Quick Links
- Where To Find Metal On The Island
- Best Dinos For Collecting Metal
In Ark: Survival Ascended, you’ll find yourself diving into treacherous terrains and taming dinosaurs while advancing from primitive spears to cutting-edge “TEK” equipment. While the game boasts an array of resources essential for survival, none are quite so indispensable as metal ore.
Once refined, metal ingots form the backbone for strengthening your base, crafting robust machinery, and forging formidable weaponry. As you embark on your journey to conquer the wild, the demand for metal will be relentless. This guide will help you pinpoint optimal metal locations and show you the best dinos to maximize your haul.
Once mined, Metal can be smelted into Metal Ingots using a Refining Forge or Industrial Forge. It costs two Metal ore to create one Metal Ingot.
The time it takes to process metal varies greatly depending on what you’re using to smelt it, with the fuel-run Refining Forge processing one ingot per twenty seconds and the electrical Industrial Forge is capable of processing one ingot per second.
Metal Ingots are used in most mid- to late-game crafting recipes in the game, from base parts to electrical machines, saddles, and armor. As such, it’s vital to streamline your metal-collection process to be as efficient and safe as possible.
Metal is predominantly mined from rocks. While regular rocks can produce metal, the yield is negligible. Instead, you should be on the lookout for Metal nodes: grayer rocks with shiny veins running through them as pictured above.
Though there is no innate danger to mining these rocks, Metal nodes are most often found in mountainous regions that present other challenges, such as inaccessible heights, extreme temperatures and—most dangerously—large predators such as the Allosaurus and Tyrannosaurus Rex.
The Island Metal Spawn Map
Metal nodes can most commonly be found on the slopes and peaks of mountains.
The following spawn map denotes clusters of metal nodes, with the darker orange indicating a higher density.
An especially abundant amount of them spawn around the volcano at 40, 37; but be warned that this is one of the most notoriously dangerous areas on the island and is teeming with huge carnivores.
When it comes to mining Metal nodes, tools matter a lot.
The best and quickest way to mine metal is with a specialized mount, such as the Ankylosaurus. However, if you don’t have one tamed yet or can’t get yours to the nodes, it is possible to mine metal by hand.
While a Stone Pick can do the job, using a Metal Pick is much more efficient, especially when at Mastercraft or Ascendant tier—the latter of which can rival the yield of an Ankylosaurus.
After being mined, Metal nodes take about an hour to respawn. This can vary depending on your game or server settings.
The following methods are the best tools to harvest metal with, ranked by order of efficiency.
- Ankylosaurus
- Dunkleosteus
- Metal Pick (Player)
- Stone Pick (Player)
To harvest a Metal node with a dinosaur, face the node and use the melee attack button.
The Ankylosaurus stands out as the champion of metal gathering. Not only does it mine the most efficiently, but it also comes with an 85 percent weight reduction for metal carried in its inventory.
The Ankylosaurus is also a relatively easy tame, being a slow herbivore that spawns in safe areas such as in the coastal forests. Be warned that they are defensive animals, however, and can hit you quite hard if you hit one and then let it catch up to you.
Boosting its Melee Damage stat will cause your tame to yield more metal per swing.
The Dunkleosteus is a ferocious, carnivorous fish that lives in the depths of the ocean with powerful plated jaws that can crush metal, stone and oil nodes in the ocean.
Because of the dangers of the deep ocean, this is considered a mid- to late-game tame and should only be pursued once you have SCUBA gear and decent water tames such as the Megalodon.
Though gathering metal is a relatively straightforward process, there are certain strategies and tips you can employ to make your metal runs much more fruitful and easy.
Using Flyers
You can pick your Ankylosaurus up using a flying mount such as the Quetzal or Argentavis.
This reduces the hassle of steering the slow Ankylosaurus and lets it get quickly flown to metal-rich areas. Your Ankylosaurus will also automatically start harvesting the metal when you fly close.
Though more difficult to tame, a Quetzal has a significant carry capacity compared to the Argentavis, making it easier to transport larger hauls of metal without having to go back and forth.
Using Weight Reduction
Certain creatures, when carrying metal in their inventory, offer a reduction to the weight of the metal.
For instance, the Ankylosaurus provides an 85 percent reduction, while the Argentavis and Dunkleosteus each offer a 50 percent weight reduction. Take advantage of this reduction when planning your mining excursions.
Using Mate Boosting
The yield of your harvests depends on your harvesting dino’s Melee Damage stat.
As such, you can use an opposite-gender Ankylosaurus for mining alongside offers the “Mate-Boosted” buff, which provides a 33 percent damage bonus.
The stats of your “boosting” Ankylosaurus doesn’t matter, and even a low-leveled one will serve the same purpose.