ARK: The Walkthrough

ARK: Survival Guide

Our guide to Ark Survival Evolved will take you from basic survival through your first 30 Levels.

Getting Started

In this guide I show you the basics of surviving your first few nights in Ark, including finding a fairly safe place to get your start. It covers basic crafting, foraging & hunting, food, water, and cooking. I also include many tips and tricks so that you'll know what is and isn't safe, and is and isn't a good for your survival along with the game mechanics that make it that way.

The First Things To Collect & Craft

The very first thing that you will need is your Stone Pick. It requires wood, thatch, and stone (mostly thatch). This is because you will need to use your Stone Pick to mine flint, so that you can make a torch and a campfire.

Things like fiber, berries, and loose stones are harvested by hand. You'll want to have a stone pick for the flint. After you have your Stone Pick, you'll want to craft yourself a Stone Axe and a Campfire. A Torch should also be on this list.

Safe vs. Dangerous Camping areas.

The beach can be a dangerous place, if you travel very far inland you'll be dino food fast. Or maybe that should be dino's fast food! The trick here is to know which water areas are the most dangerous. The coast is not as dangerous as a river. While there are dinosaurs that will come out of the ocean and possibly harass or eat you, the rivers are far more dangerous. Bitey Fish, and hungry crocodiles!

So, where to live? When you are first getting started, Go inland to the area just behind where the grass and trees start. It should be far enough to avoid the dangers of the water and rivers. Make sure to camp there a day and night to observe it a bit to make sure there aren't any dangerous dinos spawns. Also make sure it is in a place you can't miss. Campsites until you build a fence are REALLy hard to see in the grass.

Basic Equipment

Cutting a tree with an axe will produce LOTS of wood and very little, if any, thatch. With a pick you will get mostly thatch and very little, wood. The pick, of course, is also very useful for mining stone, flint, and metal.

This is probably your most used tool very early in the game. As for the torch, it can provide you with light and heat. You don't want to allow yourself to get too cold. You can use your torch to keep warm if you are exploring or don't have your campfire handy. To complete your toolset you'lll also want to craft a Spear. This is only useful for hunting and fighting. While it can be used for other purposes, it won't do very well and it will break quickly.

Basic Clothing / Armor Early in the game, all you have access to is cloth clothing. In short, you will want your cloth clothing fairly quickly. It makes a very big difference to your chances of survival, because it is difficult to survive. It takes a ton of fiber. The shoes and gloves also require hides. Getting at least a shirt and pants very early on are a must. These will provide you with both protection from harm and the elements.

Food Collection And Hunting

Your first hours on a server you will pretty much be stuck eating berries. While harvesting berries, do NOT eat the stimberrys or narco berries! Put these aside and keep them for taming and crafting later. Mejo berries also if you can find enough will work to tame some of the first dinos you will need to survive.

If you get lucky you might find a Dodo or a few you can kill with either your fists or your pick. You can also knock one or two out to keep for eggs. (FEMALE of course) As eggs are a good source of food early on. Don't bother trying to take on a Dillo until you have a spear. They spit poison and are very fast. Not to mention that their poison pretty much blinds you, which makes them even harder to kill. Lystros are also good to chop up for their flesh.

As far as butchering an animal goes, I've found the axe tends to perform best. This seems to yield the highest amount of meat and number of hides. Cooking the meat in a campfire is also critical. It's not very healthy to eat raw meat and it spoils very quickly. Cooked meat will actually last dramatically longer. So make sure you cook any meat you collect soon after you've butchered the animal. Also keep in mind that you are better off only hunting what you need at the moment. Meat spoils so quickly its best to just make it fresh each play period.

Water & The Waterskin

Getting a drink of water is a pretty easy matter. Simply walk into water about ankle deep and press E. This will fill up your water. Standing in the rain also slowly replenishes your water.

Once you have made a waterskin, this will make your life so much easier. Put the waterskin in your quick slot and get into the water. Stop the moment your waterskin lights up in your quick slot. Then click the slot number to refill the skin.

Sleeping Bags, Beds, & Your Spawn Point

When you sleep in a sleeping bag or bed you can set your spawn point. Sleeping bags are single respawns, so you will need to make a few and store extras. It is also very resource intensive in the early game. Your best bet would be to wait until you have the Engram for the Simple Bed and make that. Of course if you have travelled far from your initial spawn point, a sleeping bag may be worth the resources so that you can set your spawn point to a more useful location.

Trees And Bushes Respawn

Most things in ARK will respawn in a cycle of time if you move out of render and back into it. Plant life may take up to 30 mins to respawn. Also building to close to resource nodes and trees will effect the respawn. (Keep building foundations about 8 to 10 foundations away so they respawn)

Supply Drops & Obelisks

Supply Drops are shown by shafts of light coming down out of the sky. Different colors indicate what level which is required to open the supply crate. White is usually level 5 or so, and Green which has a lot of building things in it is Level 20. Other colors are for levels 30 up to 100 and some will contain very nice saddles and or blueprints.

Obelisks are used by players to transfer their characters and dinos between servers. They are usually located in dangerous areas. Simply approach the base of the Obelisk and access the terminal to use it. The Obelisk is also used to summon the Island mini bosses, which were the former ARK Overseer's on the Island Ark. This requires a lot of resources and is three very tough fights.

Safely Logging Out

Logging out on an Ark Survival Evolved Server can be a dangerous matter, and it is entirely possible to find that you were killed while you were logged out. But how and why does this happen? Logging out does not actually remove you from the game. Your body remains in game and appears to be sleeping. That is a serious matter, and it is not a defect. It is an intended game mechanic.

Just logging out on your sleeping bag will never suffice!

If you are inside a base with a wall, but not inside a closed structure as described above, you may still fall victim to flying dinos and possibly weather conditions. Sometimes other players also can be quite a PITA!

If you log out on a platform saddle or raft you may well get killed. If the dino shifts or the boat drifts.

For true safety (still not 100%), you need to be in a house. That includes a full roof, walls, and a door. Preferably a locked door. Thatch will do in the early levels, but progress to wood and then stone ASAP! Learn the engram for the first wooden storage box and build one. Do this regardless of whether you have a base, a house, or neither. You can never be certain that the random ARK bug deaths have REALLY been fixed, you don't want to lose all of your gear if there is a problem. SO Store your items in a box by your sleeping Spot!

Locking your house and storage box is also a good idea. Remember this is the internet. Stealing, killing, and all that good stuff happen far more often than honest play on most public servers.