Guide updated February 12th, 2022
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:
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 full configuration is available on Github (without our passwords, obviously) for the technically minded.
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.
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! |
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.
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 |
To join our server you will need to do the following:
Start playing!