ARK: Survival Evolved has recently launched for Steam’s Early Access and a ton of players are joining in on the action. Some people already know how to get started and what to do to make gear, create new gear, tame dinosaurs and some don’t. For everyone who falls into the latter category, there’s a very nifty guide available.

YouTuber eNtaK tackled the basics of ARK: Survival Evolved with a 14 minute guide on the basics of taming and crafting, showing a few examples to help get you started. You can check out the video below.

The basics for those of you who either have the volume off or can’t watch the video is that you can press ‘I’ to open the inventory and click on Craftables to craft new items.

Once you have the necessary or required items to craft a particular item, you can click on the item and craft it from the Craftables menu. Once an item is finished crafting you can place it in your quick item slot.

Leveling up allows you to put points into various traits with Engram points. The more advanced item blueprints require more Engram points. Once you unlock an item using Engram points it becomes added to your Craftables menu.

Just by performing actions, killing things and crafting things you’ll be able to level up and earn Engram points.

In order to craft some items you’ll need things such as fiber and herbs. You’ll need to use your fists to pick items up from plants and foliage. You can grab such items by pressing ‘E’ when close to them after switching to your fists. Be careful, though, because your character will take damage punching on objects.

As for taming… it’s briefly discussed in the video but not actually shown. For small herbivores you can tame them by knocking the animal unconscious. Simply attack the animal until it falls over. After it’s knocked out you can feed it a lot of food until it becomes tamed. It’s like the violent version of the date rape drug for dinosaurs. Of course, different animals require different types of food so you’ll need a lot of meat for larger carnivores and a lot of herbs and plants for the herbivores.

ARK: Survival Evolved is available right now over on Steam’s Early Access and you can grab a copy for $29.99. For more information on ARK: Survival Evolved from Studio Wildcard, you can pay a visit to the game’s official website.