Statistics or Attributes as their also called, are an extremely important part of your Ark: Survival Evolved character. They dictate everything from your characters strength to their health, and even how much they can carry. Each level you’ll have the option of choosing one area to put more points into, which means you can specialize your survivor exactly to your playstyle. Want to be a warrior? Put more points into health and melee attack bonus. Want to be a gatherer and craftsman? Beef up your crafting speed and weight so you can carry more.

Unfortunately it can be a bit confusing as to which stats do what, which is why we’ve compiled the complete list of attributes and what they do.

Health – This one’s pretty self-explanatory. Each time you increase this attribute your total health will increase by 10. A good stat for anyone, always recommended to get a few bumps to your health early in the game.

Stamina – How often you can perform an action. Running, harvesting materials (wood, rock), attacking and swimming all use Stamina. Having more stamina means you can perform actions for longer periods of time. Another good stat to increase regardless of which build you’re going for.

Oxygen – If you love swimming and being in the water this is the stat for you. Putting a point into Oxygen will increase the amount of time you can stay underwater and your swim speed. Not really recommended unless you live on an island, or are constantly wanting to fight sharks.

Food – When your food runs out you will start to starve. Each point into the Food stat increases your total food meter by ten. A higher max food stat will allow you to go longer without eating, but also means you will need more food to be completely full.

Water – The exact same as the food stat only for water. Put points here if you want to increase the maximum amount of water you can hold.

Weight – Weight dictates the amount of inventory you can carry. Things like berries cost very little weight, while rocks will quickly have your overburdened which decreases your movement speed and sucks up your stamina. Each point into Weight will increase your max carrying capacity by 10. Perfect for those material farmers out there.

Melee Damage – Melee damage can be thought of as your swing power. It not only increases the amount of damage you do with hand help weapons like the spear, it also increases your effectiveness with tools like the axe and pickaxe, gathering more materials each swing.

Ranged weapons such as the slingshot are not affected by the melee damage stat.

Movement Speed – Every point you put into movement speed will increase your characters walk/ run by approximately 2%. In addition to that you will also receive a small boost to your swim speed. Not really a useful stat considering you should be riding dinos which are much faster.

Fortitude – Fortitude is how well you tolerate environmental conditions such as hot or cold, and how well you resist unconsciousness. You initially start out with a Fortitude of 0, so you may want to consider at least one point into this category, but not much more unless you’ve maxed out everything else you want to.

Crafting Speed – Put points here to increase the rate at which you craft items. Each time you up this stat your crafting speed goes up by ten.

Torpor – An interesting stat, a players Torpor is their level of consciousness, with 0 being fully with it and your max (affected by fortitude) completely unconscious).

Armor – Armor decreases the amount of damage you take from physical attacks. You can’t put points into armor, the only way you can get it is by equipping clothing or higher level armor in your armor slots. Armor is essential if you are going to be PvPing or taking on larger dinosaurs.