"As a man or woman stranded naked, freezing and starving on the shores of a mysterious island called ARK, you must hunt, harvest resources, craft items, grow crops, research technologies, and build shelters to withstand the elements. Use your cunning and resources to kill or tame the leviathan dinosaurs and other primeval creatures roaming the land, and team up with or prey on hundreds of other players to survive, dominate... and escape!"
Here's a link to the Steam store page, so you can get started on your journey through the ARK.
You start your journey with nothing but your fists and your wits to survive the creatures hunting you. The following is a list of tips to help you get started:
Character Creation and Spawn
When you freshly spawn in ARK, you must create a character. Character creation is purely cosmetic and does not yield any benefits for altering sizes of body parts, so edit your character at will!
Once you're done customizing your character's appearance, you can also name your character in the lower right. This name will be stuck to that character and the look of your character cannot be altered unless you choose to create a new character. Be warned, as this will wipe your old character and you will be a fresh level 1 character.
Once you have created and named your character, you are given a set of spawn points to choose from. It is generally regarded that South spawn points are the best for starting off, while North can be dangerous depending on if you spawn near a mountain or not, as the Argentavis will fly down from the mountain and get you occasionally.
Freshly Spawned
Welcome to the beach, your home for awhile. Once you spawn, your first priority is to craft a Stone Pick. To craft a Stone Pick, you will need 1 Stone, 1 Wood, and 10 Thatch.
You should be able to find plenty of Stone on the beach. Look on the ground for gray rocks, and tap E when you're near them to pick them up. Probably worth grabbing several since you'll be using them for more than your Stone Pick.
To get Wood and Thatch, run up to a tree and punch it repeatedly. Punching trees with your hands will cause you to lose some health, so you'll only want to punch it enough to gather your 1 Wood and 10 Thatch. You can tap I to check your inventory to check how many you've collected.
Once you've gathered your materials, press I to open your inventory. You'll see a tab at the top for Crafting Recipes. Click that to open up your crafting menu. You can also press V to go straight to the crafting menu. Within the Crafting Recipes tab, you will see two Engrams. These are basically your recipes for crafting. Double click the Stone Pick to make it. Once the progress bar has completed, you'll be able to find your Stone Pick in your inventory.
To use your pick, drop it into your quick slots at the bottom of your inventory, close your inventory, and then press the corresponding number to activate it.
Your First Level Up
By the time you've created your first stone pick, you've probably received a message that you have leveled up, since it only required 5 experience to level up. You may have missed it, though. You will see the message if you open your inventory. Leveling up is an essential part of surviving. You will be able to improve your character's statistics as well as learn next Engrams for crafting.
Once you're in your inventory, you can press the + buttons next to your stats to increase the property of that statistic. See the Abilities section for further information on leveling up, but generally speaking, it's never a bad idea to put some points into Health!
The Tools of Survival
After you've increased one of your stats, you will be taken to the Engram menu to spend points to unlock new Engrams. A Stone Hatchet and Campfire are essential to your survival. Spears do a fair amount of damage, but break easily. Once you have spent your points to learn a Stone Hatchet, you will require some Flint, Wood, and Thatch to make one. Now that you have your Stone Pick, you can more easily gather Flint and Stone from small rock groups or big rocks. You can also use it to get Wood and Thatch from trees without taking damage. Gather the required 1 Flint, 1 Wood, and 10 Thatch to create yourself a Stone Hatchet.
Once you have created your Stone Hatchet, you have your two best friends for the next while in your Ark life! The Stone Hatchet will gather Wood, Stone and Hides more, while the Stone Pickaxe will gather Thatch, Flint and Raw Meat more. This information is essential when starting off and looking for particular resources.
At this point chances are your character's hydration is getting low and it's starting to get hungry as well. These two stats go down gradually while sprinting and fighting and need to be maintained at all times. To refill your hydration level, just go into the water and submerge yourself for a couple seconds and come out. To refill hunger, just eat. You might ask yourself, How do I eat? That's a great question. While you can pick up stone by pressing E, you can also run into tall grass and ferns to pick up various berries and Fiber.(if you have equipped a Hatchet or Pick, You can put it away by pressing "Q" - This will allow you to use the "E" or Gather Key). Fiber is essential later on and berries could be your starting food source.
Do not eat Narcoberries and Stimberries! Narcoberries are vital in taming your first dinosaur, and will put you to sleep, while Stimberries dehydrate you, but keep you from getting knocked out, which can be useful in various situations. To eat berries, simply put them on your hotkey bar and hit the representing hotkey, or click them in your inventory and hit Use Item. Berries fill up hunger and hydration by 1 point each, so you want to have a lot on you until you get some meat.
Temperature plays a role in the speed at which these levels fall down, so keep an eye on what your characters temperature is! Cold and Freezing lower your food level faster, while Hot and Hyperthermia cause dehydration much faster. Use a torch or campfire, or even both to raise temperature and to cool down jump in the water for a bit.
Once you have an ample amount of berries, lets get some meat and hides! The best way to start off getting meat is by either going into the water along the beach and killing Coels, or finding Dodos along the beach and killing them. Remember Pickaxe gives meat, and Hatchet gives hide! Once you have your meat and hides, build yourself a campfire and put some wood or thatch in it to start cooking up your meat. Simply drag your meat and fuel into the fire and light it. Cook a fair amount of meat to last you awhile so you can start going inland and build a base, or build one along the coast. Once you hit level 5, learn the Waterskin recipe and make 2+ waterskins that you can fill with water. These are great to keep hydrated when away from water and are essential to surviving. They however lose a small amount of water over time, but that's not too much of a concern.
Now that you know how to eat, drink, and hunt, time to learn about taming! Taming is simple, yet depending on the kind of Dinosaur and its Level, it can vary in time it takes. To tame, simply knock the beast you want to tame unconscious (best to use your fists or a slingshot, which you learn by leveling up, however a faster process would be to hit it with a spear and then use your fists/slingshot), and access its inventory. Once there put either berries or meat depending on if its a herbivore or carnivore and leave them in its inventory. As you notice, its taming bar will increase whenever it automatically eats the food from its inventory. Depending on the Taming Effectiveness, this will increase by a varied amount, the higher the health of the dino whenever you start to feed it, the higher the tame effectiveness will be! Tame effectiveness will decrease over time though. Now you also may notice an unconscious bar on the dino. When you access its inventory, the unconsciousness of the dino is determined by the "Torpor" stat. To keep its Torpor up, put Narcoberries into the dino's inventory, and then click them. Once clicked, hit "Remote Use" to increase its Torpor and keep it unconscious. Be sure to keep a steady supply of food on the dino at all times. Gather while you do this to keep a steady supply! Herbivores will eat Berries while Carnivores eat raw meat! Scorpions, however prefer spoiled meat so keep this in mind. Once your beast is tamed, you can name it, and you will get its Dino page to look at in your Survivor Profile! Don't forget to level your dino up when able to as it can level with you!
Now that you are equiped with the essentials and basic knowledge of survival, go and build a base, explore the game and have fun. Good luck, Specimen!
Making Tools
- Step one should be making Tools. For this you will need some basic resources. You start off with the Engram for the Stone Pick.
- To get the resources to craft this tool, start hitting trees to gather Wood (Beware, this causes damage to your character).
- To get Stone you can walk along the beach and find it laying around. Make sure you have your fists equipped and simply press "E" to pick up the stone. Then harvest small plants and bamboo for Fiber (You should also get berries to eat by doing this).
- Once you have enough resources you can craft your Stone Pick. Now you have a tool to start gathering without injuring yourself. Make sure to read all item descriptions as some tools are better at gathering specific resources than others.
Hydration
- Staying hydrated is essential to your survival on the ARK. To do this simply submerge yourself in a body of water and you will drink to your heart's content! If you wish to fill a bottle of some sort, move towards a body of water, place the bottle on your hotbar, then press the number corresponding to the bottle and it will fill with delicious ark water (press the same key to drink the water when filled).
- Your hydration meter will fill up and stay filled up when it is raining.
- Thirst steadily decreases with time, but will decrease more quickly when you regenerate stamina.
- The "Hot" status effect increases water consumption.
Hunger
- Staying satiated is necessary to survive on the ARK. Gathered berries can be eaten, and hunted animals can be quite satisfying. Simply put the desired food in your hot bar, press the corresponding number, and you can eat anything you deem fit (including some not so gracious choices.)
- Your hunger meter fills as you eat, and depletes as you exert yourself. Survival is key, starvation is death.
- Hunger steadily decreases with time, but will decrease more quickly when you regenerate stamina.
- The "Cold" status effect increases food consumption.
Dedicated Servers
Information on setting up a dedicated server: Dedicated Server Setup
Version Changes
All patch notes can be found at Patch Notes.