Spoilage

Many items in-game spoil over time, that is decay while in an inventory or container. Spoil times can vary based on where the item is placed. The map Scorched Earth has a global spoilage multiplier of 0.9.

Modifying Inventories/Containers

Each item that spoils has a base spoil time, which is the amount of time it takes for one of the items to decay while in the player's inventory. However, certain containers apply a multiplier to this value, making them last longer.

Location	Spoil Multiplier	Scorched Earth1
Player's Inventory	1×	0.9×
Hyaenodon Meatpack	2×	1.8×
Tamed Dinos	4×	3.6×
Feeding Trough	4×	3.6×
Preserving Bin	10×	9×
Smokehouse	15×	13.5×
Beer Barrel	50×	45×
Refrigerator	100×	90×
Tek Trough	100×	90×
Crop Plot2	200×	180×
Compost Bin	200×	180×

¹ Scorched Earth experiences a global 0.9× spoiler multiplier.

² Only applies to Produce while Fertilised. 1x if not.

Preserving Salt

In the DLC: Scorched Earth,  Preserving Salt was introduced. When placed into any inventory or container, Preserving Salt will double the spoil timers of all perishables in that container.

Spoiling Times

Keep in mind that full stacks of the same good (20, 30 or 100) will take proportionally longer to spoil. For example, stacking up to 100 makes berry stacks last way longer than the per unit spoil time indicates.

Note: One stack of 20 raw meat in a feeding trough takes 13.33 hours to spoil. Bear this in mind when raising juvenile or adolescent dinosaurs.

Foods

Item	Player Inventory	Tamed Dino or  Feeding Trough	Preserving Bin	Refrigerator	Crop Plot	Bee Hive
Berries	10m	40m	1h 40m	16h 40m	1d 9h 20m	---
Crops	5m	20m	50m	8h 20m	16h 40m	---
Berry and Crop  Seeds	15m	1h	2h 30m	1d 1h	2d 2h	---
Raw Meat1	10m	40m	1h 40m	16h 40m	---	---
Cooked Meat	20m	1h 20m	3h 20m	1d 9h 20m	---	---
Raw Fish Meat	20m	1h 20m	3h 20m	1d 9h 20m	---	---
Cooked Fish Meat	30m	2h	5h	2d 2h	---	---
Raw Prime Meat	4m 40s	18m 40s	46m 40s	7h 46m 40s	---	---
Cooked Prime Meat	46m	3h 4m	7h 40m	3d 4h 40m	---	---
Raw Mutton	10m	40m	1h 40m	16h 40m	---	---
Cooked Lamb Chop	1h 7m 30s	4h 30m	11h 15m	4d 16h 30m	---	---
Cooked Meat Jerky or  Prime Meat Jerky	2d	8d	20d	200d	---	---
Spoiled Meat	1h	4h	10h	4d 4h	---	---
Dishes2	5h	20h	2d 2h	20d 20h	---	---
Custom Consumable	2d	8d	20d	200d	---	---
Sweet Vegetable Cake	1h 20m	5h 20m	13h 20m	5d 13h 20m	---	---
Eggs	8d	32d	80d	800d	---	---
Kibble	3d	12d	30d	300d	---	---
Giant Bee Honey	20m	1h 20m	3h 20m	1d 9h 20m	---	15d 6h 40m

1 All forms of Meat spoil and become Spoiled Meat. All others spoil and vanish.
2 This includes Battle Tartare, Broth of Enlightenment, Calien Soup, Enduro Stew, Focal Chili, Fria Curry, Lazarus Chowder, Mindwipe Tonic and Shadow Steak Saute

Medical

Item	Player Inventory	Tamed Dino or  Feeding Trough	Preserving Bin	Refrigerator
Blood Pack	30m	2h	5h	2d 2h
Medical Brew	2h	8h	20h	8d 8h
Energy Brew	2h	8h	20h	8d 8h

Utility

Item	Player Inventory	Tamed Dino or  Feeding Trough	Preserving Bin	Refrigerator
Bug Repellant	5h	20h	2d 2h	20d 20h
Bio Toxin	45m	3h	6h 40m	2d 18h 40m

Item	Everywhere	Achatina
Organic Polymer	30m	1h 30m
Lesser Antidote	3h 20m	---

Feces have different spoiling times.

Item	Player Inventory or Tamed Dino	Dung Beetle	Crop Plot or  Compost Bin
Human Feces	41m 40s	2d 21h 26m 40s	5d 18h 53m 20s
Small Animal Feces	50m	3d 11h 20m	6d 22h 40m
Medium Animal Feces	1h 23m 20s	5d 18h 53m 20s	11d 13h 46m 40s
Large Animal Feces	2h 46m 40s	11d 13h 46m 40s	23d 3h 33m 20s
Massive Animal Feces	2h 46m 40s	11d 13h 46m 40s	23d 3h 33m 20s

Scorched Earth

Item	Player Inventory	Tamed Dino or  Feeding Trough	Preserving Bin	Refrigerator	Vessel
Cactus Sap	10m	40m	1h 40m	16h 40m	---
Preserving Salt	20m	20m	20m3	---4	694d 10h 40m
Cactus Broth	1h 30m	6h	15h	6d 6h	---
Wyvern Milk	27m	1h 48m	4h 30m	---5	---

3 Preserving Salt isn't affected by Spoilage Time Multipliers.
4 Preserving Salt cannot be stored in a Refrigerator.
5 Wyvern Milk can not be stored in a Refrigerator.

Aberration

Item	Player Inventory	Tamed Dino or  Feeding Trough	Preserving Bin	Refrigerator
Mushrooms	10m	40m	1h 40m	16h 40m
Mushroom Brew	5h	20h	2d 2h	20d 20h
Nameless Venom	30m	2h	5h	---6

6 Nameless Venom can not be stored in a Refrigerator.

Extinction

Item	Player Inventory
Crafted Element Dust	0.05s
Corrupted Nodule	30m
Unstable Element	2m
Unstable Element Shard	30s

Genesis: Part 1

Item	Player Inventory	Tamed Dino or  Feeding Trough	Preserving Bin	Refrigerator
Ambergris	20m	1h 20m	3h 20m	1d 9h 20m

Notes

• Making custom consumables will save on spoilage for each ingredient due to their long timer, especially when refrigerated.
• Before 280.130 the multiplier for the map Scorched Earth was 0.3
• Spoil timers can be adjusted by adding the following line to Game.ini -

GlobalSpoilingTimeMultiplier=

Changelog

Patch	ARK: Survival Evolved Changes
170.0	Reduced the rate at which food spoils in the inventory of an NPC creature, by 75%, to aid long-term creature maintenance.
171.0	Increased the length of time for dead player bodies/inventories to decompose, to 20 minutes.
173.0	Spoiling timer exploits fixed.
189.0	Custom servers INI can now scale globally the spoiling times of perishables, as well as scale the global decomposition time of items and bodies on the ground, respectively.
248.5	Implemented a fix for Spoiling times.
251.2	Made Spoil Timers retain their realtime values thru CrossARK transfers.
253.5	Fixed calculation errors with Spoiling Time.
253.995	Fixed issue with Spoiling times.
254.944	Added server ?ClampItemSpoilingTimes=true which will clamp all spoiling times to the items' maximum spoiling times. Useful if any infinite-spoiling exploits were used on the server and you wish to clean them up. Could potentially cause issues with Mods that alter spoiling time, hence it is an option.
255.4	Fixed several spoiling time exploits.
256.34	Fixed Spoil Bars appearing on recipe blueprints.
264.3	Dead tame bodies and player bodies and dropped item caches now save (with their decomposition timers & corpse locators intact).
280.130	Raise Scorched Earth consumable lifetime to 90% from 30% of default.
326.13	Seeds now have a spoil timer (included a one time destruction of them in dedicated storage boxes).