Best base designs in ARK: Survival Ascended

The latest installment to the ARK series delivers a new world filled with more creatures and refined gameplay, and it also lets me design and create impenetrable fortresses. Here are the best base designs in ARK: Survival Ascended that will help you ward off enemies and wildlife.

Top 10 bases in ARK: Survival Ascended

These base designs offer protection and sustainability, giving easy access to food and water sources while providing shelter in an attack. Some of these base designs will take more skill and perseverance to create, but they're more than worth the effort.

1. Lakehouse base

This base design offers beautiful scenery and puts some distance between you and the land predators. Start by putting down beams and placing wooden pillars as a foundation. Use the wood ceilings to make the floor, and enclose the interior using wood walls and a few wood windows to mix it up. Finish it off with the wooden roof, surround the base with wooden rails, and create a wood hatch to serve as an entrance to the base. Functional, yet stylish!

2. Tower base

This excellent starter base can also serve as a storage facility to stock up on resources. The tower base is best placed deep in the wood biome, and you'll need lots of wood to create wooden pillars, walls, and ceilings.

Once you've placed the foundations of wooden pillars, surround the tower with staircases, and keep building upwards. Add wooden triangle ceilings facing outwards to expand the top floor, and use them as floorboards afterward. Finally, add railings and wooden pillars, and close it off with a thatch roof.

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3. Jungle base

Creating a starter base in the jungle will give you easy access to resources, especially if you place it in the center of the map. Stock up on wood to create thatch building materials, and use wooden boxes as a foundation. Place wooden walls, doors, and windows, close it off with a thatch roof for variety, and you're all done! You can expand the base by building a dinosaur pen next to it or add wooden pillars to give the base a more aesthetically pleasing exterior.

4. Wood-stone base

This starter base can be placed virtually anywhere without standing out too much, and you won't need too much stone and wood to build it. Place a stone foundation, surround it with wooden ceilings, and add wooden rails and walls. Decorate the corners and outlines with wooden pillars, build a thatch roof, and decorate the interior to your liking.

5.Riverside base

For this base, you'll need to find a coastline and place the foundations at its highest point. Start off by placing wooden foundations and use wooden ceilings to extend the floor on three sides. Use flipped wooden walls to close the interior, and add windows and doors to your liking. Place a wooden staircase at the entrance, a wood quarter ceiling above the windows, and cover it with two thatch ceilings. Use wooden triangle ceilings to outline the roof, and use the thatch ceilings again to close to the roof.

6. Waterfront base

The waterfront makes for an excellent base location, and you can use the water for cooling down. The water also provides a wealth of resources, and you can tame dinosaurs and use them for transport. Place the stone foundation and add a few wood foundations to mix it up. Next, wall it off using wooden walls, decorate them with pillars, and add windows to let sunlight in. Create a roof using thatch ceilings, and voila!

7. Treehouse base

Treehouses make for the coolest-looking bases, and this one is no exception! To build a foundation for the treehouse base, you'll need to place beams and pillars perpendicular to the tree trunk and use ceilings as floorboards. Use stone to close off the interior, and use greenhouse walls as windows. Finally, build a roof using stone stairs, with the greenhouse walls placed in the center for maximum illumination.

8. Raft base

Like the waterfront base, the raft base can serve as a great stronghold with even better scenery, all while being mobile. Place the stone foundation on top of the wooden boat so that the rudder is still accessible, and seal it off with stone walls, doors, and windows. Build a thatch roof for good measure, and you'll have a fully floatable raft house, letting you switch locations wherever the river flows.

Related: How to make Cementing Paste in ARK Survival Ascended

9. Titanosaur platform base

Yes, it's a base built on the back of titanosaur, undoubtedly inspired by The Wandering Village. To start off, you'll need to tame a titanosaur and place it on flat ground. Place a metal foundation on top of it, and try to align the walls by waiting for the titanosaur to breathe out before placing them. From that point on, the world is your oyster—or, in this case, the titanosaur. This is not the most practical base, and it will strain your PC quite a lot, but if you can pull it off, I say go for it.

10. Metal base

A fully metal base makes for a truly impregnable fortress, consisting of metal and metal triangle foundations, ceilings, railings, and pillars. This one is the easiest to make since it requires only one material type, but it looks and feels truly powerful. The top roof can serve as a wyvern pen from which you can fly off in style, and the balcony works great as a regular land dinosaur pen.

Want to learn more about ARK: Survival Ascended? Check out Best way to farm Metal Nodes in ARK Survival Ascended on Pro Game Guides.