How to Change the Difficulty Level on Your Ark Server

The difficulty level of your ARK server controls the level of wild creatures and the quality of loot drops. By default wild dinos only go up to level 30; raise the difficulty and you get higher level dinos and better loot.

Difficulty is set with two values in GameUserSettings.ini:

DifficultyOffset=1.0
OverrideOfficialDifficulty=5.0

The resulting difficulty is DifficultyOffset * (OverrideOfficialDifficulty - 0.5) + 0.5, and the maximum wild dino level is that difficulty times 30. Sounds complicated, but with the recipe below you only do one division.

1Pick Your Values

• Always set DifficultyOffset=1.0. It is a multiplier, and keeping it at 1.0 means you can ignore it in the math.
• Set OverrideOfficialDifficulty to your desired maximum wild dino level divided by 30. It accepts values from 1.0 to 10.0.

2Add the Settings to GameUserSettings.ini

• Stop your server, then open /ShooterGame/Saved/Config/LinuxServer/GameUserSettings.ini in the file manager. The full walkthrough is in how to change your ARK settings.
• Put both lines under the [ServerSettings] section. If one of them is already there, change its value instead of adding a duplicate.
• Press Save and start your server.

3Clear the Existing Wild Dinos

Dinos that already roam the map keep their old levels, so respawn them once:

• Join your server and make sure you set an admin password.
• Press Tab to open the console and run enablecheats yourpassword.
• Run admincheat DestroyWildDinos. All wild, untamed dinos disappear and respawn at the new difficulty. Tamed dinos are untouched.

Respawning every wild dino is heavy; if the server stutters for a few minutes right after, that is normal. It settles down once the respawn finishes.

Finished

Wild dinos now spawn up to your new maximum level and loot drops scale up with them. The full list of difficulty options is on the ARK wiki.