Tek Replicator

Where Tek Tier items are made

Survivors in ARK: Survival Evolved use the Tek Replicator to craft Tek Tier items, and the station also carries the Smithy and Fabricator engrams. The ARK Wiki calls it end-game, and it needs Element to run. Regular engrams craft 12 times faster in it than usual, it has 600 item slots, and it can craft blueprints that a Smithy, Castoroides or Argentavis could not.

Getting the Tekgram

The Tekgram always unlocks from the first boss a survivor kills, with one exception: Moeder, Master of the Ocean does not grant it. Blueprints can also drop from Orbital Supply Drops and Titans. Without the Tekgram, the Replicator's inventory cannot be opened.

Crafting the Replicator

The wiki lists the Obelisk, Supply Crate, Treasure Chest, Exo-Mek and another Tek Replicator as places to craft it, although Supply Crates cannot make it in single player. A Tekgram that came from an Orbital Supply Drop does not work at Terminals or in Supply Crates, which the wiki suspects is a bug, and the Fabricator cannot craft it even though the tooltip suggests otherwise. Crafting takes 5 seconds and gives 33 XP. The recipe:

• 5000 Metal Ingot or Scrap Metal Ingot
• 800 Polymer, Organic Polymer or Corrupted Nodule
• 600 Crystal or Primal Crystal
• 150 Black Pearl
• 100 Element or Red Element

None of the Gamma Island Guardians drops enough Element for it, the wiki warns, so a survivor has to defeat them more than once or face their stronger versions instead.

Power, size and decay

One Element keeps it going for 10 minutes, although stopwatch tests on an official PvE server measured 9 minutes. While running it glows and spins, burning through the Element it holds until the supply is gone or someone switches it off. The Replicator is huge: it fits on one foundation, but hiding it completely takes a 4x4x6 enclosed structure. Its decay time is only about 16 days, and unlike the Chemistry Bench it gives no better resource efficiency than a Fabricator or Smithy.

Damage, weight and loot

It counts as a wooden structure: hands, stone weapons and ranged attacks without explosives cannot damage it, and the wiki also lists aggressive creatures that cannot harm it, among them the Direwolf, Compy, Basilisk, Beelzebufo and Araneo. It weighs 4. Our records list it on 9 maps, and 13 crate types can contain it, including the Astraeos Orbital Legendary crate and hard mission crates on Genesis Part 2 such as Bulbdog Fetch and Ferox Cull.