Don Alvarez

Two settings govern the Dino level cap: Difficulty Offset, and Override Official Difficulty. The way I have my server set, the Difficulty Offset is set to 1, then the Override Official Difficulty will govern the max level for wild dinos multiplied by 30. So if its 1 the max will be 30, set to 2 will max at 60, and so on.

I'm shooting from memory but I think you need to rename the .ark file. So the way I did it was to clear the new server, start it, and log in and out. It will create a xxxxxxxxxx.ark file in the saved arks folder. Make note of the name and turn the server off. Copy your old ARK server files to the new server, and rename the .ark file to replace the one the server created. Make sure you also move any .arkprofile or tribe files to the new server. these should not need to be renamed.

Started a server on Saturday. I've noticed this behavior with the "start" button sometimes also. It either is not working or is not doing what I expect it to be doing (?). Anyway I use the big green "Save and restart" when I want to start server, so far works every time. Takes a couple minutes for server to come up, but it works.

I think only if you have "Clean save folder" checked. Otherwise if you save and restart everything should be where you left it.

Ended up taking out a server last weekend, figured out also that #1 is possible also. Just some trial and error and had to rename a few files, but I was able to FTP up the game files from my non-dedicated server that was hosted on my PC up the SurvivalServers dedicated one. Finally got it running, all my dinos and buildings were there as well as my friend's characters. SO glad we didn't have to start over, though I was prepared to.

Recently I and a some friends picked up Ark while it was free on Epic, and we enjoying the hell out of this game so far. We've been playing cooperatively on a non-dedicated server I run from my computer. There are some drawbacks to this, foremost of which is that if I am not on, my friends can't work on our game. So we've been tinkering with the idea of getting a hosted sever. I have a couple questions about this 1) Is there a way I could import our current game to an online hosted server? I've read it may be as easy as copying some folders from my PC to the hosted site. Is that true, and will it work from a non-dedicated server? 2) Is there a way to restrict access to the server, either by password protect or whitelisting? We can't abide interlopers, and just want a to host a small server that would be invitation only. Thanks in advance