How to survive on The Island (PVE or Singleplayer)

Keep dying? Don't know where to build your base? Your tames keep dying or don't even know how to tame? Don't worry! I'll be your guide.

Spawn Location, Crafting Tools and Base Creation

I'll be using 10x XP and 3x Harvest Amount in singleplayer. See my other guide on how to setup your singleplayer save to match mine. You don't have to use the same settings as me but just bear that in mind when reading this guide. Create your character and spawn at N2.

Spawn. This was the lighting with default settings. I turn bloom off.
Punch some trees for wood and thatch. Gather some stone by pressing E on the stones resting on the ground. Gather some fibre by pressing E on the bushes. Craft a stone pickaxe (better at gathering flint, thatch, raw meat and metal), a stone hatchet (better at gathering stone, wood and hide), some spears and some cloth armour. Now you should have leveled up somewhat. He's how I'll be building my character: to complete this guide, my movement speed should be at least 130 and my stamina needs to be about 150. I should have at least 300 health, a couple points in torpor so troodons don't one-shot me and the rest goes in weight. I carry stim berries in my 0 slot and eat them when troodons bite me so they don't knock me out. Troodons are little predators with glowing eyes. They hunt in packs and deal torpor when they bite you. If you see them during the day, don't worry as they only attack at night. But don't get too close, because if you touch them they'll still attack you. If they attack you, just kite them and shoot them with a bow or spears in the head. That goes for all creatures. Shooting creatures in the head deals more damage. Apart from trikes. Shooting trikes in the head deals only half as much damage. So always aim for the body when taming a trike. Now, use the spears to kill some dodos and dilos (Spitter dinos) for some easy hide and raw meat. Equip your hatchet and hit the corpse with it to gather hide and raw meat.
Craft a campfire, set it on the floor, gather some wood, put the wood in the campfire, light it and then put your raw meat in the campfire. Wait for it to cook. Eat the cooked meat to fight off your hunger. Cooked meat will heal you a tiny bit when your hungry and you have low health.
Craft 4 sleeping bags, 10 spears and 5 bolas. Now we are going to follow the river until we reach the maw. Now follow the river south until you reach the redwoods.
Follow this river until you get to the redwoods.

This is my base location in the maw. I build on the little cliff edge near the redwood tree bridge.
You'll see a huge hollow redwood tree that acts as a bridge into the redwoods. If you still don't know where it is, look it up on the ark wiki. Place sleeping bags when your travelling to the maw. Sleeping bags act as respawn points if you die. But you can only respawn once using a sleeping bag. Grab your stuff when you respawn and keep moving (You'll see a huge green light. This is where your body is). If you a raptor attacks you, bola it and throw spears at its head. If you see a carno, just run and lure it to a herbivore (Trike, Stego, dodo). It'll hopefully start attacking the herbivore instead. Now you can run away.

Once you reach the maw, now its time to start building your base. Use wood to build your base at first until we have metal tools. Build your base on pillars next to the redwood log bridge. Build your base 3 pillars high and place ceilings on top of the pillars. We are building on pillars because the terrain around here is uneven. There's an annoying visual glitch that allows the top of pillars to stick through ceilings. To avoid this, I use a simple trick. First, decide where you want your base. Craft eight pillars and three ceilings. Now, place your first pillar. Now place another on top of it and another on top of that one. Now place a ceiling on top of the three pillars. Place a ceiling to the right of the first ceiling. Now place a ceiling to the right of the second ceiling. Place a pillar halfway through the third ceiling. Now place another pillar below the pillar sticking through the ceiling. They'll be two snap points. Make sure you snap the pillar to the lowest snap point. Quickly pickup the pillar sticking through the ceiling. If you did it right, now we don't have any annoying pillars sticking through our base. Ceilings can only be 2 ceilings apart from pillars. If you want to expand your base, you'll need to place more pillars under the ceilings to act as support. Craft stairs and place them under your base. Build one wherever you want your staircase to be, then place one to the right of the first one, then place another to the right of that one, until you can reach your base.

Good, now build your base using this knowledge. Build it as big as you want.
We need metal. Craft 3 beds and place them in your base. This will create a spawn point. There's metal nodes near your base but be prepared as there's dangerous creatures lurking near this metal. See that big hill across from the redwood? Arm yourself and set out towards it. The metal nodes are huge rocks with gold lines on them. Find them and then mine the metal with a stone pickaxe. We only need 20 metal. Once you have it, run back to base and smelt it using a forge. You need either wood or sparkpowder to light it. Use that metal to craft a smithy. Now craft some metal tools (Metal pickaxe and hatchet) using the smithy. Metal tools are better at gathering resources than stone tools. Now mine some stone and craft fence foundations and stone walls. Place the fence foundations around your base and place walls on the fence foundations. Make the walls at least 3 high. This will keep creatures out of your base. You can build behemoth gates to allow your creatures to come in and out of your base. Your base design is up to you. Make it as big and complex as you wish.

Your First Tames

Our first tame is going to be a parasaur. Why? Because Parasaurs are good at gathering berries. We need lots and lots of narco berries in order to make narcotics. We can then use them to make tranq arrows in order to tame even more creatures.

The rarer your bow, crossbow or rifle is, the more damage and torpor it deals. The amount of torpor a tranq deals is determined by your weapon's damage. So if you find a rare weapon (indicated by its color) in a supply drop, keep it safe. The rarer your bow, crossbow or rifle is, the less tranqs you need. So rare weapons save a lot of time.
Right now we can only craft primates weapons. So we need a lot of tranqs.
Craft a bow and some arrows, gather some narco berries, craft a Mortar and Pestle and spoil some meat. Place at least 30 spoiled meat into the mortar the pestle and 100 narco berries. Make 30 Narcotics. Craft 30 tranq arrows. Look for a lvl 50-100 parasaur. They can be found near your base. Bola the parasaur and fire tranq arrows into it until it collapses. Feed it mejo berries and wait for it to tame. If its torpor gets low, force feed it narcotics or narco berries. To force feed a creature, open its inventory with F or E and press E on the narco berries or narcotics. Craft a parasaur saddle. Use the parasaur to gather a lot berries from bushes. Creatures are more efficient at gathering than humans are. Every creature is good at gathering something. You can use the parasaur as a sentry. Just enable turret mode. Hold E on your parasaur. Go to alert settings and enable turret mode. It won't be able to move and it'll eat a lot of berries but it'll alert you to any dangers and scare away raptors and dilos. Just make sure your parasaur always has berries in its inventory or it'll starve to death.

Now we need a ptera in order to tame an argy. These are easy tames. Just find a high level one (80-150), bola it and fire tranq arrows into its head. 2-4 tranq arrows should be enough. Feed it raw meat or prime meat. Prime meat is better as it tames it quicker.

These creatures drop prime meat: Allosaurus, Argentavis, Brontosaurus, Carnotaurus, Dimetrodon, Diplodocus, Giganotosaurus, Mammoth, Megalosaurus, Mosasaurus, Paracer, Plesiosau, Purlovia, Quetzal, Sarco, Spino, Stegosaurus, Therizinosaur, Titanoboa, Managarmr, Rex, Chalicotherium, Hyaenodon, Wyvern.
Alpha creatures drop the most prime meat. But they are hard to kill.

Craft a saddle and equip it to the ptera.

Now we need an argy. Argys make it easy to travel around the island, can carry a lot of weight, and they are good at gathering raw and prime meat. I won't lie to you. Argys are a hard tame when your just getting started. But don't fret. We can do this! We need at least 80 tranq arrows to tame this beast. Just to be safe. You never want to run out of tranq arrows when trying to knock a creature out as creatures lose torpor over time.
First we need a taming pen so the argy can't fly away. Its easy to make. Build your pen across from your base. Craft 4 wooden dinosaur gateways and two wooden dinosaur gates. Place them in a row vertically but leave a little gap between each one so we can shoot the argy. Place a dinosaur gate on the first and last gateway. Not on the middle ones.
Argys can be found near the hill across from the redwood. Find a high level one (lvl 120-150) and lure it to the pen using your ptera. Just get near it till it starts attacking you, lure it into the pen and close the gates once its in. Knock it out with tranq arrows and feed it raw meat or prime meat. If you have the awesome spyglass mod, you can monitor a creature's health. You don't want to kill the argy when you're tying to tame it. If the argy gets too bloody (sign of low health), wait a few minutes before firing more tranq arrows. Craft an argy saddle and your good to go. Congrats! Now your life will be 10x easier on the island. Argys can easily kill alpha raptors. Alpha creatures drop rare weapons and armor. So don't be scared to try to kill one if your argy is sufficiently leveled. Your argy should have 500 melee, 10k health and 2k stamina. Put some points into weight as well.

Now tame an anky. Argys can pick up ankys. Bring 90 tranq arrows with you. Pick one up (lvl 100-150) and drop it into a taming pen. Use the same one or a more simpler one for non-flyers. Just build a taming pen using stone foundations and walls. The walls need to be two high. Place a few windows into the taming pen so you can shoot the anky but don't get too close. Knock it out and feed it mejo berries. Ankys are good at gathering metal (Metal in an anky's inventory is only half as heavy). Just pick it up with your argy, take it an area rich in metal (Use the island resource map on the ark wiki), drop it, ride it and gather metal, pick it up again with your argy and fly it back to your base.
Craft 5 forges in your base to smelt metal fast. Save all your metal and upgrade to an industrial forge asap. 1 industrial forge is equal to 50 forges. Thats how fast it smelts metal. It saves so much time.

Craft a Feeding Trough and place all your berries and meat in it. Your tames will automatically eat from the through when they are near it. It's way more efficient than keeping food in all your tame's inventory.

Making Kibble, Collecting Paste, Pearls and Oil

Now we need a frog so we gather cementing paste. Frogs can be found in the swamps and can be picked up using an argy. Tame them with raw meat or prime meat. Once you've tamed a frog, kill insects with it. Upgrade its stamina, health and melee. It'll collect chitin and cementing paste for every insect you harvest. You'll find plenty of dragonflies and giant ants around swamps, forests and the green obelisk. You can use the cementing paste to make metal walls, ceilings, an industrial forge, an industrial cooker and an industrial grinder. In order to make industrial machines and a generator, we need a Fabricator. Build one and make a generator. Silica Pearls can be gathered in the snow area. They can be found in rivers and in the sea. You need Silica Pearls to make electronics or you can just kill a tek creature. They drop a small amount of electronics.
Poly can be crafted using cementing paste and Obsidian or you can kill Kairuku and use a club to gather organic poly. Problem is, organic poly spoils quite fast. You need gas to power a generator and the industrial machines. Make Gas by putting oil and hide into a forge.

Once you've made a generator, put some gas in it and make some cables and a outlet. Craft a fridge to store meat, eggs and vegetables. Fridges preserve these ingredients for cooking.
Now we need an egg farm for our kibble. Kibble is used to tame creatures really fast and allow for the highest possible taming effectiveness. Taming effectiveness decides the max level your creature can reach. If a creature is tamed at 100% taming effectiveness, it can reach the highest possible leve through taming. Breeding allows for even higher levels.

Make cryopods ASAP! They make transporting creatures 100x easier. And they are easy to make. They are crafted in an obelisk or a supply drop. Same goes for a Cryofridge which you need to preserve your cryopods as they spoil in 30 real life days.
Build an egg farm to make all 6 types of kibble. Look on youtube for ideas. Basically, it just needs to be a building to store at least 50 creatures.
Tame one male dodo and 4 females. These are used for basic kibble.
Ok, now tame some Dimorphodons. These are needed to make simple kibble. It doesn't matter what level they are since they'll be used just for eggs. Tame a male and 4 females.
Now tame one male carno and four female carnos. These are used to tame an oviraptor and to make regular kibble. Oviraptors increase the chances of female creatures laying eggs. They eat eggs when taming them but then eat raw meat once tamed. And so does mate boosting. That's why we need one male of every species.
Now tame one male Moschops and four female. These are used for superior kibble.
Now tame one male theri and 4 females. These are used to make Exceptional Kibble.
Extraordinary Kibble is hard to get as you need yutu eggs. Look on youtube for a guide on how to tame them.

Use all this kibble to tame max level (Lvl 150) creatures. Don't waste it on low levels.

Build a greenhouse to grow vegetables. Use large crop plots and make it 3x10. Build in on pillars or use foundations. Use stone pillars or stone foundations as the base. Build it only 1 wall high.
You need Fertilizer and water to grow the crops. Make Fertilizer by putting thatch and poop into a Compost Bin. This process takes a while. Place a stone intake in the river and place pipes all the way to the greenhouse and then place a tap once the pipe is next to the greenhouse. This provides water to the crops.

Honey, Sap and Giant Snails

You need honey to make sweet vegetable cakes. These are used to tame giant snails (Achatina). Why do you need snails you ask? They make cementing paste in their inventory when set on wander. So you no longer need to gather it yourself. We can make our own honey by taming a queen bee. Queen bees make hives. Hives make honey every 15 mins.

To tame a queen bee you need a ghillie suit, bug repellant, simple kibble and an argy.
Eat the repellant, put on your ghillie suit and find a bee hive. Destroy it using your argy. Once the hive breaks and the queen bee spawns, land ASAP! Kill the drones and follow the queen. Wait for her to deaggro (Not be alerted by you). Sneak up to her by crouching. Make sure your kibble is in your 0 slot. Then, press E on her. Awesome! You now have a queen bee and therefore a hive. Tame 7 more. That should be enough honey to tame about 8 snails. Snails only eat sweet vegetable cakes.

Sap can be gathered from large redwood trees. Just make four Tree Sap Taps and attach them to one large redwood tree on each side. Build a tree platform on the redwood tree for collecting the sap. You need to press E on each tap after placement in order for the tap to start collecting sap.

Build a wander pen for your snails. Build ceilings on pillars, or use foundations on the ground, and surround it with railings. Gaint snails can be picked up with argys. Find one, pick it up, drop it in the wander pen and shoot it with tranq darts. Do not use tranq arrows. They deal too much damage. 20 tranq darts should do with a decent weapon. Three vegetable cakes should be enough to tame one.

Getting Good Loot and Alpha Creatures

Items come in six colors. Primitive, Ramshackle, Apprentice, Journeyman, Mastercraft and Ascendant. The better the item quality of armour, the better the defence and durability. The better the quality of a weapon, the higher the damage. Remember, torpor is affected by damage. The higher the damage of the weapon, the more torpor it deals.
Therefore, we need good quality loot to survive on this island. You can get good loot by either killing alpha creatures, looting supply crates on the surface or going into a cave and looting supply crates there. The cave supply crates provide the best possible loot.
Each cave provides its own set of dangers though so be prepared by researching each cave on the ark wiki!

Alpha creatures are a good way to get good loot when your starting out. Alpha raptors and carnos can be killed with a max level argy with relative ease. Alpha rexs need to be killed with a high level giga or a max level rex.

Now What?

Congratulations! You've survived the Island. But now what do you do? Well the end game of Ark is to beat the bosses on the island in order to ascend off the ark. To do that you need to breed some boss rexes and that takes time and knowledge.

The best place to get high level rexes to breed is on the centre or on ragnorok. Which means you have to transfer to a different map, tame them and transfer them back to the island. But that goes beyond the scope of this guide.
But don't worry. Its easy once you know what you're doing. All it takes it patience and practise.
To trap a rex, just build three stone dino gateways. Place two in a triangle formation, lure the rex into the middle and place the third one behind it. Shoot it with tranq darts until it drops. 80 should be enough with a good weapon. Download Dododex from the Google play store for all the info you need about creatures on the ark.
Good luck!

[Asheyria]

Thank you for taking the effort in making this guide. Just about to start playing this game, after playing Atlas. I know, most played Ark and then Atlas. Well I am weird, doing it the other way around.... still thank you, lol ^^

[Smoke]

so there is a "story mode" .... you just have to host your own game and figure it out the story yourself (by reading guides)....

[Chopstick Warrior]

Very helpful. VERY.

[GG]

@Funnerific Might be best, yes. I didn't because everyone likes to build their character different.

[Funnerific]

You should mention that in your guide. I thought I'd be safe putting all points in speed (had 170 or so) and sprint and just respeccing later.

[GG]

@Funnerific Couldn't build? Because you keep dying? I didn't say put all your points in speed. Your movement speed should be at least 130 and your stamina needs to be about 150. I have at least 300 health, a couple points in torpor so troodons don't one-shot me and the rest goes in weight. Carry stim berries in your 0 slot and eat them when troodons bite you.

[Funnerific]

I set up my game using your other guide. I was lvl 50 and had all my points into speed as your guide said. And now I can't change the point allocation because turns out the respec potion is ridiculously expensive in this game. Getting to the maw is half the problem, I was AT the maw and couldn't build.

[GG]

@Funnerific The guide still works even if you are having trouble getting to the maw. If you want to wait till you're a higher level before you make the journey, that's alright.

[Funnerific]

@Nova that's exactly what I did, for hours. Sleeping bags, remaking tools over and over. There's just no space safe from predators in the location you described. I come back again and again but can't build.

[GG]

@Funnerific That's why you place sleeping bags along the way in safe areas so don't lose progress. If predators are near your corspe, leave it. Stone tools are worthless anyway.