Many games released in 2023 on Unreal Engine 5 have had some performance or stability issues. In this guide we’ll go over how to fix Ark: Survival Ascended character creation crashing.
How to Fix Ark: Survival Ascended Crashing in Character Creation
Some players, myself included, have run into a big hitch when making a new character in Ark: Survival Ascended: the game crashing during or when loading into character creation. In my case, it just locked up and closed during creation. This is a weird issue that seems to be more of a bug than an optimization problem. Luckily, there are some fixes to try so you can get your character made and dive into Ark.
Update Your Video Card Drivers
The most obvious option comes first: Simply updating the drivers for your GPU. You can use Nvidia Experience if you’re using an Nvidia card or AMD Adrenalin if using an AMD one. Either software offers easy and even automatic driver updates.
If your drivers are up to date, it’s time to dig into some more focused fixes.
Disable DLSS in Your Settings
Head into your Ark: Survival Ascended graphics settings and hunt down DLSS, then outright turn it off. DLSS is causing a lot of Ark players issues right now. Be sure to turn off frame generation as well, at least for character creation. You’ll probably want to turn it back on once you’re in-game, though, unless it causes further crashing.
Force the Game to Run in DirectX 11
This is the one that worked for me, and it doesn’t impact performance as much as the above fix. Make sure the game is closed on Steam, then go through the following steps to force Ark: Survival Ascended to launch using DirectX 11:
- Right-click Ark: Survival Ascended in your Steam Library.
- Click on “Properties.”
- Look for “Launch Options” under the General tab.
- Type in “-dx11” without the quotation marks.
- Close out of its properties and relaunch the game.
Play Survival Ascended at a Lower Resolution in Windowed Mode
This is a bit of a weird one, but I’ve seen it work for some people and it might work for you. In the game’s settings, change the game’s resolution to one lower than your monitor’s and switch to Windowed Mode. Maybe it’s because of how tasking the game is on our hardware, but this does seem to work for some and it just might for you.
Survival Evolved players will find themselves right at home with the remaster, and it looks amazing. With luck, one of these character creation crashing fixes will help you get into Ark: Surival Ascended so you can have some fun. Look for more guides on the game here on GameSkinny.
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