When a game saves, often there are two places they’re stored. One is locally on your computer (so that you can play offline), and another in the cloud (such as Steam cloud, so that they are permanently backed up and synced between systems). There are a few reasons you might want to know the location of your save files.
Firstly, back-ups are important. In the event that your save becomes corrupt (whether due to a bug, modding issue etc), you likely won’t be able to play that save again, meaning all that progress is lost. By copying and pasting your save folder, you’ll always have a backup you can revert too. It’s always recommended to back-up your save before making any changes to your game.
Another reason you might need to know where your save game is located is so that you can actually modify it. Some games have special software available which allow you to open up your save and edit your character freely.
Steam Save Location
If you’re playing Ark Survival Evolved through the Steam client, then the save game files can be found inside the Steam folder. Specifically, you should head towards:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\ARK\ShooterGame\Saved\SavedArksLocal
You can navigate there manually, or use a shortcut in the Steam client. Open up Steam, head to your library and choose Ark Survival Evolved. Now press the cog icon on the right hand side, choose ‘Manage’ and ‘Browse Local Files’.
This should take you to the ARK folder. Now you just need to move into ShooterGame, Saved and SavedArksLocal. You will only be able to modify your single-player save files, as multiplayer saves are stored in the cloud.
