ARK: Survival Ascended Starter House Templates
The first base you build on a fresh server should be cheap, quick and hidden. These houses are sized for that: a beach hut, a bunkhouse with a greenhouse, a forest hut you can put up before your first real farm run.
They are also the builds most people keep. A starter house that snaps cleanly can be extended into a full base later without demolishing the core, which is why the layouts here favour regular grids over decorative shapes.
Themed lodges and starter houses in this category range from a few hundred structures up to a full Viking lodge. Sort by size if you want the cheapest thing that gets you off the beach tonight.
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.
Starter templates
Viking Lodge
Two complete variants of a large Viking-inspired lodge, 1,997 structures at their biggest, sharing one wood-and-stone silhouette with different interior and exterior detailing. Both are vanilla - no DLC, no mods - so they place on any PC server. Pick a variant rather than importing both: at this size a single copy already fills most of a tribe's structure allowance on official settings.
All-in-One Forest Hut
An 893-structure forest hut in wood and stone, combining residential space, storage and everyday crafting in a single build. All-in-one is accurate - you do not need a second structure for the first stretch of a PvE run. Stone tier means it is affordable well before metal, so it suits an early-to-mid game tribe. Requires Bob's Tall Tales.
Basic Bunkhouse with Greenhouse
A 272-structure bunkhouse in stone with an attached greenhouse, sized for a small PvE tribe. One of the cheapest complete living-plus-growing setups in the library - under 300 structures, so it barely touches a structure allowance. Good as a satellite build on a farming tile rather than as a main base. Requires Bob's Tall Tales.
Steampunk Starter House
A 615-structure starter home with practical interior space and steampunk decorative pieces from Bob's Tall Tales. Medium tier, so it is realistic to fund on an early PvE settlement without a metal economy behind you. Themed rather than functional-first: the decorative pieces come from the DLC set, so Bob's Tall Tales has to be active.
Greek Starter House
A 1,116-structure classical residence in stone with layered rooms, terraces and decorative pieces from the Astraeos Structures mod. Called a starter house, but at over a thousand structures it is a settled home rather than a first-night shelter - build it once you have a stone-tier economy running. Needs the Astraeos Structures mod loaded.
Beach Starter Hut
An 849-structure beach starter hut across multiple levels, with room for early crafting, storage and small tames. Wood and stone, and fully vanilla - no DLC, no mods - so it places on any PC server. Sized for a beach tile on The Island or Ragnarok, where vertical space matters more than footprint because the flat ground is contested.
Common questions
What is the cheapest house I can place on day one?
Sort this page by smallest and check the piece breakdown. The smaller wood and thatch builds are placeable within your first evening on a fresh server, before you have stone infrastructure.
Can I upgrade a wood house to stone later?
Not automatically — Template Hammer places what the file contains. In practice most players place a cheap house first and then import a stone or metal build once they have the resources.
Do greenhouse pieces need extra content?
Base greenhouse pieces are vanilla, but some cosmetic greenhouse skins come from mods. The requirements block on each template lists exactly what a build needs, and validation checks that list against the file.
Are these good on PvP servers?
As a first night shelter, yes. As anything you keep valuables in, no — a wood or stone house is a delay, not a defence. Move to the PvP base and turret tower collections once you are established.
Related collections
- ARK: Survival Ascended PvE Base TemplatesPvE base templates for ARK: Survival Ascended on PC — workshops, storage wings and breeding rooms, validated and free to copy or download.
- Small ARK: Survival Ascended Build TemplatesARK: Survival Ascended templates under 200 structures — traps, turret posts, vault blocks and storage modules you can place in one trip.
- ARK: Survival Ascended Stone Base TemplatesStone base templates for ARK: Survival Ascended on PC. Affordable early and mid-game builds, validated with the exact stone and wood cost.
- 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.
Guides worth reading first
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