ARK: Survival Ascended Metal Base Templates
Metal is the tier where a base stops being a delay and starts being a defence. It is also the tier where the farming cost becomes the real constraint, which is why the piece breakdown matters more here than the screenshots.
These builds use metal for the parts that take damage and cheaper tiers where it makes no difference — that mixed approach is standard practice and is why most of them are tagged mixed as well as metal.
Before importing, count the metal pieces in the breakdown against what you can actually farm. Template Hammer will not place a build you cannot pay for, and a half-placed shell is worse than no shell.
Template pages publish official crafting costs with visible recipe coverage. Modded pieces and files still awaiting an exact breakdown remain clearly uncosted; their requirements are never estimated.
Metal templates
92-Turret Heavy & Tek Tower
A 173-structure turret tower packing 92 Heavy Auto Turrets and Tek Turrets into a single metal-and-Tek footprint, built for PvP offline-protection windows. Mixing the two tiers matters under a soak: they draw different ammunition, so a raider who brought only one counter still has the other tier firing. Fully vanilla - no DLC and no mods. Official crafting costs are shown with visible recipe coverage.
ASR Longboat
A 1,148-structure longboat platform build in wood and metal, detailed with Arkitect Structures Remastered pieces and Bob's Tall Tales content. Its visual size and detailed modded structure set use a substantial share of a raft or platform saddle build allowance. Requires both the DLC and the mod. Official crafting costs are shown with coverage gaps for modded pieces.
Ultimate Gacha Farm
A three-part Gacha farm totalling 2,206 structures: the main production hall, a compact cubby section, and a centre support pillar so the whole thing snaps together on uneven ground. Built in metal and Tek for a PvE tribe running Gachas at scale. Each part imports separately, so you can place the hall first and extend later instead of committing to the full footprint on day one.
Triple-Stack Vaults
Left and right four-structure alignment variants for building clean triple-stacked vault storage in metal, eight structures across both. Vaults do not stack neatly without a foundation offset, and the two handed variants exist because that offset mirrors depending on which side of the room you build from. Fully vanilla, and near-free in structure count.
PvE Lookout Base
A 1,129-structure elevated PvE base with broad sightlines and enough internal room for core crafting and storage. Height is the design: an elevated platform keeps wild spawns out of your crafting floor and gives flyers a clean landing approach. Requires the Sci-Fi Tech mod for its structure set, so confirm it is loaded before importing.
Christmas 13x13 Defense Base
A 1,913-structure 13x13 defensive base in metal and Tek with a seasonal exterior theme. The 13x13 footprint is the practical part: an odd-numbered square gives you a true centre tile for the vault core and symmetrical turret coverage on all four faces. Requires Bob's Tall Tales. At nearly 2,000 structures it will use most of a tile's allowance on official PvP settings.
Anti-Tank Snap Pack
Three metal snapping variants - 29 structures across the set, 11 at the largest - for placing anti-tank obstacles in repeatable defensive patterns. They are alternatives, not parts: pick the one that snaps to the approach you are blocking. Repeatability is the value, since hand-placing obstacles at a consistent spacing is exactly what goes wrong under time pressure. Fully vanilla.
Underwater Turret Platform
A 1,684-structure underwater PvP platform shipped in two parts: the submerged base and the tower that snaps on top of it. Sixty-four Tek turrets sit in the design, and the bulk of the piece count is doubledoorframe and doorframe layering — the standard way of stacking hitboxes on a structure that cannot be approached on foot. Build your vacuum chambers to the height you want first, snap the base to the lowest one, then remove the chambers running to the seabed.
Dedi, Cryo and Crafting Layer
Twenty-six structures across two alternative layouts of the same floor: sixteen cryofridges, four dedicated storage boxes and the crafting run between them, arranged two different ways so you can pick whichever ordering matches the room you already have. The second layout is three foundations tall, which is the right height if your server runs custom cryofridge or dedicated storage sizes. Vanilla.
2×2 Auto Turret Tower
A 109-structure 2x2 auto turret tower using additional building cosmetics for its support structure. The 2x2 base plate is the practical part - it snaps onto a standard metal foundation grid, so it drops onto an existing compound without a rebuild. Requires the Arkitect's Paradise and Bamboo Building Cosmetics mods. Official crafting costs are shown with coverage gaps for modded pieces.
Warroom Storage Pack
Thirty-four structures across three parts for kitting out a warroom: a snap guide that gives you the foundation grid, a vault floor, and a triple-stacked vault block. Place the snap guide against the room you already have and connect the ceilings with railings for support, then drop the floors onto the grid it establishes. Vanilla, and every container places empty.
8x8 Starter Turret Tower
A 1,138-structure 8x8 PvP tower meant as a first real turret tower rather than an endgame one: metal railings and thin pillars over a doubledoorframe core, with a thatch layer doing the cheap sacrificial work. The footprint is small enough to hold under a per-tile structure cap while still giving turrets height. Requires Bob's Tall Tales.
Functional HQ with Lowered Floor
A 1,987-structure metal and Tek headquarters shipped with a separate twelve-foundation part for aligning a lowered storage floor. The alignment part is the point - a flush lowered floor is fiddly to snap by hand, and this gives you the exact foundation grid. Requires Bob's Tall Tales and the Arkitect's Paradise mod, so check both are loaded before importing.
Automated Medical Brew Farm
A 62-structure medical brew farm sized for volume rather than for fitting in a corner: fourteen Tek troughs feed three industrial cooking pots inside a metal shell. It is laid out so the harvesting tame does not wedge itself on the return path, which is the failure mode that makes hand-built brew farms stop producing overnight. Vanilla, and it needs a berry cart connected to run.
Automated Medical Brew Station
A 44-structure production module that pairs four small crop plots and a greenhouse section with the storage and crafting run needed to keep medical brews coming out without babysitting. Compact enough to sit inside an existing base rather than needing its own tile. Vanilla — no packs or mods required. Containers and crop plots arrive empty, so seed and fertilise them after placement.
Simple Turret Tower
A 175-structure defensive turret tower in metal and Tek, shipped as a native Template Hammer file for one-shot placement. Simple is the selling point: no variants to reconcile, just a tower that goes up in a single import when you need coverage on a new tile quickly. Requires Bob's Tall Tales. Official crafting costs are shown with visible recipe coverage.
Sloped Metal Turret Tower
A 1,236-structure PvP turret tower built around sloped railing work rather than a plain box, which changes how projectiles land on the face of it. Doubledoorframes and thin flat pillars carry most of the piece count, with a thatch shell used as cheap sacrificial layering. Requires Bob's Tall Tales — without the pack loaded the import will be missing pieces.
Vault Dropped Generator
A nine-structure module that drops a Tek generator into a vault so the generator sits protected instead of exposed on a floor. The thatch ceiling in the file is sacrificial scaffolding — destroy it by hand once the vault has settled and the generator stays where the template put it. Vanilla, and small enough to place inside a base that is already built.
Flush Dedicated Storage & Cryofridge Floor
A seven-structure metal alignment utility for setting dedicated storage and cryofridges into a clean lowered floor. Almost no structure cost, and purely geometric: it exists to give you the exact foundation offsets, because a flush lowered floor is fiddly to snap by hand and being wrong by one tile ruins the whole run of storage. Fully vanilla, PvE or PvP.
Lowered Flush Floor Pack
Sixteen structures across three alternative floors, each lowered by the exact amount one container type needs to sit flush: one for dedicated storage boxes, one for a mixed dedicated and cryofridge row, and one for vaults. Getting this right by hand is the fiddly part of a storage room, because a floor that is one tier off reads as wrong from every angle. Vanilla, and each floor places independently.
Dedicated Storage Snap Floor
Four structures that give you a clean snap point for a dedicated storage and cryofridge floor on terrain that will not cooperate. The value is entirely in the grid being exact: placing this first means the storage row lands flush instead of a tier too high. Vanilla, and it drops into an existing structure without rebuilding anything.
Common questions
How much metal does a base template need?
Each template page lists every metal piece in the build and its exact count, read out of the file itself. Multiply by the known cost of each piece to get your farming target.
Is a full metal base worth it over mixed?
Rarely. Interior walls and decorative pieces take no raid damage, so most competitive builds spend metal only on the outer shell and load-bearing structure. The piece breakdown shows how a given build splits it.
Does metal protect against Tek weapons?
Less than you would like. Metal is a meaningful step above stone against conventional damage, but Tek-tier attackers will go through it — layering and turret coverage do more than tier alone.
Can I upgrade a stone build to metal with a template?
No. Templates place what the file contains, so an upgrade means placing a new metal build rather than converting an existing one.
Related collections
- ARK: Survival Ascended PvP Base TemplatesValidated PvP base templates for ARK: Survival Ascended on PC. Turret coverage, layered walls and vault rooms, ready to import with Template Hammer.
- ARK: Survival Ascended Tek Base TemplatesTek base templates for ARK: Survival Ascended on PC. End-game builds with validated files and a full Tek structure breakdown.
- ARK: Survival Ascended Turret Tower TemplatesTurret towers, anti-tank snaps and defensive shells for ARK: Survival Ascended on PC. Validated builds with exact turret and structure counts.
- ARK: Survival Ascended Mega Base TemplatesMega builds for ARK: Survival Ascended on PC — 1,500 to 2,000 structures, from Tek fortresses to castles, validated piece by piece.
Guides worth reading first
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