Wooden Club

A starter weapon for knockouts

The Wooden Club, often just called the Club, is a melee weapon in ARK: Survival Evolved and ARK: Survival Ascended. The game describes it as "A easily made melee weapon that is excellent for knocking out targets. Only effective at short range." Its damage is very low; what it does well is apply Torpor, and the ARK Wiki rates it as highly effective for knocking out survivors and smaller creatures.

Crafting and repairing the Club

The engram unlocks at level 8 for 4 engram points, and our records also set level 8 as the level needed to craft it. One club needs:

• 4 Wood (Fungal Wood also works)
• 15 Fiber

Crafting takes 5 seconds and gives 0.7 XP. Our records put a repair at 2 Wood and 7.5 Fiber. The club weighs 2, does not stack, and has 40 durability according to the wiki.

Uses beyond knocking things out

• Organic Polymer: the wiki ranks it with the top tools for gathering Organic Polymer, in particular from dead Kairuku.
• Taming Dilos: lower level Dilos go down in 1 to 5 swings and higher ones take a few more. Dilos tame fast, and once they gain some health and damage levels, players at low levels get useful help from them.
• With a Bola: a creature held by a Bola, such as a Pteranodon, can then be clubbed unconscious.
• On a Mantis: the wiki calls a club on a Mantis arguably the strongest torpor tool in the game. Given decent melee, a Mantis can knock big targets unconscious, the Brontosaurus, Managarmr and Wyverns among them, and even a primitive club can drop a level 20 Crystal Wyvern in two hits.

Against other players

Against a player, every hit does a fixed 5 damage plus 18.8 Torpor, no matter the target's armor or the spot that is struck. The wiki notes that a wielder with high Melee stats is feared in PVP: even a fair amount of Fortitude does not protect the target, and a single hit usually leaves the victim unconscious. Most weapons stop at a 755.3% damage cap; for the club the limit is 427.7%, and 199.0% on official servers.

Later in the game and where to find one

The Sword supersedes it, yet the wiki points out that the club is one of the few beginner items that never turns obsolete. A Candy Cane Club Skin exists for it, earned with the Lowest Depth Achievement. Our records list 205 crate types that can contain the club, among them Fjordur Deep Sea and the Fjordur Ice Cave crates, and the weapon is recorded on 14 maps.