ARK Survival Ascended RAM per map

The Island's empty dedicated server is 8 to 10 GiB on the ARK dedicated server setup page. The Center is 10.5 to 12. Extinction, the lightest map that page gives a number for, is 7 to 8.5. Ragnarok, Astraeos, and Lost Colony have level names on that table and a blank memory cell.

The column is a new world save, default settings, and nobody connected. Windows is outside it. The spread on a row is the creature respawn at startup, which the page says runs for several minutes. A machine with less memory can print a lower number, and the footnote on the five numbered Ascended maps says the performance is what you spend to get that lower reading.

How much RAM does The Island use?

TheIsland_WP is the level name. The empty range is 8 to 10 GiB, and the same row's Evolved server, TheIsland, is 3.5 to 4.5 GiB. The map people mean by "the Island" is two different bills depending on which game the binary is. Ascended is the larger one, before Windows, before a base, and before a mod.

The page is explicit about what pushes the number up after that empty reading: connected players, the age of the save, structures, creatures, storage, the server's own settings, and mods. Evolved gets a per-player line in the same section, an average of 50 to 150 MiB for each person connected. Ascended's table stops at the empty map. The growth warning sits in that same section, and the 50 to 150 MiB line stays on the Evolved sentence.

A 16 GiB machine set next to the Island's 8 to 10 still has to hold Windows, the respawn window at the top of that range, and whatever the tribe builds. Less RAM can make the process report less, and the page says you pay for that in performance. A working set under 8 GiB on a small box is that footnote.

An empty Factorio map, measured the same way this question usually gets asked, held 393 MiB for six hours in the factory and survival RAM comparison. The Island's 8 GiB low end is about twenty times that 393 MiB, and the operating system is already subtracted.

How much RAM does The Center use?

TheCenter_WP is the heaviest Ascended row with a number: 10.5 to 12 GiB empty. Evolved's TheCenter is 3 to 4 GiB. The upper end of the empty Ascended map is 12 GiB of game, and the column still leaves Windows out. On a 16 GiB machine that upper end, plus the operating system, is the sum that crowds the box before anyone joins.

The same growth list applies. A long-lived Center with structures, tames, and mods is a later save than the table. The table's job is the floor under that save, and 12 GiB is the top of the floor.

Scorched Earth, Aberration, and Extinction RAM

Scorched Earth, ScorchedEarth_WP, is 7.5 to 9 GiB. Aberration, Aberration_WP, matches the Island at 8 to 10. Extinction, Extinction_WP, is 7 to 8.5, the bottom of the numbered set. Each carries the same footnote. Each Evolved counterpart on those rows sits around 3 to 4 GiB.

Extinction's 8.5 GiB upper end is the smallest ceiling in the numbered set, and it is still the game alone, on a new save, with the respawn included in the interval. Sizing a host to 8 GiB because the low end of Extinction is 7 GiB puts the whole interval, and Windows, through a slot that the upper end already fills.

Ragnarok, Astraeos, and Lost Colony RAM

Ragnarok, Astraeos, and Lost Colony are on the Ascended side of the table as Ragnarok_WP, Astraeos_WP, and LostColony_WP. The memory cells are blank. Ragnarok's Evolved number, 4 to 5 GiB, is sitting right there on the other half of the row, which is how a 4 GiB Evolved figure ends up in an Ascended quote. Astraeos and Lost Colony are Unavailable on the Evolved side.

A longer list is Unavailable for Ascended and numbered only for Evolved: Valguero, Genesis Part 1, Crystal Isles, Genesis Part 2, Lost Island, Fjordur, and Aquatica. Genesis Part 2 is the one that looks like a substitute, because Evolved's Gen2 is 10 to 12.5 GiB, in the same neighborhood as The Center. The Ascended cell says Unavailable. The 10 to 12.5 belongs to the other binary.

How much RAM does a two-map cluster need?

Each map is its own server process. The empty Island plus the empty Center is 18.5 GiB at the low ends and 22 GiB at the high ends, and both of those sums are still the game processes alone. Windows sits under them. Players, bases, and mods sit on top of the empty ranges, later.

The page recommends 4 logical cores per Ascended instance, and it prefers single-thread speed, because gameplay stays on one thread and physics is the exception. Two maps are eight logical cores of that recommendation, and the gameplay thread on each one stays single. A second map is a second process with a second save.

Ports follow the same split. The first instance is UDP 7777 for the game, UDP 7778 for the peer port, which is always the game port plus one, and UDP 27015 for the Steam query. The second instance on the page's own table is UDP 7779, UDP 7780, and UDP 27016. RCON, if you turn it on, is TCP 27020 and then 27021. The query port can sit above 27020, and the page says the Steam browser then needs that port given to it directly.

Ports, the launch line, and Linux

The server listens on UDP 7777, UDP 7778, and UDP 27015, with TCP 27020 optional for RCON. Forwards are manual. Bandwidth on the same page scales with players: a home line of 100 Mb or better for a real group, and up to 60 KiB/s per connected player, shared across both directions, tied to tick rate and how heavy the save has become.

SteamCMD app 2430930 is Ascended. App 376030 is Evolved. The install size the page gives for an Ascended server is around 11 GiB, plus saves, tribe and player profiles, logs, update files, and mods. The one-line install on that page uses the Evolved app id. The Ascended id is the substitution the same paragraph names.

steamcmd +force_install_dir C:\arkserver +login anonymous +app_update 2430930 validate +quit

The sample start_server.bat on the page lives in ShooterGame\Binaries\Win64 and launches ShooterGameServer.exe with Evolved's TheIsland and a ?Port= argument. Two notes under that sample are the Ascended differences. The port flag is -port=, or the server stays on 7777. ?ServerAdminPassword= has to be the last argument that uses the ? form, or the rest of the line is read as part of the admin password. The level name for the Island is TheIsland_WP.

ShooterGameServer.exe TheIsland_WP?SessionName=Island?ServerAdminPassword=change-me -port=7777

That line is the page's sample with those two notes and the _WP map name applied. The prerequisites also call the binary ArkAscendedServer. The requirements beside it are the Visual C++ 2013 redistributable, x64, the DirectX End-User Runtimes from June 2010, and a system Windows and Steam both still support: Windows 10 version 22H2 or newer, or Windows Server 2016 or newer. Server 2012 is named only with Extended Security Updates.

Windows Server needs a further step, because the page says those editions handle certificates differently, and that TLS 1.2 has to be enabled for any Ascended dedicated server. The change is dated 18 November 2023. The file to install after that date is r2m02.crl, into Trusted Root Certification Authorities, in both certmgr.msc and certlm.msc. An older r2m02.cer left in that store is the certificate the page tells you to remove, under the name Amazon RSA 2048 M02.

Ascended's prerequisite line is Windows, or what the page calls a Windows-like environment. Evolved is the game with a native Linux server, the ShooterGame/Binaries/Linux build and app 376030. This run stayed on Linux and left the Ascended server unbooted.

The setup page's reading of the license is personal hosting. A dedicated server license from Nitrado is the exception it names. Donations, and money that stays inside the cost of running the server, are the gains that reading allows.

On NodeRings, the game you order includes ARK in the list under the plan. The address players use after that is ip:port, on the game server page, next to the console and the files. The number to set beside this table is the Windows working set of the one map you start. A 16 GiB machine still has to fit Windows on top of that row.