Vacuum Compartment

An underwater room to live in

The Vacuum Compartment is part of the Tek Tier building set in ARK: Survival Evolved and ARK: Survival Ascended. It goes down below the water surface and gives survivors a space where they can live and breathe. The in-game text: "Place underwater, power with Tek Generator, and you can live and breath in it!" The ARK Wiki states that in ASE it needs a Tek Generator for power.

Tekgram and recipe

Its Tekgram comes from defeating the Dragon (Beta) or the Crystal Wyvern Queen (Beta), and beating either at a higher difficulty also unlocks it. Compartments are crafted in a Tek Replicator or an Exo-Mek, in 5 seconds for 1 XP. The ASA recipe:

• 360 Metal Ingot or Scrap Metal Ingot
• 136 Polymer, Organic Polymer or Corrupted Nodule
• 180 Crystal or Primal Crystal
• 2 Element (or Red Element)
• 32 Black Pearl

Our ASE record asks for the same amounts of Metal Ingot, Polymer, Crystal, Element and Black Pearl. A compartment weighs 4 and a stack holds 5, so a full stack weighs 20.

Shaping the rooms

The radial menu lets you remove any side of a compartment or freeze it, which makes that side opaque. Removing sides is how large rooms are made, for example to fit a Tek Teleporter, and every change can be reversed. The walls barely collide with other structures, and new compartments snap onto existing ones while ignoring creatures and structures in the way.

Points to know before moving in

• Damage: as a Tek structure it can only be harmed by a short list of attackers: explosives and the Tek Rifle, Tek Saddles, Titanosaur and Arthropluera, Corrupted and Enraged Creatures, titans, bosses and the DodoRex.
• Flooding: compartments stay in place when their neighbours are destroyed, so losing the wrong ones can let water into the base.
• On the roof: anything set on top of a compartment works as if it stood out of the water, Campfires and powered items such as the Refrigerator included; the wiki sees turrets as the only real use for this.
• Weather: without the home bonus, rain and fog still happen inside, which can water plots.
• Floating: most dead creatures and any unconscious or dead player inside drift around as if there were no gravity.
• Moonpool: a variant, the Vacuum Compartment Moonpool, has an open hatch facing down.

Crates and maps

Our records count 14 crate types that can contain it, such as the Astraeos Orbital Hard and Legendary crates and the hard mission crates on Genesis Part 2, Bulbdog Fetch and Circuit Chase among them. The item is listed on 9 maps.