Best Stats to Pick by Role - Ark: Survival Evolved

Your stats make up everything about your survival in Ark, so knowing which ones are best for the playstyle you’re going for is important early on. If you’re in a tribe you not only want to think about what types of stats you want, but what stats would benefit your tribe. For instance, if no one in your tribe has a high Oxygen stat, it can make gathering underwater materials more difficult.

Here are a few other examples of stat combinations you may want to go with, and the situations they are best at.

Scout – If you want to play as a scout, you can forego many of the other stats and focus primarily on Movement Speed and Stamina. After only a few levels you’ll be running much faster and for longer distances than players who put their early points into health or melee damage.

Tank – For tanky characters that plan on doing a lot of melee combat, the best attributes are Health, Fortitude, and Melee Damage. The health stat is pretty self-explanatory, the more points you put into it, the more health you have.
Chances are though you’ll run into creatures and players with tranquilizer darts/ attacks at which point you’ll want to have at least several points in Fortitude to increase your resistance to Torpor effects (and also weather effects).
Melee damage increases the damage you do with spears and other hand held weapons by a percentage. You only really need to get around 300% to be effective. Land Harvester – If you prefer the peaceful life of collecting and harvesting materials then you’ll want these stats: Melee Damage, Weight and Stamina. The Melee Damage may sound weird, but it actually increases the amount of resources you gather per hit.
Adding points to weight allows you to carry more before having to head back to base to unload, and stamina will help you whack away at trees and rocks for longer without having to take a break. Ocean Harvester – Ocean harvesters will want to invest in the same stats as the land harvester, but they’ll also want to prioritize Oxygen. Having a higher Oxygen rating not only increases the amount of time you can stay underwater without a breath, it also allows you to swim faster. Builder – Not a lot of players opt to go for the specialized builder because it doesn’t really do anything for your character other than being able to craft faster. The only stat you’ll concern yourself with is Crafting Speed, which as you may have guessed, increases the speed at which you craft.
Other stats that can be helpful to the crafter are Weight, so you can carry more materials, and Melee Damage so you can gather any materials you need more quickly.

For all of the above classes there are caps to the amount of one stats you’ll want to invest in. For example, Stamina is great for every class, but investing more than 200 is usually a waste than can be spent elsewhere.

Health is another one that because less useful the more you put in (for humans not dinos), because your armor will be providing most of your protection alter on. Look to increase your health to at least 200, but going with more won’t be detrimental at all.

Melee Damage does great things for gathering and hand held weapon damage, but doesn’t help your ranged combat at all. If you want to go with a ranged character you might want to put your points into Movement speed instead.

An Oxygen level of at least 200 will allow you to swim to the deepest depths for long enough to gather a decent amount of materials there.

Fortitude is another late game stat that comes in handy when you start trekking into caves. Caves are harsh environments whose cold will kill you in minutes. You’ll need at least 5 points in Fortitude to survive even the mildest cave.