Surviving an island of dinosaurs and other human-beings is tough enough, but now the dastardly creators of ARK: Survival Evolved have given us the tools to make things weirder, more wonderful or just plain hellish. Good job people are up to the task.
We’ve gone out and tamed a number of mods in the wilderness since the release of the official ARK dev kit through the Tool section of the Steam Library. Despite still being in Early Access there’s a ravenous appetite for more and more from mod creators.
Last Updated: 11.03.2017
The Bridges / Created by Anu Zababa
A simple map extension that goes a long way. If you’ve ever wanted a creative way to get up to the Floating Island in the center map, this might be your ticket. It adds numerous bridges from the swamplands up to the Floating Island for you to be able to travel back and forth with relative ease. This is a good option for specifically No-Fly servers.
Tameable Titanoboa / Created by Judqment8
Those Titanboas are beasty snakes to be sure, too ferocious to be brought under your control. That changes with this mod. It adds a new Tameable Titanboa with a hatchable egg to with it. It won’t be easy and these fellows are still aggressive, but with some effort, the Titanboa will become your faithful companion. This mod even comes with an engram for a saddle and riding capabilities for your colossal constrictor.
Tranq Kit / Created by Seven
All this tranquilizer and nowhere to put it, right? Well, this mod doesn’t just offer you one new tranq weapon, but several. Between the new Tranq Rocket Turret, Sniper Rifle, Stun Prod, Crossbow, and Compound Bow, you’ll have a wealthy variety of options for bringing opponents down without immediately killing them. It’s time you had the opportunity to decommission foes from numerous angles of firepower.
Reusable Grappling Hook / Created by Team Mod Plus
Grappling hooks sure can be a blast. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, your grappling hook seems to be finite, as if for some reason you just run out of grappling hook. That’s kind of lame and this mod aims to fix it. With this mod, you’ll have unlimited grappling ammo to throw around as you please. And why not? It’s not as if you can’t just pick the dang thing up when you’re finished climbing it.
Healthbars & Torporbars / Created by French Grandpa
When it comes to damage and taming in ARK, it’s a numbers game to be sure, but all of those numbers lay hidden behind the scenes making it a bit of guessing game as well. If you’re tired of trying to figure out just what you need to get the job done, this mod will certainly help. It adds health and torpor bars to add creatures to give you a better idea of what you’re actively dealing with when it comes to any quarry’s status and remaining strength.
Castles, Keeps, and Forts Medieval Architecture / Created by eNc | ExileAcid
If you’ve ever wanted to make a Gothic fortress to defend you and your tribe mates from the dangers of the ARK world, this is a phenomenal offering. It offers up over 100 different construction options based on Medieval architecture. From castles to forts and so much more, you’ll have everything you need to truly make your home a stone bastion of mighty prowess.
Pillars Plus / Created by orionsun
It’s a little weird that most of the bridges throughout all of ARK seem to hang suspended without any real support to hold them up, especially with multitudes of humans and dinosaurs walking over them. This mod fixes that up a bit. It adds pillars and supports of various materiel to be added to most bridges in the game as you see fit. More of a visual thing than anything, but it certainly adds a little bit of architectural realism to the matter.
Custom Hairstyles / Created by Stealthic
It’s time to get that mess on your head fixed up, ladies. This mod offers a multitude of new hairstyles meant for female characters. Each of the ten styles is weighted to the character body (meaning no clipping) and highly detailed. Color them as you like to fit your personal character and enjoy a fresh and beautiful new style that will make your characters stand out beautifully.
The Volcano / Created by Sicco0803
You’ve found yourself stranded on one of various islands centered around an enormous and active volcano. It’s up to you to make your new life in this unforgiving, yet beautiful new land. This mod is a new map as big as the vanilla map, featuring five different biomes and nearly all animals in the game. Make your home on one island, travel to the next, and explore what this new and gorgeous volcanic world has to offer.
Garden Decor / Created by eco
Looking to make your habitat a little more zen and relaxing with some fresh planted greenery? This mod will lend a hand. It offers up numerous different types of topiary, fountains, indoor and outdoor lighting, and more to allow you to make your establishment a much more lush environment. Everything can be picked up, moved, scavenged, and more to allow you customize with relative ease.
Skins Mod / Created by FusionGamers
If you’re a server moderator and have ever felt like gifting cool prizes to your dedicated players, or if you just feel like having fun and reskinning your weapons with something a little wacky, this is mod well worth your time. You’ll get a grand total of 95 new weapons skins that can be applied to picks, hatchets, swords, and clubs. They cannot be found in the game, only spawned by an admin. So enjoy hosting a contest or two or decking your players out with something new to keep things interesting.
Wall Clock With Alarm / Created by Grebog
Easily one of the most practical devices out there. Not a weapon for hunting and combat or a tool for killing, but rather an in-game clock! With this clock, you can set real world time or in-game time to make sure you keep track of pressing engagements. Need to make sure you don’t miss a certain hunt or real-life event? This clock also allows you to set an alarm to either of the set times to ensure you’re on time for whatever you’ve got going on.
GAF - Structures + SE-Items / Created by w4tersツ
This mod features an all-in-one package of various content for the game. With it, you get a chest that, once placed, will contain blueprints for nearly all the craftable weapons, tools, saddles, structures, skins, artifacts, and resource conversion recipes. But that’s not all. The mod also brings new equipment and craftables to the game alongside some new wildlife spawns. Wrestle with Thorny Dragons and Mantis or just hang out in your new durable polymer tent on the hunt.
Kai’s Flyer Perches / Created by Tony
If you’ve got a slew of avian friends but sour at the somewhat dull housings for them, worry no more. This mod is a one stop shop for numerous flyer perches and dwellings. With it, you’ll have access to new craftable designs for two small perches, two medium perches, and a large perch to offer your airborne allies when they’re on their down time.
Manticore X / Created by M1k3.C (Mike.C)
A most ferocious mythical beast from the olden days! This mod brings a mighty Manticore into your ARK world. Part lion, part scorpion, part eagle, all deadly. These beasts will be difficult to tangle with, but they’re not ridiculously overpowered. What’s more, if you can find the nest and capture an egg, as well as wrangle some milk from mommy Manitcore, you can raise one of your very own as a companion and mount!
Platforms Anywhere / Created by orionsun
Want to have a raised base, but tire of having to put it tree platforms all the time? This is a suitable answer to your problem. This mod brings 30 new raised platforms to your constructive options to support tree platforms and allow you variety in your building of bases. Whether you use these platforms as pillars of your new stronghold or their own decoration to mark your territory, they’re sure to make things quite a bit easier.
Epic Flame Colors / Created by Suprinity
Looking to go beyond the normal fires you see all the time and make your abode far more ethereal or harrowing? Maybe you just want a little more color in your life at night? Either way, this mod is fantastic. It offers you a new epic standing torch engram that will allow you to burn certain dyes to produce wickedly cool colors. Nearly any dye will work, so just pick whatever mood you’re feeling and let it burn to produce an aura unique to your area at night.
UFO Mod / Created by pepezilla
Welcome to Earth! Or… uh, ARK! This mod adds a new UFO inspired by a certain movie about aliens attacking the United States. With it, you’ll be able to craft one of the visitor’s ships and fly it around, wreaking havoc on the environment. It’s not easy to build and costs quite the number of high-level resources, but once you’ve got this dangerous beauty, your foes best flee for their lives.
Stackable Foundations / Created by RedDwarf
If you’ve found yourself repeatedly frustrated with the foundations already included in ARK or hate trying to find a flat surface to build upon, this is a perfect mod to solve your woes. It features new foundations that can stack, be side-snapped to walls, and feature zero collision so they can be placed anywhere. They are accessible as soon as the standard foundation is gained and are compatible with normal foundations so you can build your foundations for construction practically anywhere!
Teleport Pad / Created by Judqment8
Travel was never so easy before. This mod adds a fantastic little level 70 engram to your arsenal that allows you craft teleport pads. With it, you can set up a teleporter that will move you, other players, and any tamed dinos that will fit in its effective bubble across great stretches of space in the blink of an eye. Even better, it features automatic settings to just transport whatever steps on it or manual settings to require activation so not just any one can use your precious teleporter!
OCD Stacking Storage / Created by Echo
Ever get into organizing your storage space only to find it’s always slightly off kilter? There’s precious organization and space being wasted here! What you need is storage that can be placed in a uniform and reliable fashion and this mod will help you there. This mod features three new wooden boxes (small, medium, and large storage space) that can snap to your foundation and each other for clean reliable stacking every time. No more wasted space or clutter in your base of operation ever again.
Builders Helmet / Created by Grebog
When you’re building, you’d better make sure you’ve got the right tools. No, not a hammer or saw, but a hard hat! This mod adds a special builder’s helmet with a cool set of buffs that make construction an easier process. First, it supplies an outline to all target structures to help with proper placement at all times. Second, it allows you to pick up and move any structure you target, just in case you want to move some things around easily.
More Narcotics & More Tranq-Arrows Combined / Created by Seth333
This is a mod that brings two great mods together in one place. If you’re just not getting enough strength out of your tranq arrows or narcotics, then this mod will lend you a helpful hand. It features five new colored narcotics and applicable arrows featuring exponential strength of torpor effects. Bring even the biggest of the big down to size with the strongest narcotics available to you, all without increasing the normal damage of a tranq arrow and harming your prey.
Death Recovery Mod / Created by Manalo
Nothing in a survival game can be as degrading as putting in hours of hard work only to lose it all to untimely death. Often times, you have to find your way back to the place where you died, which invites its own world of stress and danger. With this mod, you can circumvent all of that anxiety. It offers a craftable gravestone that, once placed, will allow you to recover all inventory from your remote corpse instantly upon interaction. Save time and stress and place this puppy near your settlement for easy access.
Saddlebag Mod / Created by ExilogUploader
Ever think about pack brahmin in the Fallout games and wish you could have that merchant style inventory space on some of your animals? Now you can. This mod adds two new saddlebags that can be used with Dodos and Mammoths. The Dodo saddlebag adds 50 extra carry weight to your little feathered pals while the Mammoth saddlebag adds a hefty 500 extra carry to your fuzzy behemoths. Move gear and materials like nobody’s business, whether it’s for an exodus or carrying your dreams of being a Jurassic traveling merchant.
Advanced Rafts / Created by MacGyver
Now these are some water craft that will meet your needs at most every level of your game. These two new rafts feature unique new designs as well as dimensions and cargo space that will allow you to move and work on the water as you please. Make them your water surface base of operations during expeditions or just throw a little soiree and let your guests see the lights of your large raft glimmer like a makeshift grand riverboat, both rustic and luxurious.
Dino Finder / Created by dubCUT
Some of us just want to take the guess work out of tracking down a particular animal while others want to see where the danger is so they know where not to tread. This mod introduces a torch that will supply both needs. It reveals dino type and level in an enormous radius around the player. Let it act as your makeshift radar whether you’re the type to look for danger or evade it.
Total Conversion: Ark Moon Survival / Created by DavidBC
Say goodbye to the tropical paradise for a while and venture into the depths of space. After the Astronomia Company discovers prehistoric bones on the moon, you’re sent on an expedition to see what you can dig up on the barren, rocky landscape. This mod is a total conversion that features an enormous new map, challenges, craftables, and opportunities for loot. Take some time away from the island and discover the mysteries of this lunar makeover.
The Center / Created by evilmrfrank
Get ready to check out one of the most gorgeous and expansive maps on the ARK mod market. The Center features kilometers of hand crafted splendor featuring a floating island, ancient ruins, underwater pockets, an expansive underground realm, and numerous biomes, just to name a few of the map’s enormous splendor. There are tons of maps for ARK, but few will offer you the attention to detail and variety of The Center.
Bridge / Created by dubCUT
Do you ever look at canyons, inlets, and other natural divides and wish you had an option to build across it, making a versatile and easy access point? Then say hello to one of the most simple, yet useful mods out there. Bridge is a pretty self-explanatory addition to your building options that will allow you to finally link areas you’d like to travel by foot frequently.
Night vision Goggles / Created by ohiorenegade
This mod is a work-in-progress, but definitely worth following. If you’ve grown tired of lighting torches that announce your presence or running around grasping and clawing in the dark, then this is a mod worth your time. It allows you to create night vision goggles. Finally you’ll be able to see in the dark without risking giving yourself away visually. It’s worthwhile mod for any sneaky snake.
GateMod / Created by Exilog
Looking to put a little extra oomph or a personal escape and entry in your ARK’s defenses? Then this is a worthy mod to consider. It allows the building of different sized gates and drawbridges from the fully primitive to the high-tech. GateMod offers a reasonable entry and exit point to your base for all your dino joy rides.
Small Dragons / Created by Encryption
This mod offers small versions of dragons that are roughly the size of T-Rexes in the game. With them comes an extensive set of mechanics, including custom A.I., different colorations, custom animations, and taming and breeding options. That’s right. You can tame them and breed baby dragons.
Jurassic Ark / Created by Oxxy
There are often jokes and puns about Jurassic Park from the community at large within ARK: Survival Evolved. Isn’t it high time you were actually given the tools to put Jurassic Park together in ARK? This modder thought so. This mod offers you multiple options for building fencing and setups faithful to the iconic film. For your sake, we hope your power grid doesn’t go down.
Planting / Created by Yoropatty
After you’re finished clearing the land away and making way for your base, do you ever feel like putting the natural elements all back together to make for a more scenic area? This mod can help. It will supply you with trees, bushes, and rocks that you can place and arrange anywhere you please. Let your naturalistic side shine and weave forests, beaches, and gardens with relative ease.
Play As Dino! / Created by FinntasticGames
Inevitably, with a game that allows as much modding as ARK, someone was eventually bound to put this mod together properly. If you take of humanity, you can finally take up life as one of ARK’s many beastial inhabitants. The mod allows you to play as one of over 40 species ranging from the common to the giant and majestic. Roam, survive, and devour as much and as long as you can in whatever form you take.
Dino Racing: Evolved / Created by Mezzo
Saddle up, dino riders! It’s time for a day at the races! With this mod, you can include a fully built up minigame in your ARK realm, allowing you and other players to race. Build tracks on land or in the sky, allowing versatility of mounts and tracks for your racing pleasure. Additionally, utilize included offensive items to sabotage your competition in the race as you see fit!
Remote-View Security Monitor (CCTV) / Created by TheycallmeQ
When you’ve got an expansive industrial complex built from the ground up and in need of defense and attention in most areas, it helps to have good security. However, if you don’t have the personnel, then your next best bet is to put eyes on your whole base from one place. This mod allows you to build closed-circuit television and camera systems that will allow you to employ security or merely keep a watchful eye on situations from one area to another.
Loot Dinos v1.4 / Created by Rational
They exist in many other RPGs – rare creatures that you’re lucky to see and even luckier to slay. If you do, they drop tons of goodies for your valiant efforts. There really isn’t such a creature in ARK. That is, not without this mod anyways. It adds special gold creatures that spawn in rarity, are more difficult to kill, and will give you the mother lode if you manage to bag one. Happy hunting and good luck!
Snow Furniture / Created by Alchemist
Feel like there should be at least a little bit of variation in furniture when it comes to different environments? This mod is a small step in the right direction for you. It’s a clean, stackable mod that provides snow-covered rock furniture, perfectly suited for placement in your arctic biomes. Get a little variation in your arctic ARK while also supplying yourself with properly themed building options.
No Collision Structures / Created by KGM6911
Finding yourself wanting to build on rough terrain in ARK only to be obstructed by collision checks? This mod will help you out. It removes the collision check from thatch, wood, stone, metal, and greenhouse structures allowing you to place structures partially into terrain. Build watchtowers into mountainsides and huts upon uneven terrain with relative ease.
Total Conversion: Otherworld / Created by Skellig
A total conversion mod for ARK. This mod brings you to a mysterious island known as Otherworld. It is here that you will fight for your life against waves of creatures. Get points from slaying enemies to strengthen your weapons and abilities, use the souls of your enemies to summon creatures to your aid, and go it alone or bring your friends to the fight. How long can you survive.
Shigo Normal Drops / Created by Exilog
Here we have a simple, yet effective little mod. It allows you to increase the number of active supply drops to six at a time. Not only does it allow for a little more versatility in the arrival and procuring of equipment, but it also stacks with other supply drop mods, making it a useful and versatile little map extension to have.
OceanTide / Created by mokauno
If you ever found yourself looking at coastal tides and sighing at how static they always appear to be, then you might be interested in this mod. It adds a new effect to coastal waters, making them move and sway like an actual coastal tide would. You’ll see a few world interactions change as well. Watch predators chase creatures into the ocean before themselves needing to escape before the tide endangers them. OceanTide is a good map extension that adds a nice touch of extra immersion to the game.
‘Realism’ Giga Tweak / Created by Slowtapus
A small peak at the giganotosaurus’s stats will blow your mind. It’s easily one of, if not the most dangerous predator in ARK, far and above other creatures to an exponential degree. Taking note of that, this mod takes aim at the giganotosaurs with the purpose of keeping them as the apex predator of ARK, but also bringing them in line to other creatures with more realistic stats. These bad boys are still dangerous, but with this mod, they won’t be impossible to tussle with.
Giant Megalodons / Created by Linnsanity
Ever feel like megalodons in ARK aren’t quite so… mega? Then this is a mod worth your attention. It will take the megalodons you know and make them into enormous monsters, complete with some stat changes. Make them into the true terror of your deep sea ventures and, of course, revel in terrifying others when you tame and ride one.
Flaming Sword & Lightning Sword Ver: 0.5 / Created by P0k3r_OF_Sm0t
When they ask what killed the dinosaurs, tell them it was the Sword of Michael. Biblical jokes aside, this mod adds sweet fire and lightning swords to your ARK weapon crafting options. Besides the obvious benefit of having a torch that doubles as an effective melee weapon, these swords can set enemies aflame. In addition, you can change the color of the effect on each weapon to really make something that suits your fancy.
Joan’s Oil Compressor / Created by gRaTefuL oXyToCiN ̀͠͏̡̖̲͕’s
This is a mod that’s absolutely crucial for any player that keeps themselves and their bases landlocked, but want all the benefits that come with having the oil resource around. It allows the building of an oil compressor, which will turn fertilizer into oil after some time. It stacks cleanly with other mods as well, so all you inland islanders have nothing to fear and everything to gain with this mod.
[TC] Unlimited Tamed Boss Time / Created by Ian Tanthal
You worked pretty hard to bring down those boss monsters and make them your own didn’t you? Wouldn’t you like to keep them for as long as you want? This mod will allow you to do that. Quite simply, it will remove the tamed time limit from all bosses and give you unlimited time with them. As a nice little bonus, it takes the Broodmother and modifies her to have a rideable state.
Better Supply Drops / Created by Aelmors
Do you ever get tired of finding garbage in your supply drops? With this, that goal is within reach. It modifies the supply drops to give more suitable gear and ceases the possibility of low level gear appearing in high level supply drops. Never get level 25 items in a level 60 drop again. Also, this mod adds the possibility that you can get rare supply drops with primo equipment at every level.
Epic Islands / Created by ƘƖԼԼЄƦȤƜЄƦƓ
This mod adds two enormous islands to your ARK game. In fact, it’s part of an ongoing project to add nine different islands to your ARK game, each with their own creatures and unique environments and terrains. Each island is slated to take up about 46 square kilometers, making the entire package quite the area to explore. Take on a new adventure on these islands to discover, hunt, and build across new threatening landscapes.
Turret Remote / Created by jslay
Sometimes it’s nice to have the little luxurious in your ARK life. Say, for instance, you don’t feel like walking around to all your perimeter defenses to punch in different values for them. Download this mod for a remote control specifically for programming your turrets at distance. Cycle through range, targeting, and sleep states on all your turrets in a given area with ease. Sure it might be lazy, but convenience can’t be denied in a world like ARK.
Arkville Pub / Created by Steel
Do you ever feel like taking a break from the slog of hunting, gathering, and building? Do you wish for a place in your ARK that has a little bit more of a cozy touch to it? Then you need this mod. It will give you all the tools you need to build a brand new kind of establishment: A lovely old timey pub. The mod provides bartops, fire pits, kegs, and all the functionality you need to build a place worthy of all weary travelers.
Find My Tribemates / Created by jslay
Taking the time to wait for your tribemates to craft a flare so you can find them is something that not everyone wants to do over and over again. This mod takes a shot at ending that inconvenience. It casts a light beam from your chest that will act as a compass to your tribemates that are awake and alive. Use it to gather together without the process of casting flares to find everyone and circumvent an early speed bump in the game.
Ocean Breeding / Created by Xaneas
Did you take the time to capture, tame, and raise one of the ocean creatures of ARK and wish you had a way to propagate your work like many of the other land creatures you can tame? This may be what you’re looking for. This mod allows you to take any tamed sea creatures and breed them to raise new ones. Whether you’re Megalodons, Plesiosaurs, Anglers, etc. If it lives in water and you can tame it, this mod has you covered.
Mini Industrial Forge / Created by unclepee
Do you ever find yourself wanting the industrial forge in your ARK settlement, but have no interest in the enormous amount of space that it takes up? Then make this mod your go-to. It will allow a smaller industrial forge to be crafted that will be more suited to smaller structures and platforms. Serve all of your forging needs without sacrificing the space for other items and structures.
Map Extension: Pandora Isles / Created by Drake
A new ground awaits you, but it’s not on the land. This new ground lies in the sky. The Pandora Isles mod adds two enormous land formations floating high in the air. Finding your way up to them provides you with a large, clear new ground, fresh for the building of a safe and luxurious settlement. Build and craft without fear and cast your eyes down upon the inferior earth beneath. Put in some work and make these islands in the sky into your new haven.
The Cavern / Created by ShenmaKid
Discover a subterranean sanctuary with The Cavern mod. A mysterious chamber awaits you, teeming with underground growth, foliage, and running waters that converge in twisting turning roots around an ethereal island and obelisk. Go deep within The Cavern and search out treasure and resources, but watch your back. Predators await your trespass and will be happy to make a meal out of reckless wanderers.
Age Of Ark / Created by dodgeThis
Are you a fan of Age of Empires? Wouldn’t it be cool if you could take that tried and true system and apply many of it’s ideas to ARK? Well, with this mod you can. Age of Ark is a conversion mod that allows you to play with the elements of ARK under many of the rules of Age of Empires. Build your tribe, evolve your technology, and destroy the other tribes in a map made specifically for the gameplay of this mod. Survival is going to get strategic.
Total Conversion: Ark Pirate World / Created by DavidBC and salcarr
Ready to take your tribe to the high seas? This mod brings you to a map featuring a network of tropical islands. You can claim stake on an island, build your pirate lair, and fortify your defenses. Build boats, weapons, and cannons to wage naval battles against your enemies or establish your fortune and fame with maps that lead to treasures and blueprints to establish rum distilleries and tobacco plantations. Get a crew together and arm them well. You’re going to want all hands on deck to tame these seas.
Halo Warthog (Driveable) / Created by Spartan464748
What rides better than a dinosaur? How about a warthog? No, not the pig. We’re talking about the iconic Halo attack vehicle. With this mod, you can bring the Warthog into your ARK experience and ride around in futuristic sci-fi style.
Fire Arrow / Created by Killerzwerg
Need a little long distance fire in your ARK life? Then this mod has you covered. With it, you’ll be able to get Engrams and build fire arrows. Light dinosaurs and other players aflame with effects that light up the night like a flying torch.
ARK Reborn v220.2 / Created by TheRealAzrael
ARK Reborn is an overhaul that adds a ton of new items and updates to your ARK experience. The taming has been tweaked with new values for kibble and vegetables for keeping your dinosaurs happy, as well as making cave beasts such as snakes and spiders tameable as well. ARK Reborn also offers several new tranquilizer options for bringing down the bigger threats in the wild. Finally, Reborn offers several new structures like an electric fence to protect your settlement and stoves and dehydrators to expedite your consumable preparation.
Advanced Architecture Mod / Created by hogs
A man’s home is his castle, so they say. Well, with this mod, you can actually make your home a castle in ARK. Designed to be unlocked after level 70, this mod allows players access to a special bench and blueprints that allow for castle pieces and structure. There is a single player and multiplayer version and both task players heavily, but the result is a literal fortress of stone and mortar to defend you from the unwashed world.
True Wardrums / Created by Jesus
War drums have a distinct purpose. They’re meant to get the hearts of your war party beating and announce to your enemies that the time of reckoning is nigh, which is unfortunate for the puny sound currently inhabiting ARK’s regular wardrums. This mod will give more oomph to the ARK wardrums, aimed at giving them a quality not unlike that which can be found in Mad Max: Fury Road. The beat will be more powerful and can be heard from further away.
Ark Automated / Created by |eG| ElectroSkellington
This mod allows you to automate many different resource collection processes in your settlement. The Auto Egg Collector, Auto Compost Bin, and Fertilizer Silo will streamline processes that you would otherwise have to handle on your own. The mod also offers a work bench with which to build all the materials in the mod and a refrigerator and freezer for storing materials and keeping them from decay longer.
Laser Turret / Created by kilrath81
This is a mod that allows players to build a laser turret and the crystals that the turret uses as fuel. ARK is a hard world to live in and you’re sure to want to protect what is yours. This laser turret will help you do just that. There’s a few options to modify it and make sure your home base will be slinging automated, super-heated death at trespassers in no time.
No Collision v1.0 / Created by Kyle
No Collision v1.0 upgrades the materials in Ark: Survival Evolved, with new non-collision structures from the Wood/Stone/Metal category. The mod adds such structures as fence foundations, general foundations, ceilings, roofs, and walls.
Dynamic Color Mod V1.01 / Created by Intoxicate
An essential fix for those boring, unfashionable dinosaurs who can’t even be bothered to have interestingly coloured skin. This mod adds lots of new colours, and should work with other mods as long as they don’t change the game’s dinos too much. Now you can have your very own pink Ankylosaurus.
Improved Ankylosaurus v1.1 / Created by Judqment8
Ark’s Anklosaurus model was a bit too slow and clumsy for this modder, who has therefore decided to tweak its stats to be more agile and speedy, and to get even faster as it grows. The dino’s bite animation has been removed, and it now has both tail swing and tail pound moves for you to choose between.
StudyArg v.08 / Created by dartuche
One cool way to travel around in Ark is on the back of an Argentavis, a colossal flying bird. Not only does this mod add a few more colour schemes for these creatures, but it also adds a special sub-species to the game that are strong enough to carry sabre-toothed tigers. Now you can fly into battle on a giant eagle, before parachuting to earth on the back of a tiger. Like the most metal album cover ever made.
AVBM: ARK Vehicle Build Mod - V2.1 / Created by אMr.Mysteryא
Ark goes off-road with this Beta version of a mod that allows you to create your own vehicles using the in-game resources. Right now there are several to choose from, including motorbikes, buggies, four-wheel drive beasts and more. You can switch form third-person to an in-car view, and vehicles (presumably not the bikes) can carry up to four passengers. Who needs to hitch a ride on an Ankylosaurus, huh?
Natural Colors Mod / Created by Ustolemygmrtag
Do you want to see a teal-coloured Tyrannosaurus Rex? Of course you want to see a teal-coloured Tyrannosaurus Rex. I’m not entirely sure about the accuracy of the title, but the Natural Colors mod changes the core colours for dinosaurs and dino materials, varying the overall palette and making for a more vibrant-looking world.
The CraftTrades Mod V.8.0 / Created by EpicEssa
This mod adds a trading system to Ark, in the form of a new structure where you can swap various raw resources for different materials. This means that you won’t find yourself weighed down with three thousand pounds worth of cotton wool, without anything to use it on. It’s a neat system that will hopefully be added to the core game at some point, but for now this does the job admirably.
NPC Bush People V1 / Created by Swords
So this mod adds a bunch of violent NPC bush people to the game. Just in case you prefer being pursued by a semi-naked man wearing a literal bush around his privates to being hunted by a T-Rex, this one has you covered. On a gameplay level, it makes Ark feel a bit more like DayZ, with frenzied humanoid enemies rather than beasts.
BioTech Mod 0.9 Created by Ozukami
This is a pretty cool addition that introduces biological harvesting and poison creation to Ark. Simply kill a creature, harvest all its gooey inside bits, and start whipping up toxin arrows, sleep pellets, explosive ammunition and all sorts of other amusing toys. There are a couple of other mods that this clashes with, so make sure to check out the Steam Workshop FAQ.
Stairs Mod V3 / Created by MacLobuzz
As you can probably guess from the title, this isn’t one of the sexiest modifications out there. It basically resizes the stairs in the game, which all appear to have been designed with Andre the Giant in mind. There are smaller versions for each craftable material in the game.
Apako Islands v0.76 Alpha / Created by Kimmykix
Here’s 65 square kilometres of not one but many islands spread across the map offering different biomes to carve a living out of. The little islands out at sea maybe a little more peaceful, but that’s just because you got lucky, as others are death traps.
The mod is in its own alpha stages right now and it’s missing some stuff like ambient sounds so it’s eerily quiet throughout these dino infested islands. Also the in-game map is currently the default one for the game, and terrain collision issues might be a problem here and there.
Improved Dinos - Rare Spawns / Created by Premixedpie
You want better gear but don’t want to spend all your time flying about on your ‘dinocopter’ farming for drops? This little mod looks to solve the age-old dilemma with rare spawning dinos that are ready to challenge players with tough fights for their precious blueprint loots. It also adds new colour variations to help spot these incredibly rare and dangerous hoarders.
TorchBoost / Created by Drathek
The discovery of fire heralded the great torch industry for mankind, but honestly it needs a little nudge. This mod helps really brighten things up by quadrupling the light radius from all newly crafted torches, so not the ones already placed. Bloody labour unions.
Increased Level Cap / Created by Ahniolator
The ever-popular and almost obligatory increased level cap mod that - this will shock you - increases the level cap in the game and is intended for single player. This is great news for anyone who wants to max out their survivor and gain an additional 33 more points to spend.
This takes the default level cap from 83 (100k XP) to 100, however you’ll have to start a new character. Now’s our chance to grab all those engrams in a single playthrough.
Slow Stuff Decay / Created by Bantandulous
It’s a sad truth but we live at the mercy of entropy - everything decays. That doesn’t mean we can’t tweak the nose of the universe when opportunity strikes. This mod will slow the decay of our body to 8 real-life hours to give us time to find it. It’ll even emit smoke - thanks evolution!
Should our delicious body be destroyed then a backpack drops as per normal, but this too is guaranteed an 8 real-life hour death clock before it decays to nothing, and it emits smoke too. Dropped items should also last 30 minutes on the floor. Not recommended for PvP servers.
Ultra-Realism / Created by Storm
Getting back to prehistoric basics is what Ultra Realism is all about. That means no silly shortening of dinosaur names, a new rampaging Tyrannosaraus Bull who’ll take on anything and can’t be tamed, and removing ‘unrealistic’ damage multipliers.
There’s plenty on the agenda for this mod and updates will keep coming as ARK is updated by the development team, promises its creator. That’s not a Sabertooth it’s a Smilodon - ugh!
Metal with Glass Set / Created by Ivam
How about new building materials? This mod adds a new glass structure with metals inlays. It is as durable as the vanilla metal, but costs fewer ingots. It also costs crystals to simulate the glass. This really makes for some pretty buildings and such. Give it a download.
Baby Dinos Enhanced / Created by Exodus
Have you ever wanted to become a parent of your own baby dinosaur? Here’s your chance! This mod allows you to have baby dinosaurs using normal eggs and DNA.
Aku Shima / Created by aenigmis
This is a sort of hodgepodge of different things. Very popular right now. Changes include a glass tier, reinforced wood tier, super FABricator, electric furnace, alchemy kit, adrenaline and much more. Give it a download, you may find that you like it.
ARK: Survival Evolved has only just emerged from its dino egg on to Steam Early Access but already the mod community thrives. As the indie RPG continues to grow and the ARK dev kit gets updated along with it I’m sure we’ll be seeing some really ambitious projects.
Already there are some Jurassic Park mods in the works, but they’re not so stable right now. We’ll stand watch and promise not to steal your stuff while your backs turned, honest.
