ARK: Survival Evolved Updated April 22, 2026

How to Force Save Your ARK World

ARK auto-saves every 15 minutes. Use the cheat SaveWorld admin command to force an immediate save before rebooting or making changes — preventing up to 15 minutes of lost progress.

ARKsaveSaveWorldforce savebackupadmin

Why Force Save?

ARK dedicated servers auto-save every 15 minutes by default. If you reboot the server mid-cycle, you can lose up to 15 minutes of gameplay — tames, structures, loot, and progress.

Running SaveWorld before a reboot ensures everything is written to disk.

How to Force Save

  1. Join your ARK server
  2. Press TAB to open the in-game console
  3. If you haven't authenticated this session, run:
enablecheats YourAdminPassword
  1. Then run the save command:
cheat SaveWorld

The server will write the current world state to disk immediately. A confirmation message appears in the console when complete.

Force Save via Control Panel

You can also trigger a save from the server console in your AMP or WISP panel — no need to be in-game:

  1. Open the Server Console in your panel
  2. Type: SaveWorld
  3. Press Enter

Note: some panels send the command directly without requiring the cheat prefix when using the server console.

Automating Saves

If you want saves more frequently than every 15 minutes, add this to your GameUserSettings.ini:

[ServerSettings]
SaveWorldInterval=600

This sets auto-save every 600 seconds (10 minutes). Set it lower for more frequent saves, keeping in mind that very frequent saves (under 5 minutes) on large worlds can cause brief lag spikes during the save operation.

Before a Reboot Checklist

  1. Warn players in chat or Discord
  2. Run cheat SaveWorld
  3. Wait for confirmation in console
  4. Then reboot from the panel
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