Ark: Survival Evolved

Rat Blastards Ark: Survival Evolved Guide

Guide updated February 12th, 2022


About Ark: Survival Evolved

As a man or woman stranded naked, freezing and starving on the shores of a mysterious island called ARK, you must hunt, harvest resources, craft items, grow crops, research technologies, and build shelters to withstand the elements. Use your cunning and resources to kill or tame & breed the leviathan dinosaurs and other primeval creatures roaming the land, and team up with or prey on hundreds of other players to survive, dominate... and escape!

Ark has been around for a few years, and is often steeply discounted. Currently it is offered on the PS Store at full price, sadly. However, physical copies can be purchased used rather cheaply.

There are several DLC packs for it, which are basically new maps, but at present we are on the original map.

Ark is a deep game with not much in the way of guidance available in game. Here are two excellent online resources to help:



About our Ark Server

Update: Our Ark server is no longer live.

The Rat Blastards are running private PVE Ark servers with the original map "The Island" and soon "Ragnarok." Our servers are password protected. Clan members are free to share this password with friends as long as they provide notice either in the Discord or in the Ark PS party and with the understanding that those friends should not re-share that password.

As server admin I reserve the right to blacklist non-clan members if any issues arise. We want our server to be a friendly place and I want to prioritize clan members.

Sadly, private Playstation Ark servers do not allow cross-play, so only Playstation clients can connect.

We use Nitrado to provide server hosting. We've adjusted some configuration values to reduce some of the grind and time commitment that Ark seems to favor, without reducing the level of difficulty. Details on the current configuration and a change log are below for the technically inclined.

Our Custom Server Settings

Our full configuration is available on Github (without our passwords, obviously) for the technically minded.

  • PVP, friendly fire, cyropod sickness and structure placement collision detection are disabled.
  • Hit markers, cave building, corpse locator beacons, build on supply drops and flyer carry are enabled.
  • Engram point drop rate increased. This is retroactive for existing players. Cap is 6313 points at level 105, and 8295 at level 150.
  • Ichthyornis will never spawn on our server, because fuck those thieving assholes.
  • Third person view is allowed.

When no value is shown for a setting, it is still at the default. Recent changes show bold values.

Setting Name Oue Value Default Effect
DifficultyOffset 1.0 0.2 Sets the base difficulty of enemies
OverrideOfficialDifficulty 5.0 1.0 Higher level enemies are available
TheMaxStructuresInRange 4500 5000 For our zealous builders.
NewMaxStructuresInRange 1300 1500 See above.
NightTimeSpeedScale 1.5 1.0 Night goes by faster
DayTimeSpeedScale 0.75 1.0 Daytime passes by slower
TamingSpeedMultipler 3.0 1.0 Taming takes less time
PassiveTameIntervalMultiplier 0.2 1.0 Passive taming takes less time
WildDinoCharacterFoodDrainMultiplier 2.0 1.0 Wild dinos eat more, making passive taming faster
PerLevelStatsMultiplier_DinoTamed[7] 1.4 1.0 Tamed dinos can carry more weight
HarvestingMultiplier 2.0 1.0 Resources drop at a higher rate
PlayerCharacterWaterDrainMultiplier 0.5 1.0 Need for hydration is less
PlayerCharacterFoodDrainMultiplier 0.5 1.0 Need for eating is less
DinoHarvestingDamageMultiplier 3.0 1.0 Dinosaurs harvest more resources
FuelConsumptionIntervalMultiplier 1.5 1.0 Fuel burns longer
GlobalSpoilingTimeMultiplier 6.0 1.0 Items spoil much more slowly
GlobalCorpseDecompositionTimeMultiplier 4.0 1.0 Corpses remain in game longer
MaxPersonalTamedDinos 1000 250 We can have more tamed dinos
HairGrowthSpeedMultiplier 0.2 1.0 Hair growth is much slower, because seriously
CropGrowthSpeedMultiplier 2.0 1.0 Crops grow faster
CropDecaySpeedMultiplier 2.0 1.0 Crops rot slower
MatingIntervalMultiplier 0.1 1.0 Dinos can mate more often
LayEggIntervalMultiplier 0.5 1.0 Dinos lay eggs more often
EggHatchSpeedMultiplier 20.0 1.0 Dino eggs hatch faster
BabyMatureSpeedMultiplier 150 1.0 Baby dinos grow up much faster
BabyCuddleIntervalMultiplier 0.012 1.0 This is calculated based on the maturation speed
BabyImprintingStatScaleMultiplier 10.0 1.0 This is calculated based on the maturation speed
BabyImprintAmountMultiplier 2.0 1.0 This is calculated based on the maturation speed
BabyCuddleGracePeriodMultiplier 25.0 1.0 This is calculated based on the maturation speed
BabyFoodConsumptionSpeedMultiplier 7.5 1.0 This is calculated based on the maturation speed
BabyCuddleLoseImprintQualitySpeedMultiplier 0.3 1.0 This is calculated based on the maturation speed


Raw meat is exempted from the HarvestingMultiplier, and is produced at the usual rate, to offset the reduced spoilage time.

The dino baby maturation and imprinting was taken from this forum post and is hopefully not bullshit, because I have no idea. Turns out it wasn't so great, so we made some adjustments based on our experience.

Change Log

Date Changes
2021-07-11 Server renamed from "Rat Blastards" to "Rat Blastards: Island"
2021-06-25 Building item cap raised about 10%. This may be reverted if stability or performance suffers.
2021-05-29 Third person view is now allowed. There's some way to toggle it on while playing.
2021-04-17 Increated MaxPersonalTamedDinos from 500 to 1000 because of dino madness.
2021-03-01 Allowed building on supply drop land.
2021-02-17 Increased engram points per level, raising the cap about 300 points near end game.
2021-02-14 Increated MaxPersonalTamedDinos from 250 to 500 because more dinos is always better.
2021-02-08 Reduced MatingIntervalMultiplier from 0.7 to 0.1 because dinos need to get it on more often.
2021-02-05 Reduced BabyFoodConsumptionSpeedMultiplier from 30.0 to 7.5 because too hungry, baby.
2021-02-04 Adjusted scaling factors for baby dino maturation to improve imprinting process.
2021-02-02 Increased EggHatchSpeedMultiplier from 2.0 to 10.0 for faster hatching.
2021-02-01 Slightly increased tamed dino weight carry per level.
Increase engram points earned per level starting at level 70. Max engram point count is now 5644 at 105 (max level no boss kills) and 7776 at 150 (all bosses killed).
2021-01-31 Enabled flyer carry, which now works on friendly as well as wild targets.
Passive taming set to 0.2 and WildDinoCharacterFoodDrainMultiplier to 2.0 and this seems to do the trick. Passive tames work and are boosted quite a bit.
Fixed message of the day. No double slashes allowed apparently.
2021-01-30 Structure pickup allowed without time restriction.
WildDinoCharacterFoodDrainMultiplier from 1.0 to 2.0 so wild dinos eat more and passive taming is faster.
Passive taming set to .5 from 3 because whoops wrong direction with that value.
2021-01-28 Crop growth multiplier increased from 1.0 to 2.0
Hair growth speed reduced from 0.5 to 0.2 because still too hairy.
Baby mature speed multiplier increased from 2 to 160, and respective baby multipliers adjusted accordingly (feeding, imprinting, cuddling factors).
2021-01-27 No more Ichthyornis (thief birds).
Taming multiplier set to 3 from 2 for slightly faster tames. (Passive taming was 1, it is now 3 as well)
Less meat will drop (it was doubled like all resource drops, now it is normal. We have too much meat and it doesn't spoil fast.)
2021-01-24 Corpse beacons enabled.
Hair growth speed reduced from 1.0 to 0.5.
2021‑01‑23   Go live!




How to Sponsor our Ark Server

Our server costs us 10 euros per month, with a capacity of 10 concurrent users. If you'd like to help pay for these costs, a 2 week (5 euros) or full month (10 euros) sponsorship donation is suggested. Sponsors will received cosmetic items as a thank you gift!

Donations are done directly with our server provider, so the full amount will be applied to the cost of operating the server.

To sponsor, click this link and create a free Nitrado account. Note that donations must be euros, so you might get hit with a currency exchange fee depending on how you pay. We have a detailed guide on setting up a Nitrado account and how to set the donation currency.

Sponsorship History

Sponsor Amount Weeks Start Date End Date
Alex 10€ 4 2021-01-21 2021-02-18
Leah 5€ 2 2021-02-18 2021-03-04
Dave (NY) 10€ 4 2021-03-04 2021-04-01
Shawn 10€ 4 2021-04-01 2021-04-29
Glenn 20€ 8 2021-04-29 2021-06-24




How to Join our Ark Server

To join our server you will need to do the following:

  1. At the main menu, select “Join Ark.”
  2. Use the left stick or the d-pad to select the “Session Filter” option and choose "Unofficial PC Sessions.” Note that while the large selection of default choices are loading, the interface will be unresponsive.
  3. Ensure the “Show Password Protected” option is checked. We use a password on our server to keep it private.
  4. Use the left stick or the d-pad to select the "Name Filter" field and press the X button.
  5. Enter "Rat b" using the PS keyboard interface and select “Done” (R2).
  6. The Rat Blastards servers should be the only options. Do not worry about the ping time. Use the left stick or the d-pad to select it.
  7. Make sure the “Auto favorite played sessions” is enabled. This will allow you to use the “Favorites” session filter on future visits and save a lot of time.
  8. Press the "Options" button to connect to the server.
  9. Enter the server password, which is available in the “Blastards Ark” PS party.

Start playing!

Ark Rat