Chitin is the cheapest resource in ARK by weight and one of the most expensive by volume. At 0.01 per unit and 100 per stack, a full stack weighs 1.0 — you could carry a hundred stacks and barely notice. The problem is that the recipes asking for it want hundreds at a time, and the arithmetic between “a bug died” and “the Fabricator is built” is longer than most players expect.
Everything below comes from the cached wiki fields in ark-resources.json and ark-items.json.
Chitin, keratin and shell fragments are one resource
The paste recipe lists a single ingredient slot: “Chitin, Keratin, or Shell Fragment”. The three are interchangeable, and the infobox values are almost identical:
| Property | Chitin | Keratin | Shell Fragment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Weight | 0.01 | 0.01 | 0.01 |
| Stack size | 100 | 100 | 100 |
| Rarity | Common | Common | not listed |
| Renewable | Yes | Yes | not listed |
| Obtained from | arthropods | horned and shelled creatures | Megachelon shells |
| DLC restriction | none | none | Genesis Part 1, Lost Island |
Chitin is the firm, flexible material that forms the exoskeletons of arthropods. — ARK Wiki
That is the whole identity of the resource. Anything with an exoskeleton is a chitin node, and on most maps the practical answer is “whatever shelled thing is closest to your base”. Keratin from turtles and horned dinosaurs fills the same slot, which matters on maps where the arthropods are locked behind caves.
Shell Fragment is the odd one out: it is limited to Genesis Part 1 and Lost Island, and its description ties it to the Megachelon. If you play those maps, a turtle-shaped source of paste feedstock is available without touching a cave.
The paste ratio, at both stations
Cementing Paste has two recipes, and the difference between them is the single most useful piece of chitin maths in the game:
| Station | Chitin | Stone | Paste out | Chitin per paste |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mortar and Pestle | 4 | 8 | 1 | 4.00 |
| Chemistry Bench | 16 | 32 | 6 | 2.67 |
The Chemistry Bench is not just faster — it is 33% more chitin-efficient. Sixty paste costs 240 chitin at the mortar and 160 at the bench. The stone side drops too, from 8 per paste to 5.33.
That is worth internalising because paste demand does not stay small. Look at what the structure recipes ask for:
| Recipe | Paste | Chitin at mortar | Chitin at bench |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fabricator | 20 | 80 | 53 |
| Industrial Forge | 600 | 2,400 | 1,600 |
| Chemistry Bench itself | 250 | 1,000 | 667 |
An Industrial Forge is 2,400 chitin if you craft paste by hand at a mortar and 1,600 if you own a bench first. Since the bench costs 250 paste to build, the order is obvious: bench early, forge later. The full station ladder is in the crafting guide.
What chitin buys besides paste
Paste is the main sink, but the chitin armour set is a real early purchase and it competes for the same stock:
| Item | Chitin | Hide | Weight | Level | Engram points |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chitin Helmet | 15 | 7 | 4 | 37 | 18 |
| Chitin Chestpiece | 20 | 10 | 6 | 37 | 18 |
| Chitin Leggings | 25 | 12 | 6 | 37 | 15 |
| Chitin Gauntlets | 10 | 5 | 3 | 37 | 15 |
| Chitin Boots | 12 | 6 | 3 | 37 | 15 |
All five pieces come to 82 chitin, which is about 20 portions of paste worth of material — a rounding error next to a Fabricator, which is why the armour is usually the first thing a new player builds with a cave haul. Six weight per piece is heavy compared with hide, and it is the reason chitin armour is a cave-and-combat set rather than everyday wear.
The other consumer worth tracking is C4: 5 paste, 60 gunpowder, 10 crystal, 50 fiber and 5 hide per charge, at level 65. Five paste is 20 chitin at a mortar. Compared with the forge, explosives barely register — but they consume paste in bursts, right when a tribe is saving for something bigger.
Farming chitin without hating it
The dataset gives one clean conversion that most players never use: Shell Fragment to Chitin at a 1:1 ratio. The chitin entry lists quantity1: 1 against Shell Fragment, with a crafting time of 0.2 seconds and 4 XP. On Genesis Part 1 and Lost Island, that turns turtle-adjacent farming into chitin farming without a single cave trip.
For everything else, the rule is volume. Because the stack is 100 and the weight is 0.01, there is no reason to make two trips. Fill the saddle, come home, and craft paste in one batch — the Ankylosaurus and similar haulers are for metal; chitin fits in any bag.
Three habits pay off:
- Kill shelled things on the way to somewhere else. Chitin is a by-product of travel, not a destination.
- Keep a mortar at the cave mouth. Paste weighs 0.01 too, so crafting on site removes nothing from your haul and saves a return trip later.
- Bank paste, not chitin. Paste is the item every recipe names. Converting early also compresses 4 chitin into 1 slot, which is a 4x storage win.
That last point is the storage argument: 400 chitin is four stacks; the 100 paste it becomes is one stack, same weight, a quarter of the slots.
Paste is the real bottleneck, not chitin
If you are stuck at polymer or at the Fabricator, the constraint is almost never bugs killed — it is paste on hand. The cementing paste page works the supply chain from the other direction, and how to get polymer shows the 2-paste-per-craft sink that eats everything you make.
For a wider view of which resources gate progress and in what order, the resources guide lists the full set and the resources strategy page explains sequencing.