How to toggle damage numbers in Ark: Survival Ascended

In Ark: Survival Ascended, one of the biggest quality-of-life features players can take advantage of is the ability to have their damage numbers displayed.

Although having your incoming and outgoing damage numbers displayed World of Warcraft-style certainly does lose you some points in the immersion department, this setting is something that’s long been used by Ark: Survival fans for a number of reasons.

Whether you’re testing different weapons, dinos, or even the effects certain boosts can have on them, these activities are all made much easier when you’re able to see the damage numbers laid out in real-time.

Here’s how to show toggle numbers in Ark: Survival Ascended.

How to show damage numbers in Ark: Survival Ascended

To show damage numbers in Ark: Survival Ascended, you must toggle on the Show Floating Damage Text setting in the menu. To do this:

1. In the main menu, select Create or Resume Game.
2. Select the Advanced tab.
3. Select the Misc tab.
4. Set the Show Floating Damage Text setting to On.

Upon doing this, whenever damage is dealt to something other than yourself, it will be displayed in green. All damage that you take will be shown in yellow.

Those who played Ark: Survival Evolved will notice this is all just about the same as how things were in the original, which unfortunately, does likely mean that whether or not this setting is enabled can be out of your control at times if you’re not the host of the server you’re in.

If you do happen to be on a server that does not have damage text enabled, however, a good alternative is to craft a training dummy, which can even give you the damage per second for different attacks.

Players should also note that—especially during boss fights or other big battles—having floating damage numbers enabled will likely cause you to take dips in your frame rates, which might be an important factor for many considering the game’s hefty next-gen system requirements.