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What are the best Ark mods in 2024? The dino-survival multiplayer game has been immensely popular ever since it was released seven years ago, with a whole host of content added post-launch. If you’ve exhausted everything vanilla, however, or you fancy some unofficial extra goodies to wrap your talons around, these Ark mods are for you.
Worry not, Ark fans, because we’ve got a list of the best Ark mods right here. Ranging from rideable dodos and turtles to volcanoes and pirates, this has everything you need to spice up the dino-based survival game. You can get each mod working on your Ark server by simply subscribing to it on the linked Steam Workshop page – it’s that easy! Alternatively, pay attention to our Ark admin commands guide if you fancy using what are essentially cheats – we won’t tell anyone, promise.
Here are some of the best Ark Survival mods in 2023:
Improved Dinos
The Improved Dinos mod adds rare spawning dinosaurs that offer better blueprints and should be a greater challenge to take down than the usual Ark dinos, even for groups. The special variations to hunt down include extra large, extra deadly raptors and big alpha dinos.
Rideable Dodos
The opportunity to ride your very own dinosaur is probably one of the (very good) reasons that so many people have flocked to Ark. But one thing has always been missing: rideable dodos. The dumb birds were probably a little too puny to carry the weight of a fully grown human, but no more!
The Rideable Dodo mod changes everything. Maybe that’s overselling it. But it does mean you can finally live out your dream of leaping onto one of those ungainly birds and riding it into the sunset. Live the dream!
The World Turtle
Dinosaurs and dodos are all well and good, but let’s not pretend they’re better than a gigantic turtle. Hey, if it’s good enough for the late, great Terry Pratchett, it’s good enough for us.
Whack on this mod, and you’ll have a very small number of these permanently tameable giant turtles spawn in your server, and they’re about as large as a titan in terms of size, power, and stats. It’s absolutely the coolest you’ll ever look on top of a turtle, we promise.
Marniimods: Wildlife
The Marniimods Wildlife mod adds many animals to your arks, not just limiting you to dinosaurs. You can currently find the following creatures in this mod; some dimorphic species even have different character models for the males and females:
- Lions
- Cows
- Snow leopards
- Chickens
- Exotic birds
- Cats
- Hares
- Geckos
- Owls
- Elephants
- Wolves
- Rats
- Frogs
- Camels
- Snakes
- Ravens
- Mountain goats
- Shadowcats
Marniimods Wildlife receives constant updates, with new animals in the works and updates to existing ones planned. You can also find various saddles to use with these animals, so if you really want to fly around on a big owl, you can do so.
Thieves Island
It’s common knowledge that anything with pirates in it is good, which includes this Thieves Island map mod, an island once used as a base by the legendary pirate, Madame Cheng.
Understandably, Cheng’s fleet of 18,000 ships needed plenty of room, and so the main island in this mod equates to roughly half the size of The Island in vanilla Ark. It’s not just a new location either: you can also build fortresses in the sky with Scorched Earth dinos thrown into the mix.
The Volcano
Around the same size as the vanilla map, the Volcano map boasts five different biomes that house all of the dinos up to and including the Aberration and Extinction creatures. It also has a huge amount of resources to discover. Boss arenas from both Island and Scorched Earth are also available, as well as wild dinosaur babies. It’s certainly a striking location, with 15 caves to discover and explore, some requiring you to swim underwater to uncover secret artifacts.
Dome of Death
The story goes that shady corporations developed new dinosaur species and various other dangerous animals inside the Dome of Death. When they lost control of their experiments, they let them all loose and abandoned the facility, leaving behind riches that are now waiting to be claimed.
The Dome of Death is a map mod with striking beauty to match its hard-as-nails difficulty. Only seasoned Ark veterans need apply, but even they’ll spend plenty of time running away from, rather than towards, their new enemies.
Apako Islands
Rather than the larger landmasses you’ll find in regular maps, this map, instead, introduces 65 square kilometers of island paradises to Ark. You’ll probably need to do a lot of swimming, but one day we’ll hopefully have boats, and what a day it will be.
Unfortunately, the development of Apako Islands is on hold at the moment, but it’s already worth checking out if you fancy a bit of variety.
Halo
If you played Halo: Combat Evolved, you may remember the first time you looked up and saw the ring-shaped world that’s circling above you in the sky. This Halo map should get you a wee bit nostalgic for that moment.
Halo: Combat Evolved’s second mission ‘Halo’ was always missing a certain je ne sais quoi. And by je ne sais quoi, we really mean dinosaurs. There’s nothing quite like reliving one of the most famous moments in FPS history with one of those beasts on your heels.
Immersive training
The Immersive Training mod expands on the taming mechanic by giving you several new methods of taming dinosaurs. Whether hand-feeding the dinosaurs, giving them gifts, or even petting them – this mod makes for a far more interactive way to tame your new best friend. These new methods also strengthen bonds, increasing your trust in your dino pal.
Higher difficulty
When fending off ferocious dinosaurs and staving off starvation to survive gets too easy, you should consider raising the difficulty. To level 240, to be precise.
Diamond-hard dinos now spawn up to level 9600 with the player scaled to 300, leaving plenty in your way as you seek to reclaim your dominance of Ark’s world.
Final Fantasy 7 swords
If you can’t take waiting for Final Fantasy 7 Remake any longer, this is the mod for you. Armed with the Buster Sword, you can pretend you’re Cloud Strife once again, albeit with probably a lot less clothing on.
More Turrets & Turret Tools
Defend your hard-earned base in style with a range of fancy new turrets. With fire, oil, web, armor piercing, and explosive rounds, would-be invaders will either turn tail or be extinguished in myriad gruesome ways.
Your plush new defenses are more convenient to use, too. Now, while creatively raining death on your foes, you can do so safely in the knowledge that you’ll never need to manually refill your death machines again. Bliss.
Dino Tracker
When you’re plonked in the middle of nowhere, naked as the day you were born, it’s important to be organized. That’s why the Dino Tracker mod is worthwhile, as it allows even the most forgetful foragers to track down any mislaid dinos.
Unlockable at level 25, the Dino Tracker lets you can find all your tamed beasties no matter where you are on any map, and it’s so easy to use. It is, essentially, a fancy dino GPS, which conjures a series of yellow crosses right back to your missing dino of choice.
Caspack
While you might appreciate the tension that comes with desperately running to the site of your death in an attempt to recover lost items after the first few times it can start to become a chore.
The CasPack mod makes things simpler and enables you to see smoke signals directing you to your body, so no more guesswork. It makes your corpse stick around for a whole eight hours, rather than the few minutes you normally get, so you have plenty of time to get your stuff back.
How to make your own ark mods
If nothing here takes your fancy, you might want to take a quick look at Studio Wildcard’s instructions for making your own mods so you can create your own toys rather than play with someone else’s.
The Ark Dev Kit is a modified version of the Unreal Engine 4 Editor, containing all of the game’s source art, maps, and blueprint classes. While the C++ source code isn’t yours to muck around with, you can still alter plenty of things from AI behavior to weapons and beasties.
For more alternatives, you may also be interested in finding out more about this mod that adds a whole bunch of furniture to the game, or perhaps a mod that enables you to craft decorated biome bases to display and store your favorite critters is more your thing. Also, be sure to keep an eye on the Ark 2 release date, but if you want to try something altogether different, then take a look at our list of the best PC games right now.
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