Fiber is the resource you touch in the first minute and still farm in the last week, and its numbers are almost comically generous: 0.01 weight, 300 per stack, a full stack weighing 3.0. Nothing about carrying fiber is hard. What makes fiber interesting is how many recipes quietly assume you have hundreds of it on hand.
The figures here come from the cached infobox and recipe fields in ark-resources.json and ark-items.json.
Fiber against the other cheap resources
Fiber’s 300 stack is unusual for a plant resource, and comparing it with its neighbours shows why it behaves differently in the inventory:
| Resource | Weight | Stack | Weight per full stack |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fiber | 0.01 | 300 | 3.0 |
| Hide | 0.01 | 200 | 2.0 |
| Thatch | 0.02 | 200 | 4.0 |
| Wood | 0.5 | 100 | 50 |
| Stone | 0.5 | 100 | 50 |
Fiber is the plant material you gather in delicate strands from bushes and crops. — ARK Wiki
Fiber and hide are the two lightest things in the game, and fiber gets the bigger stack. The practical consequence is that fiber is a slot resource, not a weight resource: you run out of inventory squares before you run out of carry capacity. Six stacks of fiber is 1,800 units for 18 weight and six slots — enough for a full ghillie set and a bow with room left over.
That also means a fiber run should never be a dedicated trip. It is a thing you do while walking between two places you already wanted to be.
What fiber buys, in exact units
The cached recipes make fiber’s role clear: it is the binding agent in early weapons and the bulk filler in mid-game armour.
| Recipe | Fiber | Other inputs | Level | Engram points |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bow | 50 | 15 Wood | 10 | 11 |
| Bola | 15 | 10 Thatch, 3 Stone | not listed | 8 |
| Hide Sleeping Bag | 15 | 25 Hide | 4 | 3 |
| Crossbow | 35 | 7 Metal Ingot, 10 Wood | 25 | 12 |
| Grenade | 15 | 20 Stone, 30 Gunpowder, 5 Hide, 2 Ingot | 38 | 20 |
| C4 Charge | 50 | 60 Gunpowder, 10 Crystal, 5 Paste, 5 Hide | 65 | 12 |
| Cryopod | 15 | 10 Crystal, 5 Hide, 2 Ingot, 4 Oil, 8 Polymer | 51 | 20 |
Read down the list and a pattern appears. Fiber demand does not scale with the cost of the item — a Cryopod built from polymer and crystal needs only 15 fiber, while a C4 charge needs 50. Fiber is a flat tax on crafting rather than a progression resource, which is exactly why players underestimate it.
The Bow at 50 fiber is the first real number a new player meets, and it arrives at level 10 alongside 11 engram points. Fifty fiber is a single bush run; the trap is crafting three bows because the first two broke.
The ghillie set is the only serious fiber sink
Ghillie armour is where fiber stops being free. Each piece pairs fiber with hide and organic polymer:
| Item | Fiber | Hide | Organic Polymer | Weight | Level |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ghillie Chestpiece | 4 | 10 | 6 | 8 | 33 |
| Ghillie Leggings | 5 | 12 | 8 | 8 | 33 |
Four and five fiber is trivial — the real cost is 14 organic polymer across the two pieces, and organic polymer spoils in 1,800 seconds with a stack of only 20. Fiber is the cheap half of ghillie by an order of magnitude, which is worth knowing before you blame your fiber stock for an armour problem. The polymer page covers that half: how to get polymer.
Harvesting: the loop that actually works
The dataset describes fiber as delicately collected plant strands, and every bush on every map is a source. The efficiency question is not where but how you move.
Three habits that scale:
- Harvest on the move. Pick bushes while travelling between your base and a resource node. A hundred fiber per leg adds up to thousands without a single dedicated trip.
- Use a plant specialist when you need volume. The Therizinosaurus is the plant harvester in the gathering guide, and it turns a bush route into a bulk operation.
- Convert before you store. Fiber occupies a slot per 300. If you are stockpiling for ghillie, craft the pieces instead of banking the raw material.
The third point is the one players skip. A chest of fiber looks like wealth until you realise it is 12 slots of a resource that regenerates in the time it takes to walk to the next bush.
White, green and blue: the beacon shortcut
Fiber lists White, Green and Blue as its supply-crate colours — the three lowest tiers. Hide and Thatch carry the same flags, which tells you the design intent: the cheap plant-and-skin economy is meant to arrive as filler in early drops.
That has a practical use. If you are opening white beacons anyway for blueprints, fiber comes along for free, and a stack here and there removes the need for bush runs entirely during the first few days. The exploration guide covers beacon routing if you want to make drops part of a loop rather than a detour.
Where fiber fits in the resource order
Fiber is a support resource: it never gates a station, but it is in almost every recipe you craft on the way to one. The resources guide lists it alongside the rest of the set, and the resources tier list ranks it against materials that do gate progress.
If you are planning the first week, the beginner guide sequences fiber behind wood and thatch, and the survival guide covers the daily loop that keeps a stock ticking over.