How to play with friend?

[M/-\T#EO]

Hello, do you know how to play with a friend on a private world? I would be grateful for help

[Jhin]

You have to go host and play and start non detection server, also make sure to put "The tether distance" or something like host distance setting to 999999 so your friend can walk far away without glitching

[🦊 Hermit]

There are three ways.

The first is mentioned above - one of you go to 'Host/Local' and open up a non-dedicated session which your other friends can then join. This is not the ideal way, because this mode is subject to the tether which Jhin mentioned, which forces all players to stay close together and teleports other players to the host when the host enters a new area, such as a cave or the ocean. And also this mode is plagued with a number of bugs like caves being empty of creature spawns and rare creatures like gigas almost never spawning in. However if you have no other option, this can work for your game.

The second is to rent a server from a hosting company. This is much more stable than the above option, but it does cost money to keep the server running, so you would have to see if you would be prepared to pay it. Also, with many players moving on to Ark Ascended, I don't know how many companies still offer servers for Ark Evolved now.

The third, and by far the most preferred option if you are able to do it, is to host a local dedicated server on your own hardware. This way you do not have to pay a hosting company any money, and you have complete control over all the server settings etc. Plus because it is a dedicated rather than non-ded, it doesn't have the tether and glitch issues mentioned in the first option. This could be hosted on a separate machine, or if your computer has at least 16GB RAM you could even play it on the same machine that you are playing on with your client.

It's up to you which of the options would best suit your situation.