How to access different maps on a rented server?

[BobInSeattle]

My wife  and I just started playing this game recently and are having a great time with it. We have our own server hosted by HostHavoc and we have it tweaked to suit our playstyle.

I keep hearing about other maps like Scorched Earth, Genesic, etc, and I wonder, how do we access these? I don't mind buying any of the DLCs, but I have no idea how the system works and have a few questions:

1) Can we bring our existing characters or do we have to roll new ones on a new map?

2) Is it possible to travel back and forth across the various maps for play sessions and wind up back at our main base on The Island?

3) I'm not sure if our hosting service supports multiple maps or how to get that done. Anyone familiar with HostHavoc and how they do this?

I'd appreciate any insights or suggestions on this multi-map aspect of the game. Thanks!

[Pipinghot]

1 hour ago, BobInSeattle said:

My wife  and I just started playing this game recently and are having a great time with it. We have our own server hosted by HostHavoc and we have it tweaked to suit our playstyle.

I keep hearing about other maps like Scorched Earth, Genesic, etc, and I wonder, how do we access these? I don't mind buying any of the DLCs, but I have no idea how the system works and have a few questions:

1) Can we bring our existing characters or do we have to roll new ones on a new map?

There two different answers to this question:

1) How do things "look" from your character's perspective.

2) How do you make this possible with the server you've rented.

 

First, the character perspective.

You go to one of the three gigantic obelisks on the map (red, blue, green) and you upload your charater and/or supplies and/or animals into the oblisk, then you swap to a different map and download your characters & stuff to the new map. This is something that people do constantly on the Official servers to move from map-to-map. Side note: Technically you can do this at any drop that's coming down from the sky, but since the drops are temporary you have to know exactly what you're doing if you use a drop, it's easier and possibly safer to use an obelisk.

https://ark.wiki.gg/wiki/Obelisk

 

Second, from your perspective as the server administrator:

You have to run two different "instances" (copies) of the game on the server, with each instance running a different map and each instance/map has to be configured to be in the same cluster. How exactly you create two instances and configure them to be in the same cluster will depend on which hosting service you use. I do this on a machine that I have direct control over, so I start all of my server instances myself, running directly on the hardware that my friend owns.

Since you're running on a rented server I'm guessing you won't have to write out the full script that runs your server, instead they probably have fields that you type things into and they build the script for you. Even though your administrator panel where you set up your servers will look different from what I do, I'm going to show you a part of what my startup scripts look like, to help you understand a couple of concepts.

 

ExecStart=/arkdedicated/ShooterGame/Binaries/Linux/ShooterGameServer TheIsland?listen?SessionName=PipinghotsTheIsland?ServerPassword=<notgoingtotellyouguys>?AltSaveDirectoryName=Island?MultiHome=192.168.1.15?Port=1234?QueryPort=12345 -NoTransferFromFiltering -server -log -clusterid=Pipinghots_Cluster

ExecStart=/arkdedicated/ShooterGame/Binaries/Linux/ShooterGameServer ScorchedEarth_P?listen?SessionName=PipinghotsScorchedEarth?ServerPassword=<notgoingtotellyouguys>?AltSaveDirectoryName=Scorched?MultiHome=192.168.1.15?Port=1236?QueryPort=12347 -NoTransferFromFiltering -server -log -clusterid=Pipinghots_Cluster

 

A few things to notice here:

*   the ?listen name is different for each map, it is a mandatory name that WC decided on when they published each map. With a wrong name the server simply won't run the map, or any map at all, it must be exactly the right name. For every single person who runs a copy of TheIsland on a server it looks like "TheIsland?listen" and for every single person who runs a copy of Scorched Earth it looks like "ScorchedEarth_P?listen".

*   the "?AltSaveDirectoryName=" is technically optional, but I can't stress strongly enough how important it is to use one. If you don't use a different ?AltSaveDirectoryName= for each map your save directory is going to be a nightmare. Troubleshooting any problems with characters on your cluster would give you heart problems.

*   The "-clusterid=" must be the same for every server/map that you run. You choose the name, but use the same name every time. This specific setting is what allows your characters to move back and forth between different maps. If you don't put all of your servers/maps into the same cluster then your characters can't go anywhere.

* Each server/map has to have a unique ?Port= and a unique ?QueryPort=

 

For your reference:

https://ark.wiki.gg/wiki/Server_configuration

 

Having said all this, I strongly suspect that you'll need to rent more than one ARK server from your hosting service and run a different map on each server. Since I have access to my friend's physical server, I can run as many copies of ARK as I want to and they'll all run on this server. But hosting services typically rent a virtual server for each map that you want to run simultaneously.

So if you want to run The Island, The Center and Scorched Earth all at the same time you'll probably have to rent three virtual servers at the same time and configure them to all be in the same cluster. But again, I don't run mine on a hosting service so I might be wrong, they might let you run multiple maps on a single rented server, you'd just have to understand that each map uses a fair amount of CPU and memory, so it would need to be a pretty strong server to have good performance with multiple maps running at once.

1 hour ago, BobInSeattle said:

2) Is it possible to travel back and forth across the various maps for play sessions and wind up back at our main base on The Island?

Yes, as long as they're all in the same cluster.

Going back to my own setup as an example, I have configurations set up for multiple servers, but I never run more than two at a time (this is because, as I mentioned earlier, each copy of the ARK server running a map uses up some computer resources and my friend doesn't me running more than two instances at the same time on his server).

The most convenient way to do things would be to have a copy of every map running all the time so you can just hop to or from any map you want, but that would cost you a fair bit renting multiple ARK instances when you're only using one or two at a time. You're going to need to talk to your hosting service and find out what it would cost to run each instance/map and then decide on how many maps you want to keep running at one time.

You can probably see that this is what keeps a lot of people playing on the Official servers. Being able to jump on to any map, or even multiple different copies of same map in a single day if you're on the hunt for something specific, can be pretty convenient but when you're running your own servers this convenience comes at a cost.

 

1 hour ago, BobInSeattle said:

3) I'm not sure if our hosting service supports multiple maps or how to get that done. Anyone familiar with HostHavoc and how they do this?

Whoops, I overlooked this name before I started answering. I'm not familiar with HostHavoc, but hopefully I've given you enough information that you can understand what you're asking for if you decide to contact their customer support.

1 hour ago, BobInSeattle said:

I'd appreciate any insights or suggestions on this multi-map aspect of the game. Thanks!

There is another option you can think about, doing one map at a time, in the order they were released. This is what my friends & I are doing and here's why...

Each map in ARK has it's own unique feel & flavor. As WC released each new map they added new engrams into the game, they added new dinos, and in a couple of cases added new biomes, the mixture of biomes and the species that are native to that map make it different and more interesting to play. If you teleport to The Center and explore it using high level animals you've tamed on The Island you'll already be over powered for most of the challenges on the map. If you think of each map as being a new and different character in the ARK saga, you won't get to know those characters as well if you already have a powerful herd of dinos and high level characters when you go to each map. If your goal is to "beat" each map as efficiently as possible then by all means jump onto each map with high level characters and the highest level dinos you can. But if you want to get acquainted with, explore, experience and enjoy the unique character and nuances of each new map, then I recommend playing each map with brand new Lvl 1 characters, almost as if each map is a standalone game.

I had played quite a bit on PvP, PvE, Official, Unofficial, you name it, before I proposed this to my friends and we've been enjoying the heck out of it.

Here's an outline of what we do.

1a) Start The Island with brand new characters.

1b) Level up, explore, tame, breed, do caves, do boss fights, Boom! done with the map. Shut down The Island.

 

2a) Start The Center with brand new characters.

2b) Level up, explore, tame... but before we do caves, breeding and bosses...

2c) Copy our original high level characters from The Island to The Center. Then we finish the "end game" on The Center using those characters that stared on The Island.

 

3a) Start Scorched Earth with brand new characters.

2b) Level up, explore, tame... but before we do caves, breeding and bosses...

2c) Copy our original high level characters from The Center to Scorched Earth. Then we finish the "end game" on Scorched Earth using those characters that did bosses on The Island and The Center.

 

Rinse, repeat with future maps.

And, of course, customize the experience in any way that makes it more fun for you and your wife. Maybe my way is totally wrong for what you two want to get from your ARK playing experience, or maybe it's right, or maybe it's not quite right and you want to make changes.

 

 

 

[Zeldei]

IF you own your own server, you can simply switch the map to another map. So if you are on the Island, you would go to your server settings in the administrator interface website, switch the map to X, Y, or Z from a drop down menu, most likely. But if you switch maps, make sure to upload your character and any items you want to keep into the obelisks. 

You can also have a server cluster where you buy multiple servers and connect them with a "cluster ID." Then you can move freely back and forth without changing any maps. Also using the obelisks. But in this case, you would just click the inventory of the Obelisk and hit "transfer to another map."  Gportal allows you to buy "slots" instead of servers. So if you by 20 slots for the month, you can split it up into 2 servers of 10 slots. Each with a different map. 

[BobInSeattle]

Thank you both for the great responses. Pipinghot in particular, your message was fabulous and I will return to it from time to time until I understand everything in it. Thank you for putting that much effort into helping a couple of noobs enjoy this new world!

[wizard03]

On 1/30/2023 at 12:48 AM, BobInSeattle said:

My wife  and I just started playing this game recently and are having a great time with it. We have our own server hosted by HostHavoc and we have it tweaked to suit our playstyle.

I keep hearing about other maps like Scorched Earth, Genesic, etc, and I wonder, how do we access these? I don't mind buying any of the DLCs, but I have no idea how the system works and have a few questions:
1) Can we bring our existing characters or do we have to roll new ones on a new map?
2) Is it possible to travel back and forth across the various maps for play sessions and wind up back at our main base on The Island?
3) I'm not sure if our hosting service supports multiple maps or how to get that done. Anyone familiar with HostHavoc and how they do this?
I'd appreciate any insights or suggestions on this multi-map aspect of the game. Thanks!

With rented servers, its a bit difficult as you need a new server for each map. What you might want to do is see if you can get a server cluster going, but you may just want to go from one to another and bring everything with you....Go from the island to scorched earth, to aberation, extinction, gen 1 and finally gen 2

You can bring your characters, you can jump maps, but you must keep the servers online, and I have no clue