ARK Boats & Ships — Every Watercraft, Explained

The full roster as of Genesis Ascended. Two you can build from the base game, two that need the paid Tides of Fortune pack, and one holdover we can't confirm made the jump from Survival Evolved.

*Canoe numbers are from its Survival Evolved wiki entry; the page doesn't list it as present in Ascended, so treat it as absent until the wiki says otherwise. The Zeppelin (Bob's Tall Tales, Aberration) technically floats too — just over the water instead of on it, which is cheating for a boats guide.

Level 16, 11 engram points, crafted straight from your inventory: 250 Wood (Fungal Wood works), 125 Fiber, 75 Hide. Twenty thousand health, counted as wood-tier for damage purposes.

The raft's real job is being a mobile base. It takes up to 88 structures on a 9×9 foundation footprint (corners cut off), built up to 6 walls high above deck — and, oddly, up to 80 walls below it, which is how people build underwater raft bases. Total carry weight for everything standing on it: 1,800.

Two quirks to plan around: the raft cannot reverse — commit to your docking angle — and everything about it smells delicious to a certain fish (see below).

Level 57, 45 engram points, Fabricator (or Tek Replicator / Exo-Mek): 250 Wood · 1,200 Metal Ingot · 200 Hide · 180 Fiber · 150 Obsidian · 400 Polymer · 60 Black Pearl. It's a proper mid-game investment.

What you get for it: 32,000 health, a bigger 13×13 build platform holding 135 structures up to 8 walls high, an engine that runs on Gasoline (one fuel slot; the wiki doesn't publish a consumption rate), and — luxury of luxuries — reverse.

It's also the first watercraft that gives you a fighting chance against the ocean's raft-recycling program: a Motorboat can outmaneuver a normal Leedsichthys. An Alpha Leedsichthys keeps up, though. Some problems you outrun; some you route around.

The Leedsichthys is passive toward nearly everything in the ocean — except your raft, which it treats as a personal insult.

The wiki's own wording: it will "stop at nothing to take down any raft in open water" — and that includes rafts fully encased in stone or metal. Armor doesn't help. Speed doesn't either: a Wooden Raft is not fast enough to outrun one.

Your actual options: hug the shallows where it can't follow, upgrade to a Motorboat and outmaneuver it, or — the deep-lore move — toss Giant Bee Honey into the water, which can sometimes pacify one temporarily while you leave. The wiki lists Leedsichthys as present in Ascended; exactly which ASA maps it patrols isn't spelled out in prose, so scout your own ocean before betting a base on it.

Genesis Ascended's launch patch added "wind-driven sailing and naval combat" plus Ship Skill progression — and the Tides of Fortune pack ($19.99, half of Bob's True Tales) supplies the two ships themselves.

What the patch notes commit to, verbatim: the Sloop is "a fast, highly maneuverable sailing vessel designed for exploration, scouting, and hit-and-run naval combat"; the Brigantine is "a versatile medium-sized sailing ship offering a balance of speed, durability and firepower." Both are built through the new Shipyard structure — official description, in full: "Construct, repair, and dock sailing ships." Naval ammo comes in three flavors: Reinforced, Incendiary, and Corrosive Ship Cannonballs.

Ownership gating is player-side, not server-side: "Players who do not own Bob's True Tales can use items from the DLC, but are unable to learn their associated engrams." So a friend's Brigantine can carry you just fine — you just can't build your own. Fittingly, the Parrot can sniff out enemy player ships, and the ocean now spawns hostile Pirate NPCs to give the cannons something to talk to.

All of these live in GameUserSettings.ini under [ServerSettings]. The first is the classic raft-building lever; the last three shipped with Genesis Ascended (89.24).

All three Genesis keys are already in our GameUserSettings.ini generator (Vessels & Ships section), and the full launch-line walkthrough lives in the Genesis Ascended dedicated server guide.