make things more, interesting.
Advanced PvE
Most of what’s in here is usually left alone if you’re playing on single player. However, there’s too many tabs to look at so we’ll break down some of the important ones as per use. Here’s what you need to take note of with PVE:
- User Timer – Enables switching from PvE to PbP mode at pre-specified in-game times. Usually set to off.
- Use System Time – Enables switching at real-world (server-side) times. This requires Use Timer to be turned on.
- Prevent Tribe Alliances – Prevents tribes from forming alliances with one another when turned on.
- Allow Tribe War – Enables Tribes in PVE to declare war and fight one another for a specified length of time.
- Disable Gamma – You can have this turned on if you want a fair fight. Having this on will disable local manipulation of gamma settings for PVE. You know, to prevent any unfair advantages during nighttime.
- Cave Building – Enables building in caves when PvE mode is enabled.
- Disable Structure Decay – Leaving this turned off will disable the usual gradual decay of Structures for seven days. You can have it turned on if you don’t want anything outside of your render distance to decay.
- Disable Dino Decay – Same concept with Disable Structure Decay but applies to ownership instead.
- Flyer Carry – Allows fling creatures to pick up other creatures and players only when mounted by a player in PvE. Leaving this turned on is recommended.
- Extra Structure Prevention Volumes – Disables building near resource-rich areas when turned on. You want that oil? Fight for it!
It’s best to leave No Diseases, Non-permanent Diseases, and Allow Cave Flyers turned off for multiplayer.
Advanced PvP
Most of the settings here are for PvP, they revolve around Respawn Timers and general Structure settings. It almost shares some of the settings from Game Rules, the only difference is it affects other players too.
Advanced World
World is a genre of music that’s played anywhere outside of the United States. It’s also where you make changes to the playable area everyone is going to move around in.
The first five settings starting from the left will affect the day and night cycle. Lowering the values will increase the length of the day or evening.
Override Initial Time of Day allows you to well, change the initial time of day when the game starts. You can make further changes to that time with the Initial Time Of Day setting. Here are the other settings you might want to make changes to:
- Spoiling Time – The scaling factor for the spoil timer on all items.
- Item Decomposition Time – Spoiled items shouldn’t stay on your server forever as that eats up resources. This setting changes how long dropped items remain in the world before despawning. The same applies to Corpse Decomposition Time, increase the value for the items to stay longer.
- No Resource Radius (Players)/(Structures) – The scaling factor for how far away from player characters resources will regrow / respawn.
- Harvest Health – Sets the amount of health for items that can be harvested. High values increases the amount of damage objects can withstand before being destroyed. This results in a higher yield of resources harvested.
- Crop Growth / Decay Speed –Sets the speed for how fast crops in crop plots grow or spoil. Higher numbers mean slower crop growth/decay. Optimal settings involve having your Growth set to 10 while leaving Decay on 1.
- Poop Interval – There’s a joke that can easily write itself here somewhere.
- Mating Interval – Default setting is left at 1. Lower the value in order for creatures around the island to mate more often.
- Lay Egg Interval – Applies to Creatures that spawn eggs. Setting the value higher means less time for eggs to spawn in.
- Egg Hatch Speed – The scaling factor for eggs hatching after they spawn in. Higher numbers equate to faster hatching.
All of the settings on the far right will affect Creatures that recently spawned into the world, also known as babies.
You have settings like Baby Mature Speed to change the time it takes for babies to grow up. Cuddle Intervals should be set lower if you want to cuddle with babies less frequently for Imprints.
Advanced Wild Dino / Tamed Dino
Almost all of the settings here should remain on their default values. These settings affect both stats for Wild and Tamed Dinos, you can also adjust the stat bonuses they get every time they level up.
If you’re going to make changes, then don’t put the slider too high to prevent the game from becoming broken.
Advanced Player / XP Multipliers
Affects the amount of stats you get per point invested. Any value higher than 1 is generally good, make the value lower and progressing will turn into a slog. The same principle applies to your XP Multipliers tab since these are all just boosts.
Advanced Misc
The last settings group, props if you made it this far! Fishing Loot Quality is usually set to a maximum of 5 most of the time. You only get the loot if you fish for it of course, something not a lot of players do so it’s still balanced in a sense. Here are the other settings:
- Fuel Consumption Interval – Decreasing the value of Fuel Consumption will have your crafting equipment use less fuel. Increasing the value will have them use more fuel than usual.
- Platform Structure Limit – Increases the limit of Structures that can be placed on a platform. It’s better to have this set to max to avoid any unwanted accidents while building.
- Show Floating Damage Text – Turns the game into an MMORPG where you see numbers pop up whenever you deal any form of damage.
It’s best to keep settings like Supply Crate Loot Quality and Crafting Skill Bonus set to 1. That way you can progress through game at a somewhat normal pace. Every setting on the left is best left alone, especially photo mode. Because sometimes you need to take photos around the island for fun.
That’s what all of single player settings can do in ARK: Survival Ascended. Hopefully, this manual will manage to help you make a better world on your next playthrough!
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