Installing mods to your ARK server

ARK has a very active modding community that posts mods to ARK's Steam WorkShop under the Mod tag. You can install mods on your ARK server for community provided content, bug fixes, or quality of life features. When the mod is installed on the server the game clients that connect to it will automatically sync to your servers modlist and won't require any additional setup from your players.

Finding the ModID

The ModID is the steam asset ID for the asset that was uploaded to the workshop and is needed for the server to locate, download, and communicate the mod you want. When browsing the workshop you can find the ModId as part of the URL, or sometimes in the mod's description. For example in the link below shown here https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1136125765 1136125765 is the ModID.

Installing mods

You can use WinterNode's GCP (Game Control Panel) to automatically install and update the mods when the server starts. This makes use of the command line arguments introduced in patches 190.0, and 244.3. You can provide a list of ModIDs for the server to install and update in the Mods Startup Parameter located in the Configuration → Startup Parameters tab.

The Mods startup parameter can be a single ModID or multiple separated by commas ,. After entering the Id's of the mods you want to use, restart the server and you'll get a few lines in the console similar to the ones shown below showing that they're being downloaded and/or updated.

Loading...

Downloading item 1136125765 ...
Success. Downloaded item 1136125765 to "/home/container/Steam/steamapps/workshop/content/346110/1136125765" (3070262 bytes)

After the mod has been installed by the server you can test it by giving yourself one of items the mod adds using the EnableCheats command and your admin password, or if it doesn't add any, by looking for whatever feature it adds.

uninstalling mods

To uninstall a mod from your ARK server, you can simply remove the ModID from the Mods startup parameter. This will stop the server from loading the mod at startup. Items and structures from the mod will be removed, but it's a good idea to take a backup before removing the mod just incase anything goes wrong.