How To Make Dye in ARK: Survival Evolved

INTRODUCTION TO HOW TO MAKE DYE IN ARK

Adventuring in ARK brings about many unique adventures as you cross rushing rivers, climb through dense caves, gather important resources, and build a shelter. Building a shelter is an important stepping stone not only to survival but to opening creativity. In ARK, creativity is everywhere with the ability to create and customize structures and homes with furniture, equipment, and even a dash of color. Color is by far one of the most sought-after customization features due to what it can offer ARK players to enhance their journey.

Color is used for multiple purposes in ARK including coloring armor, weapons, saddles, and painting structures and furniture. To make Dye in ARK, it’ll take several pieces of equipment, multiple items, and a variety of berries. Join us on a great ARK adventure as we learn how to gather everything necessary and create colorful dyes to customize your ARK server!

GETTING STARTED WITH DYE IN ARK

REQUIREMENTS TO MAKE DYE IN ARK

To begin, you will need to have all of the proper equipment and items to create dye in ARK: SE. When getting the equipment to make dye, at the minimum you will need a Cooking Pot and a Mortar and Pestle. Once you have the equipment, a variety of resources to make the dye including berries are necessary. Below you’ll find an outline of all of the equipment, how you can make it, the items you will need, and how to make dye in ARK for every color.

EQUIPMENT TO MAKE THE DYE

• Cooking Pot or Industrial Cooker
  • Cooking Pot (early game)
    

     

    • Requires level 8 engram and campfire to be unlocked.
    • 75x Stone | Gathered by using a pickaxe on rocks to harvest stone.
    • 15x Thatch | Found by punching or using a pick on trees.
    • 10x Wood | Harvested by using an axe on trees and logs.
    • 5x Flint | Collected by using a pickaxe on rocks.
  • Industrial Cooker (late game)
    

     

    • Requires level 89 engram and cooking pot to be unlocked.
    • 300x Polymer, Organic Polymer, or Corrupted Nodule
      • Polymer can be created in a Fabricator with Obsidian and Cementing Paste or Achatina Paste.
      • Organic Polymer is gathered from killing Kairuku, Deathworm, Mantis, Hesperornis, and Karkinos.
      • Corrupted Nodule is found by killing corrupted creatures in the ARK Extinction DLC.
    • 1800x Metal Ingot or Scrap Metal Ingot | Created using a Forge, Metal from mining, and fuel.
    • 450x Cementing Paste or Achatina Paste
      • Cementing Paste is a resource made from Chitin or Keratin with stone in a Mortar and Pestle.
      • Achatina Paste is a randomly dropped resource coming from wild and tamed Achatina.
    • 300x Oil | Found and harvested from dark stones near oil patches in the ocean and above-water oil deposits using a pickaxe. Some creatures such as the Dung Beetle can also be tamed to help produce oil.
  • Mortar and Pestle
    • Requires level 6 engram to be unlocked.
    • 65x Stone
    • 15x Hide | Gathered by harvesting corpses with a hatchet or pick.

REQUIRED ITEMS TO CRAFT DYE

• 1x Water Jar, Waterskin, or Canteen that contains 25% or more water. Alternatively, you can connect an Industrial Cooker to a water source.
  • Waterskin is unlocked as a level 3 engram, created in your inventory using 4x Hide and 12x Fiber.
  • Water Jar unlocks as a level 26 engram and is made using 7x Cementing Paste or Achantina Paste, 5x Hide, and 2x Crystal or Primal Crystal.
  • Canteen is a later game water collector. A Canteen is made 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.
  • Charcoal is created by burning wood or fungal wood in a campfire, torch, cooker, or fireplace.
  • Sparkpowder is a resource created by grinding flint with stone in a Mortar and Pestle.
  • Gunpowder is made by grinding spark powder and charcoal in a Mortar and Pestle.
• A specific amount of berries depending on the dye(s) being created.

HOW TO MAKE DYE IN ARK

TIPS TO MAKING DYE IN ARK

HOW TO MAKE DYE IN BULK ON ARK

When making your ARK game server as unique as possible, you will often need a large number of different colored dyes. While this method requires having an Industrial Cooker later in the game, it offers the advantage of creating batches of different colored dye. To make batches of colored dye, place the Industrial Cooker and fill it with the following:

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

Place all of these items inside the Industrial Cooker. Afterward, wait until 24 of the Sparkpowder has been used and remove that. Then wait until 30 of the Gunpowder has been used and then remove that. Finally, allow the remaining Charcoal to be used. This will create 30 black, tan, and tangerine dyes, 40 white dyes, and 15 dyes for all the remaining colors. With all of that dye, you’re now ready to customize your ARK: Survival Evolved server!

HOW TO USE DYE IN ARK: SURVIVAL EVOLVED

COLORING ARMOR, WEAPONS, AND SADDLES

A big part of customizing your ARK experience involves your character, armor, weapons, and any saddles you’ll be placing on your tamed dinosaur. To apply dye to any of those items, drag and drop a dye directly onto that item. Afterward, that item will be decked out in a new shade of color. The image below features the use of green dye on a cloth hat and what that looks like on an ARK character.

STRUCTURE PAINTBRUSH AND SPRAY PAINTER

Another powerful use for dye use paint’s favorite friends, the paintbrush and a spray painter. The paintbrush is much easier to create requiring only a small amount of wood, hide, and thatch with an engram that needs to be unlocked at level 9. Using the paintbrush is less efficient than a spray painter, but helps get you started much faster with coloring structures.

The spray painter, on the other hand, is a bit more efficient allowing for the use of key and button combinations to set which region you’d like to paint a structure. The spray painter is considered more mid to late-game in ARK due to the resources and tools required to create one. Crafting a spray painter in ARK requires unlocking a level 53 engram, a Fabricator, and a lot of metal ingot, polymer, crystal, cementing paste, oil, and hide. Once you have a spray painter, you’re ready to paint with speed and precision! To use the spray painter, you can follow the chart below containing each of the unique spray painter keys and button combinations.

To get started with using either tool, simply drag and drop the dye onto the paintbrush or spray painter. Using either tool with dye, you’ll then get 10 charges to color up to 10 regions on different structures.

COLOR YOUR TAMED DINOSAURS (ARK: MOBILE ONLY)

Available only in the ARK: Mobile edition of the game and on ARK: Mobile game servers, you can use dye to paint your tamed creatures. Potent Dust can only be made with Ancient Amber, a scarce resource that can be purchased and found in ARK Mobile. Grind up the Ancient Amber in a Mortar and Pestle and you’ll then get Potent Dust.

With the Potent Dust in your inventory, drag and drop your dye onto the Potent Dust to color it. If you have made multiple Potent Dust, we recommend splitting the dust into stacks before applying dye since it is a very valuable resource. Once colored, enter your tamed creature’s inventory and place the colored Potent Dust in there. Lastly, while still in the inventory click the “Remote Use Item” option. Your ARK tame will now be colored. Since creatures can have multiple regions to color, it can take multiple colored Potent Dust to fully color it.

SPLASH COLOR INTO YOUR ARK WORLD

Are you ”dye”ing to get started? Which colors will you choose and what will you paint first? Whether that’s painting your house to look like a medieval castle or designing a dinosaur to look like a cop car to chase down your friends, you’ll have the creative freedom to color any way you like! On any ARK map, bring along your friends and jump into the world to gather the tools and ingredients needed to make dye and a paintbrush on your ARK: Survival Evolved server.