ARK vs Rust: Which Survival Game Should You Play Next?

Survival games have an inherent appeal to them. They simulate challenges we would likely face when placed in a hostile environment while giving us the freedom to disregard social norms and individual limitations in our attempts to remain alive.

Both Rust and ARK: Survival Evolved are games that attempt to do justice to this survival fantasy, but they go about it in different ways.

By the end of this article, you will hopefully know enough to decide which game is best for you.

ARK vs Rust: About the Games

Rust and ARK both came out during a period of resurgence of survival games in the early 2010s. The trend was reignited by DayZ, an ARMA 2 zombie mod that focused on realistic survival mechanics and cutthroat PvP combat. The legacy of DayZ is evident in the way Rust and ARK approach survival gameplay.

Both games feature:

• Scavenging and crafting mechanics, where players gather resources to craft items and buildings.
• Survival mechanics, based on a system of bodily needs, such as hunger and thirst.
• Randomly-generated sandbox environments with different biomes, hazards, flora, and fauna.
• Unrestricted PvP, forcing players to communicate with each other and form groups to increase their survival chance.

Despite sharing the same foundation, each game took the gameplay in a slightly different direction.

Rust ramped up the PvP aspects of survival while placing less emphasis on realistic foraging mechanics and base-building. In Rust, the quickest way to thrive is by murdering other players and taking their stuff.

In contrast, ARK favors a slower, more methodical approach to surviving in the wilderness. Players are encouraged to interact with the game’s ecosystem by taming and breeding dinosaurs. There is also an incentive to form larger communities to share resources and tackle PvE challenges.

Let’s now compare the two games in greater detail and see their unique strengths and weaknesses as survival games.

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Learn more about Rust’s community by checking out the best Rust streamers.

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ARK vs Rust Comparison

Basic Gameplay

Rust. You play Rust from the first-person perspective. You spawn naked in the wilderness with no items other than a torch and a rock. You gather resources such as wood and stone, hunt animals and harvest farms for food, craft or scavenge weapons and armor, and construct buildings for shelter and protection. You fight other players in melees using ranged weapons. Combat can occur as soon as you spawn so exercise caution if you encounter other players near the spawn location. If you die, you respawn with zero loot. If you manage to kill another player, you are encouraged to loot them for resources.

ARK. You play ARK either from the first-person or third-person perspective. You spawn with nothing and are forced to forage for resources to craft basic items. You can die easily, but you can recover your loot if you manage to find your body. You can tame dinosaurs and other creatures in the game by knocking them unconscious and nursing them back to health by feeding them various kinds of food. There is an XP system in the game which allows both players and dinosaurs to gain levels and improve their abilities over time. You can form alliances with other players to build bases, engage in raids, and tame dinosaurs together.

Graphics

Rust. Rust was built using Unity Engine 5. The environments look good, with decent textures and effects. The animations leave something to be desired, the running animation being especially awkward. Each player gets assigned a random in-game model which persists throughout the game with no tweaking options. In-game models have little variety, leaving you only a few animals such as wolves and bears, and a couple of vehicles to choose from.

ARK. ARK was built using Unreal Engine 4. The graphics are the standout feature of the game. High-resolution textures, advanced shader effects, and motion-captured animations are some of the highlights. There is a great variety of in-game models, most notably over 150 unique species of dinosaurs and other beasts. The scale of the environment is massive, a perfect setting for the game’s prehistoric denizens.

System Requirements

Rust. Rust is relatively forgiving when it comes to system requirements. The official minimum requirements are:

• OS: Windows 10 or Mac
• Processor: Intel Core i7-3770 / AMD FX-9590 or better
• Memory: 10 GB RAM
• Graphics: GTX 670 2GB / AMD R9 280 better
• DirectX: Version 11
• Network: Broadband Internet connection
• Storage: 20 GB available space
• Additional Notes: SSD is highly recommended or expect longer than average load times.

ARK. ARK is notorious for its extremely steep system requirements. The minimum specified below is enough to get the game running, but even top-of-the-line PCs will struggle to maintain a smooth frame rate when rendering many players and dinosaurs on the screen.

• OS: Windows 10, Linux, Mac
• Processor: Intel Core i5-2400/AMD FX-8320 or better
• Memory: 8 GB RAM
• Graphics: NVIDIA GTX 670 2GB/AMD Radeon HD 7870 2GB or better
• DirectX: Version 10
• Storage: 60 GB available space
• Additional Notes: Requires broadband internet connection for multiplayer

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Story & Lore

Rust. Rust has little official story or lore. The players are literally dropped into the world naked, without directions on where to go, what to do, or how they came to be there. All of this is intentional – Rust is a game where the story emerges organically through gameplay. With that being said, the plot usually boils down to waking up in the wilderness, fighting a naked maniac in the woods for a half-eaten apple, only to die in a ditch somewhere after breaking both legs.

ARK. ARK has an extensive story and lore. The plot is (needlessly) convoluted, with different factions competing for control of latter-day Earth and fighting over a new resource simply called Element, the key behind the technology to revive beasts like dinosaurs from the past. The story is experienced through in-game events, item descriptions, journals found during exploration, NPCs, and other means. However, nothing forces players to participate in the lore – you can play the game and have fun while being blissfully ignorant of the finer details of the game’s plot.

Multi-Player Features

Rust. To play Rust, you must join an existing server, or make your own Rust server. There are three types of servers, official, community, and modded. Official servers generally have a high player count, they always run the vanilla version of the game, and they’re managed by teams in direct cooperation with the developers. Community servers are also vanilla, but they usually have rules, limits, or other restrictions. Modded Rust servers are customized in various ways through officially sanctioned and community mods.

ARK. ARK also offers a variety of server types, including servers devoted exclusively to PvE, as well as PvP servers. Players can host their own server as well, including modded servers. Additionally, you can play ARK in offline mode if you want to complete story missions and tame dinosaurs in peace.

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Learn how to create your own game server by reading our post How to Make Your Own Game Server.

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Ark vs Rust: How to Choose?

Despite their similarities, Rust and ARK represent different takes on the survival gameplay formula.

Rust is a multiplayer game focused exclusively on PvP. There is no single-player mode, and PvE content is limited to fighting wildlife and participating in occasional scripted events. Rust has a faster pace compared to ARK – it only takes about an hour to get a base up and running. Death also comes swiftly in Rust. Other players can start hunting you the minute you spawn, which forces you to think on your feet instead of carefully planning your venture into the wilderness. This can make the game feel frustrating, especially if you’re a beginner.

ARK has more in common with MMO-style games than traditional survival games. You can play PvE or PvP, avoid combat in favor of crafting and dinosaur taming, and even play through the game’s story mode. Unfortunately, these MMO elements make the game feel grindy and tedious. The steep hardware requirements only make things worse, causing the game to slow down to a crawl even on high-end machines. On the upside, once you sink a few hundred hours into the game and tame a few dinosaurs, the game starts feeling appropriately epic. Nothing beats an all-out brawl between armies of dinosaurs clashing.

So which is the better survival game, Rust or ARK? If you want a fast-paced PvP game where survival depends on intense, minute-to-minute, action, go with Rust. If you want a slower-paced game where you can survive long enough to create a prosperous post-apocalyptic community, ARK ticks all the boxes.

Conclusion

The multiplayer survival genre has some truly outstanding games, and both Rust and ARK are worthy of inclusion into the hall of fame. With that being said, they are markedly different games that cater to different tastes, so players tend to favor one over the other.

We hope we’ve made it easier for you to decide which game is more worthy of your money and your time. No matter which game you pick, rest assured you’ll have a blast.

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