ARK: Survival Evolved – Starter Tips

Welcome to the Ark. It doesn’t pull any punches, so be prepared to die…a lot. But over time you’ll slowly learn more and more, and find yourself dying less and less.

How to Start

All credit goes to Hermit!

• Press E to pick up stones from the ground, and harvest berries and fibre from bushes.
• Punch trees to get wood and thatch.
• Use those materials to make some basic tools. Pickaxe harvests more thatch from trees, flint from rocks, and meat from bodies. While the hatchet gets more wood from trees, stone from rocks, and hide from bodies.
• Stick to the beaches to start with, they are the safest locations. When you unlock walls and foundations, try to fence out a ‘safe zone’ to store all your stuff. Just so long as the wall around it is high enough to block line-of-sight from surrounding dinos, nothing should attack.
• Unlock the slingshot as soon as possible, that’s the key to starting to tame things. With it you can knock out the dilophosaurs, which are weak on their own, but get a pack of them and they can be surprisingly strong. Headshot them with stones to KO them, then put food in their inventory and protect them while they eat it. Eventually they’ll wake up to be your friend.
• Bolas are also invaluable, as they can stop a small creature in it’s tracks. Get some on your hotbar as soon as you can, and keep them there even up to endgame. When you get a bola, you can start supplementing your dilo pack with some raptors for extra damage.
• Parasaurs and phiomia are also susceptible to bolas, and can make a nice mount to ride on/weight carrying mule early game. Or if you get the chance, tame a trike – can’t be bola’d, but sometimes you can find them trapped in trees, or stand on top of a cliff where they can’t reach you. Aim for their body rather than their armoured head. Once you’re riding on a mount, they will take damage for you instead.
• I would recommend you start out on The Island map, as that is the first story map and a good introduction to the game. After that if you want to play the maps in story order, go Scorched Earth > Aberration > Extinction > Genesis 1 and 2.

By this point you should be finding your feet. Keep exploring the maps for secrets, tame all the things, and have fun.