Playing Ark: Survival Evolved with your friends is one of the best ways to experience the game. This is why it can be disappointing to be kicked out of an ARK server when you and your friends are in the middle of a Jurassic adventure. It’s important to be able to play without the worry of being disconnected. Knowing how to resolve these issues is critical to ensure you and your fellow warriors can have a smooth journey through ARK!

No matter if you’re facing an issue due to your server or home connection, the server not being fully online, corruption, or an outdated client, fixing these issues can be done to ensure you and your friends remain on the server without being kicked. Through this guide, we will explore the circumstances of why you are being kicked from an ARK: SE server and how we can resolve these problems!

Bad Connection to the ARK Server

A connection issue can be the result of either an issue with your server or more commonly, an issue with your at-home internet. Let’s determine if there is a connection issue.

Gathering a Connection Report to Review

1. On your PC, you will need to open a command prompt or terminal window.
   • For Windows PCs open search in your taskbar, search for “cmd”, and open the “Command Prompt” program.
   • For Mac PCs locate the “Finder”, open “Applications” and then “Utilities”, and then click on “Terminal” to open that.
2. Gather a ping report, a report of the connection to your server, by typing this command within the Command Prompt or Terminal: ping SERVERIP-WITHOUT-PORT
3. Then press the “Enter” key on your keyboard. A report will appear and at the bottom of the report, we will want to focus on these specific results:
   

   With that report in hand, we can now review the report for potential connection problems!

Checking for ARK Server Connection Issues

When looking over your ping report, we will mainly focus on two sections at the bottom of this report. The “Packets” section and the “( % loss)” sections will allow you to determine if there is something wrong by showing if there is a loss of connection.

A ping report will send four connection ping tests and the goal is to ensure all four packets are sent and received without delay and without them becoming lost. If a packet becomes lost, that would mean there is a connection problem. Therefore, check and ensure there are no packets in the “Lost =” section and that the “( % loss)” is also at 0%.

If you have discovered packet loss that is causing connectivity issues, we will go through how you can amend this!

Fixing ARK: Survival Evolved Connection Problems

1. Try restarting your internet router to allow your connection to refresh.
2. Attempt to connect to your server from another device. Sometimes devices can include programs and firewalls that can block game connections and so this can help determine if that is an issue.
3. Contact your internet service provider, as they can often walk you through additional troubleshooting with your internet to resolve any and all at-home connection issues.

ARK:SE Server is not ONline or is Restart

If an ARK: Survival Evolved server does not fully start or if the server itself is still restarting, this can cause players to start joining a server, but then get kicked out as it is still loading.

It is recommended to wait around 5 – 10 minutes before attempting to connect to your ARK server as this allows the server enough time to come online. When mods or a custom map are added to a server, this can lengthen the time that it can take for the server to start up and restart.

If your server still refuses connection or kicks you out upon joining, we can follow steps to find out why this is happening.

Possible ARK Server File Corruption

Corruption of a file occurs when that particular file’s data breaks and is no longer formatted properly to be able to load. These types of file corruptions, which often occur due to ARK server mods, custom maps, or incorrect setting changes, are rare but do occur and require that the server be fixed before you can join without being kicked.

Checking for ARK: Survival Evolved Server Corruption

1. Entering your control panel, to the left under “Tools” select “File Browser” to access your server files.
   
2. Within the File Browser, enter the folders “arkse”, “ShooterGame”, “Saved”, and then the “Logs” folder.
   
3. Inside the Logs, look for a “crashstack.log” file.

If there is a crash log file this is a good indication that corruption is on your server. In those situations, or if you’re facing issues after making recent server changes, it’s worth exploring those recent changes to see if those resulted in corruption that could be kicking you while playing.

Reversing Corruption of Your Server Settings

If you had recently changed your server settings prior to the server kicking players out, it is very possible that those changes might be causing some trouble. It’s important to always remember what settings are changed so that you can reverse those if a problem occurs and we will show you how.

1. Start by finding what settings were edited last and what files those were changed in. Once you know what has been changed, you can undo those.
   

   For our example above, we remember changing “HarvestAmountMultiplier” and “XPMultiplier” to 99999999.99 before our server began kicking us out.

2. Access your ARK: Survival Evolved server’s control panel.
3. While on the server panel, to the left under “SETTINGS” select the “General” option.
   

   This will display all of the settings for your server.

4. You will now want to locate each setting you had changed and you’ll need to set those back to their default values. In the case of settings like the multiplier options, if you have edited these a yellow x will appear next to that setting. You can click the x next to that setting to set that back to default.
   

   For our situation of setting the Harvest and XP Multiplier options to 99999999.99, we will be changing these back to 1.0 like this:

   
5. Once you have undone those changes, lastly save and then restart your ARK:SE server!
   

If after waiting for your server to come online you are still unable to join, we’ll continue exploring other types of corruption and the methods to clearing those problems up.

ARK: Survival Evolved Mod or Custom Map Corruption

Mods and custom maps do not always interact kindly with each other and servers. This can be due to mod conflicts and issues between a mod and custom map. While ARK mod developers do their best to inform players of possible issues that can occur, sometimes these issues can be unpredictable. There are two solutions we will dive into to help with this situation.

ARK: SE Mods or Custom Maps Were Added Recently

1. We recommend following the steps in the “Reversing Corruption of Your Server Settings” section above to remove those mods or custom map.
2. Once those have been removed, test the server to see if you’re still being kicked.
3. If you can join, try adding the mods and/or custom map back one at a time, testing the server each time.
4. At any time if you start getting kicked, you’ll then know exactly which mod or custom map is causing this problem.

Removing ARK Mods and Custom Maps Are Not Helping

In these occurrences this will mean that the corruption has affected your core ARK server files and to fix this, the game will need to either be restored to a backup of before the corruption occurred, or if that doesn’t help, the game can be reinstalled which provides brand new files and removes the corrupted ones. We will show you how to restore backups and reinstall the game on your ARK server!

RESTORING AN ARK SERVER BACKUP

1. When restoring a backup, go on your panel and to the left, select the “Restore Backup” option.
   
2. You will find backups of your ARK: SE server in this “Backup Management” area.
3. Locate a backup that is prior to when these issues began and press the “Restore” option next to that backup.
   
4. You will then be informed that the data currently on your server will be overwritten with this backup’s data.
   
5. Press the “Restart now” option to immediately start the backup restore and once your server is online, your server will be set to a previous state before your issue began.

If you find that issues are still persisting, it is recommended to try several different backups from earlier dates to ensure all recent adjustments are reversed. When issues still continue after attempting multiple backups, it can be worth reinstalling ARK to ensure you have a fresh installation that will work.

REINSTALLING ARK: SURVIVAL EVOLVED ON YOUR SERVER

1. To reinstall ARK, look to the left side of your server panel.
2. Locate “REINSTALL” and click on that option.
   
3. Select “REINSTALL” once more to confirm the reinstallation.
   

   ARK: Survival Evolved will now reinstall on your server, ensuring that you have fresh files with the latest updates installed! This can take some time for the game to reinstall to the server.

4. After ARK:SE is fully reinstalled, start the server to bring it online!

The ARK game will now be reinstalled to the server and you can now begin re-adding mods or custom maps to get your server setup!

Now that any connection issues have been patched along with any broken server files, it’s time to begin playing on your ARK: Survival Evolved server with your friends! Gather up your friends and your favorite dinosaurs and get ready for the ultimate prehistoric adventure!