The Pickaxe will also mine Stone and small amounts of Flint, while the Ax will net large amounts of Flint and some Stone.
Thatch and Wood are both collected from trees, with the Pickaxe granting more Thatch over Wood, and vice versa for the Ax. The five materials you need the most in this game are Thatch, Wood, Stone, Flint and Fiber. Once the pickaxe is made, walk over to a rock and hit it several times with the pickaxe until you have a nice stash of flint, then make an axe. Repeat about 4 or 5 times, then use the materials you’ve collected to build a pickaxe. Then walk over to a tree and punch it until it falls down. First walk over to the shoreline and spam the hell out of the E button until you collect a few rocks. Once you awake on the beach, there’s a clear order of operations you should follow. The first few minutes of ARK: Survival Evolved play out like Minecraft. It can also be hard to find your body once your character is randomly respawned in a zone so take note of any identifying landscape features. Be aware though that the body decomposes after a short time, and that predators or hostile creatures don’t always leave an area once they’ve killed you, meaning they may still pose a threat in the location where you died. As with games like Diablo, ARK will save your inventory after you die and once you revive, you can find your “old” body and grab the items you left behind. Next time you respawn, make it easier on yourself by fetching the possessions off your dead body. It’ll be frustrating at first but after awhile you’ll get used to the failure. You’re going to die a lot, especially at the lower character levels of the game, and especially when you re-spawn on the beach. This will both preoccupy your time and toughen you up for the horrors to come.
Always be taming more dinosaurs and building more defenses for your home base. There’s no Story Mode, and much of the game’s conflict is driven by either self-imposed personal goals, or the chaos of the open server multiplayer community. Your biggest struggle in learning to play ARK: Survival Evolved will be figuring out what to do with yourself.