ARK: Survival Evolved offers a variety of fascinating creatures. Many of these are of prehistoric origin, while others are fantasy beings. MeinMMO shows you 5 of these fascinating beings that you can tame or breed in curious ways.
ARK has some very extraordinary creatures, and some of them have very unusual ways of being tamed. We want to show you 5 of the most extraordinary methods to tame a creature.
What is taming in ARK? In ARK, it is possible to utilize creatures for farming, fighting, or other ventures. For this to work, they must be tamed by you.
There are 2 normal taming methods in the game: the knockout tame and the passive tame.
What is knockout tame? The knockout or K.O. method is an aggressive and active way of taming. You stun the creature with a bow, a rifle, or other comparably useful tools.
When the creature is stunned, feed it its preferred food (for example, raw meat or vegetables and berries). The taming progress increases the more the creature eats. Make sure there is a sufficient amount of food in the creature’s inventory and that the stun state is maintained.
What is passive tame? Passive taming occurs without stunning. You place the creature’s preferred food in the last item quick-access slot, approach the animal, and press the displayed interaction button to feed it.
Repeat the process until the taming is successfully completed. Some creatures only eat very specific food and exhibit special behaviors during taming.
But besides the two methods, there are also some other curious ways to tame creatures in ARK. Here are the 5 most extraordinary:
1. Chalicotherium – The Alcoholic Horse Creature
What distinguishes the Chalicotherium? Chalicotheriums are herbivores. If you want to tame one, you need a special drink instead of berries or vegetables, which you must brew beforehand: beer.
Chalicotheriums are passively tamed and cannot be fed with the usual food of an herbivore; they specifically want only beer.
2. Karkinos – Knockout via Catapult
What is the Karkinos? A Karkinos is a very large crab. It can grab you with its claws and even pull you off riding animals. The Karkinos was introduced into the game with the Aberration DLC.
How do I tame a Karkinos? To tame the Karkinos, you must shoot it with a catapult. A shot to the crab’s back fills the stun bar. When this is full, the Karkinos becomes unconscious. You can then feed and tame it.
If you hit the Karkinos at another spot than its back, it takes damage and does not receive the stun effect. The challenge is not to accidentally kill the animal in the process.
3. Tusoteuthis – Feeding Giant Squids by Hand
What is the Tusoteuthis? The Tusoteuthis is a giant and extremely dangerous squid. It can grab you with its tentacles and pull you into the depths of the ocean.
How is the Tusoteuthis tamed? Despite its aggressive nature, the Tusoteuthis is passively tamed. To do this, you need to get close to it and feed it by hand. The Tusoteuthis only eats the rare and heavy black pearls.
You need to approach the mouth of the squid and then feed the monster using the action button. The Tusoteuthis only eats when you grab its attention. For this, it must be aggressive towards you, which complicates things.
The Bait Method: To ensure successful feeding, players have established the “bait method.” Here, you take a Carbonemys (turtle) as bait.
If everything goes according to plan, the Tusoteuthis will attack the turtle. If this happens, you can safely swim to the mouth of the squid and feed it.
4. Bloodstalker – The Vampire Among Creatures
What is the Bloodstalker? The Bloodstalker is an oversized spider-like creature that was introduced into the game with Genesis. The Bloodstalker is passively tamed and requires your blood to gain taming progress.
When you are within range of the Bloodstalker, it will pull you toward it with its webs. Then, the Bloodstalker will suck your blood. During this time, the creature’s taming progress increases.
How do I get enough blood for taming? Since the Bloodstalker requires a large amount of blood for a complete and successful taming, you need to have blood bags in your inventory.
You obtain these by draining blood from yourself or your sleeping friends with a blood transfusion kit. Once you have enough blood bags in your inventory, allow the Bloodstalker to grab you. It will then suck the blood from the bags and can be tamed.
Increasing the Effectiveness of Taming: If you only let the blood be drained, the tamed animal will have a very low effectiveness. Effectiveness determines how many levels the creature gains on its successful taming above its original level.
For other creatures, effectiveness starts at 100% and decreases over time as well as with damage taken during taming. For the Bloodstalker, you must first increase the base low effectiveness by letting the Bloodstalker kill creatures that you have tamed or bred.
This is suitable for shoulder creatures like the Jerboa or Bulbdog, but also larger creatures like the Parasaur, Ovis, or Raptor. It is important that the creature you use is small enough for the Bloodstalker to grab and pull toward itself.
5. Reaper King – The Different Kind of Pregnancy
What distinguishes the Reaper King? The Reapers are extremely aggressive and dangerous creatures that were introduced into the game with the Aberration DLC.
To obtain a Reaper King, you must perform some extraordinary steps, which include being impregnated by a Reaper Queen. The Reaper cannot be tamed or bred in the usual way.
Step 1: The Impregnation
First, you need to find a Reaper Queen and fight her. You must weaken her with a light source to bring her health below 2,000 HP.
Once the Reaper Queen is below 2,000 HP, she signals you with a reddish-pink pheromone cloud that she is ready to mate. She will now try to grab and impregnate you with her tail. To make this happen, you must turn off the light source.
Once she has performed her impregnation attack on you, you are as good as dead and carry a Reaper embryo inside you. After the impregnation attack, the Reaper Queen literally buries herself in the ground and disappears.
Step 2: The Pregnancy
You are now pregnant with a Reaper embryo. This phase lasts about 12 hours at default settings. During this phase, the Reaper absorbs experience points that you collect.
This collected experience determines the effectiveness and results in your Reaper baby being able to be up to 75 levels higher than the Reaper Queen that impregnated you.
Step 3: The Bloody Birth and Rearing
After the pregnancy phase, the Reaper baby violently and bloodily bursts out of your chest in a larval form. Again, you survive this process only narrowly.
After the birth and during the larval stage, the Reaper baby is extremely aggressive. Additionally, it moves around at high speed and ignores your commands.
To imprint and feed the Reaper baby without being attacked or even killed by it, a Reaper pheromone gland is required. You must consume the pheromone gland obtained by killing a Reaper Queen. This will result in the Reaper larva behaving peacefully towards you.
Once the baby has reached a certain growth progress, the larva buries itself in the ground and remains submerged for a short time. It then digs itself out of the ground and appears. Now the Reaper has shed its juvenile larval form and taken on the form of the larger adult.
ARK: Survival Evolved has built up an impressive selection of different creatures over the years, along with increasingly creative taming and breeding methods.
How many of these creatures have you tamed yourself? Which beast do you think is missing from the list and definitely needs to be included in a second part of the “5 most extraordinary taming methods”? Let us know in the comments!
