How to Build and Sail the Galleon in ARK
The Galleon is the largest craftable ship in ARK, added with the Tides of Fortune adventure pack from the Bob's True Tales DLC. The wiki's own infobox description puts it plainly: "An extremely powerful, enormous Ship for naval travel. Trades away speed for increased size, durability, and firepower. Has many cannons on every side. Can be customized with many tileset Structures." This guide sticks to exactly what ark.wiki.gg documents for the Galleon and its Shipyard prerequisite — the crafting cost, the Shipyard you need first, how steering and the 32 cannons actually work, and the building rules on deck — and calls out anything the source doesn't cover, like weight capacity or how many tamed creatures it can carry, as undocumented rather than guessed.
Crafting the Galleon at a Shipyard
The source's Overview section is blunt about the prerequisite: "The Galleon must be constructed and repaired in a Shipyard." Its infobox lists a required level of 76 and 18 engram points, and a hefty materials list — with listed substitute ingredients — for a ship rated at 500,000 health: 1,400 Metal Ingot (or Scrap Metal Ingot), 3,200 Wood (or Fungal Wood), 2,200 Thatch, 5,200 Fiber, and 250 Oil (or Oil harvested from a Tusoteuthis). None of those five ingredients are optional extras — they're the full listed recipe, so budget for all of them before starting a build.
Building the Shipyard First
Before any of that materials list matters, you need the Shipyard itself, and it has its own gate: level 42 and 24 engram points, built from 100 Metal Ingot (or Scrap Metal Ingot), 1,200 Wood (or Fungal Wood), 600 Thatch, and 300 Fiber. The source describes it as "An large Structure used to construct, fast-travel, and manage Ships," consisting of "two wood multi-level platforms" with ships docked between them — it both deploys newly-constructed ships into that docking area and repairs whatever's already docked there. The one placement rule that can't be skipped: the Shipyard must be placed in water. Since the Shipyard's own level requirement (42) sits well below the Galleon's (76), there's a real gap between when you can start building the Shipyard and when you can actually queue the Galleon in it — plan the water-adjacent base accordingly.
Steering and Sailing the Galleon
Once it's built, the source's Movement section explains the controls through the steering wheel: "the player can lower or raise the sails, affecting the ship's speed, turn the rudder and rotate the sails to control the ship's direction, and drop/raise the anchor." Two behaviors are worth knowing before you cast off. First, sails stay however you last set them: "Once the ship's sails are raised, they will not lower until the player do it manually; the player can leave the steering wheel without stopping the ship." Second, that persistence only holds while someone's aboard — "If all players leave the ship, however, the sails will lower." Speed itself isn't a fixed number in the source; it "depend[s] on how high the sails are raised, and on the wind direction," so there's no single top-speed figure to quote here, only the two variables that control it.
Cannons and Building on the Galleon's Deck
The Galleon carries 32 cannons total, split into four independently-controllable sides — front, back, left, and right. Whoever's on the steering wheel can fire any side, but other players can also man a side on their own. The right and left batteries have a catch: "The right and left cannons cannot fire if their ports are closed; they can be opened by any player operating the cannons." Firing itself needs no stockpiled ammunition for the basic shot — cannons "can be fired without needing any ammunition, shooting regular Cannon Ball" — but they can also be loaded with special cannonballs "inflicting additional effects," which the source notes simply "have to be crafted or looted." It doesn't name which special rounds exist or how to craft them, so treat the exact special-ammo recipes as undocumented.
Building on deck has its own rules: "Structures can be built anywhere on the ship, and walls can snap to the ship's floor. Foundations and Pillars cannot be placed." Combat notes from the source round it out: wild creatures can damage the Galleon but won't aggro it, NPC Ships will aggro it and "deal considerable damage with their cannons," and collisions with islands deal no damage to the ship at all.
Build the Shipyard in water well before level 76 so it's ready the moment you can queue a Galleon. Once you're sailing, remember sails only drop on their own if everyone abandons ship — and open the left/right cannon ports before a fight, since a closed port simply won't fire no matter who's manning it.
Running your own ARK server
A 500,000-health warship that takes a Shipyard, 76 levels, and thousands of resources to build is not something you want to lose to a server reset or someone else's grief run. A private ARK server keeps your Shipyard standing in the exact water tile you placed it, your half-finished Galleon docked where you left it, and your crew's cannon assignments intact between sessions — no competing for dock space or hoping the world state survives a public host's restart schedule.
Conclusion
The Galleon is ARK's premier naval warship: a 500,000-health, 32-cannon ship built at a level-42, water-placed Shipyard and then crafted itself at level 76 for 1,400 Metal Ingot, 3,200 Wood, 2,200 Thatch, 5,200 Fiber, and 250 Oil. Steering runs through raised/lowered sails, a rudder, and an anchor, with speed set by sail height and wind rather than a fixed number, and building on deck is limited to snap-fit walls with no foundations or pillars. What the source doesn't document — weight capacity, how many tamed creatures it can carry, and the specific recipes for special cannonballs — is left as an open gap here rather than a guess.
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