Element Shard

Element in small pieces

Element Shards are a resource in ARK: Survival Evolved and ARK: Survival Ascended that keeps a range of Tek devices running and goes into several Tek recipes. The game describes them as "A small chunk of strange, highly advanced material. It dissolves when transferred across ARKs."

What runs on shards

According to the ARK Wiki, shards power the Tek Cloning Chamber and the Tek Light, and the Tek Generator, Tek Turret and Tek Bow burn them as fuel. Tek armor and the other Tek weapons cannot take them as fuel; the turret and the bow are the only exceptions the wiki names.

Crafting and converting

In a Tek Replicator or an Exo-Mek, 1 Element is turned into 100 Element Shards in 5 seconds. Our records count 12 recipes in each game that take shards. One of them goes the other way: Element itself, at 100 shards per craft. Crafted Element Dust takes 1, and the others listed are Tek structures, for example the Sloped Tek Roof and the Tek Staircase at 50 each and the Tek Fence Support at 25.

Extinction also has an Unstable Element Shard, unlocked at level 55 and crafted from Element Dust. It carries a 2 minute spoil timer, after which it becomes a regular Element Shard.

Where shards are found

• Genesis: Part 1: red crystals along the trails up the volcano in the Volcano biome contain them. This can be very risky, above all if the volcano erupts. In the lunar biome, rock nodes can also yield shards, but only when mined on foot, using a metal pick or a mining drill; a Tek Stryder can speed up the work.
• Genesis: Part 2: in Rockwell's Proliferation the fleshy flora yields a small amount, as do the dormant Carniflora of the corrupted ring, along with Black Pearls and meat. The Tek Stryder also drops shards as feces.
• Crystal Isles: on Eldritch Isle, shards turn up in almost every one of the little blue crystals; at Northland they seldom do.
• Fjordur: shard rocks occur in the Abyssal Depths, The Throat of Flames and Beiygjaheimr. The wiki rates the Beiygjaheimr cave as the best spot, being safer and easier to reach than the other two caves.
• Loot: our records count 58 crate types that can contain them, among them the Astraeos Lime, Astraeos Orbital Easy and Extinction Orbital Easy crates.

Weight and transfers

A shard weighs 0.05 and up to 1000 fit in a stack, so a full stack weighs 50. True to the description, shards do not survive a move to another ARK, and the wiki confirms they cannot move between official servers or clusters.