Ark: Survival Evolved involves leveling up your best character stats by adding skill points to them. They cover all areas of your physical well-being and they can be earned by simply participating in the world around you, even when playing single-player. This could mean taming creatures, crafting items, or harvesting materials to upgrade your base and weapons.
However, there are so many attributes to choose from, so you have to decide how to spend your points wisely and this guide can help. This can change depending upon your role in a tribe, but if playing solo then this is what you want to attain when jumping into a server.
Updated June 11, 2022, by Jessica Filby: While Ark: Survival Evolved is primarily about surviving, building the best base, and taming or fighting awesome creatures, you can’t expect to succeed if you have terrible stats. They are what set you apart from other players and will, on many occasions, save your life. However, with ten different stats to put your points in, choosing the right ones can be a real challenge. Luckily some are a bit more important than others, so here’s your Ark Survival Evolved stats guide for success.
11 Crafting Skill
The Crafting Skill enables you to craft items quickly, as well as improve their stats, but it’s just not really worth it compared to the other attributes you can choose from. There are very few items you can craft at the beginning of the game, and they don’t take very long to make either.
It might be worth it if you are part of a tribe, and they anoint you the ultimate crafter, but otherwise, this is one skill you want to avoid putting Ark skill points in.
10 Oxygen
The Oxygen tells you how long you can hold your breath underwater as well as how well you move in it, but this isn’t something you really need until later in the game. Once you reach a point where you need to loot the deep sea crates, you can use a boat of some kind to traverse the waters.
There are also creatures you can tame to give you this advantage, or you can use a tek suit, and it negates the need for this attribute to be prioritized.
9 Water
Your survivor is human and has basic physical needs, such as a requirement for water in order to survive. It is a pain when you find yourself dying of thirst, but this can be easily avoided by carrying a waterskin whose Engram can be acquired fairly early on in the game.
No matter if you put points in this or not, always watch your Oxygen. It’s the most important aspect when swimming.
You might choose to add a skill point here or there, but it is usually unnecessary if you have this item on your survivor before heading inland to find the new creatures in Genesis Part 2.
8 Food
You are constantly in need of food, which is why it is a good idea to upgrade this stat a little bit. It shouldn’t be your primary focus, but if you find yourself constantly in a state of hunger, then you might want to take a few skill points to bump up its numbers.
Try to build your base near some water for easy access to this resource.
Keep in mind that you can store cooked food on your person, although it will spoil eventually, or take a boat and equip it with a preserving bin to make sure your food is always fresh. It isn’t hard to craft a campfire when you are traveling either, and berries are always plentiful in bushes to hold you over until you can find something more nutritious.
7 Fortitude
There are several biomes across the maps, which is why you have to choose where you build your base carefully. The environment could make you too hot or too cold, and it is something to keep in mind when wandering across the map.
If you often find yourself without the right armor to keep you warm or cool, it is a good idea to look into raising your fortitude. Fortitude in Ark essentially allows you to better handle the elements and extend the length of time it takes to die from hypothermia or hyperthermia. It serves to make you stronger and is a useful element if you’re in a hard environment.
6 Torpidity
Torpidity determines how quickly your survivor will fall unconscious, and you are basically an open target for other survivors and creatures in the area when this happens. It will slowly increase if you are starving or dehydrated so upgrading this stat can give you more time to find these necessities or resist the effects of narcotics.
While increasing your Fortitude, make sure to craft environment-appropriate clothes. That will save you much more than the stat itself.
However, this stat cannot be directly upgraded; rather it is connected to Fortitude. This means that every time you upgrade your Fortitude, your Torpidity knockout threshold will be increased by one, giving you a two-for-one for your skill points.
5 Melee Damage
There is no doubt you will fight in Ark: Survival Evolved, whether it be against another player or a creature. When you progress through the game it is a good idea to routinely upgrade your Melee Damage stats, so you can take down tougher opponents with ease, or use a single-player cheat code to give you an advantage.
It will allow you to deal extra damage and collect extra resources when harvesting, but it’s not as necessary as some other attributes.
4 Movement Speed
You will travel a lot in this game, and much of it will be done on foot until you can tame a mount, such as a Maewing. This is why it is so important to put some of your Ark skill points into increasing your movement speed as it will allow you to cover distances more quickly and use less stamina in the process.
As you go through the game and reach harder dinosaurs, try to not rely on your own melee damage and use tamed creatures instead.
It is also a useful skill to have in PVP servers as it gives you the ability to dodge the attacks of other players. You will need to be light on your feet to survive, and this is what this stat will enable you to do.
3 Stamina
Stamina is a measure of how much energy your character has at a given time, and it can be decreased by actions like running, harvesting, and swimming. When your stamina is low, your food and water levels will quickly drop, which is why it is so important to upgrade this stat early on in order to survive the first few days and reach an obelisk.
Tame a quick, fast-moving dinosaur like the Allosaurus, Phoenix, or Wyvern to replace needing to put any more points in Movement Speed.
The more stamina you have, the less foraging you will have to do, and it makes you rely less on upgrading your movement speed attribute.
2 Health
Health is the measure of how much life you have left before you die, and for obvious reasons, it should be one of your top priorities. You need health to stay alive, and increasing this stat makes it easier to take on bigger monsters and withstand more brutal climates.
It also prevents you from becoming injured and having to deal with a broken bone until you can find some sustenance to regenerate it. Beginners often neglect this stat, although they soon learn just how important it can be, especially when collecting mutagen.
1 Weight
Harvesting is a huge part of Ark: Survival Evolved as resources are what you use to craft tools and weapons, make a base, and create a few sets of armor. However, it is fairly easy to become encumbered to the point where your survivor can’t move, especially when you need hundreds of stones to craft an Engram.
It is a general consensus that this is the stat that always needs the most help due to your crafting projects steadily growing bigger as the game progresses.
