so I spent way too many hours in ARK Survival Evolved flying around on a Pteranodon just trying to find a decent metal node and half the time I'd land in the wrong spot and get eaten by something and lose all my gear and then have to start over and honestly it was the worst part of the game for me and I know ARK 2 is going to have a brand new map with different resource distribution but the same principles apply and I've been studying every piece of footage and dev blog Studio Wildcard has released to map out where resources are most likely to spawn and which biomes to prioritize for each material type

and look none of this is official coordinates yet because the game hasn't released and coordinates will change but the underlying biome logic and resource distribution patterns from ARK 1 carry over to ARK 2 based on what the devs have shown and this guide organizes everything by resource type so you can plan your farming routes before you even launch the game and that's honestly what I wish I'd had when I started playing Survival Evolved instead of just fumbling around like an idiot

Metal Locations — Mountains Are Still King

metal is the most important resource in ARK hands down and without it you're stuck in the stone age literally and the best metal spawns in ARK 1 were always on mountains and volcano regions and ARK 2 follows the same pattern based on the gameplay footage we've seen and the map design philosophy Studio Wildcard has talked about in their community crunches

the tallest mountain peaks are consistently the richest metal zones and in ARK 2 the map appears to have 3 major mountain ranges and at least one active volcano area and you want to set up a mining outpost near one of these because the respawn rate on metal nodes means you can do a loop every 20 to 30 minutes and come back with thousands of raw metal using an Ankylosaurus which still gives the 4x to 6x metal gathering bonus in ARK 2

and here's the thing about metal farming most people don't think about and that's weight management and transport logistics and the best metal locations are the ones closest to your base or where you can set up a refining forge on site and smelt everything into ingots which weigh less than raw metal and then transport the ingots instead because a stack of 200 metal ingots weighs 200 units while the raw metal to make those ingots would weigh 400 units and that's a massive difference when you're flying a weight-limited Argentavis or Quetzal

Crystal & Obsidian — Cave Entrances and High Altitude Zones

crystal and obsidian often spawn together in ARK and in ARK 2 the cave systems are reportedly much bigger and more complex and they're going to be the primary source of crystal deposits based on the terrain previews and crystal is essential for electronics and spyglass and greenhouse structures and later game crafting like the fabricator tier items and obsidian is needed for polymer which you need for pretty much everything industrial tier and above

the mountain summit caves specifically are shown to have dense crystal clusters and this is a pattern that's consistent across the ARK franchise and the volcanic biome should have heavy obsidian deposits and the trick with obsidian is it's heavy and you want a high weight mount and honestly the Ankylosaurus works here too but a Mammoth might actually be better for pure obsidian runs because of the weight to speed ratio if you have a ramp set up near the farming zone

and if you're looking for crystal in the early game before you have flyers there's usually a few nodes on the beaches near rocky outcroppings but they're small and they don't respawn fast and it's honestly better to just get a flyer and go to the mountain zones because the trip is worth it and you'll get 10 times as much in half the time

Oil & Silica Pearls — Underwater and Snow Biome Rich Zones

oil in ARK is mainly found in the ocean floor deposits and in snow biome areas where oil rocks spawn on land and the underwater oil nodes are deep and they require either a diving mount or SCUBA gear and in ARK 2 the ocean biome is supposed to be significantly expanded with new underwater cave systems and trenches and honestly the underwater resource game is going to be huge based on what Studio Wildcard has shown and the Mosasaurus and Plesiosaur are going to be your best friends for deep sea oil runs because they can handle the depth pressure and any predators down there

silica pearls are another underwater resource and they're found in shallow ocean areas and underwater caves and they're essential for electronics and you need a LOT of them for late game and in ARK 1 I used to farm silica pearls in the shallow bays on the west coast with an Anglerfish because it gathers pearls at like 5x the hand rate and ARK 2 should have a similar creature or mechanic and honestly if there's a creature that specializes in pearl gathering you should tame one early because the difference is massive

and for oil specifically there's an alternative method if you don't want to go underwater and that's taming a Dung Beetle and feeding it feces to produce oil and fertilizer passively and it's slow but it's consistent and you don't have to risk your life in the ocean and I actually prefer this method for early game oil needs before I have a proper water mount and scuba setup and it's one of those things the game doesn't tell you at all and you just have to learn from other players

Polymer — Organic vs Hard Polymer Farming Routes

polymer is needed for almost everything at the fabricator tier and above and there's two types and organic polymer which you get from killing certain creatures like Kairuku penguins and Mantis and hard polymer which you craft from obsidian and cementing paste in a fabricator and the organic route is way faster for small amounts but it spoils after 30 minutes and the hard polymer route is permanent but more expensive in materials

in ARK 2 the Kairuku penguins are confirmed to be returning and they're going to spawn in the snow biome and ice shelf regions and honestly the best polymer farming strategy depends on your base location and if you're near the snow biome you can just run a penguin slaughter route with a high melee damage mount and collect organic polymer by the hundreds in like 15 minutes and if you're not near snow then you want to farm obsidian and cementing paste and craft hard polymer and both approaches work and it's just logistics

and one thing I want to flag is the new creature AI in ARK 2 might change where creatures spawn and migrate and the Kairuku migration patterns could mean they're only available in certain areas during specific in game seasons or times and this is the kind of thing that could make organic polymer farming a lot harder if you don't know the migration schedule and I'll update this guide once we know the exact patterns because honestly the seasonal creature migration is one of the most interesting new features in ARK 2 and it changes farming economics completely

Sulfur, Cementing Paste & Rare Materials

sulfur is found in volcanic areas and wyvern trench zones and it's used for flame related crafting and preserving salt and the volcanic biome in ARK 2 looks absolutely massive and there should be rich sulfur deposits scattered around the lava fields and the catch is volcanic zones are extremely dangerous with fire wyverns and magmasaurs and environmental hazards like lava pools and you need heat resistant armor or a mount with thermal protection and honestly the risk reward calculation for sulfur farming comes down to whether you have a good flyer that can dodge wyverns and pick you up fast if things go wrong

cementing paste is one of the most demanded resources in ARK for crafting and there's two ways to get it and the first is farming chitin from insects in caves and combining it with stone in a mortar and pestle and the second is taming an Achatina snail which passively produces Achatina paste that works as cementing paste and in ARK 1 the swamp cave was the best chitin spot and ARK 2 has an even bigger swamp biome with giant insects so chitin farming should be good there and honestly the Achatina method is more passive and reliable and I prefer it because I don't like running caves just for chitin but it does require you to tame and maintain snails which need sweet vegetable cake to eat and that's its own whole production chain

and rare flowers and rare mushrooms are found in swamps and beaver dams and they're used for specific recipes and taming certain creatures and the swamp biome is going to be your one stop shop for these oddball rare materials and honestly you just need to go there once with a decent mount and harvest everything and you'll have enough rare materials for weeks and the swamp is dangerous and has leeches and kaprosuchus and everything else that wants to kill you but it's worth one good trip with a strong mount like a Spinosaurus or a Rex

Farming Route Optimization — The Actual Strategy That Saves You Time

and here's the thing that separates efficient ARK players from everyone else and it's not gear or dinos and it's route planning and the best farming strategy is to cluster your resource runs by biome so you hit multiple resource types in one trip instead of doing separate runs for metal and crystal and obsidian and oil and wasting 80 percent of your time on travel

so a mountain run should collect metal from the summit rock nodes and crystal from the cave entrances and obsidian from the volcanic vents and if you plan the loop right you can hit all three in 20 minutes and come back with a full inventory of mixed resources and then sort everything at your base and the alternative doing three separate trips takes an hour and uses three times the stamina on your flyer and it's just bad time economy and I used to do separate trips because I didn't plan my routes and I was basically wasting half my play session just commuting

and for underwater runs you want to combine oil silica pearls and angler gel in one deep sea loop and a Mosasaurus with decent speed and weight can cover the ocean floor nodes and silica pearl deposits and anglerfish spawns in one continuous dive and then you surface near your water base or a beach outpost and transfer everything and go back down and this is the kind of efficiency that lets you actually progress instead of spending your entire play session on logistics

and the last thing I want to say about resource farming and I learned this the hard way after losing thousands of metal to offline raiding and random disconnects and it's this and don't farm more than you need unless you have secure storage because resources that sit in your inventory or a wooden storage box are resources you haven't used yet and they can be destroyed or stolen and honestly it's better to farm on demand and use things immediately than to stockpile and lose everything and I know that sounds obvious but the number of times I've seen tribes with vaults full of metal they never used while their base was made of stone walls and the metal just sat there collecting dust and then a raid wiped everything and all that farming was for nothing and it's a tragedy of bad prioritization more than anything else