Ark: Survival Evolved is a huge survival game with a lot of variety. With so much to offer from the hundreds of dinosaurs, massive cave systems, big end game boss fights, and so much more. However some die hard fans of Ark have taken it a step further, by spending hours of time and energy creating extraordinary modded maps, giving Ark players access to new and exciting adventures filled with extraordinary terrains, mythology, new dinosaurs, and unique challenges.
If you like Ark now, wait until you’ve tried out some of the maps on this list, you’ll be amazed. Trust me, give them a try and enjoy.
Fjordur:
While Fjordur is currently recognized as an official Ark map, it didn’t start out that way. Fjordur started as a custom Ark map built by fans of the game. It’s one of the most amazing maps out there, featuring an indescribable beauty, insane and unique challenges, and the ability to be a part of mythological stories from your wildest dreams. It’s no wonder Ark picked up this gem, and made it an official map.
Play on Fjordur if you enjoy adventures filled with:
- Norse Mythology: The map is obviously inspired by Norse Mythology. It features an ice biome based off of Jotunheimr, access to Thor’s Hammer (Mjolnir), the ability to visit Asgard, and so many more references that you absolutely must discover.
- Dangerous Caves: Fjordur offers 25 dangerous and adventurous caves, each cave being more interesting than the last. Tread carefully, they’re not for the faint of heart. While you’ll see some incredible sights in each and every one of these beautiful caves, you’ll also have an incredible challenge ahead of you.
- Lord Of The Rings: One of the 25 dangerous caves will make you feel like you’re living in Lord Of The Rings, as it’s based off of a Dwarven Kingdom.
- Huge Castles: Out of all the maps, and all the amazing buildings you’ll find in them, Fjordur takes it a step further. Fjordur has some extraordinary castles that are architectural masterpieces. They also have some exciting easter eggs waiting to be discovered.
- Realms: As mentioned earlier, Fjordur gives us access to realms, which is one of the most unique features about the map. Realms such as Jotenheimr, featuring fatal cold weather, a deadly creature known as Fenrir, and a deadly cave, home to the Ice Titan. In addition, you get Vanaheimr, home to a beautiful and massive tree that feels like it belongs in the heart of heaven. And of course, Asgard, the realm of the gods.
Fjordur details: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1887560/Fjordur__ARK_Expansion_Map/
Volcano:
The Volcano is a map that gives you exactly what you’d expect, a giant volcano. It features some beautiful terrains, many different kinds of dinosaurs, unique environments, and much more.
Play on Volcano if you enjoy:
- A familiar feeling: The Volcano map is only slightly bigger than The Island, offering unique variations of the biomes you’re already familiar with. Snow, Desert, Swamp, Grass/jungle, and Redwood. You also get to experience the boss fights in the same arenas from the first two story maps.
- More Dinosaurs: Volcano offers access to all dinosaurs from the story maps, up to Extinction.
- Realistic Wildlife: Volcano features a more lifelike experience, with wild dinosaurs breeding on their own. Dinosaurs starting families and creating an ever growing environment makes the game so much more realistic.
- Exciting Caves: Volcano offers exciting caves for you to explore filled with their own unique secrets.
Volcano details: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=715028562&searchtext=volcano
Olympus:
The Olympus map feels like Greek Mythology mixed with science fiction. Featuring incredible sights, and unique relations to Mythology such as Mount Olympus. If Fjordur doesn’t do it for you with Norse Mythology, this may just be your next best option. You’ll go through incredible challenges while curiously exploring every inch of this stunning map. Once you think you’ve seen it all, you’ll discover something new.
Choose to play on Olympus if you like maps with:
- Thirteen Artifacts: There are 13 Artifacts on Olympus, meaning you get 13 exciting and challenging adventures through deadly caves, each more exciting than the last.
- Familiar Bosses: With those Artifacts you collected, you can enter the dangerous yet familiar boss arenas, and get yet another chance to defeat The Broodmother, The Gigantopithecus, The Dragon, and The Manticore.
- Tech Cave: Deep in the heart of Mount Olympus, you get a fascinating tech cave filled with puzzles and challenges that test your survival skills to the max.
- Aberration Style Caves: There are some beautiful cave systems filled with unique lights and foliage from Aberration.
- Every Dinosaur: You’ll find practically every different type of dinosaur roaming around Olympus. From The Island all the way to Genesis 2, and beyond.
Olympus details: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=970855993&searchtext=olympus
Glacius:
Glacius isn’t looking to impress you with flashy landscapes and stunning castles. Glacius’ goal is to give you a proper challenge and experience. Glacius isn’t meant for the faint of heart, because it won’t go easy on you. Glacius is for die hard Ark players who want more.
Here are a few of the exciting challenges for you to enjoy:
- Extreme Cold: To picture Glacius clearly, you can basically imagine Scorched Earth, but the complete opposite. Instead of fighting extreme heats, you’re fighting extreme colds. As well as the weather that comes with it, including Snowstorms, Blizzards, and the fatal Extreme Cold.
- Insane Artifact Cave: Glacius offers an Artifact cave like none other, likely to be the most difficult Artifact cave you’ve encountered through your Ark journey.
- Miniboss: The Artifact at the end of said cave offers a terrifying and deadly miniboss to top it. You fight your way through an incredibly brutal cave, only to find the toughest challenge on the other side of it. Do you dare to take on the mighty beast? Or do you gather your things and go home in defeat?
- Biome Coloured Creatures: Some of the creatures look a little different than usual. Designed to look like they belong in a frozen tundra, they’ve been decorated a shiny, icy blue.
Glacius Details: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2293626073&searchtext=glacius
The Chasm:
The Chasm should be your number one pick if you’re a true Aberration fan. This map expands upon the concepts of Aberration. An underground world, aberrant creatures, Aberration biomes, a deathly hot surface layer, and much more.
Play on The Chasm if you enjoy maps with:
- New Dinosaurs: The Chasm offers multiple new dinosaurs, and variants of dinosaurs you already know, the most exciting of which being additional versions of Rock Golems.
- Underwater Caves: The Chasm is unique for giving you an alien-like environment similar to Aberration. It’s cool to see that The Chasm brings that experience down to the water too, featuring underwater caves with very unique lighting and plant life.
- An Abandoned Feel: The Chasm has a giant tear ripping through the middle of the map. Similar to Aberration, the story is that the world fell apart, and the people couldn’t save it. The surface became impossible to live on, and the only option was underground.
The Chasm details: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1484748491&searchtext=the+chasm
Caballus:
Caballus is one of those unique style maps that feels very historical. Caballus can be anything you want it to be, from mediaeval times, to pirate times. Featuring ancient looking stone buildings, castles, bridges, and more.
Of course, what makes Caballus most unique is its horses. Caballus means ‘a horse’ in Latin, everything makes sense now. Caballus features many different and unique breeds of horses, and gives you that horse riding hero like feel.
What makes Caballus Worth Playing:
- Completely finished: Caballus is 100% complete, which makes it different from most other modded maps, which are still being updated. With caballus, you get exactly what you expect every time, without any changes.
- Cool Story: Caballus has a story that stays in the back of your mind while you’re playing. The lore, similar to the Story Arks, is one of the best parts. It takes an open world sandbox adventure, and turns it into a daring quest by an adventurous hero. (Find the story in the map description on the Steam Workshop)
- Good Loot: Unlike Official Ark Maps, Caballus doesn’t have any Air Drops. Instead, Caballus offers you more accurate ways of obtaining loot, and a bit of a challenge at the same time. Instead of easily flying around to futuristic looking loot drops that fall from the sky, you can surprise yourself by finding ancient treasure by accident.
Caballus details: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1679826889&searchtext=Caballus
Hope:
On the surface, Hope doesn’t look all that special. In fact, it doesn’t immediately look any different from the Island. But that’s because Hope has a beauty that requires you to look closer.
Taking a closer look at Hope:
- Most dinosaurs: Hope gives us access to nearly every creature from The Island, all the way to Extinction, blending the four maps into 1.
- Remnants of Aberration: Under the surface, you’ll find a giant Aberration style cave ready for you to explore and conquer.
- Hidden Underwater Cave: You’ll find a very nice underwater view, lit up with natural lights emitting from the plants, and from the unique Giant Jellyfish.
- Unique Spawn: Hope offers the ability to spawn in your map by falling from the sky with a parachute. You get to overlook the entire map from the moment you spawn, and you get to peacefully fall to wherever you think looks like a good place to start.
Hope details: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=869946022&searchtext=Hope
Amissa:
Amissa offers you some pretty incredible things that have never before been seen on Ark: Survival Evolved. New biomes such as a stunning Red Jungle, entirely new Boss Arenas, unique structures, Ancient Egypt Style Desert, and so much more.
Some very interesting facts about Amissa are:
- Mountain Wyvern: Amissa offers you a cool new species of Wyvern called the Mountain Wyvern. Similar to other Wyverns, this one is tamable if you can get an egg, but unlike other Wyverns, you can tame it by knocking it out, and this one won’t attack you unless you give it a reason to.
- Custom Music: Amissa offers you custom Battle Music for both night and daytime.
- Almost every dinosaur: Amissa offers you almost all dinosaurs from The Island, Scorched Earth, Aberration, and Extinction.
Amissa details: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1383342563&searchtext=amissa
Tropical Island:
Tropical Island is unlike any Mod Map on this list, because Tropical Island is completely safe from dangerous predators. Tropical Island offers you incredible views, and makes you feel like you’re on a tropical vacation. It’s very peaceful and very relaxing, but don’t think it’s just that easy. While there are no dinosaurs looking to eat you, the map offers you some intriguing mysteries.
Play Tropical Island if you want:
- A break: If you want a break from the ferocious carnivores always trying to ruin your day, the sketchy and dangerous landscapes, and all the other inconveniences that Ark gives you, then consider Tropical Island for your vacation destination.
- A nice resort: There are designations located on Tropical Island that are pre built to look like log cabins or nice beach resorts. Vacations can be hard to come by in real life, and this is practically the next best thing.
- A Map from Crazy Developers: Tropical Island is a HUGE island. It took so much labor to build, and the funny thing is… They wanted it to be built as a part of a bigger map. This behemoth of an island, was only going to be a small part of another map. Now of course, the Devs came to their senses and realized that this was a little too ambitious, so they gave us Tropical Island as a gift.
Tropical Island Details: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1987490540&searchtext=tropical+island
Sunken World:
Sunken World follows the theme that Scorched Earth gave us, being a one biome based map. Sunken world is almost entirely focussed on the Ocean. Filled with new challenges and new creatures, you’ll truly be testing your survival skills this time, being forced to dive deeper into the abyss if you ever hope to thrive.
Play Sunken World if you like:
- A Terrifying Experience: If you’re like most people, you probably have a genuine reason to fear the ocean. With terrifying dinosaurs creeping around the corner ready to kill you. The Sunken World gives you exactly what you’d expect, and so much more. Take a prehistoric underwater world from your wildest imagination, and it’s probably similar to what’s on display here.
A change of pace: Ark has always done an incredible job with the oceans. It’s a really unappreciated feature in the game, because while it is an important step in the game, it’s just not big enough to be the main part of your focus.
Sunken World gives you a refreshing change of pace, by completely turning the tables, giving you the appreciation for the ocean that Ark has always deserved.
Evolved Dinosaurs: The dinosaurs dwelling in the vast ocean on Sunken World seem a little bit different than usual. Probably due to deeper and bigger oceans, and different environments, the dinosaurs have evolved to survive.
Most aquatic creatures have evolved to have a natural bioluminescence (emit natural light). Some additionally evolved to have unique defense mechanisms, such as poison fins.
Sunken World details: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2182740759&searchtext=sunken+world
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