Ark: Survival Ascended requires a ton of resource farming, and it can get incredibly daunting if you don’t have the proper dinosaurs for it.
In this guide, we’ll quickly go through the best options for each of the essential resources that you can find in the game.
So, you can have a better idea of what you should be spending your time taming depending on your needs.
Best Creature for Every Resource
There are a lot of different resources that you will require as you progress through the game, and you can only smack nodes with tools for so long before you realize that you’re going to need a better, more efficient way of getting what you need.
Below, we’ll go through most of the important resources and the ideal dinosaurs for them.
Take note that these are just some of the best choices, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you can’t utilize whatever you have on hand. Any help is better than manual labor in this game!
- Gathering Berries & Seeds
- Wood
- Thatch
- Mining Stone
- Flint, Metal, Crystal & Obsidian
- Fiber
- Hide, Pelt & Keratin
- Bio Toxin
- Varying Types of Meat
- Organic Polymer
- Giant Bee Honey
- Oil
- Rare Mushrooms & Rare Flowers
- Cementing Paste / Achatina Paste
- Chitin
- Leech Blood & Silica Pearls
- Black Pearls
- Angler Gel
- Element
- Absorbent Substrate
Gathering Berries & Seeds
Early on, your best choices for gathering berries will be pretty much any herbivore that you can tame. However, later on, if you really need to get a ton of berries in one go, you may want to get one of the following:
- Brontosaurus
- Stegosaurus
For seeds, you should find an Iguanodon, as these can turn your stacks of berries into seeds if you place them in its inventory.
Wood
For chopping down trees, there are a bunch of options that you can go for. The most ideal ones, however, are the following:
- Mammoth – Has a ton of AoE and can clear forests with ease.
- Castoroides – These giant beavers are particularly good at efficiently farming wood.
- Stegosaurus
- Therizinosaur
Thatch
For thatch, you will want either a Brontosaurus or Triceratops. The Stegosaurus also has a special mode that is dedicated for thatch farming.
Mining Stone
When it comes to mining plain stone, the Doedicurus is almost unmatched when it comes to breaking and carrying a lot of this resource. Combined with a high weight flyer, such as an Argentavis, you can go on some quick and juicy mining runs.
Flint, Metal, Crystal & Obsidian
For these resources, you will first want to get a high weight flying mount as the dinosaurs you will need for this are incredibly slow. The optimal choices are the following:
- Ankylosaurus – For nodes on land.
- Dunkleosteus – For nodes that are underwater.
Fiber
Fiber is one of the earliest resources that you will need in the game and gathering it can be a pain until you level up a bit to tame certain creatures. With that said, the creatures that you will need to efficiently farm fiber are:
- Moschops
- Gigantopithecus
- Therizinosaur
Hide, Pelt & Keratin
The ideal choices for farming hide, pelt, and keratin from other dinosaurs around the map is by taming the following creatures:
- Sabertooth
- Dire Wolf
- Therizinosaur
Bio Toxin
Bio Toxin is gathered from Cnidaria, which are deadly jellyfish that can stun you. In order to safely farm them, a Basilosaurus is necessary as it is immune to their stun. A Spinosaur can also be used if you have one.
Varying Types of Meat
Most carnivorous dinosaurs can be used for gathering meat from other creatures, though if you want to maximize your gains, consider using the following:
- Gigantosaurus
- Carcharodontosaurus
- Tyrannosaurus
- Spinosaur – For fish meat specifically.
Organic Polymer
For farming organic polymer, rather than your typical meat-eating predators, you will want to prioritize taming one of the following instead:
- Sabertooth
- Dire Bear
- Pelagornis
Giant Bee Honey
For giant bee honey, the only ideal option here is the Dire Bear as it greatly increases how much you can get when compared to doing it yourself.
Oil
Oil is something you will eventually need a lot of as you progress further into the tech tree. The best options for gathering this resource are the following:
- Ankylosaurus – Specifically for land nodes.
- Dunkleosteus – Specifically for underwater nodes.
- Dung Beetle – Can turn feces into oil.
Rare Mushrooms & Rare Flowers
For either of these resources, you will most likely want to get a Therizinosaur as it is the best option for gathering both of them within the swamp. Other alternatives include:
- Mammoth
- Ankylosaurus – For rare mushrooms only.
- Moschops – For rare flowers only.
Cementing Paste / Achatina Paste
The Beelzebufo, which is a giant frog,is the absolute best creature for gathering cementing paste as it produces a lot of it when eating bugs.
Alternatively, an Achatina can be tamed as it produces a substitute resource known as Achatina Paste.
Chitin
The Megatherium is the best creature at collecting chitin from insects. Alternatively, you could also try using one of the following:
- Therizinosaur
- Sabertooth
Leech Blood & Silica Pearls
Dire Wolves are pretty much one of the best options for either of these resources. However, if you aren’t gathering silica pearls from dead creatures, you may want to use the Anglerfish instead.
Black Pearls
Black Pearls can only be harvested from certain dead creatures, such as an Alpha Tusoteuthis. Because of this, your best options will likely be something like a Basilosaurus, or an Ichthyosaurus for smaller creatures.
Angler Gel
As the name of the resource implies, Angler Gel is mainly gathered from dead Anglerfish. The best at gathering these are the following creatures:
- Dire Wolves
- Megalodon
Element
Element is primarily used for creating Tek gear, and the only way to get it is by defeating some of the bosses that can be summoned in certain places of the map. Check this guide out which covers more information on boss killing in Ark Survival Ascended.
Absorbent Substrate
Finally, the Absorbent Substrate can be gathered from Tusoteuthis. The Basilosaurus is the best option for this as it is immune to the Tusoteuthis’ grapple move.
And those are some of the best creatures that you can use for gathering resources in Ark: Survival Ascended. While there are other alternatives for most of these, knowing what is the most efficient can greatly speed up the grinding process!
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