Ark: Survival Evolved – How to Play Single Player

If you don’t want to spend your time on the island with others, and you’d rather build up your own army of dinosaurs without having to worry about other players, then single player mode is the way to go. In this article we’ll tell you everything you need to know to dive into Ark: Survival Evolved and start up the game’s single player mode so you can do whatever you want.

How to Play Single Player

Launching into a single player game in Ark is very easy, but it also comes with a lot of setup, depending on how you want to run the game. If you just want basic settings, with the default setup, then all you need to do is launch the game, press the Host\Local option, and then choose Play Single Player from the center menu.

If you want to spice things up, though, you can actually change all of the rules of the game, including damage output, the overall difficulty, and even the rate at which you tame dinosaurs and gain experience.

You also have the option of changing how things decay—like structures, food, dinosaurs, etc. If you’re running a server for your friends, then you can allow cave building, flyer carry in PVE, or even disallow those things depending on what you feel your game needs.

These aren’t the only settings you can change, either. You can also determine which Engrams you want to be available to players by pressing on the Engram tab. Here you can double click on items to grey them out, which will remove them from the game world when you launch your server.

The Benefits of Local Gameplay

If you aren’t sure what the benefits of playing single player, or even hosting a private server are, then let’s go over a few. Not only can you decide which Ark story you want to play, but you can also choose to create a procedurally generated Ark, which will make the world something different each and every time. It’s not something you see all that much right now, and it might be something you want to explore on your own.

The real benefits of local gameplay, though, come in the form of being able to tell your own story without having to worry about the interference of other players. If that sounds like your thing, then you should definitely check it out and give it a shot. You can find more help in Ark by checking out our guides on how to tame dinosaurs, and how to build your first house.

We’ll have more Ark content coming as we grow closer to release, so be sure to stay up to date with the latest information to make sure you’re ready when the game is fully available on August 29.