How to Display FPS on Ark Survival Ascended

Right now Ark Survival Ascended is not well optimized and to help you understand what effects your ASA graphics settings are actually doing, you can tell the game to display the fps with console commands.

Ark Survival Ascended in-game FPS display counter

To enter a command on pc hit the tilde key (~), which is in the key above the tab and to the left of the 1 key.  Then type Stat FPS and hit enter.  The fps will now be displayed on the right side of the ASA screen.  To get the fps to stop displaying simply type the command again.  It will also stop displaying when you log out, and it will have to be reentered every time you start the game. The same command works for ASE.

If you are on pc and want a less obtrusive frame counter overlay, that is always there and can do it through your Steam account.  

Steam overlay FPS display.

Go to the Steam app.  At the top steam drop down menu go into Steam Settings.  From there go to the In Game menue and turn on the In-game FPS counter.  You can change what part of the screen you want the counter to be in.  This will now be in all your Steam games when you play.  

Steam App menu to add FPS counter overlay.

I'm Celebrating 25,000 YouTube Subscribers

 I (Fat Frog's Swamp) am rapidly approaching 25,000 subscribers on YouTube, and I am celebrating with a 25,000-second (6.9 hours) YouTube live stream.  I hope you can join me.  Please stop by and say hello.  The stream will be Sunday,  April 30, starting at 10:00 am EST.   

I should hit that number by that day, or maybe during the stream, which would be really cool.

Starting in May, I will be experimenting with streaming on both Twitch and YouTube simultaneously, so if you prefer to watch on Twitch follow me at https://www.twitch.tv/fatfrogsswamp

As always, thanks for all your support!

Fat Frog

How to get Polymer in Ark Survival Evolved

 To get polymer in Ark Survival Evolved, you can either make polymer, or harvest organic polymer.  To make regular polymer, you will need to be level 48, learn the engram, and have a fabricator.  One polymer is crafted with 2 obsidian, and 2 cementing paste.  Once those resources are in the fabricator, you will need to have gasoline in it, and turn it on.  If your inventory is set up into folders, you will find polymer in the composite folder.

Organic Polymer can be substituted one for one with regular polymer when crafting.  It can be collected by harvesting the corpses from a number of creatures including kairuku (penguins), hesperonis, mantis, and karkinos.  A club is best to use when harvesting organic polymer by hand.  A leveled-up moshcops is great for harvesting with a dino, and is probably the best way to go.  The problem with organic polymer is that is spoils fairly quickly, and it only stacks to 20.  Sometimes you can have a great blueprint and not be able to get enough organic polymer into the crafting station to craft the item.  

Organic polymer (left) and regular polymer (right) in Ark Survival Evolved inventory.

Ragnarok Vegie Locations

Ragnarok was the first map to offer up free vegetables in Ark Survival Evolved.  These vegetables growing in the Highlands of Ragnarok are great for early taming of herbivores, and a good snack.  Ragnarok only has two kind of vegetables though, Savoroot and Rockarrot.  If you want the other two, you will have to grow them yourself.  To collect the wild ones, just pick them by hand.  

Ragnarok Veg Location

Lat Lon

Savoroot and Rockarrot

19.8   80.5

19.9   82.9

Ragnarok Savoroot 

Savoroot

17.0   74.9

22.7   85.5

24.6   85.3

24.4   85.5

22.8   85.6

20.1   84.8

21.7   75.1

22.0   73.6

16.7   68.5

Ragnarok Rockarrot

Rockarrot

18.1   79.2

24.8   78.6

24.0   76.3

21.8   73.6

21.3   72.2

19.1   73.3

16.9   74.5

14.8   75.3

24.8   82.7

23.6   84.0

22.1   84.5

20.9   83.4

19.9   84.4

21.2   76.7

19.9   79.1

Ragnarok Clay Locations

The Ragnarok map of Ark Survival Evolved has clay available that can be collected by had the same way stones and berries are picked up.  Clay comes in two different visual forms, a pile of clay and brown rocks. 

Clay  Coordinates on Ragnarok

Lat and Lon

Beaver area

25.0   42.7

River

26.0   47.1

Central Valley

36.4   50.0

38.8   49.1

40.5   45.1

36.4   46.5

*37.0   40.5

*39.7   44.7

*42.5   46.2

*41.8   47.7

Swamp

45.9   19.2

*locations not shown in video

General clay location on Ragnarok map.

Ragnarok Clay Rock

Ragnarok Clay Lump

Best Way to Tame a Tapejara in Ark

When you first encounter a Tapejara in Ark Survival Evolved, you realize that these flying reptiles are the most skittish creatures in the game.  Luckily Tapejara can be ensnared by bolas, the problem is getting close enough to one.  Sometimes you can get lucky and surprise one, or scare it into the side of a cliff where it will get stuck, but the following method works much better.  

One cool mechanic in Ark is when you eat a rare flower. Eating a rare flower near almost any creature will cause them to aggro on you.  This even works with completely passive creatures like dodos, Pteranodons, parasaurs etc. Put some rare flowers in your hot bar, get fairly close to a Tapejar, then eat a rare flower.  The Tapejare will turn on you an attack for a short duration of time.   When it does that you can hit it with a bola and start knocking it out with crossbow, longneck rifle, or whatever you have.  A harpoon launcher with a net projectile will also work, but I like the bola because there can be a lot of other creatures that attack you at the same time, and many can be quickly with a bola, which are cheap and faster to use then the net.  Before all of this check for dinos that you are not going to be able to handle, like brontos, for example, because they are going to end your Tapejara taming for sure. The bola trap is only going to hold for a minute, and there is a cool-down before you can use another one on the same creature.

If you find a high-level Tapejar you may want to lure it to a trap, this is probably going to take a number of rare flowers, and you are bound to get hurt doing it.  I just tame them out in the open, you risk a lot that way too.  Good luck taming a Tapejar.  They are really cool creatures, and are probably the best for flying around with a friend.  

How to Power an Air Conditioner in Ark

 An air conditioner is powered like most other electrical stations in Ark Survival Evolved.  Everything needed is crafted in a fabricator.  At the least you will need is an electrical generator, a vertical cable, an outlet, and gasoline.  Turn on the generator and snap the power cable to the generator.  If the cable is powered, the wires that wrap around the cable will turn yellow. Now place an outlet on the end of the cable.  If the outlet is powered it will shoot sparks.  With that simple set up, you are no ready to place the Air conditioner within three foundations of the outlet.  You will know the air conditioner is powered by the green lights on its base.