However, there’s another option for players who want to delve deeper into the architecture of ARK, along with gain access to lots of late-game engrams and machines. As long as you’re eligible to use ARK’s Creative Mode, you’ll find that it offers a large variety of delightful gameplay options.
What is Creative Mode in ARK Survival?
Creative Mode is a set of permissions that a player can get in-game. Once they have it, they gain access to more than one benefit. The most important perk of Creative Mode is that you have immediate access to all engrams in the game. You can also craft any engram directly in your inventory. Usually, your engrams are gated by the level you’re at and how you spend your engram points. As you level up in ARK, you gain access to leveled recipes. These can include things like:
Building pieces such as walls, floors, and ceilingsMachines to make food, craft dyes, or power devicesArmor, weapons, and ammo
Even though not all of these are involved with building, you still get access to each of them with Creative Mode active.
What Other Benefits Does Ark’s Creative Mode Offer?
When you’re in Creative Mode, many other things help you be at your creative best.
Instant craftingAutomatic flyingInfinite statsGodmodeAdmin blink rifleNo weight or crafting restrictions
We’ll explore how and why these are beneficial in Creative Mode later. Each of these options is designed to make building and creating items in ARK easier. Instead of taking weeks to make a castle, you can create something workable in less than an hour – because you don’t have to farm for materials and engrams.
How to Get Creative Mode in ARK
To give Creative Mode to yourself or other players, you have to have administrative permissions on the server. Once Creative Mode is active, it’s active until you log off the server. All the engrams unlocked with Creative Mode will also be removed once the player disconnects.
ARK Creative Mode: Limits and Restrictions
When Creative Mode is active, you lose almost every limit and restriction that can impede crafting. For example, you don’t have to wait for large amounts of items to craft. Each item has a crafting time in vanilla ARK. You can’t move very quickly while it crafts in your inventory during this. Experienced players know the pain of having multiple small items crafting and waiting for it to finish so you can run normally again. That doesn’t happen in Creative Mode. Instead, items craft as soon as you click them. It’s immediate. You also get stacks of items instead of a single one. How many items per stack depends on what item you’re crafting. For example, I tried to craft a metal foundation in Creative Mode and ended up with a stack of 20. Removing the weight restriction makes such large stacks of heavy items easier to manage. You can have enough items in your inventory to build multiple palaces and still move without encumbrance. Since it’s easy to quickly stack heavy items in ARK’s Creative Mode, this is a welcome and valuable feature.
ARK Creative Mode: GodMode
Being in Creative Mode also protects you from damage by granting you GodMode. This means that you can be standing up high on scaffolding, fall off, and land without a worry in the world. Dinosaurs that attack you won’t damage you. However, they can still damage the structure you’re building, or your tames if they notice you and aggress against you. Some players use the LeaveMeAlone command in addition to GiveCreativeMode so that even deadly carnivores will choose to avoid them instead of engaging.
ARK Creative Mode: InfiniteStats
Another status you get from turning on Creative Mode is the InfiniteStats status. It turns every status indicator you have to high so that you don’t struggle to replace your water, food, or stamina. When you want to focus on building entirely, the InfiniteStats buff can help you avoid all the pesky survival aspects of the game that take you away from your creative designs.
ARK Creative Mode: Fly
Usually, you can turn on the fly command, and it stays active until you activate the walk command. This means opening the console whenever you want to swap between flying and standing on a flat surface. However, Creative Mode turns on a toggle for the fly command. The toggle button is different for each system but is the same as the jump command. Double-tap the jump key, and then do it again once you’re done flying.
Admin Blink Rifle
You also get a neat tool in your inventory called the Admin Blink Rifle when you activate Creative Mode. To use it, put it on your hotbar like any other tool or weapon. The Admin Blink Rifle has three modes: teleport, inspect, and destroy.
The Teleport function turns the option indicator blue. Point the rifle in the way you want to go and then click the mouse to fire it. You’ll be transported to the area you were pointing at. It’s a quick way to move to a location when needed.The Inspect function turns the option indicator green. It’s a fantastic way to get quick information about the pieces you’re using to build your structures. You can get item and creature IDs for anything you point the rifle at and then click on. Use these in other commands as needed.The Destroy function turns the option indicator red. When you point it at something, the item will be instantly destroyed. Each time you click the button, it does one million damage to whatever you’re pointing at. I recently used it to destroy a ceiling that felt a little too low in 20 clicks instead of having to move to each piece, select it, choose the destroy option, and wait for it to confirm. It can save a lot of time.
Click the right mouse button or the appropriate bumper to switch between modes.
Problems with Creative Mode in ARK: Survival Evolved
Some players have reported issues with Creative Mode, including it not turning on as needed or not being given to a selected player. In many cases, logging out and then turning server cheats back on can fix the problem. Many people have also found double-checking player IDs or changing the method you’re using to give Creative Mode to work in tricky situations. If you’re setting up a single-player world, you also have to choose the right setting to show Creative Mode on the pause menu. It’s in the server options on the left pane of the login screen before starting the server. If the Creative Mode option is selected, it should appear on the pause screen as an option. Also, not every item can be crafted. For example, you can’t craft Wood. If you need Wood for something like lighting a fire, you will still have to chop it or use console commands to spawn it in. Many items used for building don’t have an engram which is why they can’t be crafted in Creative Mode. Never sign off from a session with Creative Mode in a precarious position. After a long day of building, I’ve signed back in only to find that I was floating above a cliff and am now dead at the bottom.
