⚗️ Crafting Recipes

ARK 2 Crafting - Complete Engram Database

Look I've spent way too many hours staring at engram screens and honestly this page is basically everything I wish I had when I started every single engram recipe from weapons and armor to saddles and structures and consumables with all the resource costs and engram points and level requirements ngl it's a lot of data but you kinda need all of it and I'm keeping this updated as more ARK 2 info drops

Recipe Categories

Six major engram groups covering every craftable item in the game and tbh I've interacted with all of these way more than I'd like to admit you get the idea like thousands of hours staring at these same recipe screens and I still sometimes forget how much cementing paste something needs

🔫 Weapons (30+)

Spear Bow Crossbow Longneck Rifle Shotgun Assault Rifle Rocket Launcher Tek Rifle the full progression from primitive to Tek and honestly I've crafted every single one of these and they each have their moment you know some are kinda niche but others like the Longneck are literally glued to my hotbar for hours and hours of gameplay and I still get a little thrill every time I craft an Ascendant shotgun because nothing says I'm ready quite like a shotgun that can one-shot a raptor from 50 meters away ngl it's just satisfying

🛡️ Armor (25+)

Cloth to Hide to Chitin to Flak to Riot to Tek with helmet chest gloves legs boots per tier each tier adds armor rating and insulation and honestly the jump from Hide to Flak is where you stop dying to literally everything tbh I remember my first set of Flak felt like putting on a damn tank and I've never gone back to Hide since maybe for the insulation in certain biomes but that's about it pretty much Flak is your bread and butter until you can afford Riot which is kinda overkill for PvE anyway but looks cool so I still craft it sometimes

🐎 Saddles (60+)

One saddle engram per rideable creature from Parasaur at Lv9 all the way to Giganotosaurus at Lv96 plus platform saddles for Quetzal Bronto Mosa Plesio, ngl the Giga saddle engram cost is kinda brutal

🏗️ Structures (50+)

Thatch to Wood to Stone to Metal to Tek with foundation wall ceiling doorframe door gate and fence per tier plus beds storage and crafting stations basically everything you need to go from a mud hut to a fortress and tbh I've built them all at some point the grind from Stone to Metal is where most of my playtime goes honestly and I've literally spent entire weekends just farming paste and ingots and you know what the worst part is you finish your metal base and then immediately want to expand it so you're back to farming again it never ends

🍖 Consumables (20+)

Cooked Meat Medical Brew Energy Brew Kibbles at 6 tiers Custom Recipes Lazarus Chowder Enduro Stew Focal Chili, imo the Lazarus Chowder is literally the most underrated consumable in the game especially for underwater caves etc

🔧 Tools (15+)

Pick Hatchet Torch Bola Compass GPS Cryopod Magnifying Glass Spyglass Grappling Hook Whip Climbing Pick, you know the Grappling Hook is one of those things I slept on for way too long and now I literally never leave base without one it's saved me from falling into lava and stuff like that more times than I can count and the Cryopod is basically mandatory once you start building an army of tames I remember the pre-Cryopod days and let me tell you transporting 20 dinos across the map without cryopods was actual nightmare fuel never again

Material Tier Comparison

Each building tier offers exponentially more protection at higher resource cost and honestly the jump between tiers is way bigger than the numbers make it look like going from Thatch to Stone literally feels like a different game entirely and I'm not even exaggerating

🌾 Tier 1 - Thatch

Harvest with Pick very light weight this is your first night shelter only and honestly it breaks in 2 hits so don't get attached cost is 20 Fiber plus 6 Thatch plus 15 Wood per foundation and I've had so many of these get demolished by a random raptor ngl it's basically made of paper and you should upgrade to Wood as fast as humanly possible like literally the first thing you do after taming a parasaur is ditch your thatch hut trust me on this one

🪵 Tier 2 - Wood

Harvest with Hatchet. Light weight. Early base and crafting stations but it burns from fire arrows and flamethrowers so maybe don't put everything in a wood base. Cost: 50 Wood + 12 Thatch + 20 Fiber.

🪨 Tier 3 - Stone

Harvest with Pick or Doedicurus medium weight this is your mid-game PvP base minimum and it resists most dino damage which is honestly the point where you can finally stop stressing about every wild carno that wanders by cost is 40 Stone plus 20 Wood plus 30 Thatch and imo this is where the game actually starts feeling playable you can breathe for like 5 seconds without something breaking your walls and the Doedicurus makes stone gathering so much less painful ngl

🔩 Tier 4 - Metal

Harvest with Ankylosaurus heavy weight this is the main PvP structure and it resists everything except explosives and Tek cost is 25 Metal Ingot plus 15 Cementing Paste and ngl the Cementing Paste grind is real like I've spent entire weekends just farming paste and metal so yeah it's worth it but man it's a lot of work and you'll need a whole farming setup with an Anky and an Argy to make it not soul-crushing you get the idea the payoff though when you finally have a full metal base and nothing can touch you is chef's kiss honestly

🔮 Tier 5 - Tek

Drops from bosses, medium weight, endgame base with forcefield teleporter underwater oxygen and vacuum rooms. Requires Element. By the time you're building Tek you've killed bosses 20 times anyway and the forcefield alone is worth the grind imo.

Kibble Crafting Guide

Kibble is the most important crafting chain for taming and honestly if you're not running an egg farm you're kinda playing on hard mode without realizing it higher tier = faster tame + better effectiveness and the difference between using mejoberries vs the right kibble on a 150 tame is literally hours of your life you're never getting back ngl I learned this the hard way after trying to berry-tame a high level Theri and yeah never again

Kibble TypeKey IngredientCooking MethodTames
Simple KibbleDodo Egg + Cooked Fish + Mejoberries + Fiber + WaterCooking PotParasaur, Dodo, low-tier herbivores
Regular KibbleTurtle Egg + Jerky + Longrass + Savoroot + Fiber + WaterCooking PotPtera, Ankylo, Stego, mid-tier
Superior KibbleArgentavis Egg + Prime Jerky + Citronal + Sap + Fiber + WaterCooking PotArgentavis, Mammoth, high-tier
Exceptional KibbleRex Egg + Prime Jerky + Rare Flower + Fiber + WaterIndustrial CookerT-Rex, Giga, Spino, apex predators
Extraordinary KibbleSpecial Egg + Lazarus Chowder + Giant Bee Honey + Fiber + WaterIndustrial CookerGriffin, Phoenix, special tames

Resource Farming - Best Gatherers

Which creatures to use for each resource type for maximum yield and tbh getting this wrong early game costs you so many hours it's not even funny like I spent my first 50 hours farming metal with a pick because nobody told me about the Anky and I literally want those hours back

🔩 Metal

Ankylosaurus is the best metal gatherer bar none fly to mountain nodes with Argentavis carrying the Ankylo and metal nodes give 3-5x more with Ankylo vs pick I mean this combo literally changed the game for me and I've been using it for years without an Anky you're basically wasting your time on metal runs and nobody has time for that especially when you're trying to build a metal base which already takes forever so do yourself a favor and tame an Anky before you do any serious building

🪨 Stone

Doedicurus roll attack on rocks essential for stone structures and sparkpowder for gunpowder has 75% weight reduction for stone in inventory and honestly watching them roll around is kinda adorable ngl also the weight reduction means you can carry like 4x more stone than you think and that adds up fast when you're crafting thousands of stone walls a good Doed is probably the second best farming tame in the game after the Anky imo

🪵 Wood

Mammoth for raw volume with that stomp attack Castoroides for wood weight reduction and the Castoroides also functions as a mobile smithy for field crafting which is honestly way more useful than it sounds I've repaired full sets of gear in the middle of nowhere thanks to a beaver buddy and it's saved my run multiple times you know what I mean

🌿 Fiber

Therizinosaurus delicate harvesting gathers massive amounts of fiber and also collects rare flowers mushrooms and berries without needing a separate mount tbh the Theri is kinda the Swiss Army knife of farming and I love it you can fill an entire storage box with fiber in like 5 minutes and then go gather wood with the same dino right after etc

🦴 Hide / Pelt

T-Rex or Carno for large creature kills use chainsaw for maximum hide yield and Direwolf gathers pelt effectively in snow biome honestly the chainsaw hide farming trick is something I wish I knew 100 hours earlier it's literally 3-4x more hide per corpse and stuff like that

Crafting FAQ

Quick answers to common recipe and crafting questions that I've probably googled myself at 3am more times than I'd like to admit and some of these I had to learn the hard way which is why I'm putting them here so you don't have to suffer like I did

How do I get engram points after running out?
Level up for more points or use Mindwipe Tonic to reset all engrams and reallocate or use blueprints found in supply drops which don't require the engram to craft honestly I've used Mindwipe like 4 times on one character because I kept changing my mind about what to unlock you get the idea and tbh blueprints from drops are kinda the cheat code for saving engram points anyway especially once you start farming the deep sea loot crates regularly it's literally free gear with zero engram investment how can you beat that
What's the best way to craft kibble efficiently?
Build an egg farm with 3-5 females of each kibble-tier egg layer Dodo for Simple Turtle for Regular Argentavis for Superior Rex for Exceptional cook kibble in batches in an Industrial Cooker for speed tbh setting up the egg farm is the annoying part but once it's running you basically never think about kibble again also keep a male around for the mate boost because that egg production boost is literally night and day I'm not even kidding the difference is massive
How do I unlock Tek-tier engrams?
Defeat bosses like Broodmother Megapithecus Dragon to earn Tekgram unlocks each boss unlocks specific Tek engrams and higher difficulty bosses unlock more engrams per fight ngl the Dragon fight on Alpha is probably the hardest thing I've done in ARK and I'm still not sure how I survived it the first time but the Tek replicator is worth it trust me
Can I craft items without learning the engram?
Yes blueprints from supply drops loot crates and fishing blueprints have varying quality from Primitive to Ascendant and may require higher crafting stations to fabricate I've found some of my best blueprints just randomly fishing and stuff like that a good Ascendant shotgun blueprint from a deep sea loot crate is basically the best feeling in the game imo and fishing for blueprints is honestly underrated as a way to get high-tier gear without spending engram points

Data sources: Studio Wildcard / Snail Games - official ARK 2 announcements, trailers, and developer updates, ARK Survival Evolved community blog, Xbox Wire / Microsoft - console exclusivity details, IGN, GameSpot, PC Gamer - gaming press coverage and previews.