Create your first ARK: Survival Evolved server

Once your rig is connected, you can host ARK: Survival Evolved on it. This page covers installing ASE, setting it up, and getting your friends joined, which takes one extra step in Steam. For the newer ARK, see Create your first ARK: Survival Ascended server.

In the dashboard, a server is your ASE install, and a map is one world running on it, such as The Island or Fjordur. A server can run several maps at the same time.

Step 1: Install ASE

1. Open your rig in the dashboard and click Add server.
2. Pick ARK: Survival Evolved from the Game list.
3. Click Create server to begin the install.

ASE takes about 20 GB, half the size of ASA, but it’s still a long download on most home connections. The dashboard shows how far along it is, and the install keeps going if you close the tab.

Step 2: Run the setup wizard

Click Set up my first map. You can do this while the install is still running. Configure manually skips the wizard and opens the full settings instead.

The wizard has thirteen questions, written in terms of how the game plays rather than in multipliers.

The first group is about your players:

• Whether you’re playing PvE or PvP, and about how many people play at once.
• Where your friends bought ARK. Choose Steam + Epic if anyone plays the free Epic Games version, and Steam only otherwise.
• Whether the server needs a join password.
• A follow-up that depends on your PvE or PvP answer. PvE servers choose whether abandoned bases and tames decay. PvP servers choose whether bases are safe while their owners are offline.

The rest set the pace of the game: taming, gathering, leveling, the range of wild dino levels, and how long babies take to raise. Another turns the standard quality-of-life settings on or off.

Two safety questions close the wizard. One sets how often your world is backed up, every 6 hours unless you change it. The other schedules a regular restart, daily at 4:00 AM by default, and players online get a warning 10, 5, and 1 minute before.

A single answer can change several settings. Your raising answer adjusts hatch speed, mature speed, mating interval, and cuddle interval as one group. Keeping those four in step is what lets imprinting work at any raising speed.

Step 3: Choose maps and a name

The map step comes next. The Island sits at the top, marked as recommended, and you can add any of the others:

• The Island
• Scorched Earth
• Aberration
• The Center
• Ragnarok
• Valguero
• Genesis: Part 1
• Crystal Isles
• Genesis: Part 2
• Lost Island
• Fjordur

Choosing two or more maps turns them into a cluster, which lets players and dinos move between them. Each map gets its own ports without you setting anything.

Then enter the server name your friends will look for. Clustered maps add their map name after a dash, so “Dino Camp” on The Island shows as “Dino Camp - The Island”.

Review my choices lists every setting the wizard is about to apply. Click Create my server to finish.

Step 4: Adjust settings and add mods

Every wizard answer stays editable in the map’s settings. To change a group of values at once, use a preset.

There are five rate presets: Official (1×), Small Tribes (2.5×), ARKpocalypse (3×), Boosted, and Fast (5×). The first three copy the rates of the official server types with those names. Breeding presets are Official (1×), Fast (10×), and Ultra (50×).

ASE mods come from the Steam Workshop. Copy a mod’s ID from its Workshop page and paste it into the mods section of the dashboard. The map downloads new mods, and updates to existing ones, the next time it starts, so restart it after a change.

Community-made mod maps don’t work on ASE yet. Stick to the maps in the list above.

For in-game events, use the Seasonal Event setting. It includes Winter Wonderland, Fear Evolved, and Love Evolved. Switch it back to None afterward.

Step 5: Start the map

Click Start on the map. The first boot takes several minutes, and starts after that are faster. The dashboard marks the map as online when it’s ready.

Wildcard no longer updates ASE, so new game versions are rare. If one does come out, click Update game, or Update & restart while a map is running.

Step 6: Add the server in Steam

ASE has no way to type a server address inside the game. Your friends add it to their Steam favorites once, and after that it appears in ARK’s server list. The address is on the map’s card in your dashboard, under Add in Steam by IP.

Send your friends the address and these steps:

1. In Steam, click View, then Game Servers.
2. Open the Favorites tab and click Add a server.
3. Paste the address and add it.

Then they launch ARK, find your server in the list, and join. If you set a join password, they enter it there.

If a friend can’t find the server, check that they’ve added it in Steam first. Until they do, a running server doesn’t show up for them.

Adding more maps later

To add a map to an existing server, click Add a map. The new map has its own settings.

Maps that share a Cluster ID are linked, so players can move between them. Set it when you add the map. Any Cluster ID you’ve used before shows up as a button.