Tips And Tricks

All the tips you need to survive in the ruthless, merciless world of ARK Survival Evolved.

Learning the Ropes

Holding the "H" key (default) will display advanced information on the HUD (such as what certain status effects mean)
Your basic harvesting tools are your bare hands. Punching trees hurts, so craft tools as soon as possible.

Making Tools

First, find stones. The larger rock formations on the beach cannot be picked up, but the smaller rocks scattered about can.
Second, gather Wood. This is done by punching trees, so go hurt yourself doing that. You will gather Thatch and Wood - hopefully before you die or get eaten.
Combine the wood and stone together into a Stone Pick first so you can collect flint for a Stone Hatchet.
- Using the right tool for the job is important. When hitting rocks using a stone pick, you will get mostly flint while using a hatchet will give mostly stones. When hitting trees using a stone pick, you will get more thatch while using a hatchet will give you more wood.
With these tools, you can start properly harvesting resources and creating all the tools you need for survival.

Finding Food and Water

Hunger kills just as easily as dinosaurs. Small dinosaurs are a good source of raw meat. Dodos are also a fine source of nourishment - if you don't mind killing them.
Fishing is also a quick and easy way to get raw meat.
You can refill your thirst level just by swimming - and collect water for later using a Waterskin. The rain is also an opportunity to gather water.
Berries are a quick and dirty method for refilling your food and water meters, but watch for Narcoberries - as the name suggests, they can put you to sleep if eaten in higher amounts.

Leveling Up

Every activity results in you gaining experience, even if it's simply not dying. Each level you gain will give you a single point to increase your attributes and a couple of Engram Points to unlock new crafting diagrams. Early on, Health and Fortitude are useful upgrades, keeping you healthy and more resistant to dinos and the environment longer. They also raise your resistance to losing consciousness.

For newer players it's easy to get caught up in the moment of having a lot of Health and/or a lot of Melee Damage or any other none directly survival focused ability. With that said, be sure to plan ahead, by this I mean far ahead. Are you a crafter? Then perhaps Weight will be useful, but then again. Perhaps you like to tame dinosaurs? If so then investing some points into Stamina is a viable option, this will allow you to sprint and fight for longer durations.

Personal note: As a hunter in my early level 40's (recreated my toon a few times to adjust my attributes to fit my playstyle.) I found that having around 150 Health, 180 Stamina and 120% Movement Speed is adequate to be able to stay on your toes against even a T-Rex or even the newly added Spinosaurus. The remaining points I have are allocated into increased Melee Damage as I do a lot of cavediving and the melee damage comes in handy there.

Long Term Survival

In order to survive for a long time it is advised to do the follwing,

Form or enter a Tribe.
Spend your Engram Points in Engrams such as the Campfire, Waterskin, all wood/metal building structures, Narcotics with the Mortar and Pestle, and definitely get the Dinosaur Gate/Gateway and the Fence Foundation.
You're going to need to tame a selection of dinosaurs, such as some for the transportation by land, sea and or air, the ability to gather meat, hide, wood, thatch and berries and overall, protect your base when you're offline.
Never settle for Thatch based structures, since they have relatively no protection or durability, people will focus on these first. Wood based structures take longer to demolish; however, with a few dinosaurs or a couple people with metal tools, they're rendered quite ineffective as a means of protection. Using Metal will provide the most durability and protection when you're away.

Build a Vault. It allows you to protect the most valuable resources and items you or your tribe own.
Build Alliances with other tribes so that you can rely on a helping hand; and return a helping hand.
Do not make enemies and avoid being hostile to people. Killing low level players will definitely make higher level players continuously seek and destroy you, your structures and anyone who is associated with you.

Do not stop taming dinosaurs and do not stop increasing your defense. Yeah you may have built a complete wooden fenced in yard with a nice wooden house; but you are going to want to upgrade your walls to metal as soon as you possibly can. This is usually done after acquiring atleast a Fabricator and a Behemoth Gate.

Taming

To tame dinos which take a longer amount of time, such as the Trike, make sure to minimize the amount of damage you do to the dinos when knocking them unconscious. Ideally, knock them out in as few headshots as possible if you're using a slingshot, or use tranquilizer arrows. Doing damage to a dino during taming will reduce your taming effectiveness, decreasing the dinosaurs basic stats. This has nothing to do with the duration of your tame. *Note:* Food draining (starving an unconscious dino before feeding it) does not actually reduce the time to tame, since the time it takes to drain food compensates for the time you save when feeding. *sub note* The one exception is in the case of Prime Meat. Given its short spoil timer, if you have a bunch on storage(ie. refrigerator or preserving box) starving the carnivore down enough to eat multiple Primes at once, will reduce loss. One method has been found to reduce tame times, it is linked as the following Taming#Taming_Hints.

Keeping them Unconscious

Narcoberries for Herbivores.
Narcotic for Carnivores.

With this in mind you'll reduce the taming effectiveness by a minimal amount compared to using them for the complete opposite family. Narcotics for Herbivores and Narcoberries for Carnivores.

This can and will reduce the time it takes to tame a Dinosaur if used correctly.

General Tips

You can lure carnivores to other dinosaurs and leave them to fight each other, leaving you with a weaker dinosaur and free resources.
Knocking a dino unconscious can be quicker than going straight for the kill.
Don't build shelter too close to the water, there are sea dinosaurs that can destroy the earliest shelter easily.
You can upgrade your shelter parts (ex. thatch to wood) by merely placing the new part in the same place as the old part. The old piece will be destroyed and grant you some resources back.
When building a wooden shelter, you can become encumbered very quickly with wood. Instead of running to your shelter and sorting everything out, make whatever components you can straight away as it severely lessens your weight, allowing you to stay out collecting for longer.
When you first spawn as a lv 1 just craft several picks or torches to get first few levels faster.
It's recommended not to make the sleeping bag because it is a one time use, while the bed is permanent and tribe shared.
To get around 30 meat and hide, kill Phiomia (aka pig hippo) as they don't fight back, it is also an easy source of experience.
When taming, each dino has it's preferred food; carnivores obviously prefer prime meat, but the herbivores have a preferred berry.
You can keep a target unconscious by force-feeding them Narcoberries (it comes in handy when taming).
You can quickly repair an item by hitting its assigned quickslot button (assuming you have the required materials).
You can also quickly create an additional item if you press alt while hitting its assigned quickslot button.
Greyed out items on the quickslot bar can be crafted by merely hitting its button (assuming you have the required materials) while holding that button will display what you're missing.
Split meat into stacks of one for getting Spoiled Meat faster.
Craft Narcotic for easy experience (2xp per craft).
Picking up rocks while sprinting is an extremly effective way to level up (10 times in 5 minutes!!!)
Crafting Notes as a great way to power level as it gives 1xp for every note you craft, and 0.5xp for every note your tribe mates craft near you and only requires 3 × Thatch and 1 × Fiber per craft.

Console Commands

To show your FPS, type "stat fps" into the console (default "tab").
Gamma # where # = 1 to 9 example "gamma 3" alters the darkness in the game so you can see at night. ^{[citation needed]}