Locations

A place in ARK is only ever one of four things to you, and which one it is depends entirely on how far into a save you are. First there is the beach the game drops you on, which you did not choose. Then there is the spot you decide to keep. Then there are the holes in the ground you visit precisely once each, take something from, and hope to walk out of. And finally there are the handful of structures whose entire purpose is to get you off the map altogether. Every page in this bucket is one of those four, and reading them in that order is more useful than reading them by map.

Where the game puts you

Our spawn points guide collects the most commonly reported starting positions onto a single map, and the reason to look at it is not the first spawn but every one after it. Death in this game is a logistics problem: you respawn somewhere, and the question is whether your body and everything on it is a short jog away or on the other side of a continent. Knowing the spread of spawn positions is what lets you plan a recovery route before you need one, and it is the difference between losing ten minutes and losing an inventory.

Where you decide to stay

Only two maps get a dedicated base guide in this folder, and both are maps where a bad site is fatal rather than merely inconvenient.

Aberration is the more thorough of the two, and it splits its eleven sites into two kinds. Six are simply good places to live, headlined by the Waterfall Cliff at 42.0, 51.3 and a waterfall cave at 36.3, 61.4. The other five are filed separately as hidden spots, which on a map with radiation, earthquakes and Reaper Kings is a different design goal: not comfort, but being difficult to find.

Extinction takes six sites and does something more useful than ranking them, giving each one an explicit set of pros and cons. Two are worth knowing by name: the Waterfall Cave, and the cave that sits directly beneath the King Titan, which is either the boldest address on the map or the worst, depending on your plans for the endgame. For everywhere else, base advice lives with the map itself, so Genesis, Genesis Part 2 and Valguero all carry their own building guides in our map coverage.

Where you go to take something

Caves are the largest thing in this bucket by a distance. Four maps have their own cave page, and between them they document thirty-five distinct caves, each written up the same way: how to get in, and what is worth carrying out.

Fjordur's twelve is the longest list, and it is also the one that most obviously doubles as a shopping list rather than a tour, with a Chitin Cave, a Glow Cave and an Aberration Cave sitting alongside the artifact runs. Ragnarok's nine are more varied in character, from a Beaver Cave you visit for materials to a Labyrinth you visit because you have decided to.

The Center is the odd one, and the oddity is worth flagging before you go in. Its nine caves are not nine holes in the ground, because three of them have multiple ways in: the Jungle Cave has five entrances, the Center Cave has three, and the Underground World has six. That is fourteen separate mouths for three caves, which matters both for finding them and for the fact that a cave with six entrances is a cave you can be followed into.

Sitting above all four is our game-wide caves locations roundup, which is the one to read first if you have never done a cave run. It covers both land and underwater caves, splits the loot tables the two kinds offer, notes the level requirements, warns you about the cave effects that apply the moment you step inside, and names the things waiting for you, bats and spiders among them.

Where you go to leave

The last group is small and does something none of the others do: it takes you off the map. Obelisks are the mechanism, and our obelisks guide gathers the Red, Blue and Green towers for The Island and then works through Ragnarok, Valguero, The Center, Scorched Earth, Aberration and Extinction with coordinates for each. Three towers per map is the pattern, and it holds.

What they are for is the interesting part, and the The Center obelisks page states it most plainly. An obelisk does two jobs. It is where you hand over artifacts and trophies to summon a boss, which makes it the endpoint of everything in our items guide, and it is where you upload a character, a creature or a container of gear to move it to another server. One structure, and it covers both the biggest fight you can pick and the only legitimate way to take your save somewhere else.

Fjordur builds its own version of the same idea at a smaller scale. The realms page is about reaching Vanaheim, Asgard and Jotunheim, which are not places you walk to. You go through the portal cave at 40.8 LAT, 13.5 LON and activate the terminal in each realm, after which you can teleport between them freely. It is a map that has quietly turned fast travel into a collectible.

Frequently asked questions

Which map has the most caves?

Fjordur, with twelve documented here, ahead of Ragnarok and The Center on nine each and Lost Island on five.

Do I need a specific level to enter a cave?

Some of them, yes. Our game-wide caves roundup lists level requirements alongside the loot, and it also covers the cave effects that change how you and your tames behave once you are inside.

What is the difference between an obelisk and a terminal?

For summoning and transfers they do the same job, and Fjordur in particular is covered through its boss terminals on the artifacts page rather than through obelisks. The obelisks guide is the one to use for The Island and the older DLC maps.

Where should I put my first base?

Near water and near stone, and on Aberration or Extinction, near one of the sites our two base guides list. Both were written around survivability rather than aesthetics, and Extinction's gives you the drawbacks as well as the advantages of each spot.