Carving Knife

A melee tool for special harvests

The Carving Knife is a short bladed tool that our records list for ARK: Survival Ascended; the ARK Wiki ties it to Aquatica. The game describes it as "A short razor edge ideal for harvesting special cuts of meat." Its real value lies in a few harvests that no other tool can do, and it can also serve as a melee weapon for self-defence.

What only the knife can harvest

• Barnacles: the ARK Wiki names it as the single tool able to collect them.
• Takifugu corpses: it is the one tool that yields Raw Supreme Fish Meat from them, and carving a Takifugu body has a chance of dropping a Fertilized Takifugu Egg.
• Abyssal Creatures: only the knife can take Infected Meat and the other infected body parts from them.

The description promises special cuts of meat, but the wiki points out its limits: the knife raises the yield only of Raw Supreme Fish Meat and Abyssal Meat. For Raw Prime Meat or Raw Mutton it beats neither a Chainsaw nor a Metal Pick, and Megalodon corpses give it no Raw Prime Fish Meat at all.

Fighting with it

Swung like a Sword, the knife hits for 40 damage. That equals the Pike, though its reach is shorter. Every hit costs 0.3 of its 40 durability, which the wiki works out to 134 uses before the knife breaks. Compared with other metal-tier weapons kept for melee defence, the wiki suggests it might be simpler to repair, pointing out that its recipe uses unmelted Metal and is crafted in the player's inventory.

Unlocking and crafting

The engram opens at level 12 and costs 8 engram points. One knife takes:

• 5 Metal
• 12 Silica Pearls or Silicate
• 1 Wood

Crafting grants 4.2 crafting experience, and the knife weighs 2. The wiki stresses that no Hardened Steel Ingot is needed. Volcanic Supply Crates and Rift completion rewards can give higher-quality knives and their blueprints. The wiki gives 360.1 as the version that added it.