ASA Breeding and Taming Rates: What Each Multiplier Actually Controls
There is no such thing as a "breeding speed" setting in ARK: Survival Ascended. There are five independent clocks, they are controlled by five different multipliers, and they do not live in the same file. Taming sits in GameUserSettings.ini. Mating, hatching, maturation and the imprint cadence all sit in Game.ini. Set one and ignore the others and you get exactly the result people complain about: an egg that hatches the instant it touches the ground, followed by a baby that takes four real days to raise, or a baby that grows up in ninety minutes and finishes at 0 percent imprint because its first care request was scheduled eight hours out.
The five clocks
Everything from "I found a wild Rex" to "I have an adult imprinted Rex" passes through these five stages in order. Each has its own multiplier, and the stages are not aware of each other.
| Stage | Primary setting | File |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Taming a wild creature | TamingSpeedMultiplier | GameUserSettings.ini |
| 2. Mating cooldown and the mating bar | MatingIntervalMultiplier, MatingSpeedMultiplier | Game.ini |
| 3. Egg incubation | EggHatchSpeedMultiplier | Game.ini |
| 4. Baby to adult maturation | BabyMatureSpeedMultiplier | Game.ini |
| 5. Imprint request cadence | BabyCuddleIntervalMultiplier | Game.ini |
The file split is the single biggest source of wasted evenings. Almost every breeding multiplier belongs in Game.ini, under [/Script/ShooterGame.ShooterGameMode] (the official wiki writes this header in lowercase, and that form is equally common in the wild). Only taming speed and a handful of toggles belong in GameUserSettings.ini, under [ServerSettings]. A breeding multiplier pasted into GameUserSettings.ini is not an error, it is silence: the server starts normally and the value is simply never read. Every name, file and default below was checked against the official ARK Community Wiki server configuration reference.
The complete multiplier table
Defaults are the stock values. The "faster" column tells you which direction to move the number to speed that stage up, which is not always upward.
| Setting | File and section | Default | Faster | What it controls |
|---|---|---|---|---|
TamingSpeedMultiplier | GameUserSettings.ini [ServerSettings] | 1.0 | Raise | Taming progress gained per food item eaten. Higher means fewer bites to finish the tame. |
DinoCharacterFoodDrainMultiplier | GameUserSettings.ini [ServerSettings] | 1.0 | Raise | General creature food consumption. The wiki notes it also affects taming times. |
DisableImprintDinoBuff | GameUserSettings.ini [ServerSettings] | False | n/a | True removes the extra damage and resistance the imprinter gets while riding. |
AllowAnyoneBabyImprintCuddle | GameUserSettings.ini [ServerSettings] | False | n/a | True lets anyone care for a baby, not only whoever imprinted on it. |
AllowRaidDinoFeeding | GameUserSettings.ini [ServerSettings] | False | n/a | True allows Titanosaurs to be fed, and so permanently tamed. |
MatingSpeedMultiplier | Game.ini [/Script/ShooterGame.ShooterGameMode] | 1.0 | Raise | How fast the mating bar fills. 2.0 completes mating in half the normal time. |
MatingIntervalMultiplier | Game.ini [/Script/ShooterGame.ShooterGameMode] | 1.0 | Lower | Cooldown before a female can mate again. 0.5 lets her mate 50 percent sooner. |
LayEggIntervalMultiplier | Game.ini [/Script/ShooterGame.ShooterGameMode] | 1.0 | Lower | Time between eggs being laid. Higher increases the gap, so lower means more eggs. |
EggHatchSpeedMultiplier | Game.ini [/Script/ShooterGame.ShooterGameMode] | 1.0 | Raise | Time a fertilised egg needs to hatch. Higher cuts that time. |
BabyMatureSpeedMultiplier | Game.ini [/Script/ShooterGame.ShooterGameMode] | 1.0 | Raise | Maturation speed from baby to adult. The headline breeding number. |
BabyFoodConsumptionSpeedMultiplier | Game.ini [/Script/ShooterGame.ShooterGameMode] | 1.0 | Lower | How fast babies eat. Lower reduces the meat you must stage in troughs. |
BabyCuddleIntervalMultiplier | Game.ini [/Script/ShooterGame.ShooterGameMode] | 1.0 | Lower | Time between imprint requests. At 1.0 a request arrives every 8 hours. |
BabyCuddleGracePeriodMultiplier | Game.ini [/Script/ShooterGame.ShooterGameMode] | 1.0 | Raise | How long a missed request is tolerated before imprint quality starts falling. |
BabyCuddleLoseImprintQualitySpeedMultiplier | Game.ini [/Script/ShooterGame.ShooterGameMode] | 1.0 | Lower | How fast quality drains once the grace period has run out. |
BabyImprintAmountMultiplier | Game.ini [/Script/ShooterGame.ShooterGameMode] | 1.0 | Raise | Percentage each successful care grants. Global across every species. |
BabyImprintingStatScaleMultiplier | Game.ini [/Script/ShooterGame.ShooterGameMode] | 1.0 | Raise | How much imprint quality affects stats. Set to 0 to disable imprinting entirely. |
WildDinoCharacterFoodDrainMultiplier | Game.ini [/Script/ShooterGame.ShooterGameMode] | 1.0 | Raise | How fast wild creatures consume food, which sets the gap between bites in a knockout tame. |
TamedDinoCharacterFoodDrainMultiplier | Game.ini [/Script/ShooterGame.ShooterGameMode] | 1.0 | Lower | How fast tamed creatures consume food. ASA support is listed as unconfirmed on the official wiki. |
WildDinoTorporDrainMultiplier | Game.ini [/Script/ShooterGame.ShooterGameMode] | 1.0 | Lower | How fast a knocked out creature loses torpor, so how much narcotic a tame costs. ASA support unconfirmed. |
PassiveTameIntervalMultiplier | Game.ini [/Script/ShooterGame.ShooterGameMode] | 1.0 | Lower | How often a passive tame asks to be fed. ASA support unconfirmed. |
Values are floats. There is no gestation multiplier: mammals gestate instead of laying an egg, and the INI reference documents no separate setting for that timer, so plan mammal lines around maturation rather than around hatch speed.
Why maturation and imprint interval must move together
The imprint cadence does not follow your maturation rate. The official wiki is explicit about it: BabyCuddleIntervalMultiplier "scales always according to default BabyMatureSpeedMultiplier value", and at 1.0 the imprint request is every 8 hours. Raise maturation tenfold and the request is still every 8 hours. The baby simply grows out of the window.
The number of care opportunities in a whole raise is total maturation time divided by (maturation multiplier x 28800 seconds x cuddle interval multiplier). Only the product of those two multipliers matters. Keep BabyMatureSpeedMultiplier x BabyCuddleIntervalMultiplier at roughly 1.0 and you keep the stock number of care sessions no matter how fast you raise. That is the whole rule:
- Pick your maturation speed first, based on how long you want a raise to take.
- Set the cuddle interval to 1 divided by that number. Maturation 10.0 pairs with interval 0.1.
- Then use
BabyImprintAmountMultiplierto decide how many care sessions a player must actually attend. This is the knob that buys back player time, and it is the one most admins never touch.
Two worked configurations
A Rex needs about 92.5 hours to mature at stock rates and takes roughly 9 percent imprint per care, so 11 sessions to reach 100 percent. Here is that same Rex under two coherent rulesets.
| Setting or outcome | Stock 1x | Weekend tribe | Slow and serious |
|---|---|---|---|
BabyMatureSpeedMultiplier | 1.0 | 10.0 | 3.0 |
BabyCuddleIntervalMultiplier | 1.0 | 0.1 | 0.6 |
BabyImprintAmountMultiplier | 1.0 | 4.0 | 3.0 |
EggHatchSpeedMultiplier | 1.0 | 10.0 | 3.0 |
MatingIntervalMultiplier | 1.0 | 0.15 | 0.5 |
TamingSpeedMultiplier | 1.0 | 5.0 | 2.0 |
| Rex raise time | about 92.5 h | about 9.3 h | about 31 h |
| Imprint request every | 8 h | 48 min | 4.8 h |
| Imprint per care | about 9 percent | about 35 percent | about 49 percent |
| Care sessions to 100 percent | 11 | 3 | 3 |
The weekend column is built backwards from a constraint: a raise has to fit inside a Saturday. Maturation 10.0 gets a Rex to adult in about nine hours, the matching 0.1 interval puts a request every 48 minutes, and pushing imprint amount to 4.0 means a player only has to be present for the first three requests, about two and a half hours, rather than babysitting all nine.
The slow column is not invented. Maturation 3.0 with interval 0.6 and imprint amount 3.0 is the tuning Wildcard itself ships during 3x evolution events, which makes it a safe, well tested baseline for a server that wants breeding to be a project rather than an afternoon. A Rex raise is an overnight commitment, three care sessions get you to 100 percent, and the rates stay close enough to official that stat expectations still transfer.
The failure everyone hits once
Set BabyMatureSpeedMultiplier=50.0 and leave BabyCuddleIntervalMultiplier at its default. The Rex now matures in under two hours, while the first imprint request is still scheduled eight hours after birth. The window never opens, and the adult you get is permanently 0 percent imprinted. The official wiki warns about this directly, and notes it can happen even at stock rates: a Gacha grows faster than it can accumulate imprint, so it cannot reach 100 percent without intervention. Any time you raise maturation past about 10x, test one fast growing species before you announce the rates.
Imprinting, at a glance
A full imprint raises the creature's base stats by 20 percent, and adds 30 percent damage and damage resistance while the player who raised it is riding. Imprint already earned is permanent and never decays, so a missed care session costs you the remainder, not the progress. By default only the player who claims the baby can imprint it, which is why AllowAnyoneBabyImprintCuddle matters on a server where people play at different hours.
Reaching 100 percent needs enough care sessions to fit inside the maturation window, with each session granting enough percent to add up. Those are the two halves of the same equation, and you can satisfy it from either side: shorten the interval, or raise the amount per care. For the per setting detail, the grace period and quality decay behaviour, see configuring ARK imprinting server settings. If your end goal is stacking stats rather than convenience, breeding and mutation stacking covers the inheritance side.
Taming speed and food drain are not the same lever
Taming progress only advances when the creature raises its head to eat. That gives you two independent controls, and mixing them up is why boosted servers often feel slower than they should.
TamingSpeedMultiplierchanges how much progress each bite is worth, so it reduces the number of food items a tame consumes.WildDinoCharacterFoodDrainMultiplierchanges how quickly hunger falls, so it reduces the waiting time between bites. It does not reduce how many bites are needed.
That distinction has a real consequence. Taming effectiveness, which decides how many bonus levels a creature gains on completion, decays with the number of food items eaten. Raising taming speed therefore produces both a faster tame and a higher level creature. Raising food drain alone produces the same creature, sooner, while burning through the same amount of food in a shorter window, so you have to stage more food up front. Run food drain high with a thin stack and the tame bar goes backwards when the inventory empties.
The opposite mistake is raising taming speed alone to something extreme. A high level creature has a large food pool, hunger still falls at the stock rate, and the first bite can be several minutes away. The bar sits at zero, then jumps most of the way in one go. That reads as a broken server, not a fast one. A balanced pair, for example taming speed 5.0 with wild food drain around 1.5 to 3.0, keeps the bar visibly moving. Preferred food matters more than either multiplier: kibble tames fastest and costs the least effectiveness, so check the kibble tier chart before you boost rates to paper over a food problem.
Running this on a hosted server
On Linux both files live in ShooterGame/Saved/Config/WindowsServer/, and on Windows in ShooterGame\Saved\Config\WindowsServer\. Four operational points decide whether your edits survive:
- Stop the server before editing. ARK rewrites these files on shutdown, so anything you change while the process is live is discarded. Stop, edit, start, in that order.
- Five of these can change without a restart. With
-UseDynamicConfigandCustomDynamicConfigUrlset, ASA readsBabyMatureSpeedMultiplier,BabyCuddleIntervalMultiplier,BabyImprintAmountMultiplier,EggHatchSpeedMultiplierandMatingIntervalMultiplierfrom a plain HTTP URL at every world save. This is the supported way to run a weekend rate boost. - Some changes are not retroactive. Taming effectiveness and the bonus levels it grants are locked in the moment a tame completes, so raising taming speed never improves a creature you already own. Imprint works the other way: banked percentage is permanent, but the per care amount is recalculated from current settings, so a baby part raised under old numbers can end up unable to reach 100 percent. Finish in flight raises before changing rates, and test new values on a throwaway pair rather than on a tribe's project line.
- Boosted breeding is a storage decision. Every bred creature is a persisted object in the save file, and creature count is what grows an ARK save, not player count. Rates that produce dozens of babies a night lengthen save and load times and inflate every backup you keep. ARK enforces its own ceiling here: at the tame cap a pair simply refuses to mate, and an egg left incubating will run without a timer and hatch into nothing. Cryopod finished creatures, cull failed lines early, and size your backup retention for the save you will have in a month.
Troubleshooting
| Symptom | Cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Baby matures fully at 0 percent imprint | Maturation raised, cuddle interval left at 1.0. The whole raise is shorter than one 8 hour request window. | Set BabyCuddleIntervalMultiplier to 1 divided by BabyMatureSpeedMultiplier. |
| Requests arrive every few minutes and nobody can keep up | Cuddle interval pushed far below the matching value, so the stock number of sessions is compressed into a very short raise. | Move the interval back toward 1 divided by maturation, then raise BabyImprintAmountMultiplier so fewer sessions reach 100 percent. |
| Eggs never hatch | The egg is not on the ground or in an incubator, or it is outside its temperature band, in which case it makes no progress and loses Fertilized Egg Health. At the tame cap it incubates with no timer and yields no baby. | Hatch speed does not override temperature. Fix insulation first, and check the tame cap before blaming the multiplier. |
| Mating bar does not fill | A requirement is unmet: same species (Tek, Aberrant, X and R variants do not cross breed), opposite sex, in range, wandering or Enable Mating on both, following disabled, unmounted, not neutered, no cooldown running. Or the tame cap is reached. | Work down that list before touching MatingSpeedMultiplier. A leash or a small pen fixes the range case. |
| Setting changed, nothing happened | Edited while the server was running, or a Game.ini setting was pasted into GameUserSettings.ini, or the section header is missing, or a duplicate key later in the file wins. | Stop first, confirm the file and section from the table above, and grep for the key to catch duplicates. See why ASA settings revert on restart. |
Related reading
- Configuring ARK imprinting server settings, the per setting imprint detail
- ARK kibble tiers and taming chart, which food tames which creature
- Breeding and mutation stacking, stat inheritance and mutation counters
- ASA server settings and INI reference, everything outside breeding
- ASA multipliers cheat sheet, XP, harvest, decay and survival rates
- Setting up an ASA dedicated server, Steam app id 2430930 and the launch line
- ARK admin commands, for clearing a stuck mating cooldown in testing
Managed ARK: Survival Ascended server hosting. Supercraft runs ASA dedicated servers on AMD EPYC hardware with every breeding and taming multiplier on this page exposed as a panel field across both INI files, plus raw INI access, daily snapshots and four regions. Still on Survival Evolved? We run ARK: Survival Evolved servers too.