Campfire

Fire for cooking, warmth and light

The Campfire is a cooking structure in ARK: Survival Evolved. Once lit it also warms you and lights up the area around it, and the game sums up all three jobs: "Perfect for cooking meat, staying warm, and providing light."

Building and lighting one

The engram costs 3 engram points at level 2. A campfire is crafted in the inventory in 5 seconds for 3.5 XP from 16 Stone, 12 Thatch, 2 Wood (or Fungal Wood) and 1 Flint. Fuel goes into its inventory first, for example Sparkpowder, Wood or Thatch. Then hold the Use button (E) and pick the option from the radial menu, which also lets you open the inventory or destroy the fire.

What it cooks

The wiki lists Cooked Meat, Cooked Prime Meat, Cooked Fish Meat, Cooked Prime Fish Meat, Cooked Lamb Chop and Charcoal as its products. Raw Meat is done in 20 seconds, Raw Mutton in roughly 60, and several kinds of meat can cook in the same burn cycle.

Heat and insulation

Standing close gives up to +100 hypothermal and -50 hyperthermal insulation, and the bonus shrinks with distance. Because the fire is so small, the wiki notes that the full value is hard to get without standing in the flames. A wall that touches or overlaps the campfire removes the warming effect.

Storage, water and damage

• Spare storage: early in the game you can park extra Wood or Thatch inside to avoid being overloaded, as long as the fire is out; a burning campfire consumes all the fuel it holds.
• Water: it can be placed underwater but not lit there, and a lit fire on a platform saddle soon burns out if it goes under the surface.
• Durability: it counts as a thatch structure, so anything but non-explosive ranged attacks can hurt it.
• As a weapon: a creature boxed into a small pile of structures takes high damage from it, enough to kill even large creatures such as Managarmrs, though the wiki does not advise relying on it.

Stack size and crates

A campfire weighs 4 and up to 3 fit in one stack, which weighs 12 when full. 51 crate types can contain one, including Aberration White and Genesis Blue. Our records list it on 9 maps, among them The Island, Scorched Earth, Aberration and Valguero.