Metal is the first resource in ARK that forces you to do arithmetic. Every unit of ore weighs 1.0, a stack holds 300, and the forge consumes two ore for every ingot it hands back. The pile you mined is never the pile you craft with, and the gap between those two numbers is where most metal runs go wrong.
This page works from the cached wiki data in ark-items.json and ark-resources.json, so every figure below is the infobox value rather than a rule of thumb.
Ore and ingot, side by side
| Property | Metal (ore) | Metal Ingot |
|---|---|---|
| Weight per unit | 1.0 | 1.0 |
| Stack size | 300 | 300 |
| Weight of a full stack | 300 | 300 |
| Supply crate colour | Green | not listed |
| Hexagon value | 150 | 195 |
| Exchange quantity | 10 | 5 |
| Smelt input | — | 2 Metal |
| Crafted in | — | Refining Forge, Industrial Forge, Phoenix, Magmasaur |
Two things stand out. First, ore and ingot weigh exactly the same per unit, so smelting does not make your haul heavier — it halves the count while keeping the per-unit weight. Second, the ingot carries a higher hexagon value than the ore, which tells you the game itself treats the processed form as the more valuable item.
Metal ore is an unrefined resource mined from rocks, most commonly on mountains and in caves. — ARK Wiki
That one line explains the whole logistics problem: the source is uphill or underground, and the payload is heavy.
The 2-to-1 ratio, followed all the way down
The Metal Ingot entry lists quantity1: 2 against Metal, with no craft-count multiplier. Two ore become one ingot, every time. Run the chain:
| You mine | Ore weight | Ingots produced | Ingot weight | Ingot stacks |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 stack (300 ore) | 300 | 150 | 150 | 0.5 |
| 5 stacks (1,500 ore) | 1,500 | 750 | 750 | 2.5 |
| 10 stacks (3,000 ore) | 3,000 | 1,500 | 1,500 | 5 |
| 20 stacks (6,000 ore) | 6,000 | 3,000 | 3,000 | 10 |
The practical reading: an ankylo load that fills 20 ore stacks is worth 3,000 ingots after smelting, and 3,000 ingots is exactly the amount that makes an Industrial Forge feel possible. It is also the amount that will not fit in one chest slot — a slot holds 300 ingots, so plan ten slots for the output of one big run.
The ratio means you should never judge a trip by ore count. Four hundred ore sounds like a haul and is 200 ingots. The Ankylosaurus exists because it multiplies the ore side of that equation before the ratio ever applies.
What the ingot actually buys
Metal is not a resource you bank for its own sake; it is a currency with a fixed price list. The cached recipe fields give the exact denominations:
| Item | Metal Ingots | Other inputs | Level | Engram points |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Crossbow | 7 | 10 Wood, 35 Fiber | 25 | 12 |
| Fabricator | 35 | 20 paste, 50 Sparkpowder, 15 Crystal | 48 | 24 |
| Compound Bow | 85 | 95 Polymer, 75 paste | 79 | 40 |
| Chemistry Bench | 250 | 250 paste, 100 Sparkpowder, 250 Crystal, 250 Polymer, 250 Electronics | not listed | 65 |
| Industrial Forge | 2,500 | 250 Crystal, 600 paste, 400 Oil | 80 | 90 |
The jump from 35 ingots to 2,500 is the real shape of the metal curve. A Fabricator is one decent run. An Industrial Forge is seventy-one Fabricators’ worth of ingots in a single structure, which is why tribes build it long before they can fill it.
At the small end, 7 ingots for a Crossbow is the cheapest meaningful metal purchase in the game and the reason the level 25 gate matters — that weapon is the first thing that makes a cave trip survivable. The full station ladder is unpacked in the ARK crafting guide.
Hauling: the number that decides the run
Weight, not travel time, is the binding constraint. With ore at 1.0 per unit, every 300 units is 300 weight in the saddle. A bird that can carry 900 weight moves three ore stacks per trip and nothing else — no saddle, no spare gear, no passenger.
That is why the mid-game metal route is a two-creature operation: a harvester fills the bags, a carrier moves them, and the forge sits at the base rather than at the mine. If you are still using a single flyer, the Argentavis guide covers the weight stat that makes the difference, and best gatherers guide ranks the harvesters by job.
There is a second weight trick most players miss. Because ore and ingot weigh the same per unit, smelting at the mine saves nothing — 300 ore and 300 ingots both weigh 300. What changes is the stack count: 1,500 ore is five stacks, but the 750 ingots it becomes is two and a half stacks. Inventory slots, not kilograms, force the second trip.
Scrap metal, the 1:1 shortcut
Extinction added a parallel line. Scrap Metal weighs 1 and stacks to 200, and a Scrap Metal Ingot weighs 1 with a stack of 300. The conversion field on the ingot lists quantity1: 1 against Scrap Metal — one for one, not two for one.
| Item | Weight | Stack | Conversion |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scrap Metal | 1 | 200 | — |
| Scrap Metal Ingot | 1 | 300 | 1 Scrap Metal |
That single difference makes scrap the better raw material when you have it: same weight, half the loss, and the ingot stack is 300 instead of 200. Recipes that accept “Metal Ingot or Scrap Metal Ingot” treat them as interchangeable, so a stack of scrap ingots is worth a stack of ingots at the Fabricator.
Reading the beacon and hexagon flags
Two infobox fields are easy to skip and both change how you plan. Metal lists Green as its supply-crate colour, so green drops are a legitimate early source when a mountain is too far or too hostile. Metal also lists an exchange quantity of 10 — the trade is ten units per purchase, not one.
On Genesis, metal is priced at 150 hexagons and an ingot at 195. Buying 10 metal for 150 works out to 15 hexagons per unit, and the 375-hexagon sticker on the same ten units as ingots is a reminder of how much of the value sits in the smelt.
A metal plan that survives contact with the map
- First 100 ingots: a Crossbow at 7, then save. Do not spend on decorative metal before the Fabricator exists.
- First 300 ingots: the Fabricator at 35 is the gate; the rest is padding for saddles and weapons behind it.
- First 1,000 ingots: start the Chemistry Bench fund at 250 and keep a 300-ingot buffer for paste and polymer chains.
- Long game: the Industrial Forge at 2,500 ingots is a tribe project. Build it when smelting time, not mining time, is the bottleneck.
The order matters because each station changes what the next run is for. A player with a Fabricator mines to craft. A player with an Industrial Forge mines to feed a queue. The resources strategy page covers how that shift reorganises a base, and the resources tier list shows where metal sits against the rest of the set.