Ark: Survival Evolved features timely updates and feature improvements. However, there are times when certain issues fail to get resolved even after they have been present in the game for years to count. Such issues are hard to track and even harder to fix, but there are certain workarounds that can do the trick.
Playing Ark, you might have noticed a weird trend of having your map exploration and bookmarks wiped out on every logout. The issue has been plaguing the in-game servers for a while and StudioWildCard hasn’t come up with a proper fix for it as of yet. However, is it a bug or a feature?
As it turns out, keeping your exploration overnight can entail an automatic daily server restart. This causes your map to reset every time you log into Ark. Alternatively, this issue is also caused by a broken ini / config file.
There are a few ways to fix this issue, but to give a proper diagnosis, we must understand more about the matter at hand.
Why is Your Map Glitching?
Ark: Survival Evolved uses a file write system to save your in-game progress. However, there are times when that file gets corrupted in a way that Ark is unable to write on it. The cause of this corruption can range from improper restarts to hard crashes.
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If this file gets corrupted, any progress related to map exploration is deleted and you get to see your map resetting every time you log into Ark.
How to Fix Repeating Map Resets?
As of yet, the only proper way to fix the repeating map resets is by deleting the following file:
[Steam]\SteamApps\common\ARK\ShooterGame\Saved\LocalProfiles\PlayerLocalData.arkprofile"[Steam] stands for the root path to your steam folder. Make sure to delete it while Ark isn’t running. The game will automatically make a new file as soon as it is opened again, but your character data will be deleted as well.
It is better to back this file up regularly to prevent losing any progress whenever you face a corruption issue again. Verify that the map is working properly by adding bookmarks and re-logging and you are good to go!
Reinstall Ark: Survival Evolved
If the mentioned fix hasn’t done anything for you then a complete reinstall is your next best option. If you are using the Epic Games store, simply uninstall the game and install it again. The same should be true for Steam and other platforms as well.
Doing so will delete everything including the corrupted files, and will replace them with new ones. You might lose a bit of data during this venture. However, there is no other way to fix this glitch.
All in all, this issue first surfaced during one of the many times when a new map had just been released. However, it is easy to solve in single-player mode as long as you’re willing to bear the costs. You might lose some of your data but it is the only way to get rid of the resetting map issue.