Ways to prevent your Ark: Survival Evolved from Lagging
This article will cover many of the common reasons for lag on your ARK Server.
The following are what we will cover:
Multipliers on your server + melee damage per level.
Mod-related issues.
Dino count multipliers.
Auto-save period.
Map related lag.
Multipliers are referred to as harvesting rates, tame speeds and the like.
The most common multiplier to cause lag would be the harvest rate as increasing the rate can increase the amount of materials you yield.
What else affects harvesting and can contribute to the yield?
The quality and type of tool you use to harvest eg: Metal Pick with Ascendant Quality
A harvesting based dinosaur such as an Ankylosaurus
Melee damage stat on the dinosaur or player
Every object or dinosaur that is harvest able in ARK has a loot table, so you're always harvesting multiple items. If you have a high harvest rate, a high melee damage stat per level and your server is experiencing lag that causes you to hang for a little bit after harvesting it'll be advisable to lower your harvesting rates to help decrease the lag.
Here are some alternatives instead of adjusting your harvest multipliers:
You can use a stack mod, which'll help alleviate issues when the server is trying to create the required stacks of the materials you're harvesting.
You can also set individual harvest amounts for each material within the game.ini
Turning on UseOptimizedHarvestingHealth=True (GameUserSettings.ini) in the Configuration Editor will also assist in reducing lag as it'll check the server once, rather than multiple times for each harvest.
Multiple people harvesting on high rates can also contribute to the lag and this will affect everyone on the server, no matter how far or how close you are.
Mods can be the cause of many issues, one mainly being lag, especially overhaul mods that completely change dinos, dino spawn rates, stats and add new materials/items to the game. This can sometimes be an issue with the mod itself, or with there being multiple mods conflicting. Sometimes mod authors might release a patch that could cause issues and would need time to be fixed.
The only way to resolve mod related issues is to find out if mods are the cause. Remove all your mods beforehand but backup your saves beforehand as removing mods can cause structures or items to go missing.
If there is no lag when there are no mods on the server after trying it out for a while, slowly add the mods you had before in, one at a time until the server begins to lag. The only solution is to remove that mod temporarily until a new update rolls out for it and that any issues it causes are fixed.
The dino count multiplier helps increase or decrease the amount of dinos that spawn. Increasing this would cause more dinos to spawn, in turn causing more lag. This goes hand in hand with mods that add more dinos as they are also affected by the dino count multiplier.
This is normally fine at the default value, however if you have increased it and are experiencing lag, set it back to the default value and test to see if the server runs well. After defaulting the value, run admincheat destroywilddinos in-game to refresh the spawn map and allow the server to spawn at a default rate.
The destroywilddinos command is also a command line option, you can add this to your command line to destroy all wild dinos when the server boots, please remember to remove the command line when you're done so that you can join. Another note: You will experience lag in-game when executing this command and other players cannot join, you also might get kicked, depending on how powerful your machine is, do not worry, the command is working and will resume as normal afterwards.
This is only an issue if:
Your server machine isn't running an SSD/NVME.
Your auto-save period is at an incredibly low value such as 1 minute - 2 minutes.
To resolve 1. :
Upgrade your server by contacting support, as SSDs are normally standard for our services.
Increase the auto-save period for now, so you do not have lag as frequently.
HDD save speeds are much slower and can cause slow-down when saving.
To resolve 2. :
*Increase your auto-save period to 10 minutes or higher.
Saving too frequently means the SSD/NVME is ALWAYS working, causing slow downs.
This should not be the issue with Official Map DLC as they are complete and the developers do a lot of passes and updates to ensure that the map runs at the best it can. This is more to do with workshop maps developed by individuals, especially if it's not a completed map.
The map could cause anything from FPS related lag, to the server being unable to render objects, to just causing lag itself. To resolve this you may need to either:
Report this to the mod author, or check to see if there are any comments relating to the issue and hope for an update (Keep your back ups) and then remove the map and switch.
Remove the map and move to a completed map or official DLC.
The following are what we will cover:
Multipliers on your server + melee damage per level.
Mod-related issues.
Dino count multipliers.
Auto-save period.
Map related lag.
Multiplier related lag
Multipliers are referred to as harvesting rates, tame speeds and the like.
The most common multiplier to cause lag would be the harvest rate as increasing the rate can increase the amount of materials you yield.
What else affects harvesting and can contribute to the yield?
The quality and type of tool you use to harvest eg: Metal Pick with Ascendant Quality
A harvesting based dinosaur such as an Ankylosaurus
Melee damage stat on the dinosaur or player
Every object or dinosaur that is harvest able in ARK has a loot table, so you're always harvesting multiple items. If you have a high harvest rate, a high melee damage stat per level and your server is experiencing lag that causes you to hang for a little bit after harvesting it'll be advisable to lower your harvesting rates to help decrease the lag.
Here are some alternatives instead of adjusting your harvest multipliers:
You can use a stack mod, which'll help alleviate issues when the server is trying to create the required stacks of the materials you're harvesting.
You can also set individual harvest amounts for each material within the game.ini
Turning on UseOptimizedHarvestingHealth=True (GameUserSettings.ini) in the Configuration Editor will also assist in reducing lag as it'll check the server once, rather than multiple times for each harvest.
Multiple people harvesting on high rates can also contribute to the lag and this will affect everyone on the server, no matter how far or how close you are.
Mod-related lag
Mods can be the cause of many issues, one mainly being lag, especially overhaul mods that completely change dinos, dino spawn rates, stats and add new materials/items to the game. This can sometimes be an issue with the mod itself, or with there being multiple mods conflicting. Sometimes mod authors might release a patch that could cause issues and would need time to be fixed.
The only way to resolve mod related issues is to find out if mods are the cause. Remove all your mods beforehand but backup your saves beforehand as removing mods can cause structures or items to go missing.
If there is no lag when there are no mods on the server after trying it out for a while, slowly add the mods you had before in, one at a time until the server begins to lag. The only solution is to remove that mod temporarily until a new update rolls out for it and that any issues it causes are fixed.
Dino Count Multiplier
The dino count multiplier helps increase or decrease the amount of dinos that spawn. Increasing this would cause more dinos to spawn, in turn causing more lag. This goes hand in hand with mods that add more dinos as they are also affected by the dino count multiplier.
This is normally fine at the default value, however if you have increased it and are experiencing lag, set it back to the default value and test to see if the server runs well. After defaulting the value, run admincheat destroywilddinos in-game to refresh the spawn map and allow the server to spawn at a default rate.
The destroywilddinos command is also a command line option, you can add this to your command line to destroy all wild dinos when the server boots, please remember to remove the command line when you're done so that you can join. Another note: You will experience lag in-game when executing this command and other players cannot join, you also might get kicked, depending on how powerful your machine is, do not worry, the command is working and will resume as normal afterwards.
Auto-save Period
This is only an issue if:
Your server machine isn't running an SSD/NVME.
Your auto-save period is at an incredibly low value such as 1 minute - 2 minutes.
To resolve 1. :
Upgrade your server by contacting support, as SSDs are normally standard for our services.
Increase the auto-save period for now, so you do not have lag as frequently.
HDD save speeds are much slower and can cause slow-down when saving.
To resolve 2. :
*Increase your auto-save period to 10 minutes or higher.
Saving too frequently means the SSD/NVME is ALWAYS working, causing slow downs.
Map Related Lag
This should not be the issue with Official Map DLC as they are complete and the developers do a lot of passes and updates to ensure that the map runs at the best it can. This is more to do with workshop maps developed by individuals, especially if it's not a completed map.
The map could cause anything from FPS related lag, to the server being unable to render objects, to just causing lag itself. To resolve this you may need to either:
Report this to the mod author, or check to see if there are any comments relating to the issue and hope for an update (Keep your back ups) and then remove the map and switch.
Remove the map and move to a completed map or official DLC.
Updated on: 08/09/2020
Thank you!