Overview
This guide aims to help you reduce the game file size by a lot.
Step by step
Just incase if something would go wrong I’d recommend backing up your save files if you play
singleplayer and such so you dont lose everything.
[EDIT] If you run a low end PC that has low amounts of RAM and a slow CPU I wouldn’t recommend this for you. Since your PC will decompress the file as the game is started which uses mainly RAM and CPU. But if you think your PC can run it then go ahead. Also please save your savefiles.
First you have to download a program called: CompactGUI
which is found at this link: [link]
On the page you’ll find Assets where you find CompactGUI.exe
Just click on it and it should download it
It should look like this
After you have the program. Open it and. Locate the ARK folder with the “Select Target Folder”.
The program looks like this
Then press Select Folder and this should pop up (I made a New Folder just for this guide)
It might take some time to load because of ARKs massive file size
After you have that page up, you can choose which Algorithm to use to compress the files.
I personally used XPRESS 8K, but XPRESS 16K works as well. On the right side of the screen
you’ll see the uncompressed version file size and the estimated end result file size.
After you’re ready just press the Compress Folder button and wait for it to finish, this will take time. I have a high end PC and it took around 45 minutes to finish the work. When the file is compressed you can go ahead and start the game again. For me this worked flawlessly with no issues whatsoever.
This is my results after the compressing stuff
End
Reason I made this guide is because I did not find it on steam guides. The credit goes to this guy tho