Restoring a Save Game in ARK: Survival Evolved

Save Games in ARK: Survival Evolved – Introduction

While adventuring in ARK on a server, players experience universes where they’ll investigate baffling woods, tackle secrets in mazes, and even fight corrupted animals. Unfortunately, it can happen that something goes wrong on your adventure, such as losing your favorite tamed dinosaurs in a battle or having your base destroyed even though it was protected. Luckily, there is the possibility to restore your save game in ARK to an earlier point in time by loading a backup.

Knowing your server is safe with a backup of your save game, you and your friends can adventure without worrying about losing your and your friend’s hard work. From collecting resources to taming dinosaurs, and building the most epic ARK base. Follow us through this article as we show you how to restore a save game on your ARK: SE server!

How to Save in ARK on PC and Consoles

Before you can restore a save game, you must have one. Let’s start by making an ARK game backup. First, you need to be an admin on your ARK server. This guide will show you how to do that.

If you are playing ARK: Survival Evolved on PC, saving the game is relatively easy. The following method will save the game to your PC.

• Head into your ARK server and press the Tab key. This will open the game admin console.
• Enter the following command in this game console: admincheat saveworld
• Afterward, press the Enter key and server will perform a game save.

When you play on a game console like Xbox or PS4, the process for saving is slightly different from on a PC. Follow these steps to access your ARK console on gaming consoles.

• To begin, load into your ARK server and then go to the pause menu.
• For PS4, press and hold L1, R1, Square, and Triangle.
• For Xbox, press and hold LB, RB, X, and Y.
• Next, type the command: admincheat saveworld
• Lastly, send the command and your ARK server will save.

You can learn how to use more ARK admin commands by following this guide!

Different Types of ARK Backups

Now that you know how to create a save game, let’s take care of the different backups that exist in ARK: SE. There are Game Internal Backups, Server Backups, and Database Backups. Let’s take a closer look:

• Game Internal Backups – Game internal backups are made throughout the day by the game on your server. These backups simply contain the savegame. Making it easy to roll your save game back a few hours rather than a whole day.
• Server Backups – Server backups are daily incremental backups of your server made once per day. These backups will restore the entire server back to a specific point. Including the configurations.
• Database Backups – These backups are backups of the database for your server. (Useful for games like Arma and CS:GO)

How to create a Backup and Where to Find It

The Savegame of a Nitrado host ARK: Survival Evolved Gameserver can be found in the arkse/ShooterGame/Saved/SavedArks/ directory of your server’s FTP.

This directory holds the following information:

• Playerprofiles – Each player is assigned a custom profile on the server. this profile is saved as a “SteamID.arkprofile” file. For example: 765123979XXX40008.arkprofile
• World – The current world is saved as a “Worldname.ark” file. For example: TheIsland.ark
• Tribes – Each created tribe is saved as an “TribeID.arktribe” file. For example: 1068865824.arktribe

How to Restore an ARK Game Save Backup

If you ever wish to restore a backup for your server, please do the following:

• First, log into your server webinterface.
• Next, under “Tools”, click “Restore Backup” and your server backup page will load.

• Search through and find the ARK backup you’d like to restore.
• Then, click the “Restore” option next to that backup. Press “Restore” again to confirm the backup restore.
• Finally, that ARK game save backup will restore and you’ll be able to restart your adventure from that save point!

ARK Game Save Troubleshooting Tips

• If you would like to undo something you did in-game, use the “Game internal” backups to simply roll your save game back to before you made the changes.
• “Help my server wiped after it restarted!” — Use the “Game internal” backups to roll your save game back to before your server restarted.
• Something happened on the server and I want to go a couple days back. – Use the “Server Backups” to fully restore your server to a specific date.
• My characters are here but my world is gone! – Use the “Game internal” backups to restore your world save back to the time you last played.

Keep Your Save Game in ARK Safe Today

The ability to create and load backups in case something goes wrong gives you great peace of mind when you’re out and about in ARK. In this article, we have shown you how to create a savegame, where to find it, and what types of backups there are. You can also learn how to restore a backup too. This will ensure that you feel safe when making changes to your ARK: Survival Evolved game server!

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