ARK: Survival Ascended cluster hosting: 2 to 6 linked maps

Run an ARK: SA cluster as one subscription on Hostd. Two to six maps, one shared mod list, obelisk travel between them, and updates that happen in lockstep.

An ARK cluster is two or more servers, each running a different map, sharing one folder on disk. That folder is the departure lounge. When a survivor uploads themselves, a dino or a crate of gear at an obelisk, it lands in there, and the map they travel to reads it back out. Nothing else is shared: every map keeps its own world, its own bases and its own tamed things.

On Hostd a cluster is one thing you buy rather than a pile of servers you wire together afterwards. Name it, choose two to six maps, give each map a plan, pay once.

Ordering a cluster

Open ARK pricing and click the cluster band, or go to Clusters in your dashboard and create one. You will be asked for four things.

• A name. It appears on your dashboard and nowhere the players can see it, so "Dave Was Bored Again" is a perfectly valid choice.
• Two to six maps. Each map gets its own plan, so the map your regulars actually live on can sit on Elite while the quiet Aberration side sits on Standard.
• A region. One region for the whole cluster, because the maps need to share a filesystem to share anything at all.
• A mod list. One list, applied to every map. There is a section below on why that is not negotiable.

The summary updates as you build the cluster, per map and as a total, at whichever billing cycle you have selected. Pay and every map provisions. ARK: SA cold boot is around 15 minutes per map (SteamCMD, then Proton, then mods, then the world), and the dashboard shows each map's progress, so you can watch six progress bars crawl along together if that is your idea of an evening.

Sizing: the RAM adds up, it does not spread out

Every map is a full ARK: SA server holding its own world in memory. A three-map cluster on Standard reserves 36 GB, not 12 GB shared three ways, and we reserve it at the kernel level rather than hoping the maps take turns.

Two things worth knowing before you pick. Structures are what eat memory in ARK, not player count, so the map with the 6,000-piece megabase is the one that wants the headroom rather than the map with the highest slot number. And a map nobody is playing on still holds its world in memory, so a six-map cluster where four maps are decorative is an expensive sort of decoration.

Because the whole cluster lands on one machine, we check the total fits before taking your money. If a region is short of room for the cluster you have configured, checkout tells you then and there instead of half-provisioning it and sending you an apology.

Cross-ark transfers, and the timer that eats rexes

The Cross-ark transfers card on the cluster page controls what may travel and how long it survives in transit.

Expiry is how long an upload waits in the shared store before ARK deletes it. Separate values for items, dinos and survivors, anywhere from one to 365 days, defaulting to 30. "My rex vanished from the obelisk" is an entire genre of forum post, and it is almost always an expiry timer doing exactly what it was told. Set it comfortably longer than your least reliable friend's attention span.

Travel gates are six toggles. Leave them all off and travel works normally in both directions.

The two configurations people actually want: everything off, for a normal cluster where travel is the entire point, or survivors allowed with dinos and items blocked, for a cluster where you can visit other maps but not import an army. Saving the card restarts the maps so the new settings take effect, and the panel says so before you commit.

One mod list, one build, every map

Mods are a cluster-level setting. That is deliberate, and it is the difference between a cluster that works and a cluster that produces support tickets. Travel between maps means a client and two servers agreeing on what a "Tek Rex" is. If one map is running a mod the other is not, or the same mod at a different version, then travel starts failing in creative ways: transfers that refuse, arrivals missing items, and the occasional survivor who lands as a naked level one and takes it personally.

So the panel refuses the per-server mod editor on a clustered map and points you at the cluster one. Same for the per-server update button, the map switcher and the reinstall action. All of those exist to change one server independently, which is the one thing a cluster member must never do.

The practical consequence: pick your maps at checkout. A clustered map cannot be swapped to a different map afterwards. If you want to retire Scorched Earth and bring in Extinction, remove the map and add the new one, which also spares you the conversation about where everyone's base went.

Updates in lockstep

When a new ARK: SA build lands, the Update ARK button handles the whole cluster. It arms the update on every map or none of them, then restarts them one at a time, waiting for each map to be properly game-ready before moving to the next. Players get the usual restart warnings in game at 60, 30, 10 and 5 seconds, so nobody gets dismounted mid-ocean without notice.

While that is running the cluster is busy, and other cluster changes are refused until it finishes. One hand on the wheel at a time. Automatic updates work the same way: clustered maps are pulled out of the normal staggered fleet rollout and updated as a set, because a cluster halfway through an update is a cluster where travel is broken.

Adding, removing and folding servers in

From the cluster page you can:

• Add a map. Pick a map and a plan, and it is prorated onto the cluster subscription and charged for the rest of the current period.
• Remove a map. Down to the two-map floor. The proration is spelled out before you confirm.
• Add an existing server. A standalone ARK server you already own can be folded in, world and all. It needs to be on the same machine as the cluster, running or stopped, not in arrears, and in the same currency. Its own subscription is cancelled with credit for the unused time, the map picks up the cluster mod list and gates, and it starts billing on the cluster subscription. If the server is in a different region, that one goes through support rather than being quietly relocated behind your back.

Backups cover the departure lounge too

A cluster has two kinds of data worth keeping: each map's world, and the shared transfer store. Backing up only the worlds means a restore loses everything that happened to be sitting at an obelisk, which is invariably somebody's entire breeding line.

So the cluster directory is captured alongside the first eligible map's backups, on the same schedule as everything else. Restoring the shared store is a support job rather than a button, because it requires every map in the cluster to be stopped first and we would rather do that with you than to you.

Billing

One subscription for the cluster, on the cycle you chose. Cancellation is a cluster-level decision: at period end, which keeps everything playable until the date and can be resumed before then, or immediately, which does what it says. Individual maps are not separately cancellable; that is what removing a map is for.

What a cluster does not do yet

• One region per cluster. Maps share a filesystem, so they share a location. A cluster spanning Europe and North America is not something we offer today.
• PC only. Console ARK: SA runs on a separate service tier from Studio Wildcard and we do not host crossplay clusters.

Where to go next

• Picking your ARK: Survival Ascended server plan for what each tier copes with.
• ARK: SA maps and CurseForge mods on Hostd for the map catalogue and the mod browser.
• How to set up an ARK: Survival Ascended cluster server if you want to understand the machinery underneath, wherever you run it.
• ARK: SA server troubleshooting for mod mismatch kicks and first-boot worries.

Last updated 2026-07-30. Notice a mistake? Tell us.