ARK: Survival Evolved

ARK: Survival Evolved

Dragontail
CoyodiSoul Jul 5, 2018 @ 9:07pm
[Guide] How To Adjust Dragon Spawnrates, without DinoTags, using Game.ini entries
The pinned topic did not work for me, and by the look of it, most anyone, which makes sense. I searched for my own solution and eventually found it after several hours of testing... All of these lines will be entered into the Game.ini file.

DinoSpawnWeightMultipliers require a DinoTag to work. The author has not released the DinoNameTags of any of these creatures despite multiple requests. A DinoNameTag is NOT the EntityID, or CharacterBP (e.g. ToxicDragon_Character_BP_C). It is something set within the ADK under the Character's BP in "Dino Name Tag" and "Custom Name Tag", and there is no way to find what it is outside of the ADK (if it even exists) without simple trial and error.

I will describe my reason, methodology and then the code itself for how to adjust the spawnrates of the Dragons in this mod. I have disabled the spawns of all Pygmys and Whelplings, so those codes will not be present in the "Add" lines, but use the same methodology as I will explain for the Dragons to customize them as well.

I made the decision that I wanted to add this mod to my server for my GF, who loves dragons, to give options for an extremely rare (maybe 3 dragons of any variety up at any time) and endgame mount.


The method to adjust spawnrates is as follows:

1. Remove Dragon spawns from all spawn containers they are present in through the use of ConfigSubtractNPCSpawnEntriesContainer entries.
E.g. for the Fire Dragon, you would see that here https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1l05awfNLHc2YFbGM8Ii6waIFLUsqMDpRtEFCxcPiOwk/edit#gid=0 it states they spawn in Monster Island, Mountain, and Dunes SpawnContainers.
Head over to: https://ark.gamepedia.com/Spawn_Entries and find your map (if using a custom map, assume that it uses default SpawnContainers.. otherwise you'll have to look elsewhere for the specific details of that map). In my case, I play on Ragnarok.
Scroll through the list of spawners and find the ones the Fire Dragon spawns in and copy those to a notepad, and append them with a "_C". With those and the EntityID (ToxicDragon_Character_BP_C, etc, found in the Google Docs link) of each Dragon/Pygmy/whatever in this mod, you will have everything you need to fill out a ConfigSubtractNPCSpawnEntriesContainer to remove the spawns.

2. Fill out the ConfigSubtractNPCSpawnEntriesContainer.
This https://ark.gamepedia.com/Server_Configuration#Creature_Spawn_related site has all the nitty-gritty details of how to fill in the details of the entry, and what each part does. The one thing the Wiki doesn't mention is that you can't reference the same SpawnContainerEntry in multiple lines, even if the class referenced is different between each line.. I will likely request this be added to the above page in the future, as that would've save me a lot of time to know. >.<

What that means is that you must specify all creatures being removed from each SpawnContainer in one line. One line per SpawnContainer.

Here, finally, is the first example:
ConfigSubtractNPCSpawnEntriesContainer=(NPCSpawnEntriesContainerClassString="SE_DinoSpawnEntriesDunes_C",NPCSpawnEntries=((NPCsToSpawnStrings=("EarthDragon_Character_BP_C")),(NPCsToSpawnStrings=("FireDragon_Character_BP_C")),(NPCsToSpawnStrings=("IceDragon_Character_BP_C")),(NPCsToSpawnStrings=("ToxicDragon_Character_BP_C")),(NPCsToSpawnStrings=("LightningDragon_Character_BP_C")),(NPCsToSpawnStrings=("WaterDragon_Character_BP_C"))),NPCSpawnLimits=((NPCClassString="EarthDragon_Character_BP_C"),(NPCClassString="FireDragon_Character_BP_C"),(NPCClassString="IceDragon_Character_BP_C"),(NPCClassString="ToxicDragon_Character_BP_C"),(NPCClassString="LightningDragon_Character_BP_C"),(NPCClassString="WaterDragon_Character_BP_C")))

This line will remove all Dragons from the "SE_DinoSpawnEntriesDunes_C" AKA the Dunes. As you can see, Fire Dragon is listed in the NPCClassStrings, and therefore it no longer will spawn in the Dunes.

3. Add as many of these lines as you want to remove Dragons from the each SpawnContainerEntry.
In my case, I removed all Dragons from all spawners on Ragnarok to be safe (62 entries) as once the first one was done (like above), I just had to copy+paste the rest of the entries in, which didn't take terribly long.

4. Re-add spawns.
Now we switch to using ConfigAddNPCSpawnEntriesContainer entries, which are slightly more complicated. Again, https://ark.gamepedia.com/Server_Configuration#Creature_Spawn_related is your friend. We've removed all the spawners, now we must re-add them to new, different spawners. You cannot Subtract them from Dunes, and then re-add them to Dunes, as far as I could tell.

Here is my entry to re-add Fire Dragon spawns to my Ragnarok map, using Wyvern spawners:
ConfigAddNPCSpawnEntriesContainer=(NPCSpawnEntriesContainerClassString="SE_DinoSpawnEntriesWyvern",NPCSpawnEntries=((AnEntryName="FireDragonWyvern",EntryWeight=0.001,NPCsToSpawnStrings=("FireDragon_Character_BP_C"))),NPCSpawnLimits=((NPCClassString="FireDragon_Character_BP_C",MaxPercentageOfDesiredNumToAllow=0.000005)))

"EntryWeight" is how often the dino will be selected to be spawned (a % chance), "MaxPercentageOfDesiredNumToAllow" is what % of the spawner you wish to allow to be that dino. E.g. I added the Fire Dragon to the same entry as Wyverns use. If, say, in that SpawnContainer 20 Wyverns spawned on the map, and I set MaxPercentageOfDesiredNumToAllow=50, then 10 of them COULD be Fire Dragons (with some RNG, of course, and assuming the EntryWeight was set sufficiently high). In my case, I wanted them to be ultra-rare. Be warned, the bigger the spawner you use, the lower the % should be to end up with a reasonable total number of Dragons. Instead of a SpawnContainer size of 20, for example, if it was one that had 10,000 Wyvern spawns in it, then I'd end up with 5,000 Fire Dragons. (Think the ocean, jungles, snow, beach, etc).


Thank you for hanging in there with me. Adjusting the spawnrates of these Dragons is not as easy as it should be, due to the author not releasing DinoNameTags. This isn't a simple or elegant solution, but it does work. It seemed important that I explain the steps behind this method, in order to allow you to better customize your Dragon's spawnrates, rather than just blindly copy+pasting what I use on my server, as it certainly isn't for everyone.

Below is a link to the entirety of the Game.ini code I used to adjust Dragontail's spawnrates for my GF's Ragnarok server. Please feel free to share and use them as examples.

https://pastebin.com/RJcdqnfa
Last edited by CoyodiSoul; Aug 28, 2018 @ 1:11am
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Showing 1-6 of 6 comments
KIWI Aug 28, 2018 @ 2:30am 
thnx for this @CoyodiSoul :steamhappy:
CoyodiSoul Sep 8, 2018 @ 10:44am 
Update: I made a mod which adds in DinoNameTags for the Dragons (and a saddle with a buff attached). Not doing anything too crazy with this helper mod but it hopefully will help fix a couple things:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1495787058
DeadbutDelicious Feb 2, 2019 @ 1:01pm 
I must be missing something, for some reason the code keeps disappearing from my Game.ini file. I shut down the server, open the Game.ini file, paste the lines of code and save the file before closing the window. I then save the server and start it up.

When I close the Game.ini file and reopen it immediately, the text will be there but not after starting the server.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
CoyodiSoul Feb 2, 2019 @ 5:24pm 
That's interesting. That usually only occurs on my server when the server isn't fully shut down prior to the edits being made. Maybe try copying the file from the server (not a bad idea to keep a backup anyway), making the edits and then uploading the entire file back to the server?
DeadbutDelicious Feb 3, 2019 @ 9:19am 
so I think the modder updated the dinoID's in the Google docs btw. The above didn't work, no matter what code I put in there (yours or the origionally suggested code after changing all the dinoIDs) after a save in ASM it's gone.
C:\Users\User\Desktop\Valhalla\ShooterGame\Saved\Config\WindowsServer\Game.ini
This is where I should be placing that code, right? I'm running ASM as admin, it's shut down even closed the window, edit Game.ini, save and close. Open ASM, Save, check Game.ini folder and the new code will be missing.
CoyodiSoul Feb 3, 2019 @ 8:39pm 
Ah yeah if the classnames were updated then you'll have to use those in the entries. As far as ASM goes, I'm not entirely sure as I don't use it.. does it have some sort of built in auto-generate ini feature or something? Or maybe even some tool that adds container entries for you? If so, a feature like that might be editing the ini at server start without you knowing.
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