ARK 2 Caves & Dungeons, Complete Exploration Guide

So the Central Mountain Cave at 30,55 is basically three chambers connected by narrow tunnels and it spawns spiders and scorpions and bats, bring a sabertooth or wolf honestly and a shotgun with grapples and medical brews because those bats are gonna give you swamp fever and you'll hate every second of it, and then there's the Northwest Ice Cave at 10,25 which has freezing temperatures so you need fur armor or you're literally gonna freeze to death in like two minutes, it's got a vertical shaft with ledges and dire wolves and yetis and purlovias spawn in there, grappling hooks are pretty much essential for the ice bridge section or you'll fall and lose everything, and the Jungle Temple Cave at 60,70 is honestly designed by someone who hates players ngl, spike walls and dart launchers and floor collapses everywhere, snakes and spiders and arthropluera, you'll want 200 plus HP and a pump shotgun and really good armor or you're just gonna get melted by acid spit and traps and all that

And then there's the Western Ocean Cave at 15,45 which has two entrances and one air pocket and contains the artifact of the Depths, you'll deal with eels and jellyfish and megalodons in there so bring scuba gear and Lazarus Chowder and a baryonyx or you're gonna have a bad time, and the Eastern Deep Sea Trench at 70,10 is the deepest cave at 50 meters plus with no air pockets at all which means full Tek scuba is required or you'll drown before you even see the artifact, mosasaurs and tusoteuthis and angler fish spawn in there and honestly bringing a tuso is the only way I've ever survived this place

But the Central Mountain Cave at 30,55 is probably the first cave you should tackle as a new player and tbh I wish someone had told me that before I went into the ice cave first and got absolutely wrecked, the three chambers are spaced out enough that you can clear them one at a time and there's actually a safe spot in the second chamber where nothing spawns so you can catch your breath which is kind of a lifesaver when you're panicking and low on health, the artifact in this cave is the Artifact of the Hunter which you'll need for the Broodmother boss fight and the bats in here are honestly the most annoying thing I've ever dealt with in any game, they'll give you swamp fever if they bite you and the cure requires rare flowers and leech blood which is a whole separate farming trip and it's just ugh so frustrating, bring at least 5 medical brews and don't even think about going in without a shotgun for the bats because I've tried it with just a bow and it was the worst decision I've ever made, the Northwest Ice Cave at 10,25 is a whole different beast and I mean that literally, the temperature in there drops to like minus 30 celsius and if your fur armor breaks mid-run you're dead in about two minutes and there's nothing you can do about it, the ice bridge section near the second chamber has a massive drop underneath and if you fall without a grappling hook crossbowed into the ceiling that's it your stuff is gone forever and you'll be staring at the respawn screen wondering why you play this game, this cave gives the Artifact of the Pack needed for the Megapithecus fight and honestly getting through the yetis is the hardest part because they hit like trucks and come in packs, the Jungle Temple Cave at 60,70 honestly feels like someone designed it specifically to kill players and I'm not even exaggerating, the floor collapse traps drop you into a pit of arthropluera that'll melt your armor with their acid spit and the dart launchers are positioned so you can't see them until you're already in range which is just diabolical game design tbh, bring a shield and a lot of patience and hug the walls when you see suspicious floor tiles and even then you'll probably still die at least once or twice or who knows maybe more

Look I've died in caves enough times to know exactly what you need and what's just extra weight that'll get you killed, a pump-action shotgun with at least 100 shells is basically non-negotiable because the spread hits bats reliably and it does enough damage to stagger bigger creatures and I've tried other weapons and they just don't cut it, at least two full sets of armor because your armor will break especially in the lava and ice caves and running through a cave naked is a death sentence and I've done that more times than I'd like to admit, medical brews bring like 20 minimum because they heal you faster than cooked meat and don't weigh much and honestly you'll go through them faster than you think, grappling hooks at least 10 of them because they save you from pits and let you bypass trap sections and get you out of situations where you're surrounded and I can't tell you how many times a grappling hook has saved my entire kit, a crossbow with grapples already loaded plus a stack of stone arrows for triggering traps from a distance which is something I learned the hard way after walking into way too many dart traps, a sleeping bag to place outside the cave entrance so if you die inside you spawn right outside instead of back at your base which is honestly the most important tip in this whole guide imo, stimulants or stimberry to fight torpor from scorpion stings and snake bites because getting knocked out in a cave is pretty much a guaranteed death, and a cryopod with your cave mount inside which is way easier than trying to walk a wolf through a narrow cave entrance and I've wasted so much time doing it the hard way before I figured this out

Also for standard land caves with medium-sized entrances the Thylacoleo is basically the ultimate cave mount and I love this thing, it climbs walls and does bleed damage and it's tanky enough to take hits and it fits through most cave passages, the Sabertooth is a solid budget alternative and it's faster and easier to tame but not as durable and I've lost a few sabertooths in caves before switching to thylas, for the ice cave specifically I actually prefer a pack of Dire Wolves because they get a pack bonus that stacks with each wolf in the group and three high-level wolves with the pack howl buff can shred through yetis before they even get close, wolves also don't need saddles so you don't have to worry about saddle durability in the cold which is honestly such a nice quality of life thing, for underwater caves the Baryonyx is your best friend and I'm not kidding, it stuns creatures with its tail spin which works on jellyfish and eels and it doesn't take extra damage from anything specific, the Basilosaurus is also great for deep caves because it's immune to jellyfish stings and generates oil passively but it's slow and takes damage in deep water over time so it's kind of a tradeoff, for the really tight caves where even a sabertooth barely fits a high-level pack of Raptors or even a bred Dimorphodon swarm works surprisingly well, Dimorphodons in a flock of 10 plus will shred anything in seconds and they ignore most traps because they fly which is honestly kind of broken and I'm not complaining

Anyway each cave's artifact corresponds to a specific boss and you need to know which is which before you start farming or you'll waste hours collecting the wrong stuff, the Central Mountain Cave gives the Artifact of the Hunter that's for the Broodmother and you combine it with Argentavis talons and Sarcosuchus skin and Sauropod vertebrae and Titanoboa venom at an obelisk to summon her, the Northwest Ice Cave drops the Artifact of the Pack for the Megapithecus and you'll need Thylacoleo hook claws and Megalania toxin and a few other things as tribute alongside it, the Jungle Temple Cave drops the Artifact of the Clever for the Dragon which requires Therizino claws and Megalodon teeth and Tusoteuthis tentacles as tribute and honestly gathering all that is such a pain, the Western Ocean Cave gives the Artifact of the Depths also used for the Dragon fight, and if there's a swamp cave on the ARK 2 map it would drop the Artifact of the Immune needed for the Overseer and stuff like that, honestly the tribute gathering is sometimes more annoying than the actual boss fights and I hate that part of the game ngl, start collecting tribute items early and store them in a dedicated fridge because when you finally have your rex army ready you don't want to spend three hours hunting Thylacoleos for claws before you can even start the boss fight and I've been in that exact situation and it sucks

So running caves solo requires a completely different approach than going in with a tribe and I've done both enough to know the difference is night and day, solo you need to be way more careful and way more prepared and honestly way more paranoid because there's nobody to revive you or share supplies with, take it slow and clear one room at a time and always have an escape route because panicking in a cave is how you die, the sleeping bag outside the entrance is non-negotiable for solo runs and you also want to bring double the supplies because there's nobody to share med brews or ammo with and running out of shells mid-cave is terrifying, with a tribe you can split roles and it makes everything so much easier, one person on point duty with a shield and shotgun and one person on creature control with a high-damage mount and one person hanging back to grab loot and watch for flanking spawns, the point person draws aggro and tanks hits and the mount rider cleans up creatures and the loot person keeps everyone's inventory managed so nobody gets encumbered mid-fight which has happened to me way too many times, tribe runs can clear caves in half the time with half the casualties compared to solo and the tradeoff is that loot gets split and you need to coordinate schedules but honestly for the harder caves like the ice cave and the deep sea trench having even one other person makes the difference between a successful run and a corpse run and I'm not even exaggerating

The number one cause of cave deaths and I'm not exaggerating is falling into pits because you weren't paying attention, caves are dark and the lighting is terrible and some of those holes look exactly like regular floor until you're falling through them and then it's too late and you're dead and all your stuff is at the bottom of a pit full of spiders, always and I mean always have a grappling hook loaded on your crossbow hotbar because if you start falling you swap to the crossbow and shoot the ceiling immediately and you'll catch yourself before you hit the bottom and I've saved myself literally dozens of times this way, second most common death is torpor knockout from scorpions and snakes and it's so frustrating because you're fighting a group of creatures and you don't notice your torpor climbing and suddenly your screen goes black and you're unconscious while three spiders eat your face, watch your torpor stat like a hawk and pop stimulants the moment it starts going up or you'll regret it, third is running out of ammo deep in a cave and you think 50 shotgun shells is enough and then you hit a respawn wave and you're dry with two chambers still to clear and that's a terrible feeling, bring 100 minimum and bring 150 if you can carry it because more ammo is always better, fourth is getting lost because some caves have branching paths and dead ends and panic sets in when you realize you don't know which way is out and I've been lost in the ice cave for like 20 minutes once and it was awful, place torches or standing torches at intersections pointing toward the exit and you'll never get lost again, and the most tilting death of all is clearing a cave and grabbing the artifact and then dying to a creature that respawned behind you on the way out because caves respawn creatures faster than the outside world and it's so unfair, get in and get the artifact and get out and don't linger or you'll learn this lesson the hard way like I did and trust me you don't want that