Ark: Survival Ascended has 3 levels of difficulty that you can choose when customizing your world, namely: Easy, Medium, Hard. These will affect how difficult it will be for you to survive in the world. For example, dinosaur levels on Hard difficulty will be much higher compared to Easy. To offset the enemies being stronger, though, because killing them will give you more loot than on lower difficulty levels.
We recommend choosing the Hard difficulty from the very beginning because it will actually be much easier for you to progress. The reason for this is that you’ll get an excellent amount of loot from the enemies you kill, even though they’re stronger. For example, if you choose the Easy difficulty, you are unlikely to defeat bosses quickly and efficiently because you won’t have enough resources to resist them. On the Hard level, everything becomes much easier. You kill powerful enemies, receive generous rewards for doing so, and are thus better prepared for any challenge, including bosses.
The game also has a difficulty scale that you can adjust through the world tab before you start your save. By increasing this scale, you can also make enemies weaker or stronger, as well as the number of rewards you will receive.
It’s also worth noting that in addition to the level of dinosaurs and the rewards you receive, the difficulty of the game also affects the following factors:
- Damage.
- Resistance.
- Stamina.
- The speed of food consumption.
- The speed of water consumption.
As you may have guessed, the higher the difficulty level, the more damage you will take and the less resistance to damage you will have. The same goes for food, water, and stamina, meaning that at a higher difficulty level, each factor will be consumed much faster.