Is Ark: Survival Evolved Worth it? (Here's 10 Things You Should Know)
10. Playing With Friends is the Way to Go
Ark is a great game to play by yourself, but like most open world games, it’s so much better to play with friends than it is to play by yourself.
There are a lot of aspects to Ark that can be very fun when playing by yourself. With the amount of grinding that you have to do, and the limits to your leveling, it’s much easier with a friend. You can split up who has higher stats in certain attributes, and who does certain tasks.
Building takes quite a while when you’re building by yourself too, but with a friend it can be better. By yourself, you’d have to stop every so often to collect resources, build the pieces you need, and then place them down where you’d like them. Having another friend or two can make it so much faster. One person can collect, while the other crafts, and finally, you build. The same goes for most other aspects of Ark.
Finally, any sort of fighting is optimal with extra firepower. Some of the threats in Ark can be very strong, and have a higher level than you and your tames. The more people you have going at them, the faster and easier you will bring them down. This is especially true for boss fights.
9. Endgame
Although there is a lot of time and effort put into reaching the end of Ark: Survival Evolved, it’s totally worth it. Throughout the game, you have a level cap of 100 for your player. When you reach the boss fights in each map, you gain a higher level cap and unlock more maps and tek blueprints!
After you’ve collected trophies from various wild dinosaurs and relics from caves, you unlock three different levels of bosses from each map. These bosses drop amazing blueprints, resources, element and you unlock tek blueprints when you complete them.
Once you’ve completed all three bosses on a map, you unlock the next map and gain a higher level cap.
After you’ve completed the bosses on all maps, you have everything unlocked, have a much higher level cap, and have ascended to the highest level possible. Until the developers of Ark release a new map, that is! You can continue playing afterwards as you did before and build, tame, fight, and just have fun. The game never really ends.
8. Slower Progression
Ark takes quite a while to play, if you’re planning on fishing the game and have all the end game gear. You have to invest a lot of time and work, like I state in a couple other key points.
The progression of the game is very slow, requiring you to be very dedicated. Between grinding for your resources and gear, taming dinosaurs and building bases worthy of holding up against angry wild dinos, you can spend months or even years getting to where you want, and that’s not even including fighting the bosses to ascend!
Though it takes quite a bit of time, playing Ark is very rewarding and fun! It’s a game that I’ve spent years playing and enjoy very much.
7. Don’t Get Too Attached as a Beginner
There’s nothing quite like taming your first Dodo, or Dilo, or even building your first little thatch hut. Though, you probably shouldn’t get too attached to your first tames. Throughout your journey on Ark: Survival Evolved, you will go through so many tames, bases, and even resources and tools.
Many times when you first start out on Ark, you come across a random carno or raptor that will inevitably kill you because you won’t have the tools needed to kill or tame it yet, or you venture into the water and get annihilated by piranhas.
The bottom line is, there are many times in your beginning days on Ark where you will lose tames and bases, or have them killed and destroyed on you. Don’t be upset though, these are all stepping stones toward your success on Ark. You will still keep the experience you gained and get a bit of practice for larger animals and more advanced bases.
6. Where to Start
There are now a bunch of maps to play on, and loads of spawn areas on each map, but which one is best for you?
It really all depends on your level of experience. Some maps are much harder than others, and some are extremely simple. I’ll give you a list of the maps from the easiest to the most difficult below:
- Genesis: Part 2
- Crystal Isles
- Ragnarok
- The Center
- Valguero
- Scorched Earth
- The Island
- Extinction
- Aberration
- Genesis: Part 1
5. Prepare to Invest Some Serious Time
Ark isn’t a game that you just pick up to play for a few minutes a day and get any sort of headway in. If you want to get anywhere in the game, you will have to invest quite a bit of time into it.
In my personal experience, spending a few hours a day will get you a decent amount of experience and grind time, but it will still take ages to really get anything done. Let’s put it into perspective. The dinosaur shown above is a Giga, one of the biggest dinosaurs in game, and one of the most commonly used for gameplay once you’ve gained the ability to knock out, tame, and use one.
On average, obtaining the tools needed to simply knock out a giga takes anywhere from days to weeks. You need a flying tame, metal structures, rifles, tranquilizing ammo (and a lot of it), raw prime meat, and loads of narcotics. To put it into perspective, the flying tame is most likely the easiest of the tools needed to obtain.
But the fun part is actually taming the giga. Assuming you’ve used some really good taming gear and food, taming a level 1 giga can take anywhere from an hour and a half to fifteen minutes. If you find yourself a max level, it can take up to 6 hours and 45 minutes. Just to tame one dinosaur, you’re investing the better part of a day.
If you plan to start playing Ark, make sure you have the time for it, otherwise your gaming experience will be less than great.
4. PvP isn’t for Noobs
Pvp may sound like a great idea and a quick way to get some extra resources in Ark, but there are some things you should know first.
When playing PVP on an Ark server, whether you are online or not, your base can be raided by others who are far stronger. You will inevitably have to restart multiple times.
When you join your first Ark PvP server, you will have to build up fast, effectively, and be able to defend in a quick manner.
Once you are a more advanced player and no longer a noob, you will have most likely built up a variety of contacts that play Ark as well. You Will Need Them. Playing PvP is not for the solitary player. You will need a tribe of people to work with you to defend your base as well as build, gather resources, hunt, and even work on taming dinosaurs for your use as well!
Overall, you should probably wait to dive into a PvP server until you are well versed in the ways of Ark, and know what youre doing.
3. Grind, Grind, Grind
No matter the way you play, or who you play with, there is one thing that is for absolute certain while you are playing Ark: you’re going to have to grind like crazy.
When you start off in Ark, you wake up with nothing in your inventory on an island that leaves you surrounded by threats of all sorts. You begin my punching trees with your bare fists, collecting berries and fiber from bushes, and collecting rocks off the ground. Eventually, you will be fabricating sniper rifles and running around the island like you own the place, fearless.
You have to put a lot of work into leveling up and gaining the ability to craft more advanced items, but you also have a lot more appreciation for all the things you accomplish in the game, due to everything you must do to get to that point.
2. You Choose How You Play
No matter the game you are playing, there are aspects that you can’t particularly control. What I absolutely love about Ark is the fact that you actually can control how you play. The end result is the same, but you have the power to change how you get there. In ark, when you level up, you have the choice whether to put your level points into a selection of attributes.
When you do this, you receive engram points that allow you to unlock certain tools that you can build from your inventory, or a workspace.
While some players might go for a straight health/movement speed/melee build for PvP, others may go for a fortitude/crafting skill/health build. It all depends on you and how you want to play.
1. Regular Updates
When Ark was created several years ago, there was only one map you could play on, The Island, and only a handful of dinosaurs that could be tamed. Since then, eleven new maps have been added:
- Scorched Earth
- Aberration
- Extinction
- Genesis: Part 1
- Genesis: Part 2
- The Center
- Ragnarok
- Valguero
- Crystal Isles
- Lost Island
- Fjordur
Just within the last year, several new creatures have been released and added to the game as well as tools, weapons, and much more.
The developers of Ark:L Survival Evolved are releasing a new game, Ark II in 2023 as well, meant to be a continuation of the original game.
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