Highlights
- Stats in ARK: Survival Ascended are crucial for gameplay, affecting combat, harvesting, and weather conditions. Choosing the right stat is vital.
- Players should consider each dinosaur’s strengths and weaknesses when leveling their stats. Different dinosaurs benefit from different stat upgrades.
- Key stats to focus on for PvE include food and water, fortitude, stamina, melee damage, weight, and health. Each stat has specific advantages and benefits.
Stats in ARK: Survival Ascended are a set of essential numbers that impact different parts of gameplay, including combat, harvesting, and dealing with different weather conditions. The importance of dedicating points to the right stat is so critical that even a Dilophosaur with good enough stats could defeat a Rex with poor stat placements.
Still, players should always keep in mind what they’re hoping to use a dinosaur for when leveling its stats, as each of ARK: Survival Ascended’s dinosaurs has its own innate strengths and weaknesses. For example, while some dinosaurs benefit more from leveling weight and melee damage, others might be better off upgrading their health and stamina. For PvE specifically, players should generally focus on leveling the following stats.
6 Food and Water
Avoiding Dehydration and Starvation
- Helpful for Surviving Certain Conditions.
- More Beneficial for Players, Not Important for Dinosaurs.
As a survival game, ARK: Survival Ascended has a few survival stats players need to keep in mind while playing. Though not as optimal as increasing health, stamina, or weight, increasing the food and water stats can still be helpful. After all, to regain stamina or health, the player will lose some of their hydration or food. Furthermore, certain weather conditions, such as overheating and freezing, will drain food and water faster. In these cases, having a few extra points to burn through is extremely useful.
Additionally, both food and water will gradually drain over time, regardless of whether or not the player is sitting stationary atop a dinosaur. Once either the player’s food or water completely drains, their survivor will begin to gradually lose health and build torpor, eventually leading to death, or falling unconscious and becoming vulnerable. Although players can carry food or water in their inventory, improving these stats helps reduce how often their survivor will need to use it.
5 Fortitude
Increased Natural Resistances
- Player-Specific Stat.
- Increases Temperature Resistance.
- Raises Torpor Knockout Threshold.
- Reduces The Chance of Catching Diseases.
- Boosts The Player’s Natural Armor.
In ARK: Survival Ascended, leveling Fortitude raises the players’ natural resistance. While the best method of protection comes from wearing high-tier armor, the fortitude stat is still crucial for surviving the Ark. In unfortunate situations, such as being dismounted in a dangerous environment, having points in fortitude comes in handy for surviving.
Furthermore, the fortitude stat defines how well the player deals with intense climates, such as the freezing temperatures of the snow biome or the intense heat of the lava caves. Different armor sets may provide better insulation; however, those armor pieces can also break. In dire circumstances where armor has broken, having high fortitude can be a great backup.
4 Stamina
Run, Fight, and Swim for Longer
- Increases by 10 Per Level for Survivors.
- Beneficial for Traversing The Island.
Since removing the ability to level movement speed in ARK: Survival Ascended, having high stamina has become even more essential for both players and their dinosaurs. Dictating how long a player or dinosaur can run, fly, swim, harvest, or fight for, a player’s stamina stat is arguably as important as their health stat.
While tamed dinosaurs don’t drain stamina if not ridden, the player and their ridden dinosaurs do. Due to this, players should opt to tame and level a chosen dinosaur specifically for travel and prioritize leveling their stamina stat as quickly as possible to avoid becoming exhausted in desperate situations, such as fleeing the wrath of an Alpha Rex.
3 Melee Damage
Become the Apex Predator
- Particularly Important for Dinos, Less Significant for Players.
- Boosts The Amount of Damage Dealt.
- Increases the Amount of Resources Gathered.
Melee Damage is the ultimate combat stat in ARK: Survival Ascended, impacting how much damage a dino or player deals with melee attacks. While each dino has their own individual damage stat, this can be increased by putting points into the melee stat.
Having a dinosaur with high melee damage is especially important for clearing caves, defeating bosses, and taking out Alpha Dinosaurs. Furthermore, a high melee stat will increase the number of resources a gathering dino will get from a single node, improving gathering rates overall.
2 Weight
Carry More Materials and Items
- Increases by 10 Per Level for Survivors.
- Dictates How Much A Player/ Dino Can Carry.
Crafting at an early level quickly reveals just how vital having plenty of points in weight is, especially when trying to build a base out of heavy materials such as wood or stone. Having a high weight stat allows players to carry a lot more, including materials, items, and heavy gear, without becoming over-encumbered.
Having a high weight stat for gathering dinos, such as the Ankylosaurus, Doedicurus, and Castoroides, is also significant, as it enables the player to go on larger gathering adventures, ultimately saving time and making harvesting quests more efficient. Ultimately, pumping a high number of points into weight helps with several aspects of ARK: Survival Ascended‘s gameplay, but especially benefits building, crafting, and gathering.
1 Health
Essential for Surviving
- Increases by 10 Per Level For Survivor
- Useful for Surviving Combat and Diseases such as Mega Rabies.
Useful for surviving fights against wild dinos, alphas, bosses, and cave creatures, the health stat is one of the most important stats in ARK: Survival Ascended for both survivors and dinosaurs. Aside from killing wild dinosaurs, the best way a player can raise a dinos health stat is through mutations, which require the player to breed their dinosaurs.
Having a dinosaur with a high health stat is particularly essential in both boss fights and difficult caves, where the enemy dinosaurs do massive amounts of damage. Having a high-HP dinosaur is valuable, but players shouldn’t underestimate the importance of their own health points. In unfortunate situations, such as being dismounted, the player will rely on their health to survive.
Ark: Survival Ascended
- Platform(s)
- PC, PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S
- Released
- October 26, 2023
- Developer(s)
- Studio Wildcard
- Genre(s)
- Survival, Open-World
- Engine
- Unreal Engine 5
