Soap

Scrubbing off old paint

Soap undoes paint and dye jobs in ARK: Survival Evolved and ARK: Survival Ascended, as its description says: "Scrubs dye and paint off items and structures!" Each soap is spent after a single use.

Using it on structures and items

For a structure, stand in front of it, hold E to open the wheel menu and pick the option to remove paint with soap; the paint comes off every region at once. For an item such as a piece of armor, drag the soap onto it. In ASA the Spray Painter can apply soap directly: press N or double-tap. The ARK Wiki warns that using soap poisons the survivor, even from the hotbar.

Cooking a soap

Soap is made in a Cooking Pot or an Industrial Cooker. One craft takes 20 seconds, gives 1 XP and needs:

• 3 Polymer, Organic Polymer or Corrupted Nodule
• 2 Oil or Oil (Tusoteuthis)
• 1 Water: the wiki asks for a water container at least 25% full, or a cooker linked to a water source

Cost and side effects

Since every soap is used up after one cleaning, the wiki notes that cleaning more than a few structures can get expensive; repainting with a Paintbrush or a Spray Painter, or sometimes replacing the piece, is the cheaper route. Soap also strips the item textures from a Tek Dedicated Storage, together with its top and bottom border textures. Clearing out the stored items and putting them back restores the item texture, but the borders cannot be brought back. Used on a Paintbrush, soap empties the brush, although the brush still displays remaining uses.

Storage trick, weight and loot

Soap does not expire, and grinding it in an industrial grinder returns organic polymer, which is why the wiki suggests it as a way to keep organic polymer in storage. A soap weighs 0.1, and a full stack of 100 weighs 10. Our records count 71 crate types that can contain it, including the Aberration Blue and Aberration Green crates on Aberration and Valguero, and list it on 14 maps.