Ark survival evolved, offline update

ark-survival-evolved

I mostly play Ark on single player mode and I have a very slow internet connection on the system that Ark is installed on. so I was wondering if I could download the update files from somewhere Where I have a good internet connection and then apply the updates to the game.

Best Answer

You don't have to be up-to-date to play single player, even though most updates will help you with new content and stability (LOLz for stability, though)

If you have someplace to download updates from, just install Steam there. With steam installed, use following steps to update your game.

  1. Start Steam and from the menu bar on top, click on Steam to open steam menu.
  2. Click on Settings and go to DOWNLOADS tab (select from left side pane)
  3. Check the Only auto-update games between: check-box and choose the hours late at night or any other time when your system will not be running (e.g. 2AM and 3AM)
  4. Click OK to save and close the settings dialog.
  5. Note down the path of your steamapps folder where Ark is installed
    1. Go to steam library
    2. Right Click on Ark: Survival Evolved in the left pane and click on Properties
    3. Go to LOCAL FILES and click on BROWSE LOCAL FILES...
    4. An explorer window will open. Note the path in the address bar. It should be something like C:\Program Files(x86)\Steam\steampapps\common\Ark
  6. Copy Ark from your current (slow internet) machine into a removable media (USB/external HDD etc.).
  7. Also copy the app manifest file for Ark from steamapps folder. steamapps will be present 2 directories above the path that you noted above (e.g. C:\Program Files(x86)\Steam\steampapps\)
  8. Attach the removable media to the system with good internet access
  9. Make sure Steam isn't running on the new system
  10. Copy the app manifest file into steamapps folder on the new system.
  11. Copy the Ark into the its path (the one you noted above).
  12. Start Steam. Ark must appear as installed on the new system now
  13. Again right click on Ark: Survival Evolved, click on Properties and go to same LOCAL FILES tab
  14. This time click on VERIFY INTEGRITY OF LOCAL GAME FILES.... This will force start any updates. Let the game verify and update. It may take a while to complete
  15. Once the game is updated, go back to step 5, but this time copy from new system to your original system.

Make sure that you stay up to date. Especially, you don't want to miss any major version upgrade. If you miss or skip updates, it is most likely that entire game will download again instead of patch files only.

If you can spare disk space on the system with good internet, you can just permanently install Ark on it. Just keep copying it from time to time to your original machine. If you are not on latest patch, you will not be able to see official servers, but that is not a concern if you play single player only.

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