ARK: Evolved/Ascended - How to add Creatures to Shop Packs

[Decollates]

01. Introduction

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So you've made the jump into trying GameServerApp out, either with the RCONConnect or DediConnect product, and you want to service your Ark servers and their players with the web/in-game shop that will allow for players to buy shop packs with tokens or cash. This guide is meant to walk you through the basic set-up with the simple goal of creating a shop pack for the purpose of delivering tamed creatures to your players, and is divided into ARK: Survival Evolved, and ARK: Survival Ascended.

02. The Web/In-Game Shop

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The two shops powered by GSA are intertwined - one is a point of access on a hosted community website, the other is built into the GSA integration mod and can be pulled up with the User Radial or Hotkey. Both databases talk with each other; the in-game shop has the convenience of players being able to pull up a UI to access the shop, but purchases will automatically target the character registered as online.

For ARK: Survival Ascended
For the time being, the in-game UI for the web shop has been disabled to comply with the code of conduct of Curseforge, which manages all mods for ASA. This affects all mods that had come with a UI for purchasing packs, not just GSA. But luckily, GSA's product allows for a workaround! The raw functions for the web shop still exist, which means that players can connect their account to their profiles on the community website, place a purchase on the web shop, and have the shop deliver the packs to the player.

03. Ark Commands?

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No. None of the vanilla ARK commands that can spawn creatures work over RCON. This includes commands like:

• SpawnActor
• SpawnActorSpread
• SpawnDino
• SpawnSetupDino
• SpawnExactDino

Don't try to set up shop packs with these commands. They only work if they have an in-game admin executing the command. The only way to use commands to spawn tamed creatures is through scripts provided by certain mods.

04. ARK: Survival Evolved Mod Options

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• Dino Storage V2
  Dino Storage V2, while being one of the best mods for dino storage, is not a simple plug-in-and-play mod. In fact none of the mods listed here are, DSv2 is definitely one of the more complicated ones for ASE.
  -- Mod Page
  -- Mod Guide
  -- Spawn Command Generator - With Google Sheets, you will need your own Google Drive account in order to click File>Make a Copy and then save that copy into your own drive to edit and customize.

05. ARK: Survival Ascended Mod Options

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• Dino Depot
  Dino Depot is considered by many to be the spiritual successor to Dino Storage V2. And, like DSv2, it has its own ability to spawn tamed creatures via RCON-compatible console commands.
  -- Mod Page
  -- Mod Guide
  -- Spawn Command Generator

• Pelayori's Cryopods
  Pelayori's Cryopods was made as a response to the lack of vanilla cryopod solutions in ASA at the time, and as the mod has grown, it contains its own ability to spawn tamed creatures with RCON-compatible console commands. Because it was the first choice for a lot of server owners, its information is posted here for those looking to utilize it for shop packs.
  -- Mod Page
  -- Mod Guide
  -- Spawn Command Generator - With Google Sheets, you will need your own Google Drive account in order to click File>Make a Copy and then save that copy into your own drive to edit and customize.

06. Setting Up Shop Packs

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If you don't know how to make shop packs, then you get get started by finding the Shop Packs page under the Monetization tab on your GSA dashboard. Click +Add Shop Pack, then select the game that this shop pack will be for. At this time, shop packs will only individually support a single game, so if you have both Evolved and Ascended servers, you will need to make duplicates for your shop packs.

I highly encourage you to create shop pack collections for groups of tamed creatures. Not only will this help with your organization, it will help with testing, and user accessibility. Do avoid creating packs with lots of sub-packs, as this can cause the in-game UI to not load the collection fully when accessed.

To set up a staff-exclusive role for shop pack testing, I recommend that you look at my other guide here: setting up a pack in this manner will allow for you to see it populate in real time for testing.

When creating a pack, you will need to create the pack with the In Game Command action block. Do NOT put admincheat or cheat as the prefix for your script that you got from your mod. (This pack uses the script from Dino Depot.)

In the scripts for spawning in tamed creatures that are delivered to player inventories, the script generators for the particular mods will have a field where you would normally place a Steam 64ID/EOS ID/etc. Instead, GSA will automatically collect the appropriate ID, as long as you populate the player ID field with {serviceID}. For ARK: Survival Ascended players, it helps if they have connected their accounts to the community website.

After you've set the price and visibility of the pack, you can customize it however you wish - add in additional commands to spawn saddles, set up randomizations to prioritize certain stats, etc. GSA gives you a vast amount of options to let you customize shop packs in unique and near-limitless fashions.