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How to get metal in Ark Survival Ascended is something you’ll need to figure out pretty fast 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 can’t make much of it until later. A special forge turns your metal into something that’s actually usable. This guide explains where to find metal in Ark Survival Ascended and what to do with it once you’ve got some.
Metal locations
Raw metal only reliably comes from one kind of resource nodes: rock mounds with shiny, glittery spots.
You may get metal while mining any node or piece of rock, but you won’t get much of it. That’s fine if you just need a few pieces of metal for a single crafting project, but once you start digging into base-building and equipment crafting, you’ll need to take a trip around the island and dig into metal nodes specifically.
Metal nodes exist in higher concentrations in the northern part of the island and around the volcano, which is also where most of the very deadly dinosaurs live. Make sure to wear strong equipment and take a fast mount if you venture that far north.
If you want a more relaxed metal farming experience, stick to the island’s southern half. You won’t find as many nodes, but you (probably) won’t be eaten within a few seconds either.
How to get metal
You need a pickaxe of some kind to harvest metal from a node. Stone Picks work, barely, but once you have enough metal, you should upgrade to a Metal Pick for better results. The Ankylosaurus mount will also mine it for you if you approach a node with them.
How to farm metal
The best way to get metal quickly is by gathering it with an Ankylosaurus mount. Like in Survival Evolved, the Ankylosaurus gathers almost every resource, including metal, much more efficiently than you can on your own. They also give you a hefty weight reduction boost, so you can gather more of it before having to return home.
Metal takes roughly an hour of real-world time to respawn on official servers, though you can use Ark Survival Ascended’s console commands to just give yourself some.
How to get metal ingots from metal
Metal is pretty useless by itself. You need a forge to create metal ingots, and then you can use the ingots in crafting. You unlock the Refining Forge recipe–your first forge–at level 20. It requires:
40 fiber65 hide20 wood125 stone5 flint
Throw two pieces of metal in there, and 20 seconds later, you get two metal ingots. You can craft an industrial forge later, which cuts the refining time down to one second.
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