worth a try?

[Terente22CmRecords]

i never playd this game, and il go to my parents in law for 2 weeks, how is the game worth a try? it feets under the system of the laptop il take with me 12 gb ram amd ryzen 5 5500u and 2 gb vram, and i keep seein people having pictures with some kind of pets, can you tame mobs or anything build a base? what is the game about at all?

[**Tingull**]

Best go to YouTube plenty of videos there showing what the game is about.

[Rich]

Yeah it's worth playing, but you'll need a much more powerful pc than that.

[🦊 Hermit]

Ark is a sci-fi survival game. You wake up on the beach of a jungle island with nothing, and no idea how you got there. You have to survive, explore, and learn why you are there and how to escape. But the island is teeming with dangerous dinosaurs that want you dead, and has strange technological artifacts like giant artificial towers floating over the landscape.

You can tame almost any of the creatures in the game, and use them to aid your survival. Some can carry lots of items for you or let you travel long distances quickly, others can fight to defend you, still others will gather resources far faster than you could on your own. Tame everything you can, learn about their strengths and weaknesses, and work your way up the ladder to the most powerful creatures.

There are notes dotted around the landscape that you will come across on your travels - diaries left behind by other survivors who have gone before. They made discoveries about the world you are in which give you pieces of the puzzle as to where you are, and what you are doing here. Find as many as you can, and figure out the lore. Things are not quite what they seem, and it may be that a lot more is at stake than you first realised when you woke up on that beach fighting for your survival.

Each map has a final boss to beat, after which you move on to the next map in the story. The progression starts on The Island map, then goes to Scorched Earth, Aberration, Extinction, and finally Genesis 1 and 2. Each map introduces new characters to the lore, reveals a little more about the world and it's background, and adds new challenges for you to face and overcome. And in addition to all that story content, there are a number of free DLC maps which were formerly mods but the devs added them to the game - they are not part of the canon story, but they do offer new gameplay aspects and new worlds to explore.

When the game works well, it's exceptional. However you should be aware that it is extremely buggy and glitchy, so can often have many issues. I would recommend keeping frequent manual backups of your saves, so if something goes wrong you can restore from one of those and not lose too much progress.

Also, Ark is a very demanding game, and requires quite a powerful computer to run. I'm no expert in PC hardware, but I don't think there are many laptops which would be able to play it smoothly, so I would strongly recommend you check the game's minimum specs against the capabilities of your machine to make certain it will function properly. Don't want to spend money on the game only to find that your system cannot run it.

If you want more advice on whether you will be able to play it or not, in your Steam browser, click Help at the top, then select System Information. Copy everything which appears in that box and paste it here in this thread. That will let people know the full specs of your computer, and they will be able to tell you for certain whether it will be able to run the game or not.

[william_es]

As hermit said above, a major focus of the game is taming creatures.

Many of the creatures in the game have special abilities or bonuses to certain tasks. Some creatures get a huge bonus to gathering certain resources and those resources weigh less in their inventory. Some have special attacks or other special abilities. Parasaurs have a threat radar that shows dangers in the area. Otters when worn around your neck act as a personal heating/cooling system, kind of like a sports towel. Seagulls when tamed can act like hunting falcons: they snatch up fish out of the water or small creatures, fly back, and drop them right at your feet.

You collect all these creatures and then figure out the best way to use them. They become like tools in a toolbox. Generally if there's a problem in ark, there's a creature (or set of creatures) that makes the problem trivial.

[SuperBigRobot2015]

you should try ark if you want to play like 300 hours to beat it or get far and its fun but you die a lot

[-Artemis-]

100% worth a try... the bugs and issues are annoying but stick with it until you are setup and getting boss ready... you will see many cool things.

Your machine might struggle though, that might cause you more issues than normal.

[Rich]

Originally posted by 🦊 Hermit:

Ark is a very demanding game, and requires quite a powerful computer to run. I'm no expert in PC hardware, but I don't think there are many laptops which would be able to play it smoothly

This cannot be stressed enough. I'm on a high-end stationary pc, and I even have troubles running ARK at times, at custom settings (mostly ultra but some reduced shadows and AA, 1440p..)

Originally posted by 🦊 Hermit:

I would strongly recommend you check the game's minimum specs against the capabilities of your machine to make certain it will function properly. Don't want to spend money on the game only to find that your system cannot run it.

Well here I disagree though. The minimum specs are wishful thinking at best, absolute delusions more likely.

"OS *: Windows 7/8.1/10 (64-bit versions)
Processor: Intel Core i5-2400/AMD FX-8320 or better
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: NVIDIA GTX 670 2GB/AMD Radeon HD 7870 2GB or better
DirectX: Version 10
Storage: 60 GB available space
Additional Notes: Requires broadband internet connection for multiplayer"


Yeah, there is no way a 670 can run this lmao. Most likely it wont even boot, but if it did, you're looking at single digit fps at an absolute garbage resolution.

Additionally, 60GB isnt even near enough storage space. My installation is on a dedicated 500GB SSD and it is now full (granted, i've installed the expansions but no mods, nothing outside the game and all official maps..) this is also the reason why we get 999 threads every day with people being shocked about the install size. If the store page showed accurate information (and there was a pinned thread on this topic..) this wouldn't be asked 6 gorlijon times per day.


A rule of thumb these days tbh is to look at "recommended" specs as minimum specs tbh. Most games these days are so terribly unoptimized anyway. Then, people who test it and upload videos to youtube etc, are just starting the game and running around in a mostly empty world. Sure, it gives you an idea (if it's already lagging here, just give up...) but ARK is a long game.. I've got 2k+ hours and i've not completed it yet. Late game you will have massive bases, a lot of tames, multiple people running around, more particle effects and lighting etc.. ==== Game will be much more demanding at a couple of hundred hours in than it is when you first start it up and there's nothing there yet.

[=UwG=fredthebadger]

In terms of specs, a 1050 TI and 16gb ram was just enough to play on mostly Very Low graphics, with fps dropping to ~14ish in a big base with 6+ moving/fighting dinos. I wouldn't suggest playing on a machine with a graphics card older than the 20xx Nvidia ones, and especially not on just 8gb ram.

Also, for anyone thinking of buying this version specifically, there are no longer any official servers for [Moneymaking BS] reasons related to Ark 1.5, where they killed this version's official servers so they could host the HD remake's servers on the hardware, requiring anyone who wanted to remain on official servers for any reason to buy the new version and the new version's DLCs.

[KOOLLAYDTAC]

Yes I think it's worth a try mate. And for the record on the note or system requirements for all. I played single player on this version of Ark for many years on a rig with 8 gigs or ram and 1 gig of vram so their specs should handle it just fine. If they set the game settings up properly they should have no problems running ASE mates.

[Dragon]

Originally posted by =UwG=fredthebadger:

In terms of specs, a 1050 TI and 16gb ram was just enough to play on mostly Very Low graphics, with fps dropping to ~14ish in a big base with 6+ moving/fighting dinos. I wouldn't suggest playing on a machine with a graphics card older than the 20xx Nvidia ones, and especially not on just 8gb ram.

Also, for anyone thinking of buying this version specifically, there are no longer any official servers for [Moneymaking BS] reasons related to Ark 1.5, where they killed this version's official servers so they could host the HD remake's servers on the hardware, requiring anyone who wanted to remain on official servers for any reason to buy the new version and the new version's DLCs.

I also play on a 1050ti and 16GB RAM, and a 4770K CPU. The game runs great on medium-high settings, playing offline solo.

Your PC seems bloated, tanking your average performance. Or do you have an older CPU perhaps?

[🦊 Hermit]

GeForce GTX970 can handle the game on decent settings (med-high) while simultaneously running a dedicated server in the background on the same machine. I speak from experience of hosting games for friends over many years, plus running my own single player games on a dedicated to avoid the many bugs with single player mode.

However a few steps down from the 970 and you would start to struggle I'd guess. I'm no hardware expert, but I do recognise that Ark is a very demanding game, and my card is very old now.

[Rich]

Originally posted by 🦊 Hermit:

GeForce GTX970 can handle the game on decent settings (med-high) while simultaneously running a dedicated server in the background on the same machine. I speak from experience of hosting games for friends over many years, plus running my own single player games on a dedicated to avoid the many bugs with single player mode.

However a few steps down from the 970 and you would start to struggle I'd guess. I'm no hardware expert, but I do recognise that Ark is a very demanding game, and my card is very old now.

My old rig (pre 2021) had a gtx 980, it definitely had troubles running ARK at times, especially Aberration was an absolute lag-fest, and that was only at 1080p display.

[=UwG=fredthebadger]

Originally posted by Dragon:

Originally posted by =UwG=fredthebadger:

In terms of specs, a 1050 TI and 16gb ram was just enough to play on mostly Very Low graphics, with fps dropping to ~14ish in a big base with 6+ moving/fighting dinos. I wouldn't suggest playing on a machine with a graphics card older than the 20xx Nvidia ones, and especially not on just 8gb ram.

Also, for anyone thinking of buying this version specifically, there are no longer any official servers for [Moneymaking BS] reasons related to Ark 1.5, where they killed this version's official servers so they could host the HD remake's servers on the hardware, requiring anyone who wanted to remain on official servers for any reason to buy the new version and the new version's DLCs.

I also play on a 1050ti and 16GB RAM, and a 4770K CPU. The game runs great on medium-high settings, playing offline solo.

Your PC seems bloated, tanking your average performance. Or do you have an older CPU perhaps?

It was new back before Ark had DLC. It's also plausible and even likely that your computer runs fine specifically because you're doing offline solo, I never did anything solo when I played, almost all 600+ hours I spent were on official PVP servers, and the most obvious stutters were encountering groups of other players.
Mine's also a laptop, so It's got the various laptop compromises and cooling issues, but that mattered more for long play sessions than outright performance.

Some of the settings could likely have been higher without significant FPS impact, and turning draw distance down would have helped, but it wasn't a good idea to have low draw distance in PVP and wasn't worth my time to fiddle with incremental graphics improvements to figure out which ones didn't tank my fps.

I suppose it's also possible the devs did some optimization improvements since I last played in 2017. I wouldn't bet on it, considering the history of adding new stuff that needs its own optimizing rather than working on the old stuff, but it's been seven years so they might have done something.

[𝓝𝓪𝓬𝓱𝓸𝓫𝓸𝓲]

Originally posted by Rich:

Originally posted by 🦊 Hermit:

GeForce GTX970 can handle the game on decent settings (med-high) while simultaneously running a dedicated server in the background on the same machine. I speak from experience of hosting games for friends over many years, plus running my own single player games on a dedicated to avoid the many bugs with single player mode.

However a few steps down from the 970 and you would start to struggle I'd guess. I'm no hardware expert, but I do recognise that Ark is a very demanding game, and my card is very old now.

My old rig (pre 2021) had a gtx 980, it definitely had troubles running ARK at times, especially Aberration was an absolute lag-fest, and that was only at 1080p display.

Not to mention if the 970 is MSI, you only have 3.5GB of VRam which heavily limits the graphics settings. Maxing out on VRam just makes the game completely unplayable lol.

My original 970 only performed... fine... on medium after WildCard updated the mesh a very long time ago. Overclocking helped, but it was maybe 25-35 FPS at most in areas on Island and Rag without too much visual traffic. I upgraded and got the DLC when Extinction released, so thankfully i didnt get to experience the horror that was Ab lag.