Spawning creatures on your own ARK server is one of the most useful things an admin can do — whether you’re testing a boss arena, gifting an event mount, debugging a breeding line, or just dropping a level-150 Rex into the world for a fight. But “spawn a dino” isn’t a single command. ARK gives you three different commands, and they do three genuinely different things: one spawns a wild creature at a random level, one spawns a wild creature at the level you choose, and one spawns a tamed, rideable creature with a taming bonus baked in.
This guide covers all three in depth for ARK: Survival Ascended (ASA) — the Unreal Engine 5 remaster that is now the primary game — and flags where things differ on legacy ARK: Survival Evolved (ASE). You’ll learn how to become admin first, the exact syntax for summon, SpawnDino, and gmsummon, the admincheat prefix quirk on ASA, and where to pull the exact class strings for every creature.
Step 0: Become an Admin First (enablecheats)
None of the spawn commands work until your account has admin rights for the current session. The gate is your admin password, which is set by ServerAdminPassword in GameUserSettings.ini under the [ServerSettings] section. You can also set it on the command line with ?ServerAdminPassword=.
Once that’s configured, becoming admin in-game takes three steps:
- Press Tab to open the console.
- Type
enablecheats, whereServerAdminPassword. It is case-sensitive and must have no trailing spaces. - The console confirms, and your account now has full admin rights — but for that session only. You must re-run
enablecheatsafter every relog.
enablecheats YourSecretAdminPasswordIf you’re managing a hosted box and need the full walkthrough for setting that password and adding admins, our ARK: Survival Ascended documentation covers it screen-by-screen. The process is nearly identical on legacy ARK — see how to set the admin password on an ARK: Survival Evolved server if you’re still running ASE.
The admincheat prefix (ASA)
On ASA, admin actions are typically run with the admincheat prefix from the console — for example admincheat fly or admincheat god. The cheat form also works once enablecheats is active. In practice, the spawn commands below work with either cheat or admincheat in front of them; if a command seems to do nothing, swap the prefix and try again.
There’s also an ASA-specific launch-argument gotcha worth knowing: ASA has a launch-arg parsing bug where ?ServerAdminPassword= should be the last ?-style argument, placed before any - dash arguments in your startup command. Get the ordering wrong and the password may silently fail to apply.
The Three Spawn Commands at a Glance
Before diving into each command, here’s the quick mental model. The difference comes down to two questions: do you want it wild or tamed? and do you want to pick the level?
| Command | Spawns | Level control | Classname format |
|---|---|---|---|
summon | Wild creature | Random (you can’t choose) | Short classname (e.g. Rex_Character_BP_C) |
SpawnDino | Wild creature | Chosen level | Full blueprint path |
gmsummon | Tamed, rideable creature | Chosen pre-tame level (+ taming bonus) | Short classname in quotes |
cheat summon — Wild, Random Level, Short Classname
cheat summon spawns a wild creature at your exact location, at a random level. You cannot specify the level with this command — whatever the game rolls is what you get. It uses the short “melee” classname, which usually ends in _C.
cheat summon Rex_Character_BP_CThis is the fastest way to get a creature into the world. The catch: the dino spawns directly on top of you. For something the size of a Rex, Giga, or Titanosaur, that can be lethal or trap you inside the model. If you’re summoning anything large, fly up first (admincheat fly) or be ready to admincheat god through the spawn. Because the level is random, summon is best for quick tests where you don’t care about stats — for anything you want to keep, use SpawnDino or gmsummon instead.
cheat SpawnDino — Wild, Chosen Level, With Offsets
SpawnDino also spawns a wild creature, but it gives you two things summon doesn’t: you can specify the exact level, and you can control where it appears relative to you using spawn offsets. The trade-off is that it requires the full blueprint path rather than the short classname.
The syntax is:
cheat SpawnDino "" A real, working example for a level-150 wild Rex:
cheat SpawnDino "Blueprint'/Game/PrimalEarth/Dinos/Rex/Rex_Character_BP.Rex_Character_BP'" 500 0 0 150Breaking down the arguments after the blueprint path:
- spawnDistance (500) — how far in front of you the creature appears. Bump this up for big dinos so they don’t land on your head.
- spawnYOffset (0) — sideways offset.
- ZOffset (0) — vertical offset. Useful for spawning fliers above the ground.
- dinoLevel (150) — the level the wild creature spawns at. This is a true wild level, so it will still need taming if you want to ride it.
Because SpawnDino produces a genuinely wild creature, it’s the right tool when you want to populate an area with high-level wild dinos for players to tame themselves — for example seeding a freshly wiped map with level-150s, or staging a breeding-stock hunt. It respects the spawn distance, so it’s far safer than summon for large creatures.
cheat gmsummon — Tamed, Rideable, With a Taming Bonus
gmsummon is the one most admins actually want when they say “spawn me a dino.” It spawns a tamed, rideable creature — already yours, already saddle-ready. The syntax uses the short classname in quotes plus a level:
cheat gmsummon "Rex_Character_BP_C" 150Here’s the important nuance: the creature is not “cheat-tamed” in the sense of being a flat, statless gift. It behaves like a normally-tamed dino, which means the standard taming bonus is applied on top of the level you request. So the number you pass is the pre-tame level, and the creature you actually get will be higher.
In concrete terms: a requested level of 150 lands around ~225 after the taming bonus is added. That’s why gmsummon "Rex_Character_BP_C" 150 gives you a stronger creature than SpawnDino ... 150 — the latter is a wild level 150 with no bonus, the former is a tamed dino that started at 150 and gained taming-effectiveness levels. If you’re gifting event mounts or stocking a starter dino for new players, gmsummon is the command to use.
Choosing the Right Command
- Just need something to fight or test, level doesn’t matter? Use
summon— fastest, shortest syntax, wild, random level. - Want a wild creature at a specific level, placed safely away from you? Use
SpawnDino— chosen level, blueprint path, spawn offsets. - Want a tamed, rideable creature you can hop on immediately? Use
gmsummon— tamed, chosen pre-tame level, taming bonus pushes stats above the number you typed.
Where to Pull Exact Classnames and Blueprint Paths
The single most common reason a spawn command fails is a wrong class string. There are hundreds of creatures, and each has both a short classname (for summon and gmsummon) and a full blueprint path (for SpawnDino). Don’t guess these — copy them exactly.
The reliable approach is to pull each creature’s strings from a community spawn database — sites like arkdino.com and arked.gg catalogue the short classname and full blueprint path per creature, and you can copy them straight into the console. Using the Rex as the worked example throughout this guide, the short classname is Rex_Character_BP_C and the full path is /Game/PrimalEarth/Dinos/Rex/Rex_Character_BP.Rex_Character_BP. Every creature follows the same pattern — find your target on the spawn DB and substitute its strings.
Note that modded creatures have their own class strings that won’t appear on the vanilla databases. On ASA, mods are distributed via CurseForge (not the Steam Workshop that ASE used) and are enabled on a dedicated server by appending -mods= to the command line; the server then auto-downloads them on start. For modded dino class strings, check the mod’s own CurseForge page or documentation.
A Note on Server App IDs and the ASA/ASE Split
If you’re running the server yourself via SteamCMD, it helps to know which product you’re on, because the two games are separate installs with separate App IDs. The admin and spawn commands in this guide are essentially the same across both, but the App IDs and mod system are not.
| Product | SteamCMD App ID |
|---|---|
| ARK: Survival Ascended (game) | 2399830 |
| ARK: Survival Ascended Dedicated Server | 2430930 |
| ARK: Survival Evolved (game) | 346110 |
| ARK: Survival Evolved Dedicated Server | 376030 |
To install or update the ASA dedicated server you’d run app_update 2430930 validate in SteamCMD. If you’d rather skip the SteamCMD setup, mod-folder wrangling, and command-line ordering bugs entirely, our managed ARK: Survival Ascended hosting handles the install, CurseForge mods, and admin password for you, so you can jump straight to typing enablecheats in the console.
Tuning the World Around Your Spawns
Spawning dinos usually goes hand-in-hand with adjusting your server’s rates. If you’re spawning high-level tames to fight bosses, you’ll likely also want faster taming and higher gather rates to keep up. The key multipliers all live in GameUserSettings.ini under [ServerSettings], each defaulting to 1.0 (higher = more):
- HarvestAmountMultiplier — global gather multiplier; quantity of resources per harvest action.
- TamingSpeedMultiplier — how quickly creatures tame.
- XPMultiplier — experience gained by players and dinos.
- HarvestHealthMultiplier — durability of harvestable nodes, so they survive more hits before depleting.
For granular per-resource control, Game.ini supports HarvestResourceItemAmountClassMultipliers entries that override the global harvest multiplier for specific resource classes — handy if you want, say, more metal without flooding players with thatch. For a full walkthrough of dialing these in, see our guide on how to change the gather rate on an ARK server; the keys are shared between ASE and ASA.
Spawning Your Way to Tek Tier
A big reason admins spawn high-level tames is to take on bosses — and bosses are the gateway to Tek Tier, ARK’s most advanced technology tier. Tek engrams (“Tekgrams”) are unlocked by defeating bosses, with harder difficulties (Gamma → Beta → Alpha) unlocking more. Each boss grants specific Tekgrams — the Broodmother Lysrix grants the Tek Helmet, the Desert Titan grants the Tek Railgun, and so on. A bred or gmsummon-spawned army of high-level Rexes is the classic way to test a boss arena before your players attempt it for real.
If you want the full breakdown of the boss → Tekgram → Element loop, the Tek Replicator, and the armor and weapon list, read our dedicated ARK: Survival Ascended Tek Tier guide.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why do my spawn commands do nothing?
Almost always it’s one of three things: you haven’t run enablecheats this session (it resets on every relog), the password doesn’t exactly match ServerAdminPassword (it’s case-sensitive with no trailing spaces), or the class string is wrong. On ASA, also try the admincheat prefix instead of cheat.
What’s the difference between summon, SpawnDino, and gmsummon?
summon spawns a wild creature at a random level using the short classname. SpawnDino spawns a wild creature at a level you choose, using the full blueprint path plus spawn offsets. gmsummon spawns a tamed, rideable creature at your chosen pre-tame level, then applies the standard taming bonus on top.
Why is my gmsummon dino higher level than the number I typed?
Because gmsummon applies the normal taming bonus rather than giving a flat statless creature. The level you pass is the pre-tame level, so a requested 150 lands around ~225 after the bonus. That’s expected behavior, not a bug.
Can I choose the level with summon?
No. summon always spawns at a random level. If you need a specific level, use SpawnDino for a wild creature at a chosen level, or gmsummon for a tamed one at a chosen pre-tame level.
Where do I find the exact classname or blueprint path for a creature?
Pull them from a community spawn database such as arkdino.com or arked.gg, which list the short classname and full blueprint path per creature. For example, the Rex’s short classname is Rex_Character_BP_C and its full path is /Game/PrimalEarth/Dinos/Rex/Rex_Character_BP.Rex_Character_BP. Modded creatures use their own strings — check the mod’s CurseForge page.
Do these commands work the same on ASA and ASE?
The spawn command syntax is the same across both games. The main differences are the SteamCMD App IDs (ASA server is 2430930, ASE server is 376030), the admincheat prefix convention on ASA, and the mod system — ASA uses CurseForge with -mods=, while ASE used the Steam Workshop.
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