How to play guide

ARK: Survival Ascended Beginner's Guide: Day One, Engrams and Taming Dinosaurs

A starter guide to ARK: Survival Ascended: surviving the first day, engram points, knock-out taming, building shelter, what happens when you die, default PC keys and common mistakes.

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ARK: Survival Ascended is Studio Wildcard's Unreal Engine 5 remake of the 2015 game ARK: Survival Evolved. According to the official ARK wiki, it launched in early access on Steam on 25 October 2023, together with its first map, The Island. You wake up naked on an island full of dinosaurs and prehistoric creatures and must find food, water, shelter and tools.

ARK is harsh in the first hours. Hunger, thirst, heat and cold keep pressing on you, and even small creatures can take down a naked survivor in a few hits. The game forces very little tutorial on you, so early deaths usually come from not knowing how things work.

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This guide is for players who have just started or cannot make it through the first night. Based on the official ARK wiki (ark.wiki.gg), it covers the core loop, engrams, taming, default keys and common mistakes.

Goal of the game

The core loop: gather resources, craft tools and clothes, build shelter, tame creatures and use them to push into more dangerous areas. You collect early materials such as wood, stone, fiber, thatch and flint by hand or with basic tools. Your survivor gains experience from this work; each level lets you put a point into a stat such as health, stamina or weight, and also grants engram points.

According to the official wiki, engrams permanently unlock crafting recipes, from saddles and structures to tools and clothing, and they are not lost on death. Under default multiplayer settings you cannot earn enough points to unlock everything, so you have to choose. Most of your real power comes from tamed creatures, which you rely on for hauling, mining, hunting and defending your base.

Controls

Key	Action
`W A S D`	Move
`Left Shift`	Run (uses stamina)
`Space`	Jump; surface while diving; take off on a flyer
`C / X`	Crouch / prone
`Left click / Right click`	Attack or use tool / aim
`Q`	Put away your item and use fists
`R`	Reload
`E`	Use: open doors, drink water, mount; hold for the creature or structure radial menu
`I`	Inventory (also where you spend level points)
`V`	Show craftables
`F`	Access another inventory (storage, tamed creature)
`G`	Drag an unconscious body
`0-9`	Use hotbar item
`M`	Map
`T (hold) / H (hold)`	Whistle commands for tames / extended HUD info such as temperature and time

First steps

Spawn somewhere safeAfter creating your survivor you choose a spawn region. On your first try, pick a coastal region labelled as easy; the interior and forests are full of creatures you cannot handle early on.
Start with bare handsPunching trees gives wood and thatch, using E on bushes gives berries and fiber, and E also picks up small stones. According to the wiki, the Stone Pick needs no engram and can be crafted from the start with wood and stone. Unlocked recipes appear in the craftables list on V.
Use the right toolAccording to the wiki, a Stone Pick yields more thatch than wood from trees, more flint than stone from rocks and more meat than hide from corpses; a hatchet does the opposite. Pick your tool based on what you are short of.
Spend your level pointsWhen you level up, open your inventory with I and add points to your stats. Health, stamina and weight help most early. Then spend engram points on basics such as clothing, a spear, a campfire and a sleeping bag.
Sort out water and foodYou can drink at the water's edge with E. According to the wiki, eating raw meat costs health, while cooked meat fills you more and spoils more slowly. Light a campfire and cook it. If your food or water bar hits zero, you start losing health.
Place a sleeping bag or bedYou need a respawn point. With a sleeping bag or bed you respawn near your gear instead of on a random beach.
Build a small shelterThatch is the cheapest early shelter but it is weak. Put up a few walls, a door and a roof to stay safe from the night cold and small creatures, and move to wood as materials build up.
Get your first tameStart with a small, docile herbivore. Knocking it out and feeding it the right food is the basic method, explained step by step in the tips below. A first mount or pack animal multiplies your gathering speed.

Tips and tactics

Knock-out tamingAccording to the official wiki, you first knock the creature out with a slingshot, a wooden club or Tranquilizer Arrows from a bow. Once it is unconscious, open its inventory and add its preferred food; the taming bar rises each time it eats. Carnivores eat meat, herbivores eat berries and crops.
Keep it asleepWhile taming, the creature's torpor drops. According to the wiki, you keep it unconscious by force-feeding Narcoberries or Narcotics with E in its inventory; if it wakes up, everything in its inventory is lost.
Do not punch an unconscious tameAccording to the wiki, punching an unconscious creature keeps its torpor up but lowers taming effectiveness, which means a weaker tame. Use narcotics instead.
Tame somewhere protectedTaming can take a long time and an unconscious creature attracts predators. Wall it in, stay close or set a strong tame to guard it.
Dress for the temperatureHold H to see temperature, time and location. In extreme cold or heat your survivor gets hungry, thirsty and tired much faster; fiber clothing and a fire are the cheapest early fixes.
Recover your body carefullyWhen you die, your inventory stays on your body and is marked on the map. Do not rush back unprepared, since whatever killed you is probably still there. Craft a tool and some clothes first.
Watch your weightCarrying more than your limit slows you down and eventually stops you moving. Stone and metal are heavy; bringing a pack creature on gathering runs solves this.
Learn whistle commandsHolding T opens a menu to tell tames to follow, stay, turn aggressive or passive. Tames you do not set to follow stay put, and this menu is essential once you travel with several animals.
Pick a smart base spotChoose flat ground near water with few predators passing through. Close your doors; in ARK an open door means night-time visitors.
Use single-player settingsAccording to the wiki, single-player settings let you earn enough engram points to unlock everything. If you are learning alone, they are more forgiving than multiplayer servers.

Common mistakes

Spawning inland or heading straight into the jungle: early predators will catch you with no way to escape.
Going far without a sleeping bag: you respawn on a random beach, far from your gear.
Spending engram points on decorative structures: clothing, tools and taming gear fall behind.
Leaving an unconscious creature unguarded: a predator kills it or it wakes up and the food you put in is lost.
Eating raw meat and skipping cooking: raw meat costs health and spoiled food is wasted.

Frequently asked questions

Is ARK: Survival Ascended available in Turkish?

Yes. Turkish is in the Steam store's language list; full audio is marked only for English.

Can I play solo?

Yes. You can play single-player or join official and community servers. According to the official wiki, single-player settings let you earn enough engram points to unlock everything.

How is it different from Survival Evolved?

According to the official wiki, Survival Ascended is an Unreal Engine 5 remake of the original game. Maps and DLCs have been added to the new version over time, and saves and servers are separate between the two games.

Which platforms is it on?

According to the official wiki: Steam, Epic Games Store, Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5.

Can I rebind keys?

Yes, keyboard and mouse bindings can be changed in the options. According to the wiki, controller bindings on PC cannot be customized and roughly match the Xbox layout.

This guide was written for version: This guide reflects the game as of September 2026. Default keys follow the PC table on the official wiki; the game is in early access, so controls and mechanics may change.