ARK: Survival Ascended Server Hosting USA

What Is ARK: Survival Ascended Server Hosting?

ARK: Survival Ascended server hosting is a managed service that runs the ARK: Survival Ascended dedicated server on professional hardware in a datacenter, around the clock, so your tribe's world keeps running whether or not anyone is online. Every GTX Gaming ARK: Survival Ascended server includes up to 12GB of RAM, up to 100GB of NVMe storage, a Backup Manager, enterprise DDoS protection and a web control panel for mods, settings and files, and players on PC, Xbox and PS5 can all join it.

People look for it as an ARK: Survival Ascended dedicated server, an ARK: Survival Ascended game server, an ARK Ascended private server or simply an ASA server to rent, and they all mean the same thing: a home for your own ARK: Survival Ascended server, with your map, your mods, your rates and nobody else's tribe wandering in uninvited.

What Is ARK: Survival Ascended?

ARK: Survival Ascended is the remake of ARK: Survival Evolved from Studio Wildcard, rebuilt from the ground up in Unreal Engine 5 and published by Studio Wildcard and Snail Games USA. You wake up on a mysterious island, form a tribe and tame, train, breed and ride hundreds of dinosaurs and other creatures while you craft, build and fight your way to the top of the food chain. It launched in early access on Steam on 25 October 2023, followed by Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5 in November 2023.

According to Studio Wildcard's Steam page, the remake brings:

• A new engine: Unreal Engine 5 lighting and detail, dynamic water that reacts to every creature, and foliage that bends and breaks around players and explosions.
• Crossplay: tribes can be formed across PC and console, on the same servers.
• Cross-platform mods: new maps, creatures, items and game modes from the community, downloaded through a mod browser inside the game.
• Quality-of-life changes: redesigned interfaces, smarter creature pathfinding, wild babies, a photo mode and new map and tracking systems.

The game keeps growing. Genesis Part 1 arrived as a free map in July 2026 alongside the paid ARK: Tides of Fortune naval expansion, the Astraeos map reached its final Heaven & Abyss update in August 2026, and Studio Wildcard announced an Unreal Engine 5.8 upgrade, focused on performance, for its 30 September 2026 update.

Why Rent an ARK: Survival Ascended Server?

You can run the ARK: Survival Ascended dedicated server on a spare PC at home, but most tribes rent one instead, for reasons that show up the first time a rival tribe raids at 3am:

• Always online: your map runs 24 hours a day, so tribemates on different schedules can log in, farm, tame and imprint babies whenever they need to.
• Nothing to run at home: the dedicated server needs Windows and a lot of memory, so renting keeps your own PC free for playing, with no ports to open on your router.
• Crossplay for everyone: friends on PC, Xbox and PS5 all join the same server, which a private in-game session, capped at 8 players, cannot do for a whole community.
• Your rules: no official-server rates. Pick PvE or PvP, boost taming and breeding, set the difficulty and decide who gets in.
• Proper hardware: high-frequency CPUs and NVMe storage in a datacenter, with DDoS protection at the network edge, so a raid is decided by your tribe and not by someone's home connection.
• Backups and support: backups and restores in the Backup Manager and a 24/7 support team mean a griefer, a bad mod update or a lost base is an inconvenience, not the end of your world.

Getting Started & Joining Your ARK: Survival Ascended Server

Your server is set up the moment you order. From there, getting your tribe onto the beach typically looks like this:

• Order: choose your slots, memory and location, and your server is set up instantly.
• Name it: set your server name, a server password if you want it private and an admin password in GameUserSettings.ini in the panel's Configuration Files.
• Pick a map and mods: choose your map in the Commandline Manager, install the mods you want from the CurseForge tool and restart the server.
• Join: in ARK: Survival Ascended, choose Join Game, switch the list to unofficial servers and search for your server's name. Players on PC, Xbox and PS5 all join the same way.

Once you are in, open the console and enter EnableCheats followed by your admin password to use admin commands, or send commands from the panel's Web Console and RCON without being in the game at all. Trusted admins listed in AllowedCheaterSteamIDs.txt don't need the admin password.

Crossplay: PC, Xbox & PS5 Players on One Server

Crossplay is one of the biggest reasons to choose ARK: Survival Ascended. PC players and console players on Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5 share the same unofficial server list, so a tribe split across platforms can still play together on your GTX server. A few things are worth knowing:

• On by default: the default command line in the panel's Commandline Manager includes -ServerPlatform=ALL, so every platform can join without any setup.
• Everyone needs ARK: Survival Ascended: each player needs their own copy on their platform, and players on paid maps such as Astraeos need that add-on too.
• Mods and platforms: CurseForge mods are made to work across platforms, but check each mod supports every platform your tribe uses before you add it.
• Keep it private: set a server password so only your tribe gets in, whichever platform they play on.

CurseForge Mods on Your ARK: Survival Ascended Server

Mods for ARK: Survival Ascended live on CurseForge, which lists thousands of them, from small quality-of-life fixes and structure packs to new creatures and whole new maps. Open the CurseForge tool in your control panel, browse or search the catalogue, press Install on the mods you want and restart the server to load them. Players do not install anything by hand: the game downloads a server's mods through its built-in mod browser when they join, on PC and console alike. The panel's separate Mod Manager adds server tools in one click, such as ARK: Server API, a framework for server plugins.

A few tips keep a modded server healthy. Add mods a few at a time and restart between them, so if something breaks you know which mod caused it. Keep an eye on updates: after a big game update some mods need their authors to update them before they load again. Bigger mod lists use more memory, so check the live memory graph in your panel and upgrade your RAM if it runs close to the limit.

Maps: The Island, Scorched Earth, Genesis & More

ARK: Survival Ascended brings ARK's maps across to Unreal Engine 5, and each server runs one map at a time, chosen in the panel's Commandline Manager: The Island is set up for you, and any other map goes in a custom command line with its map name. According to the game's Steam listings:

• Free with the game: The Island, then Scorched Earth (April 2024), The Center (June 2024), Aberration (September 2024), Extinction (December 2024), Ragnarok (June 2025), Valguero (October 2025) and Genesis Part 1 (July 2026).
• Paid add-ons: Astraeos, a Greek-mythology map released in February 2025, and Lost Colony, released in December 2025. Players need to own a paid map to play on it.
• Mod maps: community maps from CurseForge can be added like any other mod.

Studio Wildcard has said more expansion worlds will follow, so the list grows over time. Want your tribe on more than one map? Run a server for each and link them into a cluster.

Clusters & Cross-ARK Transfers

A cluster is a group of ARK servers that share a cluster ID and a transfer folder, usually one server per map. Players walk up to an obelisk or a Tek Transmitter, upload their survivor, items and tamed creatures, then travel to another map in the cluster and download them there. It is how tribes take a breeding line from The Island to Scorched Earth, or hop from map to map as the expansions come out. It is also the way to host more players than one server allows: each server holds up to 70 players, and a cluster lets a bigger community spread across several maps.

With GTX Gaming you order a server for each map and add the same cluster ID to each server's custom command line in the Commandline Manager; our support team can help you set it up. You stay in control of what can move: server settings such as PreventDownloadSurvivors and noTributeDownloads let you block character, item or creature transfers if you want a map to stay separate. Every server in a cluster is its own plan, so you size each map's slots and RAM for the players it will hold.

Server Settings: Rates, Taming, Breeding & PvP

When you run your own server you set the rules. The most-changed settings live in GameUserSettings.ini and Game.ini, which you can edit in the panel's Configuration Files with a text editor or a simple form view:

• Rates: HarvestAmountMultiplier and XPMultiplier for gathering and levelling speed.
• Taming and breeding: TamingSpeedMultiplier, EggHatchSpeedMultiplier and BabyMatureSpeedMultiplier, so raising a new line takes hours instead of days.
• Difficulty: DifficultyOffset and OverrideOfficialDifficulty set the level of wild creatures and the loot that comes with them.
• Day and night: DayCycleSpeedScale sets how fast the days pass.
• PvE or PvP: serverPVE switches off player damage for a peaceful building server, or leave it off for full PvP raiding.

Use ServerPassword to keep the server private, PlayersExclusiveJoinList.txt as a whitelist, ServerAdminPassword for admin access, and the RCON details in your panel to run commands remotely. Restart the server after editing the files so the changes load.

Moving an Existing World

Already playing ARK: Survival Ascended on your own PC or with another host? Your world lives in the save files of the server's SavedArks folder. Upload them through the File Manager or SFTP, restart, and your tribe carries on with its bases, tames and progress. Keep a copy of the original files until you have checked everything loads, and make sure the server runs the same mods as before.

One thing does not move: saves, characters and mods from ARK: Survival Evolved. ARK: Survival Ascended is a separate game, so ASE worlds do not load in it and every tribe starts fresh. If your tribe would rather stay on the original game, see our ARK: Survival Evolved server hosting. Our support team can handle the whole move for you, from copying your files to checking your mods load.

How Much Does ARK: Survival Ascended Server Hosting Cost in the USA?

You pay for the number of slots and the memory you choose, with up to 12GB of RAM and up to 100GB of NVMe storage included on every server. Our three recommended builds are:

• Small Tribe, 10 slots with 12GB RAM: $17.73/mo. A small tribe or a group of friends.
• Tribe, 30 slots with 16GB RAM: $44.34/mo. Our recommended size for active tribes and community servers.
• Official Size, 70 slots with 20GB RAM: $83.77/mo. Busy public servers, the size of an official ARK server.

Every slot count from 10 to 70 is available, see the full list under our plans. All plans include instant setup, crossplay, CurseForge mods, DDoS protection, the Backup Manager and 24/7 support, with no setup fee and no contract. Billing is monthly by default, with three-month, six-month and yearly cycles available at a discount, and you can change plan or cancel at any time. Running a cluster? Each map is its own server, so add up the plans for the maps you want.

How Many Slots & How Much RAM Does an ARK: Survival Ascended Server Need?

Choose a slot for every player who will be online at the same time. A small tribe or a group of friends is well served by 10 or 20 slots, an active community by 30 to 40, and public servers by 50 to 70. 70 is the most players one server holds: ARK: Survival Ascended's Steam page lists public online multiplayer for up to 70 players, the size of an official ARK server, so bigger communities run a cluster of servers, one per map. Memory is the other half: ARK's community wiki measures an empty The Island server at 8 to 10GB and an empty The Center at 10.5 to 12GB with default settings, and use climbs with every player, tame, structure and mod. The 12GB included with every server suits a fresh map for a small tribe; as a guide we recommend 16GB for 30 players and 20GB for 70, and more for long-running worlds with big mod lists. The control panel shows live memory and player graphs, so you can see exactly when your world needs more and upgrade, up to 32GB, without losing anything.

Locations for ARK: Survival Ascended Server Hosting

ARK is played in real time against creatures and rival tribes, so a low ping makes combat and riding feel responsive. Host close to your players. GTX Gaming runs ARK: Survival Ascended server hosting from seven US locations, with New York preselected on this page and Ashburn, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, Miami and Portland covering the rest of the country, plus 12 more locations worldwide: Quebec in Canada; Amsterdam, Frankfurt, London, Madrid, Paris and Stockholm in Europe; Mumbai, Singapore, Sydney and Tokyo in Asia-Pacific; plus Moscow. Some locations carry a surcharge, shown at checkout. Use the live ping test above to find the lowest-latency location for your tribe, pick it at checkout, and if you need to move later our support team can migrate your server.

ARK: Survival Ascended Server Hosting Glossary

Quick definitions of the terms you'll meet across ARK: Survival Ascended, our control panel and your server settings:

Setup Guides & Help for Your ARK: Survival Ascended Server

Once your ARK: Survival Ascended server is live, start with the Help Guides in your control panel. Our 24/7 support team is on live chat and tickets for anything else, from adding CurseForge mods and changing the map to setting up a cluster, uploading a world and restoring a backup:

Or start with the complete ARK server guide: from your first map to crossplay, mods, clusters, admin and backups.

Have any questions? Contact Us