ARK: Survival Ascended Difficulty Setting Differences Explained

Difficulty levels in video games can make or break your playthrough, especially if the difference between their tiers is drastically different. Let’s talk about all of ARK: Survival Ascended’s difficulty levels.

ARK: Survival Ascended – All Difficulty Settings Explained

There are three main difficulty settings in ARK Survival Ascended: easy, medium, and hard. Each tier influences your damage and health recovery, food and water drain, and maximum dinosaur levels. From here, you can change individual stats, like your damage or food drain, to tweak your difficulty and add more of a challenge or make things easier.

Below are the default values for each difficulty level, excluding ones that do not change:

Easy Difficulty Stats

Player

• Damage – 3
• Water Drain – 0.25
• Food Drain – 0.25
• Stamina Drain – 0.25
• Health Recovery – 3
• Harvesting Damage – 1

Creature

• Damage – 1
• Resistance – 1
• Food Drain – 0.25
• Stamina Drain – 0.25
• Health Recovery – 3
• Harvesting Damage – 3.2

Structure

• Damage – 1
• Resistance – 0.25
• Damage Repair Cooldown – 1
• Disable Structure placement Collision – On

World

• XP Multiplier – 3
• Taming Speed Multiplier – 5
• Harvest Yield Multiplier – 2
• Maximum Difficulty – Off
• Difficulty Level – 0.2

Medium Difficulty Stats

Player

• Damage – 2
• Water Drain – 0.5
• Food Drain – 0.5
• Stamina Drain – 0.5
• Health Recovery – 2
• Harvesting Damage – 1

Creature

• Damage – 1
• Resistance – 1
• Food Drain – 0.5
• Stamina Drain – 0.5
• Health Recovery – 2
• Harvesting Damage – 3.2

Structure

• Damage – 1
• Resistance – 0.5
• Damage Repair Cooldown – 60
• Disable Structure placement Collision – On

World

• XP Multiplier – 2
• Taming Speed Multiplier – 3
• Harvest Yield Multiplier – 1.5
• Maximum Difficulty – Off
• Difficulty Level – 0.6

Hard Difficulty Stats

Player

• Damage – 1
• Water Drain – 1
• Food Drain – 1
• Stamina Drain – 1
• Health Recovery – 1
• Harvesting Damage – 1

Creature

• Damage – 1
• Resistance – 1
• Food Drain – 1
• Stamina Drain – 1
• Health Recovery – 1
• Harvesting Damage – 3.2

Structure

• Damage – 1
• Resistance – 1
• Damage Repair Cooldown – 180
• Disable Structure placement Collision – Off

World

• XP Multiplier – 1
• Taming Speed Multiplier – 1
• Harvest Yield Multiplier – 1
• Maximum Difficulty – On
• Difficulty Level – 1

While stats like resistance and harvesting damage do not change, others increase or decrease to reflect your difficulty. You can also change the difficulty level using the World option’s slider to change creature levels and loot quality, with Hard difficulty having the highest value.

In other words, if you’re interested in finding the highest-level dinosaurs possible and don’t mind a challenge, set your difficulty to Hard or bring the difficulty level slider to one. Otherwise, if you want a relaxing playthrough with minimal challenge, change your difficulty to easy or reduce the level slider.

If you want to start experimenting with mods, check out the five best mods for ARK: Survival Ascended, or click the game tag below to explore our growing content list.