Our Tips for Playing Ark: Survival Evolved

If you’ve had the opportunity to play ARK: Survival Evolved, you know that the first number of hours can be incredibly frustrating. If you don’t die a lot, you are probably doing it wrong. The game doesn’t hold your hand in any way, which makes online guides so incredibly valuable. While we won’t be putting something together that as in depth as some of the Wiki’s already available, we will share with you our top tips for playing.

1. Don’t be afraid to die! This sounds like a ridiculous tip, but early on you might be playing it incredibly safe because you are worried about dying. Here are a few things to consider. If you die, you will ‘lose’ everything in your inventory, including weapons, tools, berries, and everything else. However, your body will remain in the game for a certain amount of time. Since you will always respond within a general area – fairly large, but once you pinpoint landmarks it is easy to get around – you can always go find your body and recover your items.
2. Find an area devoid of dangerous dinosaurs and set up a base camp, quickly. Grab lots of thatch and stone, and get working on a basic shelter. Once you have a shelter, fire, and hopefully a storage box, starting up again after each death should be much easier.
3. When exploring, don’t take unnecessary items with you. Getting a storage box as early as possible is very important as it allows you to store items that will remain, regardless of whether you die or not. Carrying around excess weapons / tools / supplies when exploring just means you are bound to lose all those items.
4. Build a bed as soon as possible. Once you have a bed, you can spawn to that location every time you die, saving you from having to move around the map trying to find your shelter, fire, and items back. In fact, a bed should be one of your top priorities, although it will take some time to unlock.
5. Get a dinosaur that is beneficial to you, as soon as possible. My personal choice would be the triceratops. This dinosaur is big and burly, has a good amount of HP, is wonderful for collecting berries. It is a great resource gathering dinosaur as well as a good attacking force.

Remember, you can pick up ARK right now on Xbox One for the low price of 34.99. When the game officially launches later this year, it will cost you nearly double that amount. Get in while it’s cheap, and help make this the best dinosaur game ever made! We give it our 100% approval!