How To Make Dye in ARK: Survival Evolved

Making Dye in ARK: Survival Evolved

Your ARK: Survival Evolved base says a lot about you once the walls go up and the furniture goes in. Color is where that personality really shows.

Dye lets you customize armor, weapons, saddles, and the structures you build, turning a plain base into one that looks like yours. In this Nitrado guide, we’ll show you how to gather the equipment and ingredients for every ARK: Survival Evolved dye color. We’ll also cover how to use dye on your gear, your structures, and your tamed creatures.

Equipment and Items You Need for Dye

Before you can make a single drop of dye, you need the right crafting stations and a stock of key items. At minimum, that means a Cooking Pot and a Mortar and Pestle. Here’s a full breakdown of the equipment, the items, and what each one requires.

Equipment to Make Dye

• Cooking Pot (early game): requires a level 8 engram and an unlocked campfire. Craft one using 75x Stone, 15x Thatch, 10x Wood, and 5x Flint.

• Industrial Cooker (late game): requires a level 89 engram and an unlocked Cooking Pot. Craft one using 300x Polymer, Organic Polymer, or Corrupted Nodule; 1,800x Metal Ingot or Scrap Metal Ingot; 450x Cementing Paste or Achatina Paste; and 300x Oil.
• Polymer comes from a Fabricator, made with Obsidian and Cementing Paste or Achatina Paste.
• Organic Polymer drops from killing Kairuku, Deathworm, Mantis, Hesperornis, and Karkinos.
• Corrupted Nodule drops from corrupted creatures in the Extinction DLC.
• Metal Ingot or Scrap Metal Ingot comes from a Forge, using mined metal and fuel.
• Cementing Paste is made from Chitin or Keratin and Stone in a Mortar and Pestle. Achatina Paste drops randomly from wild and tamed Achatina.
• Oil comes from dark stones near ocean oil patches and above-water oil deposits, harvested with a pickaxe. A tamed Dung Beetle can also produce oil.

• Mortar and Pestle: requires a level 6 engram. Craft one using 65x Stone and 15x Hide.

Items to Craft Dye

• A water container holding 25% or more water: a Waterskin, Water Jar, or Canteen, or an Industrial Cooker connected directly to a water source.
• Waterskin: a level 3 engram, crafted with 4x Hide and 12x Fiber.
• Water Jar: a level 26 engram, crafted with 7x Cementing Paste or Achatina Paste, 5x Hide, and 2x Crystal or Primal Crystal.
• Canteen: crafted in a Fabricator using 10x Polymer, Organic Polymer, or Corrupted Nodule; 2x Hide; 4x Cementing Paste or Achatina Paste; and 1x Metal Ingot.
• 2x Charcoal, 1x Gunpowder, or 1x Sparkpowder, depending on the dye color you’re making.
• Charcoal comes from burning wood or fungal wood in a campfire, torch, cooker, or fireplace.
• Sparkpowder comes from grinding Flint with Stone in a Mortar and Pestle.
• Gunpowder comes from grinding Sparkpowder and Charcoal in a Mortar and Pestle.
• A set amount of berries, which varies by the dye color. Check the recipe chart below for exact quantities.

The Full ARK Dye Recipe Chart

Every dye in ARK: Survival Evolved uses a different mix of berries plus charcoal, gunpowder, or sparkpowder. Use the chart below for the exact recipe and in-game color of each dye.

How to Make Dye in Bulk

Running an ARK: Survival Evolved server for a group usually means needing a lot of dye in a lot of colors. An Industrial Cooker makes that possible in a single batch, once you’ve unlocked one. Fill an Industrial Cooker with the following:

• 6 stacks of each berry type: Amarberry, Azulberry, Tintoberry, Narcoberry, and Stimberry.
• Plenty of water. Irrigation is recommended.
• Gasoline to power the Industrial Cooker: made by combining 6x Oil and 5x Hide in a Refining Forge or Industrial Forge. One Gasoline provides 15 minutes of cooking time.
• 1 stack each of Charcoal, Gunpowder, and Sparkpowder.

Place all of these items in the Industrial Cooker together. Wait until 24 of the Sparkpowder is used, then remove it. Wait until 30 of the Gunpowder is used, then remove that too. Let the remaining Charcoal finish cooking. This produces 30 Black, Tan, and Tangerine dyes, 40 White dyes, and 15 dyes of every other color.

How to Use Dye in ARK

With your dye crafted, you’re ready to put it to work. Here’s how to color your gear, your structures, and, on ARK: Mobile, your tamed creatures.

Coloring Armor, Weapons, and Saddles

Customizing your character, your armor, your weapons, and any saddles on your tames starts with a simple drag and drop. Drag a dye directly onto the item, and it takes on that color right away.

Painting Structures with the Paintbrush and Spray Painter

Two tools let you paint structures: the paintbrush and the spray painter. The paintbrush is faster to unlock, needing only a small amount of wood, hide, and thatch, plus a level 9 engram. It’s less efficient than a spray painter, but it gets you painting sooner.

The spray painter takes longer to reach. Crafting one requires a level 53 engram, a Fabricator, and a large amount of metal ingot, polymer, crystal, cementing paste, oil, and hide. Once built, it lets you set which region of a structure to paint using a key or button combination, shown in the chart below.

To use either tool, drag a dye onto the paintbrush or spray painter. Each application then gives you 10 charges, enough to color up to 10 regions across your structures.

Coloring Tamed Dinosaurs (ARK: Mobile Only)

This feature is available only on ARK: Mobile and ARK: Mobile game servers. Grind Ancient Amber (a scarce resource you can find or purchase in-game) in a Mortar and Pestle to create Potent Dust.

Drag a dye onto the Potent Dust to color it. If you’ve made more than one batch, split it into stacks first, since Potent Dust is a valuable resource. Open your tamed creature’s inventory, place the colored Potent Dust inside, then select Remote Use Item to apply the color. Creatures with multiple color regions may need several batches of colored Potent Dust to fully cover them.

Color Your ARK World!

Now you’ve got the equipment, the ingredients, and the full recipe chart for every dye in ARK: Survival Evolved. Whether you’re painting your base to look like a fortress or turning your favorite tame a brand-new color, the choice is yours! Gather your friends, stock up on berries, and start splashing color across your ARK: Survival Evolved world. 🎨