ARK Settings Sliders Guide

Are you confused by those somewhat vague settings sliders when making your local game? If so, then please read this guide.

This guide is now obsolete.[/b]

Beginning ARK: Survival Evolved

You will notice the presence of sliders specifying server settings or local game settings. Some affect your PC (player character) while others affect creatures on the island or other mechanics. Certain names are a bit too vague and make little sense. This guide is here to clear that up with my own testing.

I will describe "lower" with moving the slider point to the lefthand side of the bar and "higher" with moving the slider point to the righthand side of the bar. My personal thoughts are that we should perhaps have tooltips to appear under these slider names when hovering your mouse cursor over them for more clear indications of meaning.

Max Structures In Range

The lower this value, the less natural structures will be around the player.
The higher this value, the more natural structures will be around the player.

Day Cycle Speed

The lower this value is, the slower time will move.
The higher this value is, the faster time will move.

Note: Setting it to 0.0 will effectively stop time. Give it a try and become a timelord!

Day Time Speed

The lower this value is, the slower daytime will progress.
The higher this value is, the faster daytime will progress.

Night Time Speed

The lower this value is, the slower nighttime will progress.
The higher this value is, the faster nighttime will progress.

Dino Damage

The lower this value is, the less damage wild and tame creatures will do to other creatures including players.
The higher this value is, the more damage wild and tame creatures will do to other creatures including players.

Player Damage

The lower this value is, the less damage players will do to other creatures including players.
The higher this value is, the more damage players will do to other creatures including players.

Structure Damage

(to be edited)

Player Resistance

The lower this value is, the less health the player loses when damaged.
The higher this value is, the more health the player loses when damaged.

Dino Resistance

The lower this value is, the less health wild or tamed creatures lose when damaged.
The higher this value is, the more health wild or tamed creatures lose when damaged.

Structure Resistance

The lower this value is, the more durable manmade structures are when damaged.
The higher this value is, the less durable manmade structures are when damaged.

Note: This seems strange to me considering how you'd think a higher resistance would lead to higher durability.

XP Multiplier

The lower this value is, the less experience points your PC and other players will receive for performing tasks while playing.
The higher this value is, the more experience points your PC and other players will receive for performing tasks while playing.

Note: Setting it to 3.0 effectively triples your experience points received. I did this until I reached level 10.

Taming Speed

The lower this value is, the slower your taming process will progress.
The higher this value is, the faster your taming process will progress.

Harvest Amount

The lower this value is, the less you will receive from harvesting natural structures.
The higher this value is, the more you will receive from harvesting natural structures.

Note: Setting it to 3.0 effectively triples your harvest. For instance, picking up one rock on a beach will give you three.

Player Character Water Drain

The lower this value, the slower the PC's thirst will develop.
The higher this value, the faster the PC will thirst.

Player Character Food Drain

The lower this value, the slower your PC will hunger.
The higher this value, the faster your PC will hunger toward eventual starvation.

Dino Character Food Drain

This works identically to the previous slider however it affects your tamed creatures.
Since tamed creatures don't drink, they do not have a water drain meter to adjust.

Player Character Stamina Drain

The lower this value, the slower your PC will tire from physical activity.
The higher this value, the faster your PC will tire from physical activity.

Dino Character Stamina Drain

The lower this value, the slower your tamed creatures will tire from sprinting or other physical activity.
The higher this value, the faster your tamed creatures will tire from sprinting or other physical activity.

Player Health Recovery

The lower this value, the slower your PC will heal.
The higher this value, the faster your PC will heal.

Dino Health Recovery

The lower this value, the slower your tamed creatures will heal.
The higher this value, the faster your tamed creatures will heal.

Harvest Health

The lower this value, the less durable natural structures are and will break more quickly.
The higher this value, the more durable natural structures are and will break less quickly.

Note: Setting it to 0.0 will effectively make natural structures unbreakable.

PvE Structure Decay Period

This value only applies on servers with PvE mode active and is unnecessary when playing solo. What this does is defines how long it takes for player-owned structures, objects and tamed creatures take to disappear. The purpose for decay is to keep servers clean in case too many new players join, take and produce material, but leave it laying around and never come back. Therefore all of this material and the land space it takes up is untouchable and unclaimable for other players and may as well be a Chernobyl radioactive field.

Resources Respawn Period

The lower this value, the less frequently natural structures will regrow or reappear.
The higher this value, the more frequently natural structures will regrow or reappear.

Note: On the ARK, natural structures will respawn naturally and certain ones should do so quicker with fertilizer. This acts as a multiplier.

Personal Preferences

[Sordros]

which direction on the slider do i go for slower fuel consumption n the newer version of ark for single/co-op play

[toby353535]

I found on my pc version left is lower right is higher

[Makeithappen]

Has anyone made and updated version of this guide in 2020?

[Ness]

It says this guide is obsolete... Is there a newer one somewhere??

[DesolatePsyche]

@Aoi Blue
yeah, quite some settings work reverse. Also would nice to know how much these "scaling" multipliers and % actually affect the setting.

[Aoi Blue]

The tooltips aren't always clear about which direction is which or rate of change.

Updating it to include that information would be useful.

As a note, if you don't know exactly what a toggle or slider does, you may be able to find it in the config files or online.

[Tyranocif]

Announcement
This guide is now obselete since these settings now have tooltips. Thank you for using it!

[๑]

Awesome.

[joemow_1]

Thanks

[Aoi Blue]

To reduce hardware requirements I highly recommend reducing vertical resolution to 720 (horizontal based on your monitor size.)

For the time being you may have to also turn down anti-aliasing to minimum.

Also, cutting view distance, and adjusting world tile bufferf to your memory size can drastically improve performance.

These three settings reduce impact more than anything else.

Other quality settings should be set to medium for now until the final release with the optimized shaders.