Tips and Tricks for 'ARK: Survival Evolved'

Like Minecraft, ARK: Survival Evolved is a game about exploring, collecting, building, and surviving in the wildness. This guide covers cheat codes and general survival tips for ARK on all platforms.

How to Enable Admin Commands for ARK

All versions of ARK support cheat codes, also called admin commands. How you access the admin command console depends on which platform you're using:

• PS4: Pause the game and press L1 + R1 + Square + Triangle.
• Xbox One: Pause the game and press LB + RB + X + Y.
• Switch: Pause the game and press L + R + X + Y.
• PC: Press the tab key at any time during gameplay.

Admin cheats are also available for ARK on iOS and Android via the God console, which appears in your side menu when you're logged in as an administrator.

ARK: Survival Evolved Cheat Codes

Enter these codes in the command console to unlock cheats.

ARK: Survival Evolved Resource Locations

Knowing how to find essential resources is the key to survival in ARK.

Where to Find Fiber

Fiber is obtained by harvesting plants, which will also yield berries that you can eat or use to tame dinosaurs. Approach any of the 3D plants you see all over the place and press the interact button to pick them up. Different regions of the map have different looking plants, but they all give you the same resources.

Where to Find Metal

You can find small quantities of metal in any rocks you harvest with a pickaxe, but to find large amounts, you need to harvest specific rocks. Round rocks near rivers are a good source, but the most metal-rich rocks have a distinct light color with veins of bronze/copper-looking metal running through them. You find these rocks mostly on mountains and hills. 

Where to Find Oil

Travel far north to the snowy areas of the map. There you'll find giant, black boulders covered in frozen oil along to the water. Harvest the rocks with a pickaxe or an ankylosaurus to collect the oil. Oil can also be found in underwater caves or out in the ocean, but you need advanced equipment to reach those locations.

Where to Find Pelts

To stay alive in the cold northern area of the map, you must kill specific animals to make warm clothes. Bring lots of campfires and torches to keep you warm, and then head north until you find a wooly mammoth, megalosaurus, and dire wolves. All of these animals will give you pelts when you harvest them. Use these pelts to make Fur Armor, which will protect you from the cold. 

Where to Find Obsidian

Obsidian is required to make polymers. To find obsidian, travel to any mountain with large deposits of metal. Obsidian is usually higher up the mountain compared to where you first start finding metal, so keep climbing and you'll find obsidian eventually. Obsidian is harvested from large, flat, black rocks that are unmistakable.

How to Tame Animals

To tame an animal, you must first knock it out with your bare hands or by shooting it with a tranquilizer. Once the animal is unconscious (but not dead), you can place food in its inventory. Herbivores like berries, while carnivores like meat (prime meat from larger animals in particular). The animal will then eat the food, and it's "taming meter" will increase. Keep up the process until the meter is full to gain their trust.

Tips for Riding Dinosaurs

When you tame a dinosaur and equip it with a saddle, you can then ride it and use it to help you with things. Certain animals are better than others at various tasks. For example, raptors are great at not only collecting meat from their victims but also looting anything else they had. Triceratops are good for collecting huge amounts of berries. Ankylosaurs are perfect for harvesting metal, oil, and obsidian. Brontosaurs can carry huge loads of cargo. If you want to cover a lot of ground quickly, pick a fast animal like a sabertooth cat or raptor.

Damage and Resistance Sliders

In single-player mode, you can use the sliders in the main menu to adjust various game stats. Most of the options are straight-forward, but two of them are a little confusing: Damage and Resistance. Damage is how much damage you (or your dinosaurs) deal out, and Resistance is how much damage you take.

The higher the Damage slider, the more damage you do; however, Resistance is the opposite because it works as a multiplier, not a linear scale. For example, a Resistance of 2 means you take 2x as much damage, while a resistance of 0.5 means you take half as much as normal. If you set the Resistance to 0, you'll take no damage from enemies (although big falls will still hurt you, as will staying in the cold for too long).