Configurer un serveur ARK Ascended : le guide complet des fichiers INI

ARK Ascended settings live in two plain-text files, GameUserSettings.ini and Game.ini, and almost everything a tribe notices — harvest rates, taming speed, per-level stats, breeding timers, stack sizes — is written there. This guide explains what each file controls, which lines actually matter, and how to edit them without corrupting your save or wiping hours of progress.

Where ARK Ascended settings are stored and when they are read

ARK: Survival Ascended reads its configuration from the ShooterGame/Saved/Config/ folder of the installation. On a machine running the Windows build — which is also what the Linux side uses under a compatibility layer — the path is:

ShooterGame/Saved/Config/WindowsServer/GameUserSettings.ini
ShooterGame/Saved/Config/WindowsServer/Game.ini

Two rules govern how these files behave, and misunderstanding them is the number one cause of "my changes disappeared":

• They are read once, at boot. Editing a file while the process is live changes nothing until the next restart.
• GameUserSettings.ini is rewritten on shutdown. The running instance keeps its own copy of most [ServerSettings] values in memory and flushes them to disk when it stops. If you edit the file while the process is alive, your edits are overwritten. Game.ini is not rewritten the same way, but the habit of stopping first should apply to both.

A third source of truth exists: the launch command line. Arguments such as -mods=, ?SessionName= or ?MaxPlayers= take priority over the files. If a value refuses to change no matter what you type in the ini, check the startup arguments in your panel first — something on the command line is winning.

If you manage your instance through a Pterodactyl panel, both files sit in the file manager two clicks away, with a live console to catch parsing errors on the next boot; that is how ARK Survival Ascended server hosting at Fly-Serv exposes the configuration, alongside automatic backups you can restore when a multiplier goes wrong.

INI syntax, in thirty seconds

Both files use the same format: a section header in square brackets, then Key=Value pairs, one per line. Decimals use a dot, never a comma. Booleans are True/False. Keys placed under the wrong header are silently ignored — no error, no warning, just default behaviour. Some keys (stack overrides, engram overrides, resource multipliers) are arrays: you repeat the same key on several lines, one entry per line.

GameUserSettings.ini: rates, taming, damage and session options

This is the file you will touch 90% of the time. The important section is [ServerSettings], with a few extras in [SessionSettings], [/Script/Engine.GameSession] and [MessageOfTheDay].

The multipliers everyone changes first

Key	Effect	Typical value
XPMultiplier	Experience gain for players and tames	1.0 – 5.0
TamingSpeedMultiplier	Taming bar fill speed (higher = faster)	1.0 – 10.0
HarvestAmountMultiplier	Quantity of resources per swing	1.0 – 5.0
HarvestHealthMultiplier	Health of harvestable nodes (higher = more swings, more total yield)	1.0 – 3.0
ResourcesRespawnPeriodMultiplier	Node respawn delay — lower is faster	0.3 – 1.0
ItemStackSizeMultiplier	Global stack size for stackable items	1.0 – 10.0
DifficultyOffset	Scales with the difficulty cap	1.0
OverrideOfficialDifficulty	Wild creature level cap (5.0 = level 150 max, 6.0 = 180)	5.0
AutoSavePeriodMinutes	Interval between world saves	10 – 20

A working [ServerSettings] block for a moderately boosted cluster looks like this:

[/Script/Engine.GameSession]
MaxPlayers=20

[SessionSettings]
SessionName=Island - 3x Rates

[ServerSettings]
ServerAdminPassword=ChangeThisImmediately
ServerPassword=
XPMultiplier=3.0
TamingSpeedMultiplier=5.0
HarvestAmountMultiplier=3.0
HarvestHealthMultiplier=2.0
ResourcesRespawnPeriodMultiplier=0.5
ItemStackSizeMultiplier=5.0
DifficultyOffset=1.0
OverrideOfficialDifficulty=5.0
AllowThirdPersonPlayer=True
ShowMapPlayerLocation=True
ServerCrosshair=True
ServerPVE=False
AllowCaveBuildingPvE=True
AllowFlyerCarryPvE=True
AutoSavePeriodMinutes=15
KickIdlePlayersPeriod=3600
StructureResistanceMultiplier=1.0
PlayerDamageMultiplier=1.0
DinoDamageMultiplier=1.0
DinoCharacterFoodDrainMultiplier=1.0
PlayerCharacterWaterDrainMultiplier=1.0
TheMaxStructuresInRange=10500
bUseCorpseLocator=True

[MessageOfTheDay]
Message=Rates 3x/5x - raid window Saturday 20:00
Duration=20

Settings that change survival pacing

Drain multipliers are underrated. PlayerCharacterFoodDrainMultiplier, PlayerCharacterWaterDrainMultiplier and PlayerCharacterStaminaDrainMultiplier below 1.0 soften early game on casual worlds; DinoCharacterFoodDrainMultiplier above 1.0 forces regular trough refills and keeps tribes active. Day/night pacing is handled by DayCycleSpeedScale, DayTimeSpeedScale and NightTimeSpeedScale — shortening nights is one of the quickest quality-of-life wins on a small community world.

Access and administration

ServerAdminPassword is also the RCON password. Treat it as a root credential: long, random, never shared in Discord, rotated when a staff member leaves. ServerPassword gates the whole session, which is the simplest whitelist substitute while a community is being formed. Idle kicking through KickIdlePlayersPeriod keeps slots available without manual moderation.

Game.ini: breeding, per-level stats, engrams and stack overrides

Everything in Game.ini sits under a single header, spelled exactly:

[/script/shootergame.shootergamemode]

This file holds the deeper economy knobs. It is also where a typo does the most damage, because a malformed array line can be ignored without any visible symptom until a player complains that stone still stacks at 100.

Breeding and imprinting

[/script/shootergame.shootergamemode]
MatingIntervalMultiplier=0.3
EggHatchSpeedMultiplier=15.0
BabyMatureSpeedMultiplier=10.0
BabyCuddleIntervalMultiplier=0.2
BabyImprintAmountMultiplier=2.0
BabyFoodConsumptionSpeedMultiplier=0.5

The pair that matters is BabyMatureSpeedMultiplier and BabyCuddleIntervalMultiplier. Speeding up maturation without lowering the cuddle interval makes 100% imprint impossible, because the baby grows up before enough care events fire. As a rough guideline, if you multiply maturation by ten, divide the cuddle interval by roughly the same factor and test on a low-tier creature before announcing anything to the tribe.

Per-level stat multipliers

Stats are addressed by index. Getting the index wrong is how a "small weight buff" turns into a movement-speed catastrophe.

Index	Stat	Index	Stat
0	Health	6	Temperature
1	Stamina	7	Weight
2	Torpidity	8	Melee Damage
3	Oxygen	9	Movement Speed
4	Food	10	Fortitude
5	Water	11	Crafting Speed

PerLevelStatsMultiplier_Player[0]=1.5
PerLevelStatsMultiplier_Player[7]=3.0
PerLevelStatsMultiplier_Player[8]=1.2
PerLevelStatsMultiplier_DinoTamed[0]=1.0
PerLevelStatsMultiplier_DinoTamed_Add[0]=0.20
PerLevelStatsMultiplier_DinoTamed_Affinity[8]=0.50
PerLevelStatsMultiplier_DinoWild[0]=1.0

Three variants exist for tames: _DinoTamed applies to points you spend after taming, _DinoTamed_Add to the bonus granted by taming effectiveness, and _DinoTamed_Affinity to the affinity scaling. Raising melee through _Affinity is far more aggressive than raising it through _DinoTamed, so change one variant at a time and observe the result on a freshly tamed creature.

Stack sizes, per item

ItemStackSizeMultiplier in GameUserSettings.ini scales everything at once. When you want surgical control — big stone stacks but normal narcotics, for example — use per-item overrides in Game.ini:

ConfigOverrideItemMaxQuantity=(ItemClassString="PrimalItemResource_Stone_C",Quantity=(MaxItemQuantity=1000,bIgnoreMultiplier=true))
ConfigOverrideItemMaxQuantity=(ItemClassString="PrimalItemResource_Wood_C",Quantity=(MaxItemQuantity=1000,bIgnoreMultiplier=true))
ConfigOverrideItemMaxQuantity=(ItemClassString="PrimalItemConsumable_Berry_Amarberry_C",Quantity=(MaxItemQuantity=500,bIgnoreMultiplier=true))

bIgnoreMultiplier=true means the global multiplier is not applied on top of the number you just wrote — without it, a 5x global and a 1000 override give 5000. Class strings must match exactly, capital letters included, and the trailing _C is mandatory. The ARK wiki configuration reference lists the item class names you need.

Harvest tuning and engrams

HarvestResourceItemAmountClassMultipliers=(ClassName="PrimalItemResource_Wood_C",Multiplier=2.0)
HarvestResourceItemAmountClassMultipliers=(ClassName="PrimalItemResource_Thatch_C",Multiplier=0.5)
GlobalSpoilingTimeMultiplier=2.0
GlobalItemDecompositionTimeMultiplier=0.5
GlobalCorpseDecompositionTimeMultiplier=0.5
bAutoUnlockAllEngrams=False
OverridePlayerLevelEngramPoints=10
OverrideNamedEngramEntries=(EngramClassName="EngramEntry_StoneHatchet_C",EngramHidden=False,EngramPointsCost=3,EngramLevelRequirement=2,RemoveEngramPreReq=False)

Per-resource multipliers stack with the global HarvestAmountMultiplier, which is how you fix the classic thatch-flood problem without nerfing wood. OverridePlayerLevelEngramPoints is an array: you repeat it once per level, from level 1 upward, so use it only if you are ready to write the full list.

Editing ARK Ascended settings without breaking your save

The configuration itself never corrupts a world. What corrupts a world is editing at the wrong moment, or restoring a mismatched save after a failed boot. A disciplined workflow removes both risks.

The safe edit loop

1. Stop the instance from the console and wait for the shutdown to complete. A clean stop writes the world file and flushes GameUserSettings.ini. Killing the process mid-save is the real save-killer.
2. Take a snapshot of ShooterGame/Saved/SavedArks/ and of both ini files. Automatic backups on a schedule are good; a manual snapshot right before a configuration change is better.
3. Edit through the file man