Ark: Ascendant Metal Mining Locations and Guide for Survival

How to get metal in Ark Survival Ascended This is something you’ll need to figure out pretty quickly if you want to upgrade your tools, base, and pretty much everything else you need to survive. Even if you find a lot of the resource early on, you won’t be able to get a lot of it until later. A special forge turns your metal into something actually usable. This guide explains where to find metal in Ark Survival Ascended and what to do with it once you have it.

Metal slots

Raw metal only reliably comes from a type of resource nodes: rocky mounds with bright, sparkling spots.

You can get metal by mining any node or piece of rock, but you won’t get much of it. This is fine if you only need a few pieces of metal for a single crafting project, but once you start getting into base building and gear crafting, you’ll need to take a look around of the island and specifically dig metal nodes.

Metal knots exist in higher concentrations in the northern part of the island and around the volcano, where most of the very deadly dinosaurs also live. Be sure to wear sturdy gear and grab a fast mount if you venture this far north.

If you want a more relaxed metallurgical experience, stay on the southern half of the island. You won’t find as many knots, but you won’t (probably) get eaten in seconds either.

How to get metal

You need some sort of pickaxe to harvest the metal from a node. Rock picks barely work, but once you have enough metal you should upgrade to a metal pick for best results. The Ankylosaurus mount will also exploit this for you if you approach a node with it.

How to farm metal

The best way to get metal quickly is to gather it with an Ankylosaurus mount. As in Survival Evolved, the Ankylosaurus gathers almost all resources, including metal, much more efficiently than you could on your own. They also give you a major weight reduction boost, so you can gain more back before you have to go home.

Metal takes about an hour in the real world to respawn on official servers, although you can use Ark Survival Ascended’s console commands to give yourself some.

How to get metal ingots from metal

Metal itself is pretty useless. You need a forge to create metal ingots, then you can use the ingots in crafting. You unlock the Refining Forge recipe (your first forge) at level 20. It requires:

• 40 fibers
• 65 hide
• 20 wood
• 125 stones
• 5 flints

Throw two pieces of metal there, and 20 seconds later you get two metal ingots. You can craft an Industrial Forge later, which will reduce the refining time to one second.