ARK Game.ini Generator
Build a clean Game.ini for your ARK: Survival Ascended server in minutes. Tune breeding speed, imprint windows, XP rates, per-level stats, structure decay, loot quality, and PvP raid timers — copy the output, paste it in. No half-broken templates from 2017, no missing settings, no guessing which line index means what.
Breeding & Imprinting
The most-tweaked section on every breeding-friendly server. Baby mature speed, egg hatch rates, imprint windows, mating cooldowns — this is the bundle of settings that decides whether breeding feels like a passion project or a 14-hour second job.
How fast babies grow into adults. 10× means a Rex matures in roughly half a day instead of three. The single most-changed breeding setting on the planet — almost nobody runs official rates because nobody has 80 hours to babysit a Giga. Pair with low Cuddle Interval and high Imprint Amount so you can actually hit 100% imprint before maturation finishes.
How fast fertilized eggs incubate. Usually set to match BabyMatureSpeedMultiplier — pairing them makes the breeding flow feel cohesive. Crank this up and the egg phase stops being the bottleneck.
Cooldown between dino matings. Lower = shorter cooldown. 0.1 means dinos can mate again 10× sooner. Almost every boosted server drops this — nobody enjoys waiting hours just to start the next breed.
How fast the mating bar fills during the act itself. Mostly cosmetic — usually left alone. The Mating Interval setting matters way more for actual breeding throughput.
Time between eggs from passive egg producers (Dodo, Oviraptor, etc). Lower = eggs laid more often. Important if you breed for kibble — running a chicken farm for prime egg supply needs a low value here.
Time between imprint cuddle requests. Lower = more frequent cuddles. Drop this hard whenever you raise BabyMatureSpeedMultiplier — otherwise babies mature before you get enough cuddles in to hit 100% imprint, which feels terrible.
How long an imprint window stays open after the request appears. Higher = more time to actually respond. Generous on this means missing one cuddle isn't a disaster — kind to working adults who can't camp the baby for 4 hours straight.
How fast imprint quality degrades when you miss a cuddle window. Lower means missing one cuddle barely hurts. Set this to 0.01 if you want imprinting to be effectively forgiving.
How much imprint % you get from each successful cuddle. Higher = fewer cuddles needed for 100%. Critical when paired with fast maturation — if babies grow up in 4 hours but each cuddle only gives 10%, you'll never hit max imprint without this cranked.
How much stat bonus a 100% imprint actually grants. 2.0 = double the imprint benefit. Makes fully-imprinted dinos genuinely powerful on boss runs — without bumping this, the imprint reward is honestly underwhelming.
How fast babies burn through food from their inventory. Lower means babies need fewer feedings — essential on fast-maturation servers, otherwise babies starve between check-ins. Drop this to 0.5× whenever BabyMatureSpeedMultiplier is above 10×.
How often dinos poop. Lower means more frequent poops. Matters mainly for fertilizer farming and Beelzebufo dung beetle setups. Otherwise, it's vibes.
Time between feeds when passive-taming (Ichthyornis, Achatina, Mesopithecus, etc). Lower = can feed more often = faster passive taming. Genuinely useful tweak nobody talks about.
Hard-disables all breeding server-wide. Used on competitive PvP wipe servers and on RP servers that want only wild tames in play.
Lets players unclaim tamed dinos so others can pick them up. Useful for trading, gifting starter dinos to new players, or rage-quitting elegantly. Most PvE servers leave this on.
XP Multipliers
Game.ini's per-activity XP rates. These work alongside GameUserSettings.ini's master XPMultiplier — they stack multiplicatively, so a 2× base XP and a 2× harvest XP gives you 4× XP while harvesting. Used to fine-tune which activities feel rewarding.
Extra XP from killing creatures, stacked on top of the base XP rate. Bump this on PvP and combat-focused servers where you want fighting to actually feel like the main progression path.
Extra XP from harvesting resources — wood, stone, berries, fiber, all that. Bump this for builder-focused communities so the gather grind also feeds your level.
Extra XP from crafting. Lets players passively level by leaving narcotics or spark powder in a mortar overnight. Crafting-economy servers crank this up.
Passive "just being alive and doing things" XP. Usually left at 1× — bumping it makes the game level you for breathing, which is weird unless you specifically want chill idle progression.
XP from special events — boss fights, explorer notes, Genesis missions. Bump this if you want bossing and exploration to feel genuinely rewarding instead of just for engrams.
Player & Dino Stats
Level caps, max difficulty, and the all-important flyer speed toggles. The MaxDifficulty toggle is the one most admins miss — without it, your wild dino levels cap weird. Speed leveling is where the actual ASA difference shows up: by default you can't level Speed on tamed dinos, period.
Lets you put points into Speed on flying tames — Argentavis, Pteranodon, Quetzal, Wyverns. Off by default in ASA because Wildcard nerfed flyer mobility back in ASE and never undid it. Almost every unofficial server turns this on because turtle-paced Argys are miserable.
Lets you put points into Speed on any tamed dino, not just non-flyers. Default off. Enables Speed leveling on ground tames like Rexes, Therizinos, Ankylos. Most QoL-focused servers flip this on so your Anky doesn't crawl back from a metal run.
When enabled, this forces wild dino levels to actually scale to your OverrideOfficialDifficulty setting. Without this on, the game caps wild dino spawn levels at a lower value regardless of your difficulty setting — which is why so many admins set Difficulty 5.0 but never see level 150 dinos. Turn this on.
Override the player level XP cap. 0 means "use ARK's default cap" (level 105 plus boss/note levels). Set this above 0 to extend the player level ceiling — popular on long-running PvE servers where players hit max and lose interest. Number is total XP, not levels.
Override the dino level XP cap. 0 = ARK default. Raise this if you want post-tame leveling beyond the standard ceiling — useful for PvE players who actually max out their breeding lines and want more.
Server-wide hard cap on total tamed dinos. Default is 5000. Hit this cap and nothing new can be tamed until something dies or gets uploaded. Lower it on small VPS servers; raise it on cluster mains where players actually breed armies.
Game.ini's tamed dino food drain rate. There's a similar setting in GameUserSettings.ini — this one wins if both are set. Lower = tamed dinos eat less often.
Structure & Resource
How structures and resources behave at the deeper Game.ini level — turret damage scaling, structure prevention radius, the saddle mounted-weapon rules. The big GameUserSettings.ini structure settings handle the easy stuff; this section is where you fine-tune the rarer edge cases.
How far around a structure resources stop respawning. Lower means resources respawn closer to bases — handy if you want to harvest from your base without traveling. Higher prevents foundation-spam farms.
Multiplies damage dealt by Auto Turrets, Heavy Turrets, and Plant Species X. The single biggest PvP-balance lever — raise for faster raid defense, lower if turrets feel unbeatable on your server.
Multiplies turret damage specifically against dinos. Used to make turrets viable against riding-dino raid pushes without making them oneshot players. PvP servers often run 2× to 3× here.
Lets players use ranged weapons while mounted on dinos during PvP — bow from a Rex, rifle from an Argy, that kind of thing. Off by official PvP. Turn it on for old-school ARK PvP feel where mounted shotguns ruled the world.
Disables the entire alliance system server-wide. Common on small-tribes PvP where alliances would defeat the cap. Off everywhere else.
Damage multiplier to structures inside designated PvP zones (mostly relevant on PvE-with-PvP-zones servers). Official default 6.0. Only matters if your map actually uses zone-based PvP.
How long a damaged structure must wait before it can be repaired again. Default 180 (3 min). Set to 0 for instant repair — convenient on PvE, exploit-prone on PvP. Stops "infinite-repair tank" cheese during raids.
Blocks the use of structure-template tools on platform saddles. Niche PvP setting that prevents instant base reconstruction during raids.
Enables an increasing respawn delay when players die repeatedly to the same PvP attacker — the "stop suiciding to scout" prevention system. Default off. Turn on for hardcore PvP.
Time window during which repeat deaths to the same player count toward the respawn penalty. Default 300s.
How much the respawn delay multiplies on each repeated death. 2× doubles the delay each time. Stops streamers from suiciding endlessly to scout a base.
The starting respawn delay before the multiplier kicks in. Default 5 seconds.
Decay & Lifespan
How fast items spoil, how long structures last, how quickly corpses decompose. The forgotten section that drastically affects how a server feels over weeks. Lower spoil times mean players spend more time cooking; higher decay timers mean abandoned bases linger.
How fast meat, berries, and other food spoils in inventories. Higher = food lasts longer. Raise this to 2× on casual servers so players aren't constantly making jerky just to keep up.
How long dropped items remain on the ground before disappearing. Lower means cleaner maps; higher means you have actual time to come back for that bag you dropped. PvE servers often raise this.
How long dead creature bodies stick around. Higher = more time to harvest the meat off your kills. Server-cleanup-focused admins lower this; PvE servers raise it for slower harvesting trips.
How fast generators, refining forges, and torches burn through fuel. Higher = fuel lasts longer. Raise this to make late-game base power costs less of a chore.
How fast player hair and beards grow back after being cut. Higher = faster regrowth between haircuts. Niche QoL setting that RP servers actually care about.
How fast crops in planters wither without water or fertilizer. Lower = crops survive longer between checks. Drop this if you want farming to feel less like a constant babysitting job.
How fast crops grow from seed to harvest. Higher = faster cycle. Most boosted servers run 3× to 5× here so farming is a real path, not a multi-day commitment.
Multiplier on how often passive-producing tames (Dodo, Oviraptor, Carbonemys, etc) drop eggs. Lower = eggs more often. Kibble economies live and die by this setting.
Loot & Crafting
Loot drop quality, recipe outputs, fishing rewards, crafting bonuses. The settings that decide whether your end-game gear feels earned or showered down. Pair the fishing quality with crafting bonus and you can dramatically tune the gear curve without touching damage multipliers.
Quality multiplier for items pulled from fishing. Higher = better gear from the same fish weight. The fastest way to seed your server with blueprints if you don't want to grind cave runs.
How much extra item quality your Crafting Skill stat adds to crafted gear. Higher = crafting-focused builds matter more. This is the one to tweak if you want masterwork crafted gear to outpace cave-loot drops.
How long a player's death-bag corpse stays in the world. Higher = more time to recover your stuff before despawn. Mandatory tweak for cave-running PvE — losing your inventory because you couldn't get back in 5 minutes is brutal.
How effective Custom Recipes (cooked from cooking pots) are at restoring stats. Higher = better food/medical brews. RP servers love bumping this so home-cooked meals beat generic kibble.
How much your Crafting Skill amplifies Custom Recipes when you craft them. Higher = high-Crafting-Skill players make dramatically better consumables.
Quality of items from beacon drops (the colored beams of light). 1.5× to 2× is a common bump for PvE servers where players want decent saddle blueprints without cave-diving.
How much loot drops per successful fish catch. Higher = bigger hauls per fish. Pairs with FishingLootQualityMultiplier — quality controls what drops, this controls how much.
Quality of loot from special drops (Genesis missions, OSDs on Extinction, etc). Tune this carefully — too high and the bossing endgame collapses overnight.
Automatically grants every engram as players level up, removing the engram point system. Casual-friendly — players don't need to plan their builds. Hardcore-unfriendly because engram-point planning is a real progression layer.
Removes the once-per-24-hours limit on Mindwipe Tonic. Free experimentation with stat builds. Casual-friendly, exploit-prone on PvP (Mindwipe → buff stats → boss fight → mindwipe back).
Multiplies the max stack size for every stackable item. 5× means stone stacks of 500 instead of 100. Genuinely transformative QoL — your storage doesn't fill up with 200 partially-full stacks anymore.
PvP Timers & War
Tribe war declaration cooldowns, PvE-to-PvP zone timers, and the relevant pieces of the offline-raid system that live in Game.ini. Most of the offline-raid behavior is in GameUserSettings.ini — these are the deeper timers people forget exist.
Shortest possible duration of a declared tribe war. Default 86400 (24 hours). Lower for quick-war scrimmage servers; higher for serious campaign-style PvP.
Longest possible tribe war duration. Default 604800 (7 days). Set lower to force frequent war rotations.
Game.ini's tribe-war toggle. Lets PvE tribes mutually opt into a temporary war state. Same setting also exists in GameUserSettings.ini — leave consistent across both files to avoid confusion.
Lets PvE tribes cancel a declared war before it ends. Off by default to prevent abuse — declaring war and immediately cancelling could be used as a feint.
Game.ini-side offline raid timer. 0 = use defaults from GameUserSettings.ini. Set a value here only if you specifically need a different timer than what's in your main config.
Game.ini's per-tribe alliance cap. 0 = no Game.ini override (uses GameUserSettings.ini value). Mostly redundant with the GUS setting but kept here because some hosts only read it from Game.ini.
How many entries the tribe log retains. Default 100. Raise this on PvP servers where the tribe log is forensic evidence after a raid — 100 lines disappears in minutes during real combat.
Adjusts how detailed tribe log entries are for structure destruction events. Higher = more granular logging (every wall, every turret). Lower = grouped summaries.
Allows admins to grant Creative Mode to players (infinite resources, fly, godmode). Useful on build servers and event servers. Massive footgun on regular PvP — don't enable unless you really mean it.
Turns off all beacon and supply crate drops. Used on highly modded servers where vanilla beacons would clash with the mod's loot economy.
Per-Level Stats · Players
How much each stat point grants when a player levels up. Default 1.0× means the standard base gain (Health +10 per point, Stamina +10, Weight +10, etc). 2.0 doubles all gains. This is the array most casual servers boost so leveling actually feels meaningful instead of trickle-fed.
⚠ Community-reported quirk: Several admins report that PerLevelStatsMultiplier_Player[11] (Crafting Speed) only takes effect when placed on the third line of your Game.ini — immediately after the [/script/shootergame.shootergamemode] header. If you set a value here and it's not working in-game, that's likely why. This generator automatically emits the line in that position when you change Crafting Speed.
Per-Level Stats · Tamed Dinos
How much each stat point grants when a tamed dino levels up post-tame. The most-tweaked dino array — bump Health and Melee Damage on PvE for tankier breeding lines, bump Weight on hauler tames so Argys and Ankylos actually carry useful loads instead of fainting under 200 stone.
⚠ Heads up: Speed won't level on flyers (Argy, Quetz, Wyverns) unless you also enable bAllowFlyerSpeedLeveling=True in the "Player & Dino Stats" section above. Water and Crafting Speed have no effect on any dino — they don't drink and they don't craft.
Per-Level Stats · Wild Dinos
How much each stat point grants when a wild dino spawns at a given level. Affects the pre-tame stat distribution before you knock anything out. Bumping Health and Melee Damage here makes wild encounters genuinely dangerous; raising Weight gives you wild taming targets that start carrying more.
⚠ Broken slots: Wild dinos cannot level Speed at all — that slot has no effect. Water and Crafting Speed are universal dino non-starters (no drinking, no crafting). Setting these values is harmless but will do nothing in-game.
Per-Level Stats · Post-Tame Bonus (Add)
The post-tame "add" bonus applied to a dino's stats the moment it's tamed — a one-shot bonus based on the dino's pre-tame level. Default 1.0× means standard post-tame stat gain. Bump this on PvE servers where you want freshly-tamed dinos to feel powerful without grinding levels post-tame. Stacks with the regular per-level multiplier.
⚠ Same dino-universal limits as the other dino arrays: Water and Crafting Speed do nothing here either.
Per-Level Stats · Taming Effectiveness Bonus (Affinity)
The Taming Effectiveness bonus applied to a dino's stats based on how perfectly it was tamed. Higher Taming Effectiveness % = better post-tame stats; this multiplier amplifies that effect. Tune this if you want the perfect-tame bonus to feel genuinely meaningful (the difference between a 99% tame and a 76% tame should be tangible, not theoretical).
⚠ Same dino-universal limits: Water and Crafting Speed have no effect.
About the ARK Game.ini Generator
The Game.ini file is the deeper of ARK: Survival Ascended's two main config files. While GameUserSettings.ini handles server identity and the obvious multipliers (taming, harvest, XP), Game.ini is where the more subtle stuff lives: breeding multipliers, imprint cuddle intervals, structure decay periods, per-level stat scaling, fishing loot quality, custom recipe effectiveness, and the per-activity XP rates.
Most casual server admins never touch Game.ini. Most serious admins live in it. This generator covers every setting that matters, with plain-English explanations, working defaults, and flags on the settings that don't actually do what the docs claim they do.
Where does Game.ini live on the server?
Same locations as GameUserSettings.ini, just a different filename:
\ShooterGame\Saved\Config\WindowsServer\Game.ini(Windows servers)/ShooterGame/Saved/Config/LinuxServer/Game.ini(Linux servers)- Nitrado, GPortal, ASMR, and most managed hosts: in your control panel under "Configuration Files" or "Expert Settings"
The file may not exist when you first install the server — create it manually with the section header on the first line:
[/script/shootergame.shootergamemode]
What's the most-changed Game.ini setting?
Easily BabyMatureSpeedMultiplier, paired with BabyCuddleIntervalMultiplier. Every breeding-friendly server tweaks both. Right behind those: BabyImprintAmountMultiplier (so you can actually hit 100% imprint on fast-grown babies), MatingIntervalMultiplier (so you're not waiting hours between breeds), and the PerLevelStatsMultiplier arrays (so leveling actually feels meaningful).
What's broken or not-quite-working in Game.ini?
A few honest gotchas worth knowing:
- PerLevelStatsMultiplier_Player[11] (Crafting Speed) — community reports it only works when placed on line 3 of Game.ini, directly under the section header. Unconfirmed by official docs but reported by enough admins to be worth trying if your Crafting Speed boost isn't sticking.
- PerLevelStatsMultiplier_DinoTamed[9] (Speed) — does not work on flyers (Argy, Quetz, Wyverns) unless
bAllowFlyerSpeedLeveling=Trueis also set. - PerLevelStatsMultiplier_Dino*[5] (Water) and [11] (Crafting Speed) — have no effect on dinos. Dinos don't drink water and don't craft, so these slots do nothing regardless of value.
- PerLevelStatsMultiplier_DinoWild[9] (Speed) — wild dinos can't level Speed at all. This slot is purely cosmetic on the Wild array.
Common ARK Game.ini examples
- Boosted PvE — BabyMatureSpeedMultiplier 10, BabyCuddleIntervalMultiplier 0.1, BabyImprintAmountMultiplier 3, KillXP/HarvestXP/CraftXP all 2 to 3×. The breeding-focused QoL bundle.
- Hardcore PvP — Most multipliers at 1×, bAllowFlyerSpeedLeveling false (no Argy speed), tight tribe war timers, all per-level arrays at 1×. Standard official-feel PvP.
- Breeder paradise — BabyMatureSpeedMultiplier 30×, BabyCuddleIntervalMultiplier 0.05, BabyFoodConsumptionSpeedMultiplier 0.3, BabyImprintAmountMultiplier 5. Plus huge per-level stat boosts on tamed dinos. Build armies in days.
- Solo / Small Group — Generous breeding rates, longer corpse lifespan, higher item stack sizes, auto-unlock engrams. The settings that make ARK playable when you're the only one logging in.
Does this work for ARK: Survival Evolved (ASE) too?
Mostly. The vast majority of Game.ini settings work identically in ASA and ASE — breeding, imprint, XP rates, per-level stats, decay, loot. A handful of ASA-only settings (cryopod-related, some structure flags) won't apply to ASE but will be ignored gracefully.
More ARK tools
- ARK GameUserSettings.ini Generator — for server identity, taming, harvest, PvP rules
- Top Shared ARK Configs — see the most-shared configs from other admins
- All ARK generators