Ark: Survival Evolved is a survival game. Like many in its genre, players have to scrounge for food, water, and resources, while avoiding Ark's deadly prehistoric wildlife, all while discovering the secrets of their surroundings.

Most of the player's crafting will be dedicated to purely pragmatic ends, such as weapons, shelter, and fuel for Ark's ever-advancing tech tree. But that doesn't mean there's no time for supposedly frivolous things, like self-expression.

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When players are finally in a comfortable spot to experiment, Ark: Survival Evolved gives players multiple tools to customize their surroundings. A key item type for this customization is dye.

Dye in Ark: Survival Evolved

Dye, also known in-game as coloring, can be applied to many things: from the player's body to the bodies of tamed animals, to the player's shelters, to Ark: Survival Evolved's various weapons. There are 25 different colors of dye, so the chromatically minded player has plenty of options.

In order to make coloring, players need a cooker, either a cooking pot or an industrial cooker. The cooking pot will be more readily accessible early on and can be crafted with stone, thatch, wood, and flint. They also need a campfire and fuel to use it.

Recipe for Dying in Ark

Once the player has a cooker, the recipe for coloring is fairly simple. They need a form of water, such as a waterskin or water jar, a form of burning material, namely charcoal, gunpowder, or sparkpowder, and berries to determine color.

There are 5 types of berries: amarberry, azulberry, tintoberry, narcoberry, and stimberry. Players need a minimum of 15 berries for simpler colors, and 18 berries for more complex colors. 15 berry colors can only be made with charcoal, while 18 berry colors can only be made with gunpowder or sparkpowder. Players make different colors by either choosing all of one type of berry or experimenting with mixtures.

A good place to gather berries is Ark's Herbivore Island. It has a good amount of resources and few enemies to interrupt the crafting process. Once they complete the cooking process, they get 5 units of dye.

Getting to Paint

Before a player can use their dye, they need painting equipment. This can either be the paintbrush or the spray painter. The former is easy to get, only requiring wood, hide, and thatch. The latter is more complicated, requiring the player to have a fabricator and have access to rarer items like crystal and polymer.

To use the paintbrush, players choose a color by dragging the dye onto the brush in the inventory menu. Once the color is chosen, they can wield it like an ineffective weapon, slapping paint with each swing.

Ark: Survival Evolved is available now for Android, iOS, PC, PS4, Stadia, Switch, and Xbox One.

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