ARK 2 Beginner Guide, How to Survive & Thrive

Put 1 wood plus 1 stone on your hotbar and craft a Stone Pick then punch a tree with the pick and you get way more wood plus thatch than just punching with fists and it's literally the first thing you should do, then you can use the pick to get more stone and thatch and fiber from bushes and before you know it you've got the basic toolkit and you're not running around naked and helpless anymore, you get the idea this is like the most basic thing in the game but half the new players I've watched don't do it right away and then they wonder why they die.

Don't punch boulders yet because that takes forever and you'll break your hands before you get enough stone, instead walk the beach looking for small stones on the ground because it's much faster early on and you need stone for basically everything like picks hatchets campfires and foundations, I spent my first 20 minutes punching a boulder and got like 3 stone and felt like an absolute idiot when my friend told me to just pick them up off the ground, so yeah don't be me just grab loose stones.

Punch bushes and eat all the berries except narcoberries because those black ones will put you to sleep mid fight and then you die which has happened to me more times than I want to admit, this solves early hunger and thirst at the same time and it's honestly the only reason I survived my first 10 minutes because I was starving and had no idea berries were even edible until I accidentally ate one, narcoberries look kind of like the other dark berries so you really gotta pay attention or you'll knock yourself out at the worst possible moment and that's how you get eaten by a dilo or whatever.

Tools first then Campfire then Thatch structures then Cloth armor and the Bola is critical for taming so don't skip that, I mean you literally can't tame anything without Bola early on. You'll be running after Parasaurs throwing rocks at them like a caveman which doesn't work, wood structures come next and a bow if you have spare points, basically just get the survival essentials and don't get distracted by the 50 other engrams you could learn because half of them are useless at this stage and you'll never craft them.

Bow plus Tranq arrows are your top priority then Wood structures then Smithy then Crossbow then a Raft for coastal exploration, the raft is kind of underrated tbh it's basically a mobile base in the early game and you can put a bed and storage on it and live on the water which is honestly safer than living on land for the first few days, the Smithy opens up metal tools which is a huge upgrade and the Crossbow is way better than the regular bow for tranqing bigger creatures, so yeah raft life is good life etc.

Longneck Rifle plus Tranq darts then Stone structures then Pteranodon saddle then Smithy crafting for advanced stuff. And the Ptera saddle at 38 is honestly the biggest power spike in the entire early game because suddenly you can fly anywhere and see the whole map and escape any ground threat, Stone structures are also huge because thatch gets destroyed by basically anything and wood burns, stone is the first building tier that actually keeps you safe from wild dinos and low level raiders, these levels are kind of grindy but the payoff is massive.

Saddle at Lv9 and you bola it then tranq arrows to the head then feed narcoberries and mejoberries and wait for the tame bar to fill, it's basically a free weight mule and early berry gatherer and honestly you should tame this before you do anything else serious because having a mobile storage unit that can fight off small threats is a complete game changer, the Parasaur also has this radar ping ability that highlights nearby threats which I didn't even know about for my first 50 hours of playing and when I found out I felt so dumb, so yeah Parasaur first always.

Okay so the Pteranodon saddle unlocks at Lv38 and you bola it then 1 to 2 tranq arrows to the head then feed raw meat and wait. Your first flyer is a complete game changer for scouting and I remember the first time I flew over the map I could see everything and it was honestly the moment the game clicked for me, you can scout base locations find metal nodes spot enemy bases and escape any ground fight instantly, the Ptera has low weight and stamina so don't overload it but the mobility alone makes it the most important tame in the early game hands down, also you need to be careful landing because if you run out of stamina mid flight over water you and your Ptera are both dead and that's a terrible feeling.

And for the Ankylosaurus the saddle is at Lv36 and it's the best metal flint crystal gatherer in the entire game bar none, pair it with an Argentavis to airlift it to metal nodes and your resource problems basically disappear overnight because one Anky run to a metal mountain gives you more metal than 2 hours of manual pickaxe farming, this is the tame that opens up everything like advanced weapons better armor industrial crafting and all that, the Anky is slow as hell on land though so you really need that Argy to move it around or you'll spend half your playtime walking a turtle speed dinosaur across the map which I did and it was miserable, anyway get the Anky and your progression speeds up like 10x.

Move inland to metal and obsidian rich zones by Lv30 because the beach is a starter zone not a home and I stayed there way too long my first playthrough like until level 45 which is honestly embarrassing, you're basically wasting time if you're still beach living past level 30 because all the important resources are inland and the beach spawns are weak and the XP is terrible, the beach is safe but safe means slow and ARK 2 rewards risk, so once you have a Ptera and some metal tools get off the beach and never look back.

Dinos are NOT optional in ARK like you literally cannot play this game without taming and I ignored taming for my first 20 levels because I thought I could just craft better gear and survive on foot, that was completely wrong and I died constantly, tame early tame often because a tamed creature doubles your effectiveness at minimum and some tames like the Anky multiply your resource gathering by like 5x, a solo player with 3 good tames is more effective than a player with metal gear and no tames and that's just how the game math works, so stop being stubborn and get a Parasaur.

Don't learn everything only prioritize essential gear because engram points are limited and you can't unlock everything on one character, mindwipe tonic can reset your engrams later but it's a pain to craft requiring rare mushrooms and narcotics and stuff you won't have early, I wasted like 15 points on decorative structures and saddles for creatures I didn't even own yet and then couldn't unlock the Longneck Rifle at level 30 and had to spend hours grinding for a mindwipe, just learn the essentials and save the rest for when you actually need them.

Always log off inside a locked structure because offline raiding is absolutely real and your unconscious body lying on the ground is the easiest target in the game, I lost everything once because I logged out next to a tree thinking I was hidden and when I logged back in the next day my body was dead and all my stuff was gone including a full set of metal tools and a crossbow I had just crafted, even a 1x1 thatch hut with a door is better than sleeping in the open because at least it slows them down and might make them look for an easier target, never ever log out outside and you'll thank me later.