How to Increase Max Dino Level in ARK: Survival Ascended

April 17, 2024

While the ARK 2 release date remains vague, fans of the world of dinosaurs have found an excellent way to have fun in ARK: Survival Ascended. The improved world of dinosaurs absorbed all the best from ARK: Survival Evolve and reworked the gameplay based on the capabilities of Unreal Engine 5.

However, the slight reduction in the maximum level of dinosaurs became a thorn in the side of every fan. Some say that this isn’t a problem and you can get used to the innovation, but for those wanting to increase max dino level in ARK: Survival Ascended, here’s how to do it.

The expanding list of ARK: Survival Ascended’s dinosaurs is filled with several under-used creatures, each with useful and unique abilities.

ARK: Survival Ascended: How to Change Max Dino Level

First of all, it is worth clearing up a few details. The ability to increase your dinosaur level cap in ARK: Survival Ascended is not a built-in in-game feature. So, the only way to do this is to go into the game files and change them. If you play on an online server, you can not increase the maximum level of wild and tamed dinosaurs. The exception is servers on which you have administrator privileges.

However, if you are the lucky owner of a private server, increasing the max dino level in ARK: Survival Ascended is a matter of 5 minutes. Here’s how to do it:

Open Steam, go to your games library, and open the ARK: Survival Ascended page.
Click on the gear in the upper right corner and select Manage.
Next, select Browse local files and open the ShooterGame–Saved–Config–Windows folder.
Browse the files in this folder and open GameUserSettings.
Scroll down the file to [ServerSettings]. In this file subsection, set DifficultyOffset to 1 if it was set to something else so that the line would look like DifficultyOffset=1.
Next, press Enter to create an empty line and insert OverrideOfficialDifficulty=10. Note that the argument with which we indicated the number 10 is the number that determines the level of dinosaurs, but there is one essential clarification. You must multiply the specified number by 30. Thus, OverrideOfficialDifficulty=10 will increase the maximum level of dinosaurs to 300, and OverrideOfficialDifficulty=15 to 450.

This is what the code should look like, which you should insert into the GameUserSettings file under the [ServerSettings] line:

DifficultyOffset=1

OverrideOfficialDifficulty=10

The next step is to launch ARK: Survival Ascended, then go to Game Rules and World tab. Set Maximum Difficulty to Off. Otherwise, the maximum dinosaur level will remain at 150 regardless of the changes you set.

ARK: Survival Ascended introduced many changes to its building mechanics that have made base building a much more enjoyable experience.

All you must do now is go into the game world and check out the result. However, keep in mind that old dinosaurs that appeared before will not be able to increase their level. So, you will have to kill the entire current generation to make way for younger and more powerful ones. To do this, open the in-game command line by pressing ~ and enter DestroyWildDinos to destroy all wild dinosaurs. Don’t worry, this command will not affect already tamed individuals. After all the creatures die out, the world will begin to be filled with creatures with new level limits.