I'll be working on changing all my videos to text for this guides purpose. So for those of you that prefer scanning though text rather than scanning through video do not fret!!! It is on the way!!!

Hey ppls!!! This is my first time writing a guide so please bear with me :) I will be writing these guides according to the points I go over in the video. Somethings may seem out of place, but I will try my best to make it structurally sound and get the meaties points to you.

To begin, the reason I created these points was to be able to get basic principles of the game out to new players of the game. The free version of SotF comes much later in the lifespan of ARK and its understandable that people may be confused about the basic points of survival in the game. Before this some people have had over 2000 hours worth of gameplay and it took maybe 500 of those to get a true understanding of terrain, wild survival, and PvP concepts. With this portion of the guide we will be going over points you should know before even touching SotF. Such as simple gathering, what those objects you gather do, and a general explination of SotF's early game.

The first time you spawn in, you must attempt to gather to attain the foundation to move onto a higher tier of craftable equipment.

As a note, that will be reiterated later, know that...

• Trees have WOOD and THATCH
  
• Stones have FLINT, STONE and METAL
  
• Bushes have BERRIES and FIBER
  
• Animals have HIDE, RAW MEAT, PRIME MEAT and CHITIN (this is of course dependant on the animal)

Your first gather tool will be your fists.
---- Being unarmed allows you to punch trees for gathering a good amount of THATCH and a miniscule amount of WOOD
----Being unarmed also allows you to press E, which will let you pick at Bushes and little STONES on the ground. When you pick up little stones on the ground you will attain STONE. When you pick at bushes you will gain BERRIES and FIBER.

At the beginning punch a tree until you receive, the minimum, of 1 WOOD and 10 THATCH. Once you've done this, Press E to pick up at least 1 STONE of the ground.

Check your crafting menu and you should be able to make your second gathering tool,
the Stone Pick
----The stone pick allows you to hit trees with more effectiveness, allowing you to recieve an average amount of THATCH, and a small amount of WOOD
----The pick also allows you to now hit big stones all across the island. Hitting rocks with the stone pick gains you a good amount of FLINT and a small amount of ROCKS. It even gets you a miniscule amount of METAL.

Once you make your pick, equip it and start slapping away at rocks. Attempt to gather 1 FLINT, 1 WOOD, and 10 THATCH with your new item. This should be quick and easy.

Gathering these things allows you to craft your Third gathering tool, the Stone Hatchet
----The stone hatchet allows you to gather an average amount of WOOD and a miniscule amount of THATCH from trees. (Exact opposite to stone pick)
----You can even gather a small amount of STONE from stones with the hatchet, but this is ineffecient if there are rocks to pickoff the ground.

Now you have your first two tools for gathering, to reiterate what we've learned.
-----Stone Pick gets you more THATCH and FLINT from the respective resources
-----Stone Hatchet gets you more WOOD and STONE in consideration to stone pick

Now that we know this we must consider the following, since this is Survival of the Fittest, you won't be able to easily gather these things without being poked in the butt :)
-----When gathering remember that the resources you gather from are destructable
-----When you hit a tree so many times, it falls down, when you pick a bush to much it breaks apart, and the worst of all, when you hit a big stone to much IT EXPLODES (visually....).
-----Always try not to break the resources you gather from, THERE ARE TONS OF THEM, gather a bit from one rock an then move on to the next. Breaking them will alert players that are look for some easy early experience points, or the chance to knock out the competition
-----Another thing you can do it simply exhaust all the smaller resources respectively. There are very small palm trees to gather from and some very small stone clusters that will make a unnoticable explosion when they are exhausted. If you feel like going gather crazy, gather from those.

Moving on, your next step in gathering will come from wild animals rather than the wild flora.
Consider killing something small, like a dilo, for some easy resources or something average like a raptor for a little more resources than something small would have given you.

To kill these animals you must make yourself either a Spear, or later on a Bow and some Stone Arrows. These can easily be made by the initial gather tools you have aquired.

Once you have taken down the animal you are now able to gather 2 more different resources (in some cases 4 more different resources but that is unnecessary in this guide.)
----Hitting the dead dinos body with a stone pick will give you more RAW MEAT.
----Hitting it with a Hatchet will give you more HIDE
***(In special cases which you may need later, a Spear gives you more PRIME MEAT from certain animals)***

You have now gathered some of the most basic materials on the island!!!!!! Lets consider what we have.

• STONE allows you to make certain tools early game
  
• WOOD is very necessary for making your first Spears and Bow, plus they are need for your tools and the foundation for your base
  
• THATCH is needed by almost everything early game from tools, to arrows, even cloth armor.
  
• FLINT is also very necessary for your early damage items like spears and arrows.
  
• RAW MEAT is necessary for feeding once you cook it, or for feeding easier tames.
  
• FIBER is also a general resource used for almost everything early game (gathered from bushes)
  
• HIDE to make your very necessary Hide armor, and the eventual necessary resource for mid-game.
  
• METAL will be used in later stages of the game

Now we go to BERRIES...

BERRIES come in 6 colors Blue, Yellow, Red, Black, White, and Purple

• To put it plainly, BLACK AND WHITE BERRIES, are NO-NO colors when it comes to your hunger
  
• The black narcoberry increases torpor (or sleepiness) DONT EAT THESE, use these to keep dinos or, for some whatever reason, enemies asleep. These are also used to make tranquilizer arrows to knock out dinos or, again for some weird reason, people.
  
• The white stimeberries increase your lost stamina, BUT dramatically decrease your hydration (or water). These are excellent for getting yourself out of a jam if you have to sprint for a long amount of time. Be warned, having no water hurts you, but dying hurts you to so if you need to spam these in a moment of desperation then you have my permission little buddy. [Edit] ALSO, stimberries descrease your torpor (or sleepiness).
  
• The Blue, Yellow, Red, and Purple berries are excellent for eating if you having nothing else to munch on, I highly suggest only eating Blue, Yellow and Red since Purples are excellent for taming. BERRIES of these kind will increase your food and water slightly.

YAY!!! Were almost done with the core basics, of early game, of ARK, of the guide, of everything....

You should now know all early game gathering materials, foods and items
(I RAN OUT OF SPACE!!!!! D: I will continue discussion on the next part for a descriptive look on early game weapons like Spear and Bow plus move on to the rest of the guide

If you would like to see a (crappy) visual what this guide was inspired from check out my video on this below. (Sorry for the quality, I promise it gets better as we get to the next episodes, I just didn't think it would catch on :P )

In this video we will go over the general pvp aspect of the game. Initially in the previous video you were taught the basics of the game, now you must own those aspects and push them forward into a hostile enviorment that want to kill you :P .

We will go over how you should be playing overall as you intitially get off the platform. We will also go over some general combat tips that I thought of on the stop that may definitely help you in the middle of a fight. Last but definitely not the least of this video, we will go over a huge beginner discussion on taming. How to tame, what the dino is, what it needs to tame, ect....

In this video we will go over tons of points brought up by qt. We will go over the general idea of what you base size should be as well as talking about map awareness and the usefulness of you map. With that we will also go over how far out you should roam in an FFA game.

After that we will go over what stats do and what stats you should choose for the specific situation. Then, we will have a go at Tranq mechanics and how the torpor is calculated. This is used to tie into the discussion over whether or not you should spam your arrows and whether or not you should pull the bow all the way when you shoot. With the Tranq portion we will go over dino aggression as a secondary tie in as a helpful tip for players.