An ARK: Survival Ascended save-file viewer for Windows. Read your .ark and see
everything in it: every creature, player, tribe, structure and fertilised egg, on the map
and in sortable tables.
Note this is an admin tool, and needs direct access to game saves that would only typically be available to admins (or single player).
ARK writes a world, single-player or dedicated server, to a .ark file named for the
map: Ragnarok_WP.ark, TheIsland_WP.ark. By default that file holds the whole world,
players and tribes included. (An ASA option can store players and tribes separately; I
have not looked at that yet.) Save Prodder reads the .ark and shows what is in it. It
never writes to it.
A single 64-bit Windows executable: the parser, a small local web server, and the web interface. Nothing to install, no dependencies.
Your save data stays on your machine. The app reaches the internet only for map packs and FTP: it checks GitHub for the high-res map catalogue when you open a save, downloads a pack when you ask, and connects to your own server if you use the FTP fetch. Nothing about your save is sent anywhere.
- Creatures, wild and tamed. Levels, colours, stat points, gene traits, imprint, and ancestry as a family tree. Cryopods included. (Tested against SCS since that's what I was using; more test data wanted.)
- Players and tribes, with tribe logs and a LagLog, an approximate aggregation of who is the largest or most expensive. Useful at a glance, but not enough to apportion blame.
- Structures, in both XYZ and in-game coordinates, inventories where they have them, and who placed each one.
- Fertilised eggs, on the ground and in containers, wild and bred.
- The map: resource, obelisk, cave and point-of-interest layers, a heatmap, and optional high-res aerials.
- Find stuff: one search box that tries to look in everything, structures included.
- Parse notes: whatever could not be placed or drawn is counted and listed, not silently dropped.
Windows, 64-bit. Download ark-save-prodder.zip from
Releases, unzip it, run
ProdderCore.exe. Nothing to install, no requirements.
It opens in its own window. Under it, the exe runs a small local web server and the
window is a view onto it, so everything stays on your machine; close the window and the
tool stops. If you would rather use your browser, run it with --browser (or
--no-browser to start the server and open nothing) and it serves at
http://127.0.0.1:8412.
The window needs the Microsoft Edge WebView2 runtime, which is part of Windows 10 and 11. On the rare machine without it the app falls back to your default browser on its own.
Windows will warn you that this is from an unknown publisher. It is not code-signed, because a certificate costs money and this is free. That warning is about the missing signature, not about the file.
The 0.5 executable scans clean: 0/68 on VirusTotal.
Rather than take my word for it, every release lists a SHA-256 for both the zip and the
exe so you can check your download matches, and all of the source is here, including
scripts/build_release.py, which is the script that builds the download.
One thing worth knowing if you ever do see a warning: heuristic scanners sometimes flag self-contained .NET executables as "packed", because the whole runtime is bundled inside one file that unpacks itself when you run it. An earlier build of 0.5 drew exactly that kind of hit. It is a guess about the shape of the file rather than anything found in it, and the hashes and the source above are how to check rather than trusting either verdict.
Prodder reads a .ark; how you feed it one is up to you.
- A file on this PC. Choose or drag a
.ark. Single-player and locally-hosted saves sit under...\ShooterGame\Saved\SavedArks\. Prodder copies the save out of there into its own folder and never touches the original. - Off your server. Most hosts expose the save folder over FTP or FTPS; Prodder connects, you browse to the folder and click a save (the newest is marked, and zipped saves are unwrapped for you). Once a save is open, one click checks whether the server's copy is newer and refreshes it. Your login is stored encrypted on your machine (with your Windows account key) and only ever sent to your server.
- One you opened before. Kept and re-read from a cache, so it loads faster.
Reading a map is fast: about eight seconds for an established Valguero save in my local testing (more test saves wanted).
Every supported map has a built-in topographic image. I am also making higher-quality aerial maps, available on demand (large downloads; see High-res in the interface). Genesis, Genesis Ocean, Ragnarok, The Island and Valguero are done so far; the rest fall back to topographic. The map packs live in a separate repo, ark-save-prodder-maps, SHA-256 checksummed for validity.
The player info panel has a "this is me" button in the top right. Clicking it just means your tribe shows up purple in the tribe logs. I like purple, and it made the app more fun to develop; it does not do anything else.
See BUILD.md.
The tool is free. If it saved you some time or helped you, there is a Ko-fi. No pressure.
ARK: Survival Ascended is Studio Wildcard's. This is an unofficial tool, not affiliated with or endorsed by them.
MIT. See LICENSE, which also carries arkparse's notice.