Alter dino spawns in ARK
Alter dino spawns in ARK
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Do you want to alter dino spawns in ARK? In order to control the percentages of your ARKs native wild population, you can use mods such as Simple Spawners, or use the built-in system for controlling it. It might seem a bit overwhelming at first but once you did it yourself a few times it’ll be really simple to understand.
All of these settings should be placed in your Game.ini.
DinoSpawnWeightMultipliers=(DinoNameTag=<tag>,SpawnWeightMultiplier=<factor>,OverrideSpawnLimitPercentage=<override>,SpawnLimitPercentage=<limit>)
This example is listed in the official documentation. Let’s break it down real quick. Here are the arguments explained.
Arguments
tag(string) – Dinosaur type to adjust, see Creature IDs (column Name Tags).
factor(float) – Weight factor for this type.
override(false) – If true, use the specified SpawnLimitPercentage.
limit(float) – Maximum percentage (among all spawns) for this type.
First off, remember this system is dynamic, meaning it changes over time, based on a number of factors like if players are in that area, if it’s in stasis or not, or if it’s badly populated, etc. Secondly, even though you can control the values, there is still RNG in place that makes it more dynamic as well.
So, for example, say that you want to change the spawns of the Brontosaurus. First, grab its dino name tag, or just commonly called the tag. After that, we have the weight multiplier, which basically decided how often this particular spawn will be called. In theory, if you have this multiplier set to 1(=100%), a whole container could be filled with Brontosauruses. But since ARK spawns it by RNG(and not to mention that creatures are constantly killed, tamed, or despawns) it is extremely unlikely it’ll happen.
Lastly, we have the spawn limit percentage, which basically sets a hard limit on the number of the particular dino that can spawn in each of the containers it’s in. Setting the limit to 0.1(=10%) means that the container can only be filled with a maximum of 10% Brontosauruses. When the limit is reached, another creature will be picked instead. The OverrideSpawnLimitPercentage must be set to true for this to take effect.
DinoSpawnWeightMultipliers=(
DinoNameTag=Bronto,
SpawnWeightMultiplier=0.8,
OverrideSpawnLimitPercentage=true,
SpawnLimitPercentage=0.1
)
Keep in mind that ARK usually has several containers that can spawn the Brontosaurus. By applying this code, all of those containers will be affected by the code. You can specify containers individually, see further down. Also keep in mind that when you alter the spawns of a creature, all other creatures that are in that container can be affected as well.
If you are trying to alter the spawn rates of a modded creature, you’d have to rely on the author of the mod to give you dino name tags. If that’s not available, or the custom creature has the same tag as its vanilla counterpart(which is fairly common), the easiest solution is to remove the creature from spawning altogether using NPCReplacements, and then control its spawn with mods such as Simple Spawner.
This is useful when you want to replace any given type of creature with another or disable it altogether. The following code will replace all Brontosauruses with Dodos,
NPCReplacements=(FromClassName="Sauropod_Character_BP_C", ToClassName="Dodo_Character_BP_C")
And the following code will remove Brontosauruses from spawning at all,
NPCReplacements=(FromClassName="Sauropod_Character_BP_C", ToClassName="")
So if you want a high chance of finding a Brontosaurus in those areas, but you don’t want that many of them, set the SpawnWeight high, and the LimitPercentage low so it’s more likely to get picked but will not be in greater numbers.
Some exceptions to this exist, for example, Quetzes, which have a separate container only for them. In such cases, the Quetz will obviously be picked by the RNG-roll every time. Also, consider that many custom modded maps both edit existing vanilla containers and adds containers of their own. Consult the author of those maps if unsure.
As always, remember to,
Save your world and let the server shut down properly before editing your Game.ini.
Make sure that the file is not set to read-only so your server won’t overwrite your changes upon rebooting.
Do a wild dino wipe after you’ve made changes to anything spawn related.