A loadout is a weight budget
Every loadout in ARK is a weight argument before it is anything else. The item data makes the math concrete: a full Flak set weighs thirty — chestpiece 10, leggings 10, boots 4, helmet 4, gauntlets 2 — and an assault rifle adds 10 on top.
That is forty weight of gear before you carry a single round of ammo or a medical brew. Knowing the number is what stops you from packing the whole stash and walking at half speed.
The cave run kit
Caves kill with falls, darkness and tight packs more than with any single monster. The kit is small and light:
- Climbing pick — the cave walls are the map.
- Parachute — the drops are the killer.
- Charge lantern — 300 durability of hands-free light, at 6 weight.
- Pike or crossbow — something that reaches in a corridor.
- Medical brews — the fight happens where you cannot retreat.
Leave the explosives at home. A grenade in a tunnel with your mount in it is a grenade thrown at yourself.
The farming run kit
A farming run is your mount’s job, not your kit’s. Ride the right harvester — Ankylosaurus for metal, Doedicurus for stone — and carry almost nothing yourself: armor, a pick for the nodes your mount misses, and food.
The whole point of a harvester is that the weight comes home on its back. Carrying a full combat loadout on a farming trip wastes the creature’s capacity on your own gear.
The raid kit
Raiding is the one place the heavy numbers are worth their weight:
- C4 charges — 6899 damage in a two meter radius, the wall opener.
- C4 remote detonator — half a weight, and the trigger.
- Grenades — 175 explosive damage over a six-meter radius (wiki figures) for the defenders on top of the wall.
- Assault rifle — the everyday pick for the people shooting back.
- Full Flak set — thirty weight of the best standard protection.
Bring spare guns. A raid that stalls turns into a fight over your own corpses, and a broken rifle is a broken rifle.
The boss kit
Boss fights are long, so the kit is the raid kit with depth:
- Full Flak set, because riders die too.
- Assault rifle plus a backup — jams happen at the worst time.
- Medical brews in bulk — count them before the fight, not during.
- Energy brews — stamina for the whole arena, not one sprint.
The tribute goes in separately. Carrying boss trophies into the arena means losing them to a corpse you cannot reach.
Stage progression
Beach. Hide armor, a slingshot, a spear, and a campfire. Everything else is luxury.
Early tame. A bola for Pteranodons, narcoberries, and a club. The first mount changes what you can carry, so the kit expands around it.
Mid game. Chitin gives way to Flak, the crossbow gives way to a fabricated pistol, and the Ankylosaurus carries the metal. This is where loadouts start to matter.
Late game. Full Flak, an assault rifle, and C4 for anything that walls itself in. The kit stops changing much after this — the creatures get better instead.
The two-kit rule
Carry two kits and swap between them, rather than one kit that compromises at everything. The light kit is the farming loadout: armor and a pick, around fifteen weight. The heavy kit is the raid loadout: Flak at thirty, an assault rifle at ten, and the explosives you actually plan to use.
Swapping kits at the base takes thirty seconds. Carrying both at once costs forty weight you do not have.
Ammo discipline
Guns need the right magazine. Handgun rounds, rifle rounds and sniper rounds do not interchange, and tranq arrows and darts are a separate line again. A rifle with pistol rounds is a thirty-weight club.
Leave it in the box
The last rule is subtraction. Anything you have not used on the last three trips stays home, because the weight you save is the trip you can extend.