Cementing paste costs 4 chitin and 8 stone per craft, weighs 0.01, and unlocks at level 13 for 3 engram points. On paper it is a beginner recipe. In practice it is the resource that decides whether your tribe reaches tek tier, because the late-game structures ask for it in the hundreds and nothing about the recipe scales with them.
Every figure here is from the cached wiki fields in ark-resources.json and ark-items.json.
The paste card
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Crafted in | Mortar and Pestle (also Chemistry Bench, Equus Saddle) |
| Chitin, Keratin or Shell Fragment | 4 |
| Stone | 8 |
| Output | 1 |
| Level | 13 |
| Engram points | 3 |
| Crafting time | 1 second |
| Crafting XP | 1.2 |
| Weight | 0.01 |
| Stack size | 100 |
Cementing paste is crafted at the Mortar and Pestle from stone plus chitin or keratin. — ARK Wiki
The 0.01 weight is the number that hides the problem. Paste is effectively free to carry, so the cost never shows up in your weight budget — it shows up in your chitin budget, weeks later, when a structure recipe asks for 600.
The Chemistry Bench is a 33% discount
There are two paste recipes in the data, and the difference between them is the most valuable ratio on this page:
| Station | Chitin | Stone | Paste out | Chitin per paste | Stone per paste |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mortar and Pestle | 4 | 8 | 1 | 4.00 | 8.00 |
| Chemistry Bench | 16 | 32 | 6 | 2.67 | 5.33 |
The bench turns 16 chitin into 6 paste instead of 4, which is a 50% yield increase on the same feedstock. In per-paste terms you go from 4 chitin to 2.67 and from 8 stone to 5.33.
Scale that to real structure costs and the argument makes itself:
| Structure | Paste | Chitin (mortar) | Chitin (bench) | Stone (mortar) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fabricator | 20 | 80 | 53 | 160 |
| Chemistry Bench | 250 | 1,000 | 667 | 2,000 |
| Industrial Forge | 600 | 2,400 | 1,600 | 4,800 |
The bench pays for itself almost immediately: building it costs 250 paste, and the 250th paste costs 667 chitin at a bench versus 1,000 at a mortar. Every paste after that is cheaper forever. The chitin page runs the feedstock side of this in detail.
Paste is really a structure tax
The cached recipes show what actually consumes it. Paste appears in nearly every mid-game structure, and the quantities are not subtle:
| Recipe | Paste | Level | Other major inputs |
|---|---|---|---|
| C4 Charge | 5 | 65 | 60 Gunpowder, 10 Crystal |
| Compound Bow | 75 | 79 | 95 Polymer, 85 Ingot |
| Fabricator | 20 | 48 | 35 Ingot, 50 Sparkpowder, 15 Crystal |
| Chemistry Bench | 250 | not listed | 250 Ingot, 250 Crystal, 250 Polymer, 250 Electronics |
| Industrial Forge | 600 | 80 | 2,500 Ingot, 250 Crystal, 400 Oil |
The pattern is a step function. A Fabricator costs 20 paste — one mortar session. A Chemistry Bench costs 250 — twelve and a half Fabricators’ worth. An Industrial Forge costs 600 — thirty Fabricators. Each station multiplies the paste bill by an order of magnitude, which is why “we have plenty of paste” is a statement that expires weekly.
Achatina paste is the same item with a different source
The Achatina produces Achatina Paste: weight 0.01, stack 100, rarity Uncommon, added in 252.0. Its description calls it a secretion “chemically similar to Cementing Paste”, and every recipe slot in the data lists them as alternatives — “Cementing Paste or Achatina Paste”.
That means a snail pen is a paste factory. Each Achatina produces passively, so the practical upgrade path for a settled base is paste from snails and chitin from everything else. The best tames guide puts the Achatina in the utility category for exactly this reason.
There is a second shortcut worth knowing: the Equus Saddle is listed as a paste crafting station. A horse that crafts paste on the move changes how a cave run ends — you convert chitin at the cave mouth instead of hauling it home.
Beaver dams and the field-expedient route
Giant beaver dams contain finished paste, which skips the chitin chain entirely. The data does not publish a yield per dam, so treat a dam as a variable bonus rather than a supply plan: the value is that the paste is already made, and the cost is that beavers defend it.
For tribes on a river map, the working pattern is to check dams on the way to somewhere else rather than to plan a raid. What you cannot do is rely on it — the quantities that matter are 250 and 600, and no dam schedule produces those on demand.
Mobile and Genesis pricing
Two non-crafting sources are listed. The Mobile cost field is 100 charges for 15 paste at the Factory, and the exchange quantity is 25. Neither changes a PC or console game, but if you play the mobile build, 15 paste per 100 charges is a reasonable emergency rate when a structure is one craft short.
The broader point is that paste has a price everywhere because everything needs it. The resources strategy page covers how to hold a buffer without turning your base into a warehouse, and the resources tier list ranks paste against the other craftable materials.
Building a paste habit
Three rules cover almost every situation:
- Craft at the source. Paste weighs the same as chitin per unit but compresses 4 units into 1 slot, so converting before the trip home is free storage.
- Own the bench before the forge. The 600-paste Industrial Forge is 800 chitin cheaper if the bench exists first.
- Keep 100 paste liquid. It covers a Fabricator plus five C4 charges, which is the difference between “we can respond” and “we are saving”.
The crafting guide shows the full station ladder those numbers feed, and how to get polymer covers the other half of every Fabricator-tier recipe.