Base Damage
Base Damage is a special Attribute which, unlike Melee Damage, cannot be directly seen by the Player during gameplay. For a list of base values of other stats, see Base Creature Statistics.
The Base Damage depends on the Creature or the Player, and respectively, the Weapon used. Same Creatures and Weapons also have the same Base Damage.
Usage
Disregarding Armor, resulting damage is calculated by multiplying the Base Damage, an absolute number, by the percentage coming from the Melee Damage Attribute.
The difference between Base Damage and Melee Damage is that only the latter can be seen ingame. This may lead to confusion of the player because it does not seem obvious that Melee Damage is not the only Attribute affecting the damage.
Higher Melee Damage does not necessarily mean higher resulting damage.
Example:
Regarding a Tyrannosaurus and a Carnotaurus with a Melee Damage of 230% and 270% respectively, one could assume that the Carnotaurus would deal more damage.
However, after factoring in the Base Damage this assumption turns out to be wrong:
| Dinosaur | Base Damage | Melee Damage | Total Damage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Carnotaurus | 35 | 270% | 35 * 270% = 95 |
| Tyrannosaurus | 62 | 230% | 62 * 230% = 143 |
List of Base Damages
Creatures
| Name | Base Damage |
|---|---|
| Player Unarmed (Spyglass and Flare Gun) | 8.0 |
Weapons
Ignoring armor, Weapons may deal different amounts of damage depending on where you hit a certain creature. For example, you only deal 20% damage against a Carbonemys' shell body part. Many creatures also take additional damage if you hit them in the head, with differing multipliers. However, the damage against the fleshy body of the organisms stays the same across all of them.
Weapon damage values
Against unarmored bodies, the damage weapons do per shot/attack is listed in the following table.
The Percent Torpor Gain is based on the % Melee Damage Attribute of both the weapon used, as well as the player using it.
For example, a Ramshackle Wooden Club with 120% damage will do a base damage of 6. With its torpor gain multiplier of 3.75, it will now do 22.5 torpor per hit.
| Weapon | Damage (unmodified) |
Torpor Gain (unmodified) |
Percent Torpor Gain |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hands | 8 | 14 | 175% |
| Stone Pick | 16 | 8 | 50% |
| Torch | 15 | unknown | unknown |
| Stone Hatchet | 20 | 10 | 50% |
| Spear | 30 | 0 | 0% |
| Wooden Club | 5 | 18.75 | 375% |
| Slingshot (Stone) | 14 | 24.5 | 175% |
| Bow (Stone Arrow) | 55 | 0 | 0% |
| Bow (Tranquilizer Arrow) | 20 | 95 | 450% (200% + 250% over 5 seconds) |
| Metal Pick | 32 | 16 | 50% |
| Metal Hatchet | 40 | 20 | 50% |
| Pike | 55 | 0 | 0% |
| Crossbow (Stone Arrow) | 95 | 0 | 0% |
| Crossbow (Tranquilizer Arrow) | 35 | 157.5 | 450% (200% + 250% over 5 seconds) |
| Simple Pistol | 63 | 0 | 0% |
| Metal Sickle | 50 | unknown | unknown |
| Grenade (direct hit) | 150 | 0 | 0% |
| Metal Sword | 90 | unknown | unknown |
| Longneck Rifle (Simple Rifle Ammo) | 280 | 0 | 0% |
| Longneck Rifle (Tranquilizer Dart) | 26 | 221 | 850% (600% + 250% over 5 seconds) |
| Longneck Rifle (Shocking Tranquilizer Dart) | 26 | 442 | 1700% (1200% + 500% over 5 seconds) |
| Shotgun (per pellet, 10 per shot) | 64 | 0 | 0% |
| Fabricated Pistol | 50 | 0 | 0% |
| Pump-Action Shotgun (per pellet, 14 per shot) | 46 | 0 | 0% |
| C4 Charge (direct hit) | 650 | 0 | 0% |
| Assault Rifle | 47 | 0 | 0% |
| Rocket Launcher (direct hit) | 1500 | 0 | 0% |
| Compound Bow (Stone Arrow) | 74 | 0 | 0% |
| Compound Bow (Tranquilizer Arrow) | 27 | 121.5 | 450% (200% + 250% over 5 seconds) |
| Compound Bow (Metal Arrow) | 202.5 | 0 | 0% |
| Fabricated Sniper Rifle | 165 | 0 | 0% |
| Electric Prod | 1 | 266 | 26600% |
| Melee attack of any Ranged Weapon | 10 | 14 | 140% |
| Melee attack(Tek Gauntlets(charged)) | 265(+40 splash) | 0 | 0% |
| Tek Sword | 200 | 0 | 0% |
| Charged Tek Sword attack(Tek Gauntlets(Charged)) | 280(+52 splash) | 0 | 0% |
| Tek Rifle | 240(+120 splash) | 0 | 0% |
| Tek Railgun | 935 | 0 | 0% |
Note: all values were taken from the raw damage values of the blueprints in the dev kit.
Charged weapons
The minimum pulling time to shoot an arrow with a bow is 0.3 seconds and the maximum damage is reached after pulling for 1.2 seconds. An arrow's damage starts at 25% at 0 seconds, and increases linearly up to 100% at 1.2 seconds. Since an arrow can only be launched after 0.3 seconds, this means that the minimum damage of an arrow is 43.75%.
The only difference for slingshots is the minimum pulling time, which is 0.25 seconds, resulting in a minimum damage of 40.625%.
Highest Damage In-Game
For the curious, the most damage possible in the game legally can be done by the 
Carcharodontosaurus, more details below.
- NOTE: We are using mechanics of both
ARK: Survival Evolved and 
ARK: Survival Ascended to calculate the results, but because ASA is going to have all the content of ASE eventually this is going to be possible at some point.
If we do a breeding line of Carchas and we maximize the 
Melee Damage up to 254 points into the stat we finish the line with 1290% of melee damage, that's equivalent of 2,721.9 damage per bite. Then we level up all the 88 levels of the Carcha into melee, each point will add 109.65%, so after leveling up our Carcha will finish with 10,939.2% or 23,081.712 damage per bite. After finish the level up progress we can start killing creatures until we reach the 100 kills, with this amount our damage scales up to 63,474.708 per bite, and if we are counting with the imprinting bonus at 100% our final damage will be 82,517.1204 per bite.
Once we got our Carcha with all the previous points ready we also gonna need some other creatures, we are going to use a 
Gigantopithecus as the victim because it has the highest headshot damage multiplier (x3.5), so if we are playing on ARK: Survival Ascended this will increase our damage even further.
We also going to need some supports, in this case 
Yutyrannus, 
Amargasaurus, 
Desmodus and another Carcharodontosaurus of the opposite gender of the one that we are going to use.
Once we got all our supports we must go to Genesis: Part 2, do the Shadowmane Prowl mission (That increases the damage done of all the tamed creatures by 20%) and wait until the night so the Desmodus abilities activates, and there is where all is going to happen.
First of all, acumulate kills with the damage dealer Carcha up to 100, then put it closer with the other Carcha in order to have 
Mate Boost, then throw the Gigantopithecus using a 
Cryopod while the player still has 
Cryo Cooldown effect so the Gigantopithecus gets Cryo Sickness so it will get x10 damage, then shoot an Amargasaurus Armor Spike to the Gigantopithecus to reduce its damage resistance by 25%, then screech with the Desmodus to the Gigantopithecus so it will get 20% more damage, then roar with both Yutyrannus roars to give your Carcha 
Courage buff that increases its damage by 25% and 
Fear debuff to the Gigantopithecus that increases the damage taken by 50%. Now is time to bite.
Calculation
Recapitulating a little everything we have:
- Carcha damage = 211 (Base Damage at 100%, it has 20% at level 1) + 254 levels (1290%) x 100 kills (2.75) x imprinting (30%) = 82,517.1204 per bite.
- Carcha buffs = Carcha damage + Mate Boost (33%) + Shadowmane Prowl mission effect (20%) + Courage buff (25%) = 164,621.655198 per bite.
- Gigantopithecus debuffs = Headshot Multiplier (3.5) +
Armor Reduction debuff (25%) + Desmodus screech (20%) + Fear debuff (50%) + Cryo Sickness debuff (x10) = 78.75 times normal damage. - Total damage = 164,621.655198 x 78.75 = 12,963,955.3468425 per bite.
Notes/Trivia
- Since the Base Damage value can not be seen during gameplay, other methods are required to find out the exact numbers, such as in-game testing, receiving the values from the developers (like in Patch Notes 173.0), or by extracting them from the Dev Kit.
- In v242.0 a server-option for displaying the dealt damage as a floating number (as known from RPG-games) was added. This mode is not enabled on official servers, but is always enabled for the damage dealt to the Training Dummy.
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