ARK: Survival Plus Wikia:Introduction

Survival Plus [often referred to by players as S+ but not to be confused with Structures Plus!] is a complete overhaul of ARK that changes nearly every aspect of the game. From the official website:

> *Survival Plus is a mod that aims to give players a whole new take on ARK. Experience a more immersive Survival Feeling than ever before as you brave a new and more dangerous world on your journey from the Stone Age into the Medieval Times. From the first steps in this Total Conversion you will find that this is nothing like vanilla ARK – it feels like a whole new game!*
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This mod changes crafting, items, dinosaur tames, hunger and wellness, professions, and even large prefab structures! It can be extremely daunting at first even to experience ARK players. This guide will cover installation of the mod, the first thirty levels of your life, and entry into a profession in the hopes that you'll be able to spend less time confused and more time being mauled by Raptors!

**WARNING - THIS GUIDE CONTAINS MANY SPOILERS. DO NOT READ THIS IF YOU ARE LOOKING TO FIGURE OUT THE MOD ON YOUR OWN.**

Additionally, this mod features integrations with several of Eco's mods so you'll want to subscribe to both of them as well.

**eco's Stable Structures and Decor**

**eco's RP Decor**

**Resources and Basics**

Resources, and gameplay in general, is different in Survival Plus than what you'll find in vanilla ARK. Sure there are still dinosaurs that want you for lunch and you can punch trees, but the crafting, resources, and general progression are quite different. Let's start with common resources and how to get them...

**Basic Resources**

* **Bark** - Bark is a new item in Survival Plus used in crafting. You can get bark from trees as it replaces the normal thatch drop.
* **Plant Parts** - When you harvest a plant, you get plant parts. These can be crafted to make fiber or dried to make thatch.
* **Fiber** - Fiber is no longer gathered from plants since it has been changed to plant parts. Fiber can now be crafted from gathered plant parts.
* **Thatch** - Thatch is no longer gained from trees and the like but instead is obtained from plant parts as they dry. This happens automatically over time and there are several crafted items that will help to speed this process up.
* **Bones** - Creatures now drop bones when you kill them. Bones come in 3 sizes are a raw material used in crafting.
* **Feathers** - Creatures also drop features [if they are a creature that has feathers such as a Dodo] and these are also raw materials used in crafting items such as arrows.

There are certainly more resources but we'll cover those as we progress.

**Basic Game Mechanics**

There are a few major changes to note in Survival Plus that you will immediately need to understand to properly survive. The first major change for a new survivor is the foraging system and changes to berries. You can no longer live on berries alone! First, the supply of berries is much more limited as you'll get 0-2 berries from harvesting a bush but second, and most importantly, S+ requires you to keep your nutrition in check. What the heck?

Survival Plus introduces an entire system for nutrition which contains the following categories of nutrients:

* Minerals
* Fats
* Carbohydrates
* Protein
* Vitamins

You must eat a variety of items to keep all of these categories up and failure to do so comes with consequences! For example, you could gain a debuff to your stamina or carry weight for not keeping up certain areas. As you get low in specific areas, you'll see a warning on the screen in two forms: yellow for warning, red for critical. If an item is flagged critical, you're also receiving a debuff for that specific area. An example below is an M with a down arrow showing you are low on minerals:

Starting out, your basic foods will be berries and cooked meat which will raise the five areas [carb/vitamin for berries, fat/mineral/protein for meat] but not at a terribly fast rate. What can you do about this? Meals. Meals are, much like real life, a mixture of various components to make something better. Survival Plus rewards you for eating meals by giving you far more nutrients than simply eating the base components. As such, it is always suggested to make meals when you can as they are far superior to base food. Should you get a yellow warning, or \*gasp\* a red debuff, here's what to eat to get that back up:

* Vitamin: Berries or field crops
* Protein: Cooked meat or field crops
* Carbohydrates: Seeds or berries
* Fats: Seeds or cooked meat
* Minerals: Seeds, salt, cooked meat

As noted above, meals are **always** the best option when trying to raise nutrients but the above items can help you in a pinch.

The other major game mechanic to know early on is that you can't simply tame dino's as you can in vanilla. You don't run up to a dino, knock it out, feed it, and magically have it as your friend! Furthermore, the mod limits which dinos can be tamed which includes blocking all large dinos as well as all flyers. A full list of tameable dinos is located in the wiki:

Taming

That all said, let's move on to your first day...

**Your First Steps (1-5)**

As with vanilla ARK, you'll create a new character, choose a spawn point for your given map, and finally spawn naked and afraid. Survival Plus works with all standard ARK maps and most modded maps.

As with vanilla, your first concerns should be gathering basic resources so you can gain experience, levels, and of course survive what will most likely be an upcoming cold night. Start by gathering wood to craft yourself a **wooden club**. This will be used to break down plant parts into **fiber** as well as knock some sense into the local Dodo population. Continue gathering plant parts, bark, wood, and stones until you can build yourself a **pick** and a **torch**. From there, you'll most likely have gained a level or two and can start spending engram points on new things! While you do receive a decent amount of engram points, much like vanilla, you do not have enough to take everything so I'll try to cover the main items I would recommend.

Level 2 gives us four essential engrams. You'll want to take all of them as you get the points. The **stone knife** can be used to get more plant parts whereas the **stone hatchet** will help us get more wood. Furthermore, like the **wooden club**, the **stone knife** is used as a tool for crafting various items.

Level 3 offers us quite a few engram choices and our limited points are not nearly enough! You'll want to focus on getting the **wooden spear** and campfire immediately for defence and warmth [as well as cooking!] and pick up the **plant string** and **wooden spindle** when you can. What's the other stuff? **Hay bundles** are crafted items that convert plant parts to thatch and are crafted and placed on the ground. They use a fixed set of plant parts to craft and return that many in thatch once they are done drying [it takes a while]. The **wooden bucket** is used in various recipes to hold buckets of sand or soil and is needed early in the creation of clay. **Bone needles** are used to tailor basic hide armor while the **chunk of bone** is a crafting component to break down medium and large bones to be used in recipes.

Onward to level 4 and we gain more engrams with once-again, not enough points. **Sharpened bone** is a priority here to make the **bone knife** [used for crafting] but the first buy should be the **waterskin** depending on your proximity to water. You will effectively want all engrams from this level with the **primitive sowing kit** optional as it is only used for binding wounds. Did I mention you have to actually heal wounds? Should you get a bite, cut, or anything that shows the broken bone icon, you'll need to use a bandage or sewing kit on yourself. The first bandage you get is the **bark wound cover** which can be easily crafted and applied. Should you get an injury, just use the item until it says you've successfully applied it. Wounds can cause you to not regenerate health and should always be treated as quickly as possible. More serious wounds take time to heal even after being treated.

What else is here? The **primitive hammer** and primitive chisel are both tools used in the crafting of items. To use them they simply have to be in your inventory and will take a durability hit per item crafted.

Level 5 is another buffet level giving you a whole bunch of engrams to choose from. Here you can get the **bark chest** which is your first storage container as well as the mortar and pestle which has limited use at this level. Focus should be on obtaining a **sleeping bag** and a **hide tent** if possible. The former serves as a one-time respawn point while the latter is portable shelter that raises insulation values when you are inside it. The tent can even be picked up and moved with you as you travel. Other items at this level are the **lard ointment** which is made in the mortar and pestle from lard [cooked animal fat] and can be applied when wounded. Bone meal is used in [later] recipes while hide strips are a crafting component commonly used throughout the mod.

At this point you should be getting in the groove of things finding resources, obtaining food, and generally doing your ARK thing. Spears will provide you with defence and as the tooltip notes, you can toss them into the campfire to cook them into a "burnt" version which is slightly more durable. Your tent, campfire, and torch should keep you warm at night but overall things are not safe and you have no permanent shelter as the thatch buildings you'd normally make in ARK isn't even an option. What next?

Rinse, lather, repeat.

**On My Own Two Feet (6-10)**

Continue gathering resources, crafting items when you can, and levelling up. More levels mean more engrams which means more things to craft and raise your quality of life!

Levels 6-9 offer more variety to your life and you'll need to make some decisions based on your play style in regards to which engrams you take. Here's the tree for reference:

Some of these items should look familiar to vanilla ARK players. The **hide armor** pieces are your first armor items you can make and are a welcome change to standing around in your underwear. You've been collecting those Dodo hides right?

**Clay shaper, crude shaft,** and **wooden nails** are all crafting tools or components used to make other items and **clay** is a material used to craft your second storage item, jars! If you take the **pottery wheel** engram along with **clay shaper** you can craft clay into a **large clay pot** or a **food storage pot** which are both essential items and will enable you to finally make **meals** to help keep those hunger debuffs away.

Place the pottery wheel, open its inventory and add clay. From there you can craft the two pots which must then be placed in the campfire to be fired. The process will change the item from "fresh clay" to the actual useable version. So how do you get clay? Remember that mortar and pestle engram? Make one of those and plop it down along with a **wooden bucket**. The easiest clay recipe for us at this point is one **bucket of soil** plus **water**. A bucket of soil is made by taking your bucket over near trees or bushes and using it. If you're in the right area you will get a bucket of soil otherwise you'll receive a message stating you aren't in the right area and that you should find aforementioned trees. If you're standing in water you get a bucket of sand which you do not want at this time and can empty the bucket simply by using it [E] in your inventory. Toss the bucket of soil plus a filled waterskin into the mortar and pestle and craft **clay**.

I recommend making both the food storage pot [make two!] and the clay storage pot as we'll promptly put them to work. Furthermore, make some extra clay and you can craft **wet clay balls** which are insanely useful. Place one food storage pot on the ground and then place your wet clay balls inside to make a caveman refrigerator. Any food placed in that pot will spoil at a much slower rate as long as there are wet clay balls within. The wet clay balls turn to **dry clay balls** after they are used up but can easily be turned back to wet. Simply take all the dry clay balls, stand in water, and craft **refresh dry clay balls**.

What about the clay storage pot? Place that down and you can use it as storage but that's kind of boring isn't it? You can use the clay storage pot to make salt which you've probably noticed is used to make meals! So how the heck do I make salt? Just toss filled waterskins into the clay storage pot and walk away. That's it. The waterskins will dry and leave salt behind that you can use in cooking. Repeat as needed to be as salty as you desire. No really, keep making this stuff, it's super useful.

So what about that other food storage pot you had me make? You've got salt for meals but most meals need a food storage pot to cook them in. The food storage pot doubles as both a storage container, as we used it before, and as a cooking tool. Place the food storage pot in the campfire and you can now make **simple meals** and **boiled eggs** which are both amazing compared to cooked meat and berries. You may have found eggs by now but if not, they are found in nests or, if you've managed to tame any dinos, can come from them as well. Note that dinos do not like their nests being robbed of their children so take care when stealing eggs as they can and WILL aggro on you, even Parasaurs! Survival isn't always about being nice!

Aside from all the wonderful items above, there's more! If you're a hunter you'll want to go after the **stone bola** and the **sharpened flint spear** while everyone will want to aim to get the **thatch bed** to have a reusable spawn point. You can upgrade your bark bandages to **hide bandage** as well as take the **find seeds** engram to gain the ability to grind poop in a mortar and pestle for a chance to find seeds and worms. Finally, there is the **ground titanomyrma mound** which is used to find copper. What's that? Look for giant ant rocks in your travels [anywhere the titanomyrma can spawn] and loot them for these chunks. The hives work like beaver dens in vanilla and contain both clay and mound chunks and, much like beaver dens, are very heavy and anger the locals. I highly recommend grabbing these mounds whenever you see them if possible as you'll need copper later on.

Finally, you should be approaching level 10 which offers these goodies:

This is another 'it depends' level, as in, depending on what you care about will depend on what you spend points on. The **bonfire** is a very bright, short burning campfire that can be used to scare dinosaurs away. The **chopping station** is essential in most cases as this allows creation of a few different crafting components. **Primitive loom** and **burlap** are used in conjunction to make **burlap armor** which requires no special engrams and gives slightly better insulation than your primitive hide armor. **Wood spike wall** does as you'd assume and the **fish trap** can be placed in water with worms [remember that time you ground up poop?] to passively catch fish for you. You'll need to bait the trap and remove the fish manually of course.

Continue that level grind and resource gathering as level 11 holds something you'll truly appreciate given your life up to this point.

**The Middle Years (11-20)**

In the previous section I hinted that level 11 will give you a much-needed engram, but before we get there, you should have something new in your inventory. Coins! Currency in Survival Plus is in the form of gold and silver coins. 1 gold = 100 silver. Use these coins to purchase deeds, trade with players, and even purchase items from the NPC traders and Depot. For now, keep these coins somewhere safe!

See that little gem in the top right? Primitive Wood Hut? That's your first house! No more sleeping on the beach for this survivor! While it certainly is not required to take this if you're comfortable with your open-air living, it certainly helps. The **primitive wood hut** will give you shelter that increases your insulation value against hot and cold as well as a safe place to put your bed and your belongings. Do be sure to add the **primitive thatch door** as all most all buildings in S+ do not come with doors! Once you hit level 13 you'll be able to craft wooden locks and keys to actually lock up your house [note these have limited uses] so keep that in mind for server-play.

Crafting the primitive wood hut creates a construction site that you can place. Once placed, interact with the site and insert all crafting materials it asks for and click the build button once it lights up. If the build button is not lit up, you're missing one of the required items. You'll notice some odd icons in the inventory of the construction site, these are "dummy items" that server as a requirements list such as:

In this case, the icon tells us we need thatch and will have a number stating how much thatch we need. More details [and a video] of how building works can be found here:

Ever forward... there are a few other noteworthy engrams at this level:

* **Fresh Firewood** - In your chopping station, convert 1 piece of wood into 2 pieces of fresh firewood. This will dry and become dried firewood which can be used to make charcoal or burn in most anything that runs on wood.
* **Coal Kiln** - Place dried firewood in this structure and turn it on to produce charcoal! Charcoal will be used in a variety of recipes as well as required fuel for profession items such as the quicklime kiln or the forge.
* **Wooden Saw** - Tool used to cut wood in a chopping station
* **Crude Plank** - Material used in crafting recipes, made in chopping station
* **Standing Torch** - It's a torch that stands. Nothing ground breaking but it servers to provide light. Be sure to put wood into it to burn!
* **Flint Pick / Hatchet** - Upgraded versions of your stone tools for increased gathering speed and yield
* **Crop Plot** - Unlike vanilla, there is only one size crop plot in S+ and this is it. Place it down, toss in fertilizer, water, and a wild seed and wait. Note that only the farmer can place seeds better than "wild" into the plots and plots occasionally need to be raked using a **wooden rake** tool. Also, unlike vanilla, you can't open the inventory of a crop plot so all interactions are done via the radial menu.
* **Fences** - Several fence pieces that can be free placed to block wandering dinos, not terribly strong but useful for pens
* **Work Table** - Workstation that enables the higher-level crafting recipes as well as profession tables
* **Trade Stall** - Sell your stuff! You can open the shop inventory and place items within, set their price, and allow other players to purchase your wares. Note that you'll need to place change in the shop otherwise players will have to have exact change to purchase your items. For example, if you have an item for sale for 75 silver and a player only has 1 gold coin, they won't be able to buy the item as the shop has no way to give them the 25 silver change they would be due for the purchase.

Moving on... noteworthy items in the 15-18 level range:

* **Pile Items** - Piles are storage containers with specific requirements for what they hold. This includes wood pile, stone pile, coal pile, and others. In the case of the stone pile, it will hold both stone and flint but you cannot put wood in. The piles have unlimited weight capacity but limited slots. Regardless of the restrictions, they are generally cheap to make and extremely useful.
* **Primitive Longhouse** - This is a lovely structure that is about twice the size of your primitive wood hut and a great way to expand your village. Like the primitive wood hut, you place down a construction site and have to feed it materials.
* **Primitive Bow and Arrows** - This is... well it's a bow... and arrows. You'll start with basic wooden arrows and move up through copper arrows with even better arrows available post 30. This is most likely a 'must have' engram for hunting and survival for most players. Note that arrows require the **crude arrow shaft** engram as well as the **wooden arrow** engram.
* **Clay Trough** - Making clay sucks, but it doesn't have to! The clay through can be piped to provide water and will fill itself with water when it rains. You simply have to add in your buckets of soil and it will do the rest. Oh and it crafts 4 at a time! Note that like all clay items, this has to be fired in campfire before you can use it.
* **Wooden Sieve** - A useful tool should you aspire to be a blacksmith as it is required to make **copper dust** but can also be used to sieve for worms, seeds, and other items. Stand in water to use this item.
* **Copper Dust** - Remember those ant mounds you may have found early on? If you've ground them up in a mortar and pestle you can use the resulting item with a sieve [while standing in water] to produce copper dust. The copper dust can then be cooked in a primitive forge with an **ingot mold** and charcoal to produce copper ingots.
* **Bone Spear** - Upgrade to your flint and wooden spears

Finally, we round out with levels 19 and 20 which give us the **fresh ingot mold** used to make ingots, various signs for decoration, upgraded wooden arrows, a **fire maker**, and our first saddle. Of note here are the ingot mold (if you plan to make metal or become a blacksmith) and the fire marker which is a reusable fire starter kit that has 100 uses before it breaks.

**Wrapping Things Up (21-29)**

Level 21-24 are where things pick up finally for budding blacksmiths as you finally gain the ability to fully smelt copper and create copper items! If you have no interest in metalworking, skip on to the next section.

* **Primitive Forge** - This is your first forge. The primitive forge requires **charcoal** to run and is capable of smelting copper, tin, and bronze ingots. To do so, place charcoal, an ingot mold, and the metal itself within the forge and turn it on. Note that ingot molds are slowly consumed and the forge will not craft an ingot without a mold!
* **Stone Anvil** - Every smith needs an anvil and this just happens to be your first one. Use the stone anvil to find various metalworking recipes such as tool heads.
* **Copper Tools** - These are far superior to your previous tools but are also quite a bit more expensive and complicated to make. As with all tools, the better the material, the better the durability, harvest speed, and harvest yield of resources [in most cases].
* **Metal Pot** - This is the metal version of the food storage pot we made earlier. You can place it in a campfire to enable cooking advanced recipes.
* **Whip** - Does exactly what you think it would...

More love for metal workers!

* **Fresh Hammer Mold** - Much like the ingot mold, simply put this mold in the forge with metal and it will make hammer heads. Do note that it will continue to craft hammer heads as long as the mold lasts and there is metal in the forge so unless you want 500 hammer heads, keep an eye on it! The hammer heads are used to make metal hammers.
* **Morellatops Saddle** - Get you one of those walking water trucks!
* **Weapons** - More upgrades using your new copper skills. Copper spear, copper pike, copper arrow. Wait what? Pike? Yes! Much like the vanilla pike, a **copper pike** does slightly less damage than a copper spear but has zero chance of randomly breaking and cannot be thrown. For the non-metalworkers, bone arrows become available at level 27 and are the highest level primitive arrow that can be crafted as everything past that will require metal arrowheads.

**Getting Professional (30+)**

What? You're level 30 already? While this may seem like the end, it really is the beginning to the next tier in your survival... professions!

Professions are specializations that you may choose once you reach level 30. Depending on your server settings, the number of professions you can take will be limited! [unless you're playing single player which defaults to all professions available].

Each profession generally has another profession [or multiple] that provide good synergy to their skillsets and recipes. While there are many possible combinations, I've listed some I feel are particularly strong should you be on a server where you can obtain more than one profession. For example, I list blacksmith and carpenter as having synergy as between the two, they very often use materials produced by the other [nails, tool handle, hilt, etc]. While it is not required to pick a profession with synergy, it is helpful if you're trying to cut down your reliance on other professions. Given the nature of Survival Plus, you should be able to simply purchase items you need from other players tho this may not always be the case depending on your server.

Note that professions are not purchased as normal engrams. You need to open the journal and choose a profession [or multiple] via the engram menu. As you level up and gain higher tiers [journeyman, master] of a profession, the book will update to allow you to gain those ranks as well. If you have the Eco mod integrations, there are a few Eco-related engrams you can purchase within the normal engram system that will unlock additional things to craft.

Current professions in the game include:

* **Alchemist** - Alchemists are able to brew poisons, potions, and other beneficial items as well as craft explosives such as firecrackers and cannon balls. Synergy professions: Farmer
* **Blacksmith** - Blacksmiths are traditional metalworkers crafting weapons, armor, and building components for use by other trades. Synergy professions: Carpentry, Tailor
* **Carpenter** - Carpenters craft a variety of wood-based products including buildings and components. A carpenter may later specialize in cabinetmaking [furniture] or shipwright [ship building] to further expand recipes. Synergy professions: Blacksmith
* **Farmer** - Farmers specialize in the growing of plants and breeding of creatures. They are the only class that can plant seeds in plots higher than "wild" tier and are also the only class that can breed creatures. Furthermore, the farmer gains access to high-level cooking recipes and candle making. Synergy professions: Entrepreneur, Tailor, Alchemist
* **Hunter** - Hunters specialize in, well, hunting. They gain a bonus to melee damage and are able to craft items such as ghillie armor. Currently the hunter is not fully implemented. Synergy professions: Alchemist
* **Mason** - Masons work in stone and clay. As such, a mason is needed to craft irrigation pipes, stone building materials, and has an integral part in the creation of castles. Synergy professions: Blacksmith, Carpenter
* **Tailor** - Tailors utilize cloth and hide to create armor and clothing as well as various components such as rope and sails. Synergy professions: Farmer, Blacksmith
* **Entrepreneur** - Entrepreneurs are primarily an RP class meant to run taverns and inns. This class has the ability to brew beer and wine as well as craft high tier meals to sell to patrons. Currently an entrepreneur is gifted 200 gold to help offset the cost of starting a business. Entrepreneur is not fully implemented yet. Synergy professions: Farmer

**Final Thoughts**

Survival Plus is a giant mod that changes nearly everything in ARK. While confusing at first, hopefully this introduction has been able to help you land on your feet!

**Steam Workshop Link**