4. Home is where the health is.

When you leave a server, your avatar will not. They sleep on the floor where you log out, leaving you open to robbery and death. Log out in a secure building to ensure that a dino doesn’t munch on your unconscious body.

5. Watch your vitals.

Health, hunger thirst and torpidity are the main ones you want to watch to ensure you stay upright, but the stamina, health regen and weight are important in their own respects.

6. Pick your targets carefully.

At an early level, taking on the bigger dinos can be a tricky ordeal. However there is plenty of passive creatures that don’t attempt to fight back, so start off attacking them to help you level up.

7. It’s OK to eat fish cuz they don’t have any feelings.

Along with Dodo’s, a great way of getting (nearly) risk free meat is to dive into the shallower water and take on Coel’s, a fish that doesn’t fight back. Just watch out for alligators and piranhas.

8.Keep your meat ice cold… Sometimes.

If you need to spoil your meat (I know, it seems like you wouldn’t want that, but many recipes rely on rotten flesh), split your meat pile up into as many stacks of one that you can and they will spoil all at once as opposed to one at a time.

9. Know your spawns.

If you die, you will be able to choose which section of the map you would like to spawn at. However, if you have a bed placed, you can respawn there, so it is a good idea to get one down as soon as possible, in a safe location.

10. Sleeping rough.

Sleeping bags are disposable, they are unlocked earlier than the bed, so the temptation to place one will be there, and is probably worth it if you can afford it, but they work better for expeditions, or any trip that will require you to leave your base for an extended amount of time. Just remember they are one use only

11. Don’t forget to lock the door… And the cupboards.

It doesn’t cost any materials (as of writing this) to put a lock on your doors or chests, so there is no excuse to not do it. The locks function through pin code, but once you have entered it, you and your tribe can all enter and access freely without having to input the code. It is just for outsiders to struggle with when they try to raid you.

12. Know your hotkeys.

There is two ways to interact with objects in the world, first is using the “E” key, which by default acts as an action key. Holding “E” activates a radial menu that allows you to select from all current options. Pressing “F” allows you to access the inventory of the object you are looking at if applicable. This makes it easier when you are, for example, using a fireplace. “E” by default puts out the fire, which, if there is wood already burning, uses up the fuel, meaning you have lost it’s use.

13. Keep your dinos fed.

Much like yourself, your dinos have needs (that extend past pooping every once in a while. Seriously, everyone poops), and if you don’t keep your pets well fed, they will struggle in fights and on long journeys. Food governs stamina, which is an essential stat for all creatures in ARK, A well fed dinosaur, is a scary dinosaur.

14. Teamwork is key to a strong defence.

Doing anything in ARK can be a task if you are not prepared, and having some extra hands is vital to get anywhere. It’s not impossible to play the game solo, but you will hit many obstacles in your attempts. Not least is the taming of ARKs wildlife. It takes a lot of ingredients, care and attention to convince a Raptor to follow you instead of eating you.

15. Taming can be a real grind.

Some of the indigenous species on ARK can take up to 3 hours to tame, so you may be wondering whether there are any shortcuts. Well, to be blunt, no there aren’t. You have to work for your prehistoric army. However, you can make it easier on yourself. There is a bit of a debate as to whether starving your potential buddy is a good idea, and whether it makes any difference. The truth is that starving them out doesn’t make the taming process any quicker, but it does give you more time to gather that particular species favourite snack. Each specimen is as fussy as the next, and feeding them there preferred snack is certainly better than using any old food.

16. Carnivores aren’t TOO fussy.

Carnivores like meat, any meat will do, but raw is preferred. They do have a special liking for Prime meat though, which is a rarer drop that you get off of the bigger, scarier creatures in ARK. Careful though as it spoils much quicker than the other meat. If you have a piece of prime meat with not long until it goes off, just cook that bad boy up. The carnivorous types have a preference for raw meat sure, but even cooked prime meat is better than the standard.

17. Your pets are more than just scaly friends.

With so many different animals and reptiles to pick from, you would have to expect them to have individual skills. Well, you would be right. Trike’s are excellent foragers, so hopping on the back of one and attacking bushes is the most effective way of gathering those essential berries and seeds. On the meat eater parallel, large mouthed carnies will gather meat off the corpses of your fallen foes. Just be sure to empty their inventories before they eat it all up.

18.The right tool for the right job… Two.

Hatchets and pickaxes are the two gathering tools at your disposal, and contrary to what you may assume, they are both useful for both rocks and trees. Hitting a tree with an axe will gather wood (which I’m sure you could have guessed) but hitting it with a pick will gather thatch more effectively. When it comes to rocks, a pick will gather special materials such as flint or stone, where as the axe will gather more stone. It’s also handy to know that the pick harvests more meat, from animals, while the axe does better at skinning creatures for their hides, chitin, or keratin.

19. Location location location.

I may be wrong about this, but it seems the northern parts of the island are waaay harder to tackle. With Sabretooths, Argentavis’ (giant birds to you and me) and all the other scary beasts from down south, it seems like a way more hostile place to set up a base. Your best bet is establishing yourself in the south, and then moving further north once you have prepared all the materials needed to survive deeper in the island.

20.Spec Smart.

The engram list that you use to unlock recipes is expansive and set to get bigger. You won’t be able to take on all the recipes at first, so coordinate with your team mates to ensure you can cover everything. The easiest way is to think of roles around your camp. For example having one or two people working as, another as a tailor, and another as a farmer and cook is a great tactic. You will have more points to spend on general things, and undoubtedly you could dabble in a bit of everything, but setting yourself roles like this means you can work better as a group, which is one of the biggest assets to your survival.

21. Keep your enemies close.

Anyone who has played a multiplayer survival game with PVP will understand that alliances rely on trust, and of course ARK is no different. That being said, a lot of players will actually find you too intimidating to attack once you have a dino or two with you. With that in mind, you should not get too confident in yourself. Things can change in the blink of an eye, and even your awesome T-Rex isn’t invincible. Form friendships with your neighbours, tell them you will look out for their home if they do the same, and present a peace offering, and before you know it, you will have your own neighbourhood watch.

22. Your dinos ding too.

Be sure to ensure you have levelled up your pets. Much like yourself, they have stats that must be attended to. Prioritising the correct stat for the right dino is important too. If you use a particular species for travel, then you will want to up their stamina or movement speed. If they are a fighter, then again stamina, but also damage. If you use them as a harvester, then carry weight and… Well I guess stamina is always going to be useful for any tamed creature you plan on using as a mount.

23. Loyal to the end.

You can command your pets with shortcuts. “T” whilst looking at one will tell it to follow you, while “Y” will tell them to stop. Alternatively, if you want to command your whole herd, “J” will tell all nearby pets to follow, and “U” will tell them to stop. You can even make a convoy of pets by making them follow each other. If using these hot keys while mounted on a creature, the ones that you command will follow the one you are sat on.

24. Where do they get all that energy?

While riding a mount, you will see their stats above yours on the right hand side of the screen. Most of the species in ARK will have their stamina deplete quickly if you hold the sprint key, and as stamina governs your attacks too, this can prove fatal. As well as that, some of the larger creatures are rather slow when not sprinting. For example, Trikes have a hard time carrying all that mass as well as you, so instead, hop off, command them to follow you, then run ahead of them. In their desperation to stick by your side they will ignore their stamina bar and stick on your heel as closely as they can.

25. Watch your weight.

It is important to manage your inventory. IF you carry too much you will slow down considerably, and if you carry more than that, you will stop moving all together. Sometimes your desperation to grab a load of goodies before a dino eats you can cause you more trouble than it is worth. Say that you and a buddy are running back from a scavenging run, both with full inventories, but your compadre gets chomped on by a Spinosaurus. The temptation will be there to grab their backpack and run on, but doing so will more than likely cause you to stop in your tracks, making that dinosaurs hunt all the easier. Be smart, retreat and remember the location, then come back when you have the space. There is no sense in you both losing all that glorious loot.

26. The world shall provide.

All across the landscape, you will see huge pillars of light that appear randomly. These are supply drops that seem to be beamed in from the heavens. They are all colour coordinated and each colour is associated with your level, so don’t go running to drops that are beyond your current skill. White/multicoloured lights indicate a drop that is available to level 3s and above, and will contain basic supplies such as materials or basic tools. Green drops are available to those who are level 15 and above, blue for 25, purple for 35, yellow is 45 and finally red is level 60’s and above.

27. A plan to plan.

Blueprints are one of the most valued loots in the game. Essentially, these plans allow you to build whatever their correlating design is, without having to have it in your engram list. An example of this is if you were to find a blueprint for a gun, at a level that you couldn’t even access the engram for it even if you wanted to. So long as you have the materials and the blueprint in your inventory, you will be able to craft that particular gun. This not only means you can craft more advanced items before you reach the correlating level, but it also saves you spending your engram points on them.