ARK: Survival Ascended Maps List: Which Map Should You Run?
There is no best map. There is only the map that fits the server you are actually about to run, and until you have answered that, the question cannot be answered at all. Five things decide it:
- Is this anyone's first ARK? A map that punishes you in the first hour will end the server before week two.
- How many people, and how spread out? Three friends on a 100 square kilometre map will never see each other.
- PvE or PvP? PvP cares about chokepoints, sightlines and how many approaches a base has. PvE does not.
- One world, or a cluster? If you plan to run several maps and let people move between them, pick a starting map, not a forever map.
- Is there a progression goal? Tek, a specific boss, the story chain, a particular creature. Some of those only exist on one map.
Answer those and the list below usually shrinks to two or three candidates. The map is a server launch parameter (the _WP identifier in GameUserSettings.ini and on the command line), so it also decides the creature set, the boss set, the resource layout and how heavy the server process is going to be.
Edition check first. This page is about ARK: Survival Ascended, Steam dedicated server app 2430930. ASA map identifiers carry the _WP World Partition suffix (TheIsland_WP, not TheIsland), and several Survival Evolved maps have no ASA version at all. See the ASA settings reference if you are copying config forward from Survival Evolved.
Released ASA Maps Compared
These are the maps you can actually select on an ASA server today. Everything else is either upcoming or Survival Evolved only.
| Map | Difficulty for a new player | Size and spread | Known for | Good first server? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Island | Easiest | Mid-size single landmass plus satellite islands. Short travel, walkable early. | The map the game teaches you on. Low-level southern beaches, danger rising inland and north. Three obelisks, the classic caves, the guardian bosses. | Yes. The default answer. |
| The Center | Easy to moderate | Mid-size but split into islands with real water between them, so it plays larger than it measures. | A floating island, an active volcano, an underground region with its own light source, two buildable underwater domes. Broodmother and Megapithecus share one arena. | Yes, if the group will build boats or tame a flyer early. |
| Ragnarok | Moderate | Roughly 2.5 times The Island by land mass, about 4 times in total size. Long overland trips. | Norse theming, an erupting volcano, Griffins for cheap early mobility, the wyvern trench as a mid-game target, and the Ascended-exclusive Nunatak boss. | Yes, and the most common second server people run. |
| Valguero | Moderate | About 63 square kilometres, dense rather than sprawling. Biomes sit close together. | Almost every biome on one map (jungle, snow, savanna, lava, hot springs) plus an underground Aberration-style trench with its own ocean. Deinonychus, and the Ascended-exclusive Grendel and Megaraptor. | Yes. Best pick for variety without the commute. |
| Scorched Earth | Hard | Mid-size open desert. Fast to cross, completely exposed. | Water scarcity and heat as the core mechanic, sandstorms, superheat and electrical storms, three Wyvern types, the Phoenix, the Manticore. | No. There is no forgiving starter beach here. |
| Aberration | Hard | Mid-size on paper, vertical in practice. Real distances are far longer because you climb and detour constantly. | An underground damaged ARK: radiation, earthquakes, gas leaks, the Nameless, Reapers, Karkinos, and Rock Drakes in place of conventional flyers. Rockwell is the boss. | No. Play it second or third. |
| Extinction | Hard, endgame-shaped | Mid-size. A ruined city ringed by wasteland and three biome domes. | Corrupted Earth rather than an ARK. Orbital Supply Drops and Element Veins are timed defence fights, not loot pickups. Four Titans, including the King Titan. | No. It assumes a tech tier and a tribe. |
| Astraeos | Moderate, but the scale is the difficulty | The largest released ASA map. Over 70 square kilometres playable at launch across eight regions. | Greek mythology theming, more bosses than any other map, glowing Astral creature variants, the Trireme warship. A separate purchase. The DLC map is named directly on the server and needs no mod entry. Do not confuse it with the free CurseForge mod map of the same name, which is a different and less complete world. | Only if the group already knows ARK. |
| Lost Colony | Moderate, story-led | Large and region-structured, set on Arat Prime. | The first paid canonical Ascended expansion: a skill tree, the Thrall enemy faction with outposts you raid or defend, the Veilwyn, heavy cinematic content. | No, and it costs extra on top of the game. |
| Genesis Ascended Part 1 | Moderate, but structured | Not one landmass. Five biome zones (Bog, Arctic, Ocean, Volcanic, Lunar) reached by HLN-A teleport. | A mission-and-hexagon loop instead of open sandbox drift, plus Magmasaur, Ferox, Megachelon, Astrocetus and Bloodstalker. | No. Best map for players who want objectives, worst for learning ARK. |
Seven of those come with the base game: Scorched Earth, The Center, Aberration, Extinction, Ragnarok, Valguero and Genesis Ascended Part 1, alongside The Island. Astraeos and Lost Colony are separate purchases, and everyone on the server needs to own them. Genesis Ascended Part 1 is free to everyone who owns the base game. It released on 3 July 2026. Some store listings still show a price inherited from the Survival Evolved era season pass, which is what causes the confusion.
Announced but not selectable yet
These come up constantly in map arguments and none of them is a map you can boot today:
- Fjordur. Explicitly marked unavailable for Survival Ascended on the community wiki. It has been discussed for a late 2026 update, but it is not a map you can run right now.
- Genesis Part 2. No confirmed date.
- Atlantis. Announced, undated, no release.
- Crystal Isles and Lost Island. Survival Evolved maps with no Ascended version. Do not carry their identifiers forward from an old config.
Dates on unreleased ARK content move, repeatedly. Choose from the table above. Our ASA roadmap page tracks what has shipped against what was announced.
Pick by What You Want the Server to Be
| What you are running | Map | Why |
|---|---|---|
| My first ever ARK server | The Island | The progression curve is the tutorial. Beaches are survivable, every guide and video assumes this map, and when something goes wrong the answer already exists. See The Island map guide. |
| A small group of friends, 3 to 6 people | Valguero, or The Island | Short travel keeps a small group in the same story instead of in six separate ones. Valguero gives biome variety without the commute. See the Valguero guide. |
| A big tribe that wants room | Ragnarok, or Astraeos | Both are large enough for several bases that are not on top of each other, with mid-game targets worth organising around. Start with the Ragnarok resource map and its caves and artifacts, or Astraeos server setup. |
| A PvP server | Ragnarok, or The Island | Ragnarok has distinct terrain to defend and enough space that a new tribe is not instantly on a veteran's doorstep. The Island is the opposite bet: everyone knows every cave and choke, so fights happen sooner. Pick deliberately. |
| Players who want a hard progression | Aberration, then Extinction | Aberration removes flight and forces you to re-learn movement and light. Extinction assumes you survived that. Neither is a first map for anyone on the server. |
| A cluster people move between | The Island into Scorched Earth into Aberration into Extinction | That is the story order, and it is also a difficulty ramp. Add Ragnarok or Valguero as the sandbox map people keep their main base on. See cluster setup. |
Server Cost by Map: What Actually Drives It
This is where map choice meets hosting, and it is the part most people get backwards. An ARK server simulates the loaded world, not the players. Slot count is close to the least important number in the decision.
Three things drive resource use, roughly in order:
- Wild creature count. Set by the map's own spawn tables and by your NPC multipliers. It is the biggest single lever you control, and it is also the usual cause of a server that was fine for a month and then was not. If memory climbs without new players, check this first: wild dino overspawn.
- How much world is resident at once. World Partition streams terrain, so a server is not holding the whole map open. But it holds open whatever players are standing in, and a big map with players scattered across it holds more open than a small map where everyone is on one coast. This is why Ragnarok and Astraeos cost more than The Island at the same slot count.
- Accumulated tames and structures. This one grows with time, not with map, and it lands in the save file. A six month old tribe is a heavier server than a fresh one on any map.
Relative guidance, and it is deliberately relative: The Island, The Center and Scorched Earth are the lightest of the released set. Valguero and Extinction sit in the middle. Ragnarok and Astraeos are the heaviest, because they are the largest and because players spread out across them. Genesis Ascended Part 1 sits oddly, since its five zones behave more like several small maps than one large one.
We will not hand you a gigabyte figure per map, because it would be wrong. The same map with three players in week one and three tribes in month six are different servers, and your multipliers move the number further than the map does. Size for the map, then watch real usage. Saved worlds live under ShooterGame/Saved, and save file growth is the early warning worth watching, since it drives both backup time and restart time. For the numbers see ASA hardware sizing and ASA server cost.
Not sure yet? On a managed ARK: Survival Ascended server the map is a dropdown, every released map is already installed, and the old world's save stays on disk when you switch, so trying a map costs an evening instead of a rebuild.
Changing Map Later: It Is a New World, Not a Move
Changing the map value and restarting does not migrate anything. It starts a fresh world. Your bases, your tames and your stored items stay in the old map's save, which is still on disk under ShooterGame/Saved as its own set of files, so nothing is destroyed, but nothing follows you either. Players keep their platform account and get a brand new survivor.
If what you actually want is to keep progress and add scenery, do not change the map. Run a second server and join the two with a shared cluster ID, which is the only supported way for characters, tames and items to travel between maps. That is covered in cluster setup, and the failure mode people hit most often is covered in character transfer showing as deleted.
Two rules before any map change. Back up the current save first, because the fastest way to lose an old world is to switch maps twice and overwrite something in between: see backup strategy. And warn your players, because from their side this looks identical to a wipe.
Where Should I Build?
The answer is the same on every map, which is why coordinates from someone else's server so often disappoint. Score a location against these, in this order:
- Fresh water in range, or a committed plan for a well and irrigation. On Scorched Earth this is the first decision, not the last.
- Flat ground sized for month three, not week one. Every base doubles. Building on a slope means pillars and ceilings forever, and it is the single most common regret.
- Wood, stone and metal within one short round trip. Metal is the one people underestimate: thatch and stone are everywhere, metal nodes are not, and a base that is a ten minute flight from metal quietly stops progressing.
- Distance from aggressive spawn points and migration paths. Sit somewhere for ten minutes before you place a foundation. A scenic spot on a carnivore spawn is a rebuild, not a base.
- Obelisk or terminal access. You need it for uploads, boss fights and any cluster transfer. It does not have to be next door, but it should not be an expedition.
- Somewhere you can land and take off. Under a cliff overhang looks great until your first Argentavis.
PvP adds two: prefer a single approach you can actually cover, and avoid the obvious landmark everyone else on the server is also eyeing. PvE adds one: neighbours exist, so do not pillar off the only flat beach, because that is how servers lose players.
Per-map specifics are in the individual guides, which is where verified locations belong: The Island, Valguero, Ragnarok, Astraeos, Lost Colony and Genesis Ascended.
Once You Have Picked
- ASA dedicated server setup, where the map identifier goes on the launch line
- ASA settings reference, including
ActiveMapMod, which is only for community mod maps and not for the paid DLC maps - Astraeos free vs paid, if that map is on your shortlist
- ASA crossplay setup, if console players are joining
- Cluster setup, if the answer turned out to be more than one map
- Official: the ARK site from Studio Wildcard
Managed ARK: Survival Ascended server hosting. Supercraft runs ASA dedicated servers on AMD EPYC hardware with CurseForge mods, every released map, raw INI access, daily snapshots and four regions. Still on Survival Evolved? We run ARK: Survival Evolved servers too.