ARK Survival Ascended: How does the Skill Tree work?

ARK Survival Ascended now has a Skill Tree system, courtesy of the Lost Colony Expansion Pass. Called the Lost Skill Tree System, players will be able to unlock some truly powerful passive and active abilities, designed around a variety of gameplay styles. They can help you survive easier, reduce your repair costs, and so much more. Unfortunately, this is something locked behind a paywall, so if you don’t have the Expansion Pass, you can’t take advantage of this great system.

The Skill Tree system rolls out with the ARK Survival Ascended Ragnarok update, as was shown in the 2025 Roadmap. If you’re curious about how this system works, we’re here to help you figure it out and survive just a bit easier.

How does the new Skill Tree work in ARK Survival Ascended?

You can find the new Skill Tree system in ARK Survival Ascended by clicking on the far right tab of your character screen. It brings up a red screen that has a skill tree similar to Final Fantasy X’s sphere grid. To unlock any of these, you need to first have the Expansion Pass, but also have Skill Points.

Completing Milestones can take time, but it's the secret to unlocking untold power (Image via Studio Wildcard)

Simply pulling up the Skill Tree will show the passives, and the active skill points can be found elsewhere. You can see the active skills by clicking on what looks to be a starburst icon next to the flag in the menu. You can also see them on the skill tree, towards the end of each line of skills. The aforementioned menu just makes it easy to drag and drop those actives onto your hotbar.

If you click the little red flag on your Skill Tree menu, towards the upper right of the screen, you’ll be brought to your Milestones. Pulling up Milestones will show a series of milestone paths. In the image above, you’ll see Beachcomber, Woodland Worker, and Stone Age. Completing all the milestones in one of those columns nets you the reward of 3 Skill Points, as you see on the screen.

It doesn’t matter how you do them, as long as you complete those objectives, and get some skill points. Once you finally have a few skill points, you can go back to the Skill Tree in ARK Survival Ascended, and unlock some powers. You start in the center, with the red icon, and have to pick one of the three abilities directly connected to it:

These skills are all amazing; pick what matters to you most from the start (Image via Studio Wildcard)

Hot Blooded: Your natural Health regeneration is increased by 100/200/300%.
Well-Oiled Machine: Reduces repair cost of Items and Structures by 10/20/30%.
Experienced Killer: Your mounts gain 10/20/30% increased Experience from kills.

Doing so will require a specific amount of Skill Points, and then allow you to take the next skill along that line, provided you can afford it. At first, they cost one skill point, but the deeper you go, the more they cost. These will no doubt benefit you when you're tackling the content of the Ragnarok map.

All available Skills in the ARK Survival Ascended Skill Tree (so far)

Note that the total number of Skills and Skills tree categories might increase with the introduction of even more nodes when ARK Lost Colony is released later this year. That being said, here's all the Skills across three archetypes:

Beast Mastery Skills

Unleash your inner alpha with the new Beast Mastery branch, focused on mounts, taming, and imprinting.

Experienced Killer (3 ranks, 1 SP each): Mounts gain +10/20/30% more XP from kills.
Mounted Opportunist (3 ranks, 2 SP each): On kill, mount has a 5/10/15% chance to restore 10% stamina.
Essence Eater (2 ranks, 4 SP each): 10% chance to gain +2.5/5% damage for 20s (stacks 3x) on mount kill.
Spectral Mount (Active, 13 SP): Mount becomes spectral for 15s - no stamina cost, untargetable, immune to dismount.
Bonded Taming (3 ranks, 2 SP each): Tamed creatures gain +10/20/30% imprint bonus.
Imprinter (2 ranks, 4 SP each): Increases imprint effectiveness by 5/10%.
Twin Imprint (Active, 13 SP): Share your imprint bonus with an ally for 60 minutes.

Wayfarer Skills

Master mobility, survival, and trickery with the Wayfarer branch, designed for solo runners, flankers, and clever escape artists.

Hot Blooded (3 ranks, 1 SP each): Boosts natural health regen by +100/200/300%.
Heavy Footed (3 ranks, 2 SP each): Reduces fall damage by 10/20/30%, and knocks back nearby enemies when you fall.
Smoke Magician (2 ranks, 4 SP each): Smoke Grenades last +15/30% longer. Throwing one breaks traps and drops aggro (3 min cooldown).
Spirit Rush (Active, 13 SP): +100% movement speed for 15s; phase through tamed and wild creatures.
Bloodlust (3 ranks, 2 SP each): Melee kills grant +10/20/30% movement speed for 5s.
Barbed Blades (2 ranks, 4 SP each): Metal Sword/Pike hits have a 2.5/5% chance to cause a bleed (5% max HP over 10s).
Curse Reflection (Active, 13 SP): Reflect 50% of damage taken for 4s back to attackers.

Utility Skills

Support your tribe, streamline your workflow, and maximize efficiency with the Utility branch - ideal for builders, gatherers, and crafters.

Well-Oiled Machine (3 ranks, 1 SP each): Reduces repair cost of items and structures by 10/20/30%.
Speedy Harvester (3 ranks, 2 SP each): Gain +5% move speed per harvest (max 5 stacks) for 10/15/20s per stack.
The Midas Touch (2 ranks, 4 SP each): 3/6% chance to turn a harvested node gold — gold nodes yield more resources and have more HP.
Mass Production (2 ranks, 4 SP each): 3/6% chance to double output when crafting ammo.
Strong Back (3 ranks, 2 SP each): Reduces weight of structures in inventory by 10/20/30%.
Tracker (Active, 13 SP): For 60s, detect enemy players, tames, structures, and key resource nodes (Crystal, Obsidian, Metal, Pearls, Silicate, Oil, Sulfur, Element) within 80m.
Telekinesis (Active, 13 SP): For 60s, remotely access containers, toggle structures, and pick up items within 30m.

It’s going to take some time to unlock all these skills, unless you’re running cheats in Offline Mode, but they’re worth it. All of the passives will automatically run on your character, so it’s just a matter of picking which ones you want first from the active and passive list. This will give your character a suite of incredible new powers and passive bonuses to make survival so much easier.

Check out our other ARK Survival Ascended guides and features

About the author

Jason is an Esports and Gaming journalist at Sportskeeda holding an amazing 11 years of experience under his belt. Having put out 4000-plus articles and amassing over 12 million reads for Sportskeeda, he is among the company’s most experienced writers. Jason holds a Bachelor's degree in English from UNC Pembroke and was inspired to become a gaming journalist very early on in life after reading Nintendo Power.

Jason is a jack of all trades when it comes to gaming journalism. He’s a key writer in Sportskeeda's MMO department, but he also likes to help out in other categories, like streamers, RPG, card games, and whatever else is needed. A solo gamer at heart, Jason's favorite titles include Earthbound and Dragon Warrior.

Jason places high value on accuracy and relevance in his write-ups. He achieves this with thorough research to sift facts from rumors. One of the biggest highlights of his career is his interview with Canadian pro wrestler Kenny Omega about his inclusion in the Like a Dragon game series. He is also good friends with journalist Kazumo Hashimoto, who he admires for the kind of stories he works on and his deep ethics.

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Edited by Jason Parker