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Ark Tutorials


AndeAndi

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This is a starter tutorial I have written up the past six years with constant updates. I also have ones specific for the official maps since added except for Lost Island. It is a general starter for those first time players and is applicable to all platforms Ark can be found on. Feel free to add other starter hints.

 

A hint for veterans that are not aware of it. Holding A while you dismount a tame will dismount you on their left side instead of on the right.

 

Ark, The Island. Walk through for first time players. All systems.

 

Start by reviewing the In Game Tutorial to learn how some of the basics of the game function. It will give you an idea how various icons in the game function.

Next, start a single player game to get familiar with how the game mechanics work using your, keyboard, mouse, or game controller. Otherwise, you are going to be killed constantly while trying to figure how things work while playing on the toxic public servers. The game does not pause while you are looking in your inventory leaving you vulnerable to a surprise attack by everything that wants to kill you. In single player mode, the game is frozen when you hit the Esc key. In on line mode, the game keeps running 24-7 where your character can be killed while all of your hard work gets destroyed.

All first time players will have a chance to modify their character as they wish. Regardless of how they craft them, all characters start with the same stats in the game.

Game Play Mechanics. Constantly running will make you tired as well as use up food and water faster. Extreme cold, heat, starvation, or dehydration will eventually kill you. If you spawn near a predator, run! Hide behind something or run by some herbivore, which it may take an interest in, allowing you to escape.

If you are killed, you will be reborn losing everything but your crafting skills. You have 15 minutes to reclaim your stuff from your dead body or bag if you were eaten. A Death Beacon will appear when you get in range of your body. No other players can see this but can still loot your stuff if they happen to find your dead body or bag.

Start playing your first single player game on “The Island” in South Zone One. Once you have spawned in;

1. Grab that rock in front of you, then go punch that driftwood log to get 1 wood and 10 thatch.

2. Go into crafting and craft the pick. Place it in hot bar 1.

3. Go hit one of those round boulder to the left with the pick to get flint. Use the pick on a tree to get more wood and thatch. Pick some bushes to get some berries and fiber.

4. As you will have leveled up by now, apply the level to health or weight. Select the hatchet and spears from the Engrams List and craft a hatchet. Place it in hot bar 2. A hatchet gathers mostly stone, wood, and hide, The pick gets mostly flint, thatch, or raw meat.

5. Craft at least three spears and place them in hot bar 3. Spears are good for defense against the spitters and compys. As spitters will flare their hood before spitting on you, jump to the side to dodge the blinding spit. If you are attacked by a compy gang, go backwards to keep them in front of you aiming the spear low to kill them all. Left mouse stabs with the spear, right mouse can be used to throw one. Walk over a spear to recover it. Note that spears can break without warning.

6. Place mejoberries in hot bar 0. Why? To prevent more important items being stolen from you by the Pegomastax which will sneak up and steal things from you. Stolen berries may passive tame them.

7. Craft a torch and place it in hot bar 6. You can still pick up stones and harvest bushes while using a torch for it’s light and keeping warm.

8. Go kill some Dodos for their meat and hide. Eat berries for food but save the Narcos for taming as they will put you to sleep. Likewise, the Stimms will give you energy and counteract poisonous bites but make you very thirsty. Save the purple ones for taming herbivores.

9. At the next level up, get the campfire, shirt and pants. Craft the clothes and put them on. Find a sheltered spot where your back is protected from surprise attacks and place the campfire down. Place some wood or thatch in it for fuel, raw meat to create cooked meat and light the fire. Use the fire and or torch to stay warm when it gets cold.

10. A Waterskin will store water for your use when you are away from a water source, but they will leak. You can refill them by standing in the water and press the use item key, or place in the hot bar and press that number. They can also be refilled when it rains.

11. As it is likely getting dark by now, use the torch for light and warmth as you go about gathering more materials for a shelter. You should have a level up soon to get thatch foundation and walls. A shelter will give you additional protection from the heat or cold. Plan on staying put during the night as it can get very dark out and you could easily walk off of a cliff or get ambushed by a predator.

12. On Level 4, get the slingshot for your first ranged weapon. On Level 5, the storage box. Place extra items in it so you are not being overburdened by their weight.

13. Get a sleeping bag but don't craft it for now. You need the hide to craft the Simple Bed which you will place on a foundation. This will give you a fixed place to be reborn if your character gets killed. Sleeping bags are a portable one time use item.

14. Supply drops may give you useful or higher quality items. Access them if you can safely do so.

15. There are going to be many more items then you will ever have engram points for selecting. Spend them on items that are most useful. At this stage of the game, mortise and pestle, narc, standing torch, bow and arrow, bola, tranc arrows, and the raft are top priority. The Bola is most useful for stopping an attacking raptor or for immobilizing a creature from a Parasaur size and smaller to kill or tame.

16. A raft will allow for fast transport for resources and safer locations. You can place structures on them and ferry your tames with you. Just watch out for swimming sarcos, which can attack your tames on the raft, alpha sharks, or Leeds, a giant fish that will attack your raft and destroy it.

17. Your first tames can be some dodos for an egg farm, spitters that you knock out with the slingshot and use as guard dogs, and a parasaur for transport and berry harvesting. Get low level ones for now, they are easier to tame. If you can find a Moschop that ask you to feed them something easy, such as a type of berry, passive tame it by placing that food in slot 0 and feeding it when prompted. It is good at gathering berries, thatch, fiber, wood, even raw meat. It doesn’t need a saddle. Your first flying tame should be a Pteradon. Wait until you can craft saddles for them before attempting a tame.

18. Explorer Notes are a good way to quickly level up your character and your tame. Wait until you have tamed a Pteradon before opening them. While riding on your Pteradon, you will both get the experience when you activate one. You will get double the bonus if you activate a second one while the XP timer is running.

 

You are now well on your way to being a survivor on the Ark. Play cautiously, be aware of your surroundings, and watch your six. And always, be prepare for the unexpected to happen, because it will when you least expect it.

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On 1/15/2022 at 6:17 PM, rpicardi1 said:

This is a starter tutorial I have written up the past six years with constant updates. I also have ones specific for the official maps since added except for Lost Island. It is a general starter for those first time players and is applicable to all platforms Ark can be found on. Feel free to add other starter hints.

 

A hint for veterans that are not aware of it. Holding A while you dismount a tame will dismount you on their left side instead of on the right.

 

Ark, The Island. Walk through for first time players. All systems.

 

Start by reviewing the In Game Tutorial to learn how some of the basics of the game function. It will give you an idea how various icons in the game function.

Next, start a single player game to get familiar with how the game mechanics work using your, keyboard, mouse, or game controller. Otherwise, you are going to be killed constantly while trying to figure how things work while playing on the toxic public servers. The game does not pause while you are looking in your inventory leaving you vulnerable to a surprise attack by everything that wants to kill you. In single player mode, the game is frozen when you hit the Esc key. In on line mode, the game keeps running 24-7 where your character can be killed while all of your hard work gets destroyed.

All first time players will have a chance to modify their character as they wish. Regardless of how they craft them, all characters start with the same stats in the game.

Game Play Mechanics. Constantly running will make you tired as well as use up food and water faster. Extreme cold, heat, starvation, or dehydration will eventually kill you. If you spawn near a predator, run! Hide behind something or run by some herbivore, which it may take an interest in, allowing you to escape.

If you are killed, you will be reborn losing everything but your crafting skills. You have 15 minutes to reclaim your stuff from your dead body or bag if you were eaten. A Death Beacon will appear when you get in range of your body. No other players can see this but can still loot your stuff if they happen to find your dead body or bag.

Start playing your first single player game on “The Island” in South Zone One. Once you have spawned in;

1. Grab that rock in front of you, then go punch that driftwood log to get 1 wood and 10 thatch.

2. Go into crafting and craft the pick. Place it in hot bar 1.

3. Go hit one of those round boulder to the left with the pick to get flint. Use the pick on a tree to get more wood and thatch. Pick some bushes to get some berries and fiber.

4. As you will have leveled up by now, apply the level to health or weight. Select the hatchet and spears from the Engrams List and craft a hatchet. Place it in hot bar 2. A hatchet gathers mostly stone, wood, and hide, The pick gets mostly flint, thatch, or raw meat.

5. Craft at least three spears and place them in hot bar 3. Spears are good for defense against the spitters and compys. As spitters will flare their hood before spitting on you, jump to the side to dodge the blinding spit. If you are attacked by a compy gang, go backwards to keep them in front of you aiming the spear low to kill them all. Left mouse stabs with the spear, right mouse can be used to throw one. Walk over a spear to recover it. Note that spears can break without warning.

6. Place mejoberries in hot bar 0. Why? To prevent more important items being stolen from you by the Pegomastax which will sneak up and steal things from you. Stolen berries may passive tame them.

7. Craft a torch and place it in hot bar 6. You can still pick up stones and harvest bushes while using a torch for it’s light and keeping warm.

8. Go kill some Dodos for their meat and hide. Eat berries for food but save the Narcos for taming as they will put you to sleep. Likewise, the Stimms will give you energy and counteract poisonous bites but make you very thirsty. Save the purple ones for taming herbivores.

9. At the next level up, get the campfire, shirt and pants. Craft the clothes and put them on. Find a sheltered spot where your back is protected from surprise attacks and place the campfire down. Place some wood or thatch in it for fuel, raw meat to create cooked meat and light the fire. Use the fire and or torch to stay warm when it gets cold.

10. A Waterskin will store water for your use when you are away from a water source, but they will leak. You can refill them by standing in the water and press the use item key, or place in the hot bar and press that number. They can also be refilled when it rains.

11. As it is likely getting dark by now, use the torch for light and warmth as you go about gathering more materials for a shelter. You should have a level up soon to get thatch foundation and walls. A shelter will give you additional protection from the heat or cold. Plan on staying put during the night as it can get very dark out and you could easily walk off of a cliff or get ambushed by a predator.

12. On Level 4, get the slingshot for your first ranged weapon. On Level 5, the storage box. Place extra items in it so you are not being overburdened by their weight.

13. Get a sleeping bag but don't craft it for now. You need the hide to craft the Simple Bed which you will place on a foundation. This will give you a fixed place to be reborn if your character gets killed. Sleeping bags are a portable one time use item.

14. Supply drops may give you useful or higher quality items. Access them if you can safely do so.

15. There are going to be many more items then you will ever have engram points for selecting. Spend them on items that are most useful. At this stage of the game, mortise and pestle, narc, standing torch, bow and arrow, bola, tranc arrows, and the raft are top priority. The Bola is most useful for stopping an attacking raptor or for immobilizing a creature from a Parasaur size and smaller to kill or tame.

16. A raft will allow for fast transport for resources and safer locations. You can place structures on them and ferry your tames with you. Just watch out for swimming sarcos, which can attack your tames on the raft, alpha sharks, or Leeds, a giant fish that will attack your raft and destroy it.

17. Your first tames can be some dodos for an egg farm, spitters that you knock out with the slingshot and use as guard dogs, and a parasaur for transport and berry harvesting. Get low level ones for now, they are easier to tame. If you can find a Moschop that ask you to feed them something easy, such as a type of berry, passive tame it by placing that food in slot 0 and feeding it when prompted. It is good at gathering berries, thatch, fiber, wood, even raw meat. It doesn’t need a saddle. Your first flying tame should be a Pteradon. Wait until you can craft saddles for them before attempting a tame.

18. Explorer Notes are a good way to quickly level up your character and your tame. Wait until you have tamed a Pteradon before opening them. While riding on your Pteradon, you will both get the experience when you activate one. You will get double the bonus if you activate a second one while the XP timer is running.

 

You are now well on your way to being a survivor on the Ark. Play cautiously, be aware of your surroundings, and watch your six. And always, be prepare for the unexpected to happen, because it will when you least expect it.

Wow this is great 

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I also have them for each of the maps as getting started on some of them require different tactics or are not recommend for beginners.

The latest free map, Valheim, I rate as medium difficulty due to how cold it is on that map.

Recommended early goals for survival on this map is to quickly level up fortitude to 40, level up weight, get into hide armor as fast as possible, and build a shelter before nightfall. It gets brutally cold at night.

Some locations to spawn in at.

Default Vardiland places you along the beach by the pine forest. You may have to deal with Raptors and Troodons early on, so be mindful that they are in the area. Recomment that you head East to find safe to harvest honey and the shipwreak on the beach. Andrewsaurus spawn in the plains nearby that, like the Equuis, can be tamed at any level and ridden bareback. Don't get too close or you will be killed. You toss them honey, then run up to them and ride them when they start eating the honey. Play the mini game to tame but watch their red rage bar. Jump off and run before it goes full red. You can then toss it more honey and continue taming. Wait too long and it will kick you off and kill you.

Vardiland South. This will place you next to a shipwreak and some runestones. This will give you early access to metal tools and levelups. The downside is that you are locked unto a small valley surround by high cliffs where the dangerous stuff lives. There may be a back entrance to the Darvian Cave.

Do NOT spawn into Vannaland North. It is a death trap of murder cold and wolves.

Likewise, Balheimr is as hard as it warns you. If the heat doesn't get you, the dangerous creatures living there will.

Early gameplay has found that the safest location to start in is Vannaland West. By heading over to the nearby island with the waterfalls to the East and making the long dangerous swim while avoiding the sharks and mantas, starting your camp on this island will keep you safe from anything larger then a dilo. There are sufficient basic resources there to get established with shelter and metal tools. With a canoe, you can explore the more dangerous Swamp Island, Bulbjord, to harvest dead creatures for spoiled meat and organic polymer. Once you can find enough chitin or keratin, your home island should have high level Pteradons landing there. I will be posting about that adventure soon in my gameplay of the official map.

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