My favorite mods:
Ark is absolutely my most favorite modern day game. I’ve actually played it way more than I’ve played any other game EVER. I’ve already clocked nearly 2,700 hours! So, I know Ark! One of the great things about this game is the Workshop, the ability to use mods. There are a lot out there and some of them are pretty dramatic, turning the game into something more bizarre and crazy. Here are some of my personal favorites, which may be updated over time.
There are some mods that are pretty much ESSENTIAL! One of which is perhaps the most popular mod of all, Structures Plus! S+ makes building in Ark a lot easier. One of the things it allows you to do that you can’t do in the base game is to pick up things (like walls, foundations, ceilings, etc.) that you’ve placed. One problem with the base game is that if you don’t like how you placed a wall, for instance, you can only demolish it, you can’t simply pick it up and place it some where else. S+ allows you to do just that and more. *Update: The base game has added a similar feature, but only allows you a short period of time to do this.* S+ comes with it’s own versions of crafting stations, like the smithy and fabricator. S+ actually allows you to pull resources from one place (crafting station, storage box, or creature inventory) and put it in another. So, if you want to make some flak armor, instead of carrying all that material over to the crafting station, you can click a button and the mod will pull the required materials, if you have enough of them for whatever you’re crafting. There’s quite a lot more about S+. It’s difficult to get into all of it from memory alone, but I strongly recommend this mod! Another tool S+ adds is a “Nanny” which is something you can place that will imprint your babies for you, so you don’t have to wait around until it’s ready to be imprinted. It also removes the requirement to do whatever the baby wants or give it whatever kibble it decides it wants. This is definitely a time saver. It also has something that makes hatching eggs easier and quicker, but I use another mod for that.
Another ESSENTIAL mod for Ark is StackMeMore. This mod reduces the weight of everything and increases their stack sizes. So, you can easily carry a huge load of materials without having to run around back and forth to store things that normally weigh a lot and have very limited stack sizes. I’ve gotten so use to this mod that I can hardly remember playing without it.
Another really good mod is Ark Advance, currently called “Ark Advance 10.” It has it’s own crafting station which allows you to make some interesting things. I primarily use it for two things. With this mod you can make tranq arrows that slow down your target. But, you can also make tranq arrows and darts that are extremely effective! These, to me, are an essential part of taming. The mod author has stated that it could take about 5 of these special tranq darts to take down a max level Rex. Most things don’t take too many darts, in fact earlier I knocked out a Megalosaurus with just one dart. Another really helpful piece of this mod that I use is the feeding trough. This feeding trough uses power to keep food from spoiling fast. The normal (and even S+) feeder actually makes it so that nearby resources can't respawn, but the Advance feeder doesn't do this. This is super helpful. I also like to use the portable refrigerator in this mod.
Speaking of mods essential for taming, TameXL is another amazing mod. Normally when you knock out a creature with a tranq arrow or dart, you have to wait until it’s hungry enough to eat the food you’re trying to give it. You also have to keep an eye on it’s torpor, making sure it doesn’t get too low or it’ll wake up. There’s been debate since the beginning of Ark whether or not you should let the creature starve before putting food in it’s inventory. A hungry creature will eat food more quickly, but you still have to wait for the creature’s food stat to drain. Luckily, this mod removes that waiting time. It allows you to create narcotic that completely increases a creature’s torpor and completely drains their food. This means that you can go ahead and give them food. This really cuts down on the amount of time necessary to tame a creature.
Since I've grown tired of taming, I've found another essential mod called the Taming Gun. It's just a pistol that uses tranq arrows. You fire it at a creature and it gets instantly tamed at the max level. It removes the need to feed and wait for torpor to drop. I had used some console commands to force tame creatures, but it wasn't very effective, especially when I needed to aim at a moving creature. This gun works both on land and under water.
Another mod I really like is called Egg N Poop Collector/Incubator. As the name says, it adds a collector that collects eggs and poop. It can then transfer that poop and thatch to another station (within the mod) that turns it into fertilizer. Once that fertilizer is created, it can send it over to your crop plots. This makes farming automatic. There is a chance that instead of dropping poop, a creature will drop an egg. This collector picks up both, so you don’t have to go hunting around for either resource. Eggs and poop are essential to creating kibble, while eggs are used in the recipe and poop is used to grow crops that are used in the recipe. I also like the Incubator, which requires power. You simply drop a fertilized egg on it and it hatches quickly. Normally to hatch an egg, you need to put it in a place that has the right temperature. Each egg has a different preference of temperature. Normally you would surround an egg with some air conditioners or torches, but this mod removes the need to worry about temperature and hatch time.
Farming and making kibble does require a bit of work, but if you don’t want to bother with making kibble, the Kibble Vending Machine mod is for you! It allows you to make kibble using raw metal (ore). This is really handy! I’ve often carried one around with me when I go out to tame creatures. I usually collect enough metal to have the machine craft as much kibble as I need.
Awesome Teleporters is exactly as it sounds. You can craft teleporters and place them almost any where. Then, craft the remote control for it and you can teleport back and forth. This is incredibly handy! You could live in one place, but teleport to another area for gathering metal and teleport back.
Awesome Spyglass is also exactly as it sounds. It's a spyglass, but it has more features. It can zoom in and out. It can display the levels of creatures and what it takes to tame them. It can outline wild creatures, helping you see which are aggressive towards you and which are passive or don't see you.
Finally, the Builder’s Helmet is another essential. It allows you to pick up any structure. You can craft the helmet out of cheap materials. This is good especially if you’ve made something that isn’t part of Structures Plus. You can even make the skin version of the helmet that can be inserted on your helmet, therefore not losing your armor.
If you play Ark with mods, feel free to share your favorite mods in the comment section.
- Structures Plus
- StackMeMore
- Ark Advance
- TameXL
- Taming Gun
- Egg N Poop Collector/Incubator
- Kibble Vending Machine
- Awesome Teleporters
- Awesome Spyglass
- Builder's Helmet
Ark is absolutely my most favorite modern day game. I’ve actually played it way more than I’ve played any other game EVER. I’ve already clocked nearly 2,700 hours! So, I know Ark! One of the great things about this game is the Workshop, the ability to use mods. There are a lot out there and some of them are pretty dramatic, turning the game into something more bizarre and crazy. Here are some of my personal favorites, which may be updated over time.
There are some mods that are pretty much ESSENTIAL! One of which is perhaps the most popular mod of all, Structures Plus! S+ makes building in Ark a lot easier. One of the things it allows you to do that you can’t do in the base game is to pick up things (like walls, foundations, ceilings, etc.) that you’ve placed. One problem with the base game is that if you don’t like how you placed a wall, for instance, you can only demolish it, you can’t simply pick it up and place it some where else. S+ allows you to do just that and more. *Update: The base game has added a similar feature, but only allows you a short period of time to do this.* S+ comes with it’s own versions of crafting stations, like the smithy and fabricator. S+ actually allows you to pull resources from one place (crafting station, storage box, or creature inventory) and put it in another. So, if you want to make some flak armor, instead of carrying all that material over to the crafting station, you can click a button and the mod will pull the required materials, if you have enough of them for whatever you’re crafting. There’s quite a lot more about S+. It’s difficult to get into all of it from memory alone, but I strongly recommend this mod! Another tool S+ adds is a “Nanny” which is something you can place that will imprint your babies for you, so you don’t have to wait around until it’s ready to be imprinted. It also removes the requirement to do whatever the baby wants or give it whatever kibble it decides it wants. This is definitely a time saver. It also has something that makes hatching eggs easier and quicker, but I use another mod for that.
Another ESSENTIAL mod for Ark is StackMeMore. This mod reduces the weight of everything and increases their stack sizes. So, you can easily carry a huge load of materials without having to run around back and forth to store things that normally weigh a lot and have very limited stack sizes. I’ve gotten so use to this mod that I can hardly remember playing without it.
Another really good mod is Ark Advance, currently called “Ark Advance 10.” It has it’s own crafting station which allows you to make some interesting things. I primarily use it for two things. With this mod you can make tranq arrows that slow down your target. But, you can also make tranq arrows and darts that are extremely effective! These, to me, are an essential part of taming. The mod author has stated that it could take about 5 of these special tranq darts to take down a max level Rex. Most things don’t take too many darts, in fact earlier I knocked out a Megalosaurus with just one dart. Another really helpful piece of this mod that I use is the feeding trough. This feeding trough uses power to keep food from spoiling fast. The normal (and even S+) feeder actually makes it so that nearby resources can't respawn, but the Advance feeder doesn't do this. This is super helpful. I also like to use the portable refrigerator in this mod.
Speaking of mods essential for taming, TameXL is another amazing mod. Normally when you knock out a creature with a tranq arrow or dart, you have to wait until it’s hungry enough to eat the food you’re trying to give it. You also have to keep an eye on it’s torpor, making sure it doesn’t get too low or it’ll wake up. There’s been debate since the beginning of Ark whether or not you should let the creature starve before putting food in it’s inventory. A hungry creature will eat food more quickly, but you still have to wait for the creature’s food stat to drain. Luckily, this mod removes that waiting time. It allows you to create narcotic that completely increases a creature’s torpor and completely drains their food. This means that you can go ahead and give them food. This really cuts down on the amount of time necessary to tame a creature.
Since I've grown tired of taming, I've found another essential mod called the Taming Gun. It's just a pistol that uses tranq arrows. You fire it at a creature and it gets instantly tamed at the max level. It removes the need to feed and wait for torpor to drop. I had used some console commands to force tame creatures, but it wasn't very effective, especially when I needed to aim at a moving creature. This gun works both on land and under water.
Another mod I really like is called Egg N Poop Collector/Incubator. As the name says, it adds a collector that collects eggs and poop. It can then transfer that poop and thatch to another station (within the mod) that turns it into fertilizer. Once that fertilizer is created, it can send it over to your crop plots. This makes farming automatic. There is a chance that instead of dropping poop, a creature will drop an egg. This collector picks up both, so you don’t have to go hunting around for either resource. Eggs and poop are essential to creating kibble, while eggs are used in the recipe and poop is used to grow crops that are used in the recipe. I also like the Incubator, which requires power. You simply drop a fertilized egg on it and it hatches quickly. Normally to hatch an egg, you need to put it in a place that has the right temperature. Each egg has a different preference of temperature. Normally you would surround an egg with some air conditioners or torches, but this mod removes the need to worry about temperature and hatch time.
Farming and making kibble does require a bit of work, but if you don’t want to bother with making kibble, the Kibble Vending Machine mod is for you! It allows you to make kibble using raw metal (ore). This is really handy! I’ve often carried one around with me when I go out to tame creatures. I usually collect enough metal to have the machine craft as much kibble as I need.
Awesome Teleporters is exactly as it sounds. You can craft teleporters and place them almost any where. Then, craft the remote control for it and you can teleport back and forth. This is incredibly handy! You could live in one place, but teleport to another area for gathering metal and teleport back.
Awesome Spyglass is also exactly as it sounds. It's a spyglass, but it has more features. It can zoom in and out. It can display the levels of creatures and what it takes to tame them. It can outline wild creatures, helping you see which are aggressive towards you and which are passive or don't see you.
Finally, the Builder’s Helmet is another essential. It allows you to pick up any structure. You can craft the helmet out of cheap materials. This is good especially if you’ve made something that isn’t part of Structures Plus. You can even make the skin version of the helmet that can be inserted on your helmet, therefore not losing your armor.
If you play Ark with mods, feel free to share your favorite mods in the comment section.
