What is Ark: Survival Evolved?

Ark has sold over 40 million copies since its release in 2017, making it one of the most popular survival games of all time. There are two Ark games: Ark: Survival Evolved and Ark: Survival Ascended, the latter being a remake of the original. Ark is best known for its dinosaurs; in the game you tame them and use them for transportation, resource gathering and combat.

The Ark storyline can be quite a confusing one. With many expansions and DLCs added over the years, it has gone from a simple survival game with dinosaurs to a sci-fi space exploration game with advanced bionic animals. The basic premise is that a strange substance contacts an earth-like planet, and humanity names this substance 'Element'. Element has many wonder properties that humanity plans to take advantage of, however lasting exposure to it causes the planet to become unlivable. Arks are then created to help humans survive and purge Element from their planet, with each Ark essentially being a giant biome. A ship is also sent into space to look for other planets to transform, in the event that Earth is unsaveable.

Multiplayer

Ark: Survival Servers are hugely customizable, we don't place any restrictions on what you can change. Tweak your XP rate, taming speed, harvest amount, breeding/maturation speed, and more. Decide whether your server runs a combat focused PvP server, or a peaceful building focused PvE server. On top of that, you get DDoS protection, a server that runs 24/7 so your friends can jump on whenever they want, and a backup manager that keeps your server files safe and secure.

Ark: Survival Evolved has a massive modding community with thousands of mods to choose from,including: Structures Plus (S+), Awesome Spyglass, Dino Storage, Automated Ark etc. We make adding them easy, just paste the mod ID from the Steam Workshop into our game panel, restart your server, and the mod installs automatically.

Ark: Survival Evolved Creatures

There are over 700 different creatures in Ark: Survival Evolved, spanning roughly 244 species and hundreds of variants. Before the many DLCs and expansions, the original appeal of the game was a survival game with dinosaurs. You are stranded on a deserted island and have to survive against dinosaurs while advancing through technological stages of history. The creatures in the original game were mostly dinosaurs, such as T-Rexes, Raptors, Triceratops, Pteranodons in the sky, and Megalodons in the water. Many creatures were added in the first updates, including the Ankylosaurus for metal harvesting, the Giganotosaurus as the apex land predator, and Woolly Mammoths in the snow biome. The Scorched Earth DLC is when the game started to expand past animals that were once found in the wild, to fictional and mythological creatures. Some of the new additions included the Mantis, Wyverns in fire, lightning, and poison variants, Rock Elementals, and the Manticore boss. Later expansions pushed even further, with Aberration introducing alien-like underground creatures such as the Rock Drake and the Xenomorph-inspired Reaper, Extinction bringing corrupted creatures and colossal Titans, and the Genesis expansions adding mind-controlling Noglins, teleporting Shadowmanes, and a rideable space whale called the Astrocetus.

Ark: Survival Evolved DLC's

DLC stands for 'Downloadable Content', and the term is used interchangeably with expansion. In essence, DLCs are expansion packs that add new content, including maps, creatures and storylines. The base Ark game comes with the map The Island and 100 base creatures. There are 5 paid expansions, each introducing a new map, storyline and creatures: Scorched Earth, Aberration, Extinction, Genesis Part 1 and Genesis Part 2. A further 6 free expansions have also been released, including the Center, Ragnarok, Valguero, Crystal Isles, Fjordur and Lost Island maps. Like the paid DLCs, they contain new maps, creatures and storylines. The free DLCs were originally created by the Ark community and then officially added to the game by the Studio Wildcard developers.

With our game hosting control panel, you can easily switch between DLC's using a simple dropdown. Just select your preferred DLC, restart your server, and start playing on your new map!