ARK 2 Resource Gathering & Farming Guide: Metal Routes, Oil, Crystal, Wood & Stone

Honestly resource gathering is basically the whole game tbh like you spend 90% of your time farming stuff whether you're building a stone base or crafting tranq arrows or trying to get metal structures up and I've died so many times just trying to haul resources back to base you know the thing is you really need efficient farming routes and the right creatures or you're just gonna be out there forever grinding away and I'm not 100% sure but I think most new players kind of overlook how important the creature combos are for farming like the Anky Argie duo literally changes everything and in my experience once you get that setup going you'll never want to farm metal by hand again I mean it's so damn slow otherwise and the metal to base progression path that the experienced tribes use is honestly the only way to do it ngl

Resource Priority by Progression Stage

Your farming priorities kind of change as you progress through the tech tiers and honestly don't farm resources you can't process yet because I've wasted so much time gathering crystal before I even had a fabricator and it just sat there doing nothing for days like literally useless inventory weight so here's the breakdown of what matters when

Metal Farming: The Economic Backbone

Metal is the single most important resource in ARK 2 like honestly everything from metal tools to turrets to Tek structures needs it and I've spent probably hundreds of hours just flying back and forth doing metal runs and if there's one thing I've learned it's that efficient metal farming requires exactly two things an Ankylosaurus with that 40% weight reduction on metal and an Argentavis which gives you another 50% weight reduction on metal and together they form this incredible farming duo that no serious tribe plays without I mean you could try farming metal with a pick but honestly that's just torture and you're gonna hate the game if you do that the way I do it is just load up the Anky on the Argie fly out do the run and come back with enough metal to actually build something useful

Best Metal Locations on Arat: So the Western Mountain Ridge around coordinates 60 40 is hands down the richest metal spawn I've found on the whole map you've got 15 plus metal nodes at the summit and they respawn every 45 to 60 minutes and I usually bring an Anky and fly it up with an Argentavis and a single run honestly yields like 300 to 500 metal ingots worth of raw metal which is pretty good ngl but the danger is real there are Raptors and Sabertooths and I've even seen a Giga spawn there once or twice and that was terrifying. Also the Northern Frozen Peaks around 25 55 are kind of underrated imo with 10 plus metal nodes mixed in with crystal and obsidian but you need fur armor or an otter because it's freezing cold up there and honestly I've frozen to death up there more times than I want to admit but the lower predator density makes it worth it and you can grab multiple resources in one trip which saves so much time. Then there's the Hidden Valley Caves around 70 80 which I discovered way later than I should have with 8 to 10 metal nodes inside a cave system near the southeastern coast and the cave mouth is narrow enough to block large predators which is awesome for solo players but the respawn times are longer like 60 to 90 minutes so you can't just farm it over and over you know

Metal Farming Workflow: So here's how I actually do it I fly the Argentavis to the metal location with the Ankylosaurus carried in its claws then I land dismount and ride the Anky to each node and I always use the Anky's primary attack not the spin because the spin just wastes stamina for no good reason and then I transfer the metal from the Anky to the Argie every 3 to 4 nodes to keep the Anky light enough for fast movement and honestly if you don't do that you'll be crawling back to base at like 2 mph and it sucks and then I just fly home and smelt everything in the industrial forge and a 30 minute run should produce 400 to 600 ingots with this duo which honestly is enough to keep a solo player going for quite a while

Stone and Wood Farming

Stone: A Doedicurus is pretty much the only creature worth using for stone like I've tried other things and nothing compares and its passive gathering mode where it rolls up into a ball honestly feels kind of broken because it gathers stone automatically while you move along the beach or riverbank and it also gives you 75 percent weight reduction on stone which is massive and the best stone routes are basically any coastline with visible rock clusters and the eastern beach from 80 50 to 85 70 has dense rock spawns with minimal predator interference which is great because getting jumped while farming stone is the worst and a 20 minute Doedic run yields like 1000 to 1500 stone which is more than enough for most building projects

Wood: A Mammoth or Castoroides handles wood pretty efficiently and honestly I prefer the Mammoth because it gathers more per swing around 60 to 80 wood per tree while the Castoroides gathers faster with a wider swing arc but both give you that sweet 50 percent weight reduction on wood and the best wood zones are the dense central forest around 50 50 and just avoid the swamp biome because the tree density is lower and predator density is way higher and I've lost tames there and it just isn't worth it and here's a trick I learned for efficient wood farming use the Mammoth's secondary attack the stomp on clumps of small trees for maximum wood per minute then switch to primary attack for large trees and you'll be swimming in wood in no time

Oil Collection

Oil is essential for gasoline which powers generators fabricators and motorboats and I didn't realize how much oil I'd need until I actually started running a fabricator and then suddenly I was like oh crap I need hundreds of this stuff and there are basically three ways to collect oil. So the Dunkleosteus underwater mining is honestly my favorite just gather oil from underwater oil veins in the deep ocean and the Dunkleo has 50 percent weight reduction on oil and the best spots are the ocean floor around 30 70 and 60 85 and a 15 minute run with a decent Dunkleo yields 200 to 300 oil which is pretty solid. But if you don't have scuba gear yet you can grab oil rocks on the surface in the snow biome with a pick or Anky and it's less efficient than underwater mining but safer for early to mid game players who are still working on their scuba setup. Also you can tame an Achatina for passive oil production and it produces 1 to 2 oil every 15 minutes just by existing and I usually place 3 or 4 in a pen near my base and collect passively and it's low volume but literally zero effort which I love because I'm lazy about some things tbh

Crystal and Obsidian

Crystal: You need crystal for spyglasses electrical items and Tek tier and I always gather it with an Ankylosaurus from crystal nodes in the mountain and snow biomes and the Western Mountain Ridge has like 5 to 6 crystal nodes near the peak and the Northern Frozen Peaks have 3 to 4 and crystal respawns every 40 to 60 minutes and honestly a dedicated crystal run every 2 hours sustains medium scale electronics production pretty well in my experience

Obsidian: You need obsidian for polymer indirectly through the fabricator recipe and for Tek tier stuff and it's found in the same mountain zones as crystal but there are fewer nodes typically only 3 to 4 per mountain and the Caverns of Lost Hope underwater cave at 40 55 has 6 plus obsidian nodes and is honestly worth the scuba gear investment I mean it's kind of a pain to set up the scuba run but the yield is so good and the Ankylosaurus is the optimal gatherer for both crystal and obsidian so you don't need to swap creatures or anything like that

Fiber and Berry Farming

Fiber is perpetually needed for everything from cloth armor to sleeping bags and I used to gather it by hand like an idiot for the first few hours before someone told me to tame a Moschops or Trike for mass berry farming which yields fiber as a byproduct of thatch and berry gathering and honestly that changed everything and the Therizinosaurus is the end game fiber gatherer and its special attack shreds bushes for 200 plus fiber per swing and I'm not kidding a 5 minute Therizino run produces enough fiber for a week of crafting it's absolutely ridiculous how good it is

Automated Resource Production

Beyond manual farming ARK 2 offers several passive resource systems and I honestly love these because I can set them up and then go do other stuff while resources pile up. So the Industrial Forge smelts metal crystal and obsidian 20x faster than a regular forge and it's basically a standard mid game upgrade that you should get as soon as you can afford it and the Chemistry Bench produces polymer sparkpowder narcotics and other processed resources at 4x the speed of the mortar and pestle which saves so much time. Also Bee Hives give you passive honey production and honey is used for kibble medical brews and taming and you just build a beehive box near a flower rich area and let the bees do their thing and you get the idea. Then there are Gardens where you grow crops like rockarrot savoroot and citronal for kibble production and a greenhouse with irrigation and fertilizer produces 6x faster than outdoor plots and honestly it's kind of a no brainer once you have the materials

Use Cases

Scenario 1: Solo player's weekly metal run schedule. In my experience the best schedule is Monday Wednesday Friday do 30 minute Anky Argie metal runs to the Western Mountain Ridge and Tuesday Thursday do a Doedicurus stone run plus a Mammoth wood run and then on the weekend do a Crystal plus Obsidian mountain run and refill the industrial forge and this schedule honestly produces enough metal for a full stone base with 10 plus turrets within two weeks of casual play and I've done this exact routine on multiple servers and it works every time

Scenario 2: Tribe preparing for boss fight logistics. So if you're in a tribe assign two members to full time resource farming one week before the boss attempt and one farms metal for ammo and saddles while the other farms organic polymer obsidian and crystal for Tek rifle and shield production and the tribe crafter processes the raw materials into finished goods and a three person farming rotation keeps the forge running 24/7 and honestly this is pretty much the standard way competitive tribes prep for bosses and it just works

Scenario 3: Underwater oil farming run. Gear up with scuba tank flippers and a Dunkleosteus then dive at 30 70 and follow the ocean floor northeast and each oil vein yields 10 to 15 raw oil and just loop back when your inventory is full and a full scuba tank lasts 20 minutes which is enough for a complete circuit and I've done this run so many times I could probably do it with my eyes closed at this point

Tips

Argie plus Anky is non-negotiable the Argentavis's 50 percent weight reduction on metal literally doubles your farming efficiency and never metal farm without this duo because you're just wasting your time otherwise. Also store raw metal in the forge not in vaults because an industrial forge holds up to 20000 raw metal and processing raw metal into ingots reduces weight by 50 percent so store ingots and only store raw metal in the forge and trust me this saves so much inventory management headache. Also hide backup farming creatures because if your main Anky gets killed during a raid you lose your farming capacity for 2 to 3 hours and that's honestly devastating so keep a backup Anky and Doedic in a hidden pen 200 meters from your base and I've learned this the hard way after losing my only Anky to a raid and then spending hours trying to tame another one. And with the Doedicurus in rolled mode you press the alternate control key to roll your Doedic into a ball and while rolled it auto gathers stone as you push it along beaches and it's honestly the best passive gathering method in the game bar none. And never farm without a flyer nearby always park an Argentavis or Pteranodon within sprint distance because if a Giga or alpha predator spawns you escape by air not by running and I've lost count of how many times this has saved my butt

Breadcrumb

Home › Guides › Resource Gathering & Farming Guide