Word to the wise: do not install mods on busy servers yet

Ok, where do I start.

I’ve got 2 servers which were stuck with a mod that when I remove it… will likely delete a lot of player tamed dinos (because I re-mapped them to a unique BP)
I can’t update the mod, because all attempts to re-cook in the 188 devkit result in failure to load in the dedi servers (though PIE and local game work fine)
The mod itself has some incorrect settings (causing dinos to overspawn) making the game unplayable after a time.

No choice but to bite the bullet… let my lesson be yours.

Anyway… thought I’d warn you all before you mess with busy servers - a lot of unhappy people :frowning:

Yea, I am writing a mod to nerf tamed dino health per level and I just realized I’m going to have to kill everyone’s current dinos. Fortunately we just wiped yesterday so noone is too furious about it…

I’m currently staying away from big-time modding because we have to replace items rather than being able to configure the existing items. I really hope the dev team would consider giving us “configuration based” modding option, aka 7d2d. Until I can’t add/remove a tweaking mod without breaking the world I’ll just keep on hacking my changes avoiding the workshop altogether.

Yes, definitely avoid the workshop for anything that involves affecting player or dino stats, or creating/remapping… and pretty much anything that will be catastrophic if it suddenly vanishes because you can’t load the mod.

Another burn point is having to re-create the PrimalData blueprint on updates… because if you keep using your “old” PrimalData it won’t have new engrams/items etc. Theoretically you can just create the new stuff manually yourself… but stuff that is “below the hood” you just won’t know about until it’s potentially fatal.

I think we get lulled into a sense of security with the pretty good updates and stability… but it’s an Early Access game… and bugs are, have and will continue to hit the devkit as well.

Minor point on topic here, but if you replace your PlayerPawns, when your users login to the dedicated server thy will be dead and at the respawn menu. No bodies or deathItemCache left behind either.

Yup, we need to remember that this just came out as well, so there is alot to be fixed/adjusted and matured about it as time goes on. The amazing thing about Ark & Wildcard is the fact their team is wonderful about listening to feedback, suggestions, etc. So I think because of that, we should see alot of these problems get resolved over time :smiley: