# Looking for help with running an Ark server on Xbox One



## CanYouHackett97 (Feb 8, 2017)

*Some Background:*
My friends and I got Ark: Survival Evolved for Xbox One a while ago. We tried playing the public servers, but all the good places for a home are taken by people with huge fortresses and we don't wanna worry about strangers messing up our stuff anyway. So we started our private server, but since it's on Xbox One, we don't have the option of paying for a dedicated private server online like PC. One of our options is to host a dedicated server, which turns your Xbox into a server, but you wouldn't be able to play while it's doing so, meaning you'd need another Xbox to play. The other is to play on a non-dedicated server, which we've been doing, but this has an annoying in-game limitation: all players must remain within 250 meters of the host. If they go too far, they will be stopped by a red wall. If I move away from them, the wall will move towards them and force them to follow me (sometimes pushing them with so much force that they get killed). This is VERY annoying and we want to switch to a dedicated server.
So what I plan on doing eventually is buying an Xbox One S (my friends and I have talked about splitting the cost) and running the server on my old Xbox (I've looked it up, and I can use an Xbox Live Silver account for free and use game sharing to run the game on two Xboxes without paying for another Gold account or buying the game again).

*My Problem:*
Here's where my issue starts. I'm a commuting college student and I live at home with my parents. I typically spend weekdays at my dad's house and weekends at my mom's. So currently, with my one Xbox One, I have to pack it up and carry it when I bring it to my mom's on the weekends, unpack it there, the pack it back up and bring it to my dad's and set it up again. I've been considering buying an Xbox One S just to end this issue. I'd leave an Xbox at each house and not have to carry one and set it up twice a week.
Now having a second Xbox would also mean I could do the whole dedicated server thing for Ark. But I would need to have both Xboxes to get the server going and to play it.
So here's where I'd like some help and see if anybody else has any ideas to make this work.
These are the options I considered, as well as the cons of each option:
*1) Just Bring Both*
I obviously thought about just bringing both Xboxes between houses. The issue is that packing, carrying and setting up two Xboxes makes life even harder than it was before when I had to carry one, and I'm sure my parents would call me crazy for bringing two Xboxes instead of just having one for each house.
*2) Leave the server Xbox at my dad's and only carry the other*
I could just leave my old Xbox at my dad's house to run as the server and only bring the One S between houses to play on. However, this makes it tricky to have the server running. I could just leave the Xbox always on running the server, but I'm certain that would be horrible when the electric bill shows up, and I saw somewhere that this would also be bad for the Xbox (I also have a bit of a fear that the thing could burst into flames and burn my house down). So what if I don't leave it always on but just want to get the server started when we wanna play on it? Well that would be perfect if I knew how to do that. I can't remotely get it going from a different town, and I can't make my dad go do it because he wouldn't have a clue how to and probably wouldn't want to.
*3) Wait until I'm not going between houses every week*
I am gonna be living on campus at UConn in the upcoming fall, so I suppose I could wait to do the whole dedicated server thing until I'm staying on campus and don't need to worry about transporting consoles for a while. This would be a temporary fix of course and wouldn't work when I'm not on campus.

So there's my dilemma and the options I've considered. I'd really appreciate ideas that I'm not thinking of here.


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