Ark Survival Ascended is often credited with being a completely unnecessary game. Members of the Ark community themselves were criticizing the release of this game. Rather than improving the original Survival Evolved, however, the game was a serious graphical and mechanical upgrade from the old game. This also meant a host of new bugs and glitches for the developers to fix. One of these issues is that the game is not saving progress as intended. This is true for all platforms and from what we can tell, the methods to fix this issue are equally ridiculous.
Ark Survival Ascended or ASA, is often dubbed the pain simulator. This is because the game is generally very buggy, there are a lot of challenges on The Island (map) and often you spend more time solving issues or missed chances to tame or find dinos in the game than playing. While this is true, there is a lot to like about this game, and the single-player gameplay with a few mods is actually pretty satisfying when it works. So, if the game cannot be saved, you are very rightfully going to be pretty upset. Luckily, there are a few ways to force the game to save. We have shared all the workarounds for this issue in this guide.
ARK Survival Ascended not saving progress: How to fix it?
Initial impressions are that this is an issue that is limited to the game’s single-player mode. While the multiplayer mode is more susceptible to this issue, we have shared the workarounds, keeping the single-player mode in focus. Here are some of the most effective ones:
1). Use console commands
The first method is to simply enable console commands and use them to save the game. This is a manual and sometimes tedious process but it will ensure that your in-game progress is saved. You need to type the “admin cheat saveworld” command in the command console to save the game. Now, every time you load into the game, you are going to start from the previous save you created.
2). Use console commands (Second fix)
‘destroywilddinos’ is a common command to destroy the wild dinos around the map. This command is often used to stop the overspawing of dinos on the map. So, how is this relevant here? Well, you can use the “destroywilddinos” command before typing the saveworld command, as mentioned in the previous workaround. This is particularly effective on consoles since a lot of players were able to get the game saves working again after doing so. Since this is also a console command, you will need to have console commands enabled in-game.
3). Fly to max height and then self-kill
This is a trick that you will need creative mode for. Once you are ready to save the game, store your items, and then enable Creative mode. Fly to maximum height and then disable Creative Mode to fall and die. Since dying in-game forces a save, this might be able to save your game and fix the game not saving issue. Make sure you do this near some friendly dinos or structures since you might have to retrieve your items when you spawn back.
If you are on consoles, you can try this method with a friend and a flying dino. You can then ask your tribemate or friend to guide your dinosaur back to safety as your game saves.
4). Restart your device
The last method is to just restart your device entirely. When you do this, any software issues or complications should sort themselves out, fixing the game’s not saving progress issue.
5). Delete Local Save
Sometimes, your local save can be corrupted, due to which the game is unable to save your progress. To fix this issue, you can head over to the game’s save directory: “steamapps\common\ARK Survival Ascended\ShooterGame\Saved”, and delete the single-player save file.
Note: Don’t forget to backup the saved file.
Now, you can use Steam’s cloud save feature to sync the data of the most recent save. After doing so, check if the issue persists.
Well, these are all the workarounds worth trying to fix the game not saving progress issue in Ark Survival Ascended. If you find this guide helpful, make sure to visit Android Gram for more such interesting content.
