Options

A lot of  ARK: Survival Evolved settings can be configured through its in-game Options menu. In order to access this menu, you can either click the "Options" button on the main-menu or hit your ESC key in-game and select the "Options" button.

The following settings refer to the PC versions (Steam/Epic Games Store) of the game. When an option is present on console versions too, the same description and meaning is usually applicable.

Audio

Setting	Location	Description	Options
Master Volume	Options	Adjusts the general volume of the game, affecting the mixed result of the below settings.	slider
Music Volume	Options	Self-explanatory.	slider
SFX Volume	Options	Sound effects, all sounds besides background music.	slider
Voice Volume	Options	Controls other survivors vocal chat.	slider
Ambient Volume	Options	Sounds like beehives and water.	slider
NPC volume	Options	Adjusts the volume of NPC's like H-LNA, as well explorer notes voiceovers.	slider
Inventory Access Sound	Advanced Settings	If enabled, plays a short sound when opening the Inventory.	Checked, Unchecked
Disable Menu Music	Advanced Settings	If enabled, prevents music to play in menu.	Checked, Unchecked
Play Action Wheel Click Sound	Advanced Settings	If enabled, plays a short click sound when selecting an option from the Action Wheel/radial Menu on Structures, Creatures and other Survivors.	Checked, Unchecked
Stop Explorer Note Audio on Close	Advanced Settings	If enabled, stops explorer notes voiceovers when closing the explorer note.	Checked, Unchecked

Graphics

Setting	Location	Description	Options
Resolution	Options	Changes game rendering resolution. Custom resolutions can be set as well.	Depends by screen hardware.
Window Mode	Options	Switches the game into different presentation modes.	Windowed, Fullscreen, Windowed Fullscreen (also known as borderless).
Graphics Quality	Options	Graphics settings presets. If after selected a preset any option is changed, the value will switch to CUSTOM.	CUSTOM, Low, Medium, High, Epic
Resolution Scale	Options	Changes the resolution quality. Maxing will display 100% same resolution as the screen resolution set, any lower value may improve performance at the cost of the final graphics quality.	slider
World Tile Buffers	Options	The amount of graphics memory used to render areas of the map the player isn't in: areas, textures, models are stored in buffer for quicker loading while transitioning between areas (tiles) of the map. Increasing it may lead to better load times between tiles.	Low, Medium, High, Epic
View Distance	Options	The maximum distance the game will load tiles. Lowering it may increase performance.	Low, Medium, High, Epic
Anti-Aliasing	Options	Smooths edges of models improving the visual quality at a performance cost.	Low, Medium, High, Epic
Post Processing	Options	Visual quality of effects such as bloom, depth blurring, shadowing definition quality, portal distortion, character lines, light rays, and selective scene tinting.	Low, Medium, High, Epic
General Shadows	Options	Quality and distance of most shadows (projected by near and medium objects).	Low, Medium, High, Epic
Terrain Shadows	Options	Quality and distance of terrain specific shadows. A lot less noticeable than General Shadows and Distance Field Shadowing. Setting it to lower values may improve a bit performance in GPU limited scenarios without noticeable quality impact on most cases.	Low, Medium, High, Epic
Textures	Options	Textures resolution and quality. Lower settings use less graphics RAM (VRAM), higher settings use more. Epic settings require a big amount of VRAM (graphics card with at least 8GB are suggested.).	Low, Medium, High, Epic
Sky Quality	Options	The amount and quality of weather clouds. Setting it at very low values will totally disable volumetric clouds.	slider
Ground Clutter Density	Options	The quantity of non interactable ground decoration, such grass, flowers and non-harvestable bushes.	slider
Ground Clutter Distance	Options	The view distance of non interactable ground decoration, such grass, flowers and non-harvestable bushes.	slider
Mesh Level of Detail	Options	Controls the quality of models a for non-near distances. It has a minimal performance impact on modern hardware.	slider
High Quality Anisotropic Filter	Options	If endabled, rises the quality of anisotropic filtering, improving textures quality that are far away and steeply angled with respect to the camera point of view. Disabling it can slightly improve performance in GPU-limited scenarios.	Checked, Unchecked
Motion Blur	Options	If endabled, blurs the visual during fast camera motion. Disabling it can help significantly to keep a more constant frame-rate while fast moving the camera, as well to have more clear the visual of the action. Moreover, disabling it may help to reduce the motion sickness.	Checked, Unchecked
Film Grain	Options	Should add a grain filter to visuals, reminiscent of film artifacts. It is known to now work anymore.	Checked, Unchecked
Distance Field Ambient Occlusion (Expensive!)	Options	Shading setting for how distant and sky lights affects the nearby scene, resulting in a more soften and diffuse light. Mostly noticeable on specific scenes and environment, like the big swamp trees of Ragnarok compatible with Tree Platforms. Can work together with Screen Space Ambient Occlusion and it's not meant to be an alternative. Despite its description may not result performance expensive, instead it may have a lower performance impact than Screen Space Ambient Occlusion.	Checked, Unchecked
Screen Space Ambient Occlusion	Options	Shading setting to approximate the attenuation of light due to occlusion, resulting in a higher contrast scene. Disabling it may improve performance in GPU limited scenarios.	Checked, Unchecked
Allow Enhanced Max View Distance Mode	Options	Significantly increases the view distance of higher LODs for all objects at a performance cost that can vary by map.	Checked, Unchecked
Distance Field Shadowing	Options	Toggles distance objects such trees from projecting their shadows.	Checked, Unchecked
High Quality Materials (Requires Restart)	Options	Toggles higher quality materials and texture resolutions (such normals) beside diffuse/color textures. A game restart is required to apply any changes.	Checked, Unchecked
Sub Surface Scattering (Requires Restart)	Options	Typically used for skin surfaces, allows lighting to partially penetrate the surface and reflect off of various layers, depths, and colors to provide more realistic looking skins for characters and various monsters.	Checked, Unchecked
High Quality VFX (Requires Restart)	Options	Allows higher quality visual effects at the cost of performance.	Checked, Unchecked
Simple Distance Character Movement	Options	If enabled, lowers the quality (the frame rate) of the movement animations for distant characters, lowering the CPU usage.	Checked, Unchecked
High Quality LODs	Options	Toggles higher quality models for the most distance objects, such toggling 3D tree models to 2D. It can improve performance on GPU-limited scenarios.	Checked, Unchecked
Extra Level Streaming Distance	Options	Allows faster loading of very far objects such trees and rocks, at a cost of memory usage (both RAM and VRAM).	Checked, Unchecked
Color Grading	Options	A post processing option allowing ambient color correction based on environment and daylight. Causes an almost null performance impact.	Checked, Unchecked
Light Bloom	Options	A post processing option resulting in abundant glaring effects around any source of light and certain creatures having Albino color regions. Disabling it can improve performance in GPU-limited scenarios, as well drastically improve the visibility on most scenarios.	Checked, Unchecked
Light Shaft	Options	A post processing effects to enabled sunlight beam and crepuscular rays effects at a cost of performance.	Checked, Unchecked
Low Quality Level Streaming	Options	Lowers the quality of very distant streamed terrain and objects such trees and rocks using lower quality models. It may help increasing performance on memory limited scenarios (both RAM and VRAM).	Checked, Unchecked
Blood Damage Overlay	Advanced Settings	Shows a red semi-transparent overlay around screen edges when the survivor is dealing with a sensible amount of damages	Checked, Unchecked
Torpidity Effect	Advanced Settings	Shows a purple semi-transparent overlay around screen edges when the survivor torpidity is increasing	Checked, Unchecked
Animation Staggering	Advanced Settings	If enabled, drastically reduced far creatures animation framerate, improving performance on CPU limited scenarios.	Checked, Unchecked
Low Quality Animations	Advanced Settings	If enabled, drastically reduced far creatures animation quality reducing the smoothness given by interpolation, improving performance on CPU limited scenarios.	Checked, Unchecked

Camera Controls

Setting	Location	Description	Options
UI General Scale	Options	Allows to make the HUD smaller, except the Item Slots Bar. Unfortunately it cannot make it bigger than default value. Useful mostly on low resolution screen and very large displays such TVs.	slider
UI Item Slot Scale	Options	Adjusts the Item Slots Bar dimension.	slider
Camera Shake Scale	Options	Controls how much the camera shakes, like when a big sized creature is moving near the player.	slider
Camera FOV	Options	Adjusts the camera field of view	slider
Look Left/Right Sensitivity	Options	Mouse and controller horizontal camera movement sensitivity.	slider
Look Up/Down Sensitivity	Options	Mouse and controller vertical camera movement sensitivity.	slider
Invert Y	Options	Inverts/reverses/flips the control of the camera on the Y-axis (looking up and down)	Checked, Unchecked
Third Person Camera Offset	Options	If enabled, the camera will stay on the right of the survivor even when not wielding any weapon, if disabled it will center the survivor back.	Checked, Unchecked
Disable Third Person Camera Interpolation	Options	If enabled, it disabled the smoothing on third person camera when looking around, resulting in a more linear move of the camera. Disabling it may help to reduce the motion sickness caused by the third person camera.	Checked, Unchecked
Melee Camera Animation	Advanced Settings	If enabled, the camera will follow the melee attack animation when being in first person.	Checked, Unchecked
Camera View Bob	Advanced Settings	If enabled, Bobs the view when moving in first person camera. Disabling it may help reducing motion sickness.	Checked, Unchecked
First Person Riding	Advanced Settings	If enabled, forces player into first person view when mounted	Checked, Unchecked

HUD

All the following settings are located in Advanced Settings.

Setting	Description	Options
Floating Names	Toggles name plates upon creatures and other Survivors.	Checked, Unchecked
Join Notifications	Toggles notifications at middle top screen when a player joins or leaves the game.	Checked, Unchecked
Chat Bubbles	If enabled, displays in-game chat bubbles when a player sends a message.	Checked, Unchecked
Status Notification	If enabled, a message is displayed at the top of the screen whenever survivor status changes.	Checked, Unchecked
Fahrenheit Temperature	If enabled, switches to Fahrenheit scale from Celsius scale to display environment temperature.	Checked, Unchecked
Auto Chatbox	If enabled, the chatbox can be set to be displayed whenever a chat message is received (global, local and tribe) or to always on. If disabled, the chatbox is toggled between fade off or always on.	Checked, Unchecked
Hide Server Info	If enabled, hides the server info that is displayed on the ESC menu, useful for streamers protecting privacy.	Checked, Unchecked
Chat Show Online ID	If enabled, the players account name will be displayed at begin of each message chat, while the Survivor name will follow and displayed between parentheses.	Checked, Unchecked
Chat Show Tribe Name	If enabled, the survivors Tribe will be displayed square parentheses after the Survivor name.	Checked, Unchecked
Allow Crosshair	If enabled, a crosshair will be displayed at the center of the screen in first person view or following the camera barycentrics in third person view.	Checked, Unchecked
Allow Hit Markers	If enabled and if server allowed, hit markers will be displayed when damages are dealt.	Checked, Unchecked
Color Item Names	If enabled, items will show a colored name based on their quality tier when Item Labels are enabled in inventory.	Checked, Unchecked
Disable Menu Transition	If enabled, disabled the fade-in and fade-out graphics between menus as well additional confirmation messages.	Checked, Unchecked
No Tooltip Delay	If enabled, disabled the short delay before showing any tooltip.	Checked, Unchecked
Give Default Survivor Items	If enabled, each time a Survivor respawns this will receive all skins and costumes unlocked with achievements, Explorer Notes unlocks as well other default skins and costumes of the game. It restores the  Mini-HLNA Skin each time accessing a terminal.	Checked, Unchecked
Hide Floating Player Names	If enabled, disabled the floating names only upon other survivors	Checked, Unchecked
Quick Toggle Item Names	IF enabled, players can press the left-analog to show or hide item names in the inventory.	Checked, Unchecked
Show Item Selector Button	If enabled, displays the controller shortcut above the quickbar.	Checked, Unchecked
Toggle Extended HUD Info	If enabled, the Extended HUD Info can be switched from be displayed or not, otherwise the related key must keep pressed to show it.	Checked, Unchecked

Controls (Default)

---

Action	Keyboard	Gamepad
Move Forward	W
Strafe Left	A
Fire	Lmb
Iron Sights / Alt Fire	Rmb
Run	⇧ Left Shift
Use	E
Jump	Space bar
Reload	R
Crouch	C
Access Other's Inventory	F
Remove Shoulder-Mount	Double Tap F
Toggle Fists	Q
Selfie Cam	Right Alt
Prone	X
Expanded HUD Info	H
Your Inventory	I
Tribe Manager	L
Melee/Pistol Whip	Left control
Toggle Chatbox	Backslash
Map	M
Zoom Camera In	Mouse scroll up
Zoom Camera Out	Mouse scroll down
Push to Talk	B
Toggle Weapon Attachment	N
Place Map Marker	P
Toggle Console	Tab ↹
Tribe Chat	Slash
Move Backward	S
Strafe Right	D
Toggle Orbit Camera	K
Your Craftables	V
Defecate	Z
Whistle "All Follow Me"	J
Whistle "All Stay Put"	U
Drag Body	G
Toggle HUD	Back space
Use Slot Item 1	One
Use Slot Item 2	Two
Use Slot Item 3	Three
Use Slot Item 4	Four
Use Slot Item 5	Five
Use Slot Item 6	Six
Use Slot Item 7	Seven
Use Slot Item 8	Eight
Use Slot Item 9	Nine
Use Slot Item 10	Zero
Whistle "You Follow Me"	T
Whistle "You Stay Put"	Y
Craft Slot Item (Modifier)	Left Alt
Turn Right	→
Turn Left	←
Look Up	↑
Look Down	↓
Global Chat	↵ Enter
Tribe Chat	/