Caves

Known cave locations.Credit to /u/KronixGaming and reddit

There are two types of caves: Surface Caves and Underwater Caves. You can find them around Ark map. Some of them are really hard do explore and others quite tricky. They all have really great prizes if you can manage to explore them but be careful, there are some enemies waiting for you and get lost inside them is realy easy.

Here is a useful guide for Cave Exploration: Guide

Creatures Found in Caves

• Titanoboa;
• Spiders;
• Bats;
• Dilophosaur;
• Scorpion;
• Crocodile (Caves with water lakes);
• Piranha (Caves with water lakes);

Surface Caves

Adventurers will have to deal with extreme temparatures, dangerous jumps, narrow spaces and water-paths. Every cave has loot crates with different levels and one unique artefact.

Cave	Artifact	Latitude	Longitude	Loot Crate Level
South (1)	Artifact Of The Hunter	80.3°	53.5°	10
Central	Artifact Of The Clever	41.5°	46.9°	10
South (2)	Artifact Of The Pack	68.2°	56.2°	25
South-East	Artifact Of The Massive	70.6°	86.1°	40
North-West	Artifact Of The Skylord	19.3°	19.0°	40
North-East	Artifact Of The Devourer	14.7°	85.4°	55

Central Cave

Enemies:

• Unknown;
• Unknown;

Dangers:

• Unknown;
• Unknown;

INFO:

• Unknown;

Upper South Cave

File:Sarcos.jpg

You need to dive right through them

Enemies:

• Bats
• Titanoboas
• Spiders
• Scorpions
• Megapiranhas
• Sarcos

Dangers:

• Extreme Cold

INFO:

• Biggest cave in the game. The cold will stop you from regenerating health, so bring lots of cooked meat and bloodpacks
• A very large part of the cave is underwater. You will need 3-4 points in oxygen or lazarus chowder to get through the underwater parts
• The underwater part is swarmed with piranhas and sarcos. Sometimes you have to fight vs 20-30 piranhas at once. They will tear your armor apart, so bring an extra armor and an extra weapon with you
• If you don't like fighting underwater, this will be the hardest cave to accomplish

Lower South Cave

Enemies:

• Titanboas
• Spiders
• Scorpions

Dangers:

• Very Cold (bring lots of food)
• Getting Lost (it is easy to turn around and forget which way you came in)

INFO:

• Considerable one of the easiest caves, very good to farm experience.
• You can get a lot of metal in the cave, but you need to make sure that you can defend from the creatures that live down there.

South-East Cave

Enemies:

• Unknown;
• Unknown;

Dangers:

• Unknown;
• Unknown;

INFO:

• Unknown;

North-West Cave

Enemies:

You need to jump to the rock in the middle - yes it is possible

• Spiders;
• Bats;

Dangers:

• Dangerous Jumps;
• Very little space;
• Extreme Cold;

INFO:

• The North-East-Cave is all about your jumping skills. It is a very narrow cave, you will be crouching mostly. You won't encounter much enemies and they are a little bit buggy as of patch 176. The biggest challenge is a very dangerous jump after obtaining the Artifact of Skylord.
  

• The jump can be avoided on pvp servers by building something to jump on and going back.
  It is recommended to not bring your best equipment, as the enemies are weak and buggy and the risk of dying without the possibility of getting the corpse back is high. Groups will have big trouble due to the limited space.

North-East Cave

You will walk a spiral path to the ground

Enemies:

• Spiders;
• Bats;
• Scorpions;

Dangers:

• Dangerous Jumps;
• Extreme Cold;

INFO:

• This can be considered the hardest cave of the game, you will need a lot of food/bloodpacks;
• This cave is swarming of bats
• There are dangerous jumps, as you will walk a spiral path down to the ground. It is advised to bring a parachute with you
• An underwater path at the entrance will prevent you from taking any dinosaurs with you

Underwater Caves

Currently there are 12 confirmed Underwater Caves on the official Ark Map. They are found all around the island in the deep ocean areas. It can be quite a struggle but finding one of these can be a great benefit in getting Silica Pearls and Oil. The only indication of the position from the surface is a small flow of bubbles, appearing as a thin white line. However, once underwater this visual sight disappears. The Cave itself is hidden in a giant roundish rock. The entrance is marked by big bubbles rising up.

The inside of the caves yields a big cluster of Silica Shells, where one can easily get around 50 Silica Pearls in one go. There are also some Oil containing Rocks, but they are less awarding than the Oil-Nodes outside the caves. However there are often some Clusters of Oil and Pearls outside of the cave, too, that can be picked up because of the fresh air from the cave.

Nº	Latitude	Longitude	Oil	Silica Pearls
01	16.0°	10.1°	Unknown	Unknown
02	10.0°	21.5°	Unknown	Unknown
03	10.4°	39.5°	No	Yes
04	06.3°	89.7°	Unknown	Unknown
05	36.3°	91.5°	Unknown	Unknown
06	50.5°	11.2°	Unknown	Unknown
07	52.7°	91.9°	Unknown	Unknown
08	83.0°	09.9°	Yes	Yes
09	90.8°	14.0°	Yes	Yes
10	89.8°	36.8°	Unknown	Unknown
11	90.3°	71.3°	Unknown	Unknown
12	87.4°	89.7°	Yes	Yes

Tips

• Lazarus Chowder will decrease the needed Oxygen while underwater and allow you to dive for longer times, making it easier to find the entrance.

• Riding a Megalodon can help against other Sharks and allows you a very quick movement in the Water. They are also a good way to spot the bubbles from the surface. However, there seems to be a problem with taking your Shark into the Cave, too, at the moment.

• If you have a Tribemate with a Pteranodon, he can transport you directly to the location of the Cave and drop you down, avoiding most of the swim, and with that, most of the Megalodons on the way to the cave. Once finished the Pteranodon can pick you up again from the water surface. This is also a very resource friendly method, as it allows to go down with minimum armor and weapons, as fighting can be reduced to a minimum. That way, the loss of dying down there ain't that much of a throwback. This however requires to have found the entrance in the first place.