One of the first and most critical decisions you'll face in ARK: Survival Ascended is choosing your difficulty setting. This isn't just a simple toggle between "easy" and "hard" but an important decision that can reshape your entire experience. Your difficulty settings impact everything from the ferocity of the prehistoric creatures around you to the very progression of your character. This guide explains all three difficulty settings in ARK: Survival Ascended, so that you can choose the right one for your playthrough.
Ark Survival Ascended: Best Farming Dinosaurs
It can get tedious to farm for resources in Ark: Survival Ascended, so make sure to tame these dinosaurs with great farming utility asap.
All Difficulty Settings in ARK Survival Ascended
ARK: Survival Ascended has three difficulty settings: Easy, Medium, and Hard. Here’s a quick explanation of how each of the difficulty levels influences your gameplay:
Easy
On Easy difficulty, the world of Ark is generally more forgiving. The wild dinosaurs you’ll find are quite low-level and early survival would be less intimidating. Leveling up in ARK: Survival Ascended is easier and more effective on Easy mode, which means you can rapidly increase your stats. For instance, you could quickly pump your Melee Damage to over 400% with just a few stat boosts. Additionally, your need for food and water decreases more slowly, and taming dinosaurs becomes much more simple.
Medium
Medium difficulty marks the point where things start to get more challenging. Dinosaur levels are higher, making them tougher, and your level-ups aren't as efficient as before. You’ll also gain less per stat point invested. This combination leads to scenarios where it becomes quite hard to defeat dinosaurs all by yourself.
Hard
Hard difficulty dramatically shifts the game's balance. Wild creatures become incredibly dangerous, and you can easily get defeated by most of them, even if you're at a higher level yourself. This unforgiving nature means you'll likely have a rough time getting started, with initial survival being a constant struggle. The upside is that you'll find higher-level dinosaurs more frequently, making it easier to tame creatures over level 100.
After choosing a difficulty, you can adjust specific parameters like your character's damage output, food and water drain, to either increase the challenge or make your survival journey a bit more forgiving.
Which ARK Survival Ascended Difficulty Setting Should You Choose?
Choosing a difficulty in ARK: Survival Ascended isn't just about how hard you want the game to be. On Easy, the game can quickly become repetitive since you can defeat almost anything solo, making your tamed dinosaurs feel unnecessary. On the other hand, Hard difficulty can be incredibly punishing. Losing your carefully tamed dinosaurs to overpowered wild creatures is not only frustrating but can seriously slow down your progress.
If you’re completely new to ARK and want a more gentle introduction to its vast world, picking Medium difficulty for your first save is a solid compromise. Once you’re confident later on, you can always start a new game on a higher difficulty for the full ARK experience.
WHERE TO PLAY
- Genre(s)
- Board Game, Casual
