r/playark

I beat Palworld recently and it kind of put me in the mood to play Ark again, but probably solo this time as I would like to actually hang on to my save file across time. The biggest issue I've had with Ark in the past is that me and some buddies start it on a dedicated server and play for some time, but we lose interest fast and then that effort all feels wasted. I would kind of like to have something I can start and stop as I need to and hopefully hold on to my save file and work on it as needed.

I only have ASE, never bothered to get ASA, but I could be convinced to try that if people think the solo experience is exceptionally better. However, I only have DLC for ASE. I never got around to playing genesis so I kind of would like to do that content for once.

I think the biggest concern I have is how I would fit mods into the playthrough. From personal experience, Ark almost requires mods to have a good time. I think the biggest ones are structures plus and stuff that automated breeding, since the breeding in this game is a god awful experience. Do I still need these types of mods to enjoy Ark single player, or does single player do special stuff that makes it easier? The other concern I would have too is that too many mods and it could break my save file, or make it difficult to uninstall the game and come back to it later. Although, it seems like the consensus nowadays is to play on the pre-aquatica patch and stick to that, so maybe that makes things better.

Last, are there any recommended rates to use? Like a blanket x5 or whatever?

So I 'ACCIDENTALLY' bred 1300+ snails to produce organic polymer. M on SP with S+, Dino Storage Mods. So i stuck them all into 5 terminals and they are producing organic polymer passively. I occasionally cook 100s of veggie cakes and throw them away so i have a sense of them using resources. My issue is, these damn snails also produce achatina paste. M hitting about 130k-150k paste per hour. I filled an entire vault in less than 1 day of play. I also use ultra stacks and they stack 10k per slot yet the vault is full. I found out that the S+ grinder grinds them into chitin and stone. I throw away the chitin since I have a vault full of it from the cave runs. But I need flint constantly to make gunpowder. I usually run out of stone and flint fast. So I decided to turn that stone into flint in the grinder. I currently have over 2million stone and it only grinds 1000 per session. I changed the config file to speed up the grinder speed and set it to max (100). Still, the speed was never the issue tbh. It's the queue limit that is the issue. Only 1000 queue will take me 2000 manual queues to get that 2million stone down to flint. Is there anyway I can queue much more? Idc about speed tbh. It can run for a week and I'm fine. I just dont wanna sit at the base grinding stones every single day.

I’m lvl 53 and tbh I’m still looking for a place to settle I have two spinos n a bronco n a raptor but that’s about it, I don’t know where to go, I want open land near resources where should I go ?

I play single player and haven’t downloaded ASA yet but the DLC stuff looks fun however I don’t want to have to pay £20 just for some new stuff on a game I haven’t even downloaded yet, is there any way to spawn this stuff in with commands or anything like that?

[supprimé]

It’s like wild card doesn’t give a flying f*ck about the game anymore. I have this annoying issue where for some reason a broodmother lystrix will just spawn out of nowhere at the green obelisk, as well as dinosaurs just spawning in the sky and walking around in the sky and I can’t use destroymytarget or get them down because they have no hitbox and are like ghosts.

I js started a single player ase game and most dinosaurs are between 1-50 I have seen that people put there game difficulty at 5 to get lvl 150s is that cheating I feel like it is I js wanted to get a opinion

Just dicovered that this option exists in ASE, I've never seen anyone play it or even mention it.

I mean, I played some procedural games like No Mans Sky etc, and their worlds look nowhere as beautiful as hand crafted worlds like Valguero or Ragnarok.

I'm almost afraid to ask but I would like to know. Is this even playable?

I'm playing Ark Ascended on a friend's server. Whenever I plant a seed and fertilize it, I see it sprout but that's it. It's irrigated and tilled. I logged out last night and got back on today and there's nothing growing, no plant, nothing in the crops inventory, nothing whatsoever. What's the deal?

My girlfriend and I have been playing ASE together for the last week on Xbox series X on a non dedicated server. However suddenly it has completely stopped working overnight. No idea why. Whenever she tries to join her game gets stuck on "PrimalGameData BP" and won't load. We live together so we're on the same network, just separate xbox consoles. We've tried unplugging and restarting our router, our Xboxes, clearing local data caches for the game and "resyncing" game data, disconnecting our consoles from the network and reconnecting. Nothing works. We even verified that our game versions are the same. We've been playing just fine for days and now it just died all of a sudden. We even tried searching for the server in the "join" tab but the server doesn't even show up. I've been hosting, but we even tried to host on her console instead and it was exactly the same. Either one of us can host and load into a non dedicated just fine but neither of us can connect to and join to each other's server. Don't know what to do. Please help.

When I first started running multiple ASA servers, most of my focus was on keeping everything online.

Eventually I realized the more important question was:

What happens when something goes wrong and I’m not there?

A crash is annoying.

A bad update is worse.

A corrupted save or power outage can turn into a much bigger problem if you don’t already have a recovery plan.

For newer server owners, I think one of the best things you can do early is make sure you have:

Automatic backups you’ve actually tested restoring

A way to know when a server crashes

Graceful shutdown/restart automation

Player warnings before maintenance

A fallback plan when an update breaks something

Some way to recover without needing to be sitting at the machine

You don’t need a giant enterprise setup. Even just having a tested backup and knowing exactly how you’ll recover can save a lot of stress later.

Full disclosure: I’m the developer behind Cousin Server Manager. A lot of the recovery/automation features in it came from problems I ran into while managing my own ASA cluster. There’s a free core edition, but I’m mainly interested in how other admins approach this.

What’s the failure scenario you’re most prepared for — and what’s the one you’re still hoping never happens? 😅

Im playing on my server on astreous, I got to level 55 and I cant level any more! Anyone know what's causing this? Ive spent hours trying to fix in my game.ini, settings, files, everything. Thanks.