Melee Damage

Melee Damage in ARK: Survival Evolved is a basic statistic for both players and creatures. It is a measure of the amount of extra damage dealt when attacking, or yield when harvesting renewable resources. Thus, a higher Melee Damage kills creatures and other players, as well as harvest resources, in fewer hits. It also increases the total yield of resources harvested from a renewable resource, and improves the chances of receiving any rare resources. Base damage depends on the tool or weapon in use, and Melee Damage is a multiplier of this base damage.

Formula

Melee damage is affected by 4 factors: Weapon Base Damage, Weapon Damage Quality Multiplier, Survivor Melee Damage Multiplier and Server Settings: Player Damage.

Melee Damage = WBD * WDQM * SMDM * PD

For example, a survivor with 200% Melee Damage wielding a 150% damage sword on a server has 2.0 Player Damage setting will do 540 damage:

540 = 90 * 150% * 200% * 2

Increasing

Putting a point into Melee Damage for players increases their damage modifier by 5%.

Notes

• Some servers "clamp" resource harvesting, meaning that each source has a max amount of resources it can yield, regardless of how much your melee damage allows you to harvest with each hit.
• Eating  Battle Tartare,  Enduro Stew and beer temporarily increases your melee damage.(currently bugged and  Battle Tartare and  Enduro Stew do not give additional damage)
• Attacking while you are out of  Stamina increases your  Torpor.
• Increasing melee damage affects the damage output of player melee weapons, but not of ranged weapons. It also increases the damage of most dino attacks.

Changelog

Patch	ARK: Survival Evolved Changes
170.0	Fist Damage reduced by 20%.
172.3	"Pistol whip" melee damages are nerfed appropriately and they now lose durability accordingly.
180.0	Can no longer melee attack people thru walls.
180.2	Eliminated the last edge cases with inability to melee attack structures from certain angles.