ARK: Survival Evolved – How to Tame Dinosaurs

Taming Dinosaurs in ARK: Survival Evolved

Across your ARK: Survival Evolved server, you’ll run into everything from the towering Tyrannosaurus Rex to the gentle, plant-eating Bulbdog. Once tamed, these creatures can help with fast travel, gathering resources, and fighting off threats alongside your tribe.

Taming works differently for nearly every creature. Some need to be knocked out first, others need a specific food placed in their inventory while they’re still awake, and a handful need something stranger entirely. Knowing which method a creature needs before you go looking for it saves you a wasted trip. In this Nitrado guide, we break down every taming method in ARK: Survival Evolved, from knock-out and passive feeding to admin commands and force taming, so you know exactly what to bring before you head out.

ARK Taming Types and How to Tame Dinosaurs Using Them

Knock-Out Taming

Knocking a creature unconscious is the most common taming method in ARK: Survival Evolved, and it covers most of the aggressive creatures you’ll find on the map.

Ways to knock a creature unconscious:

• Melee and ranged weapons: hit the creature with your hands, a slingshot, a wooden club, an electric prod, a bow, a crossbow, a compound bow with tranquilizer arrows, a harpoon launcher with tranquilizer spear bolts, or a longneck rifle loaded with tranquilizer or shocking tranquilizer darts.
• Tamed-creature attacks: bite with a Basilisk or Titanoboa, kick with an Equus or Unicorn, head-butt with a Pachy, sting with a Scorpion, or shock with an Electrophorus.
• Continued hits: you can keep striking an unconscious creature to raise its torpor further, but this lowers its taming effectiveness.

Once the creature is unconscious, open its inventory and place its preferred food inside. Keep restocking that food throughout the taming process, since an empty inventory causes the taming bar to drop instead of rise.

• The creature raises its head to eat when the taming bar increases.
• A creature only eats once it’s hungry enough, and it eats its favorite food first if that food is already in its inventory.
• Note: the Royal Griffin is exclusive to ARK Mobile. If you’re playing on PC or console, this creature doesn’t appear on your server. On ARK Mobile, it only eats once you meet one of its requirements: your survivor is level 95 or higher, you’re wearing a Gold Crown, or you share the Royal Griffin’s surname and your survivor is level 40 or over.

The creature needs to stay unconscious for the whole taming process. Narcoberries and narcotics restore its torpor and extend how long it stays knocked out. Force-feed them by hovering over the item in the creature’s inventory and pressing:

• PC keyboard: E key
• Xbox controller: Y button
• PlayStation controller: Triangle button

Non-Violent Taming

Many ARK creatures can join your tribe without a fight. Feeding the creature links the tame to you or your tribe, which starts its hunger dropping so you can keep feeding it through the process. Taming progress only drops if the creature takes damage or starts starving. Stay close during the early stage of a non-violent tame, since moving too far away can unlink the tame and reset your progress.

Favorite foods for non-violent tames:

• Araneo: Spoiled Meat
• Arthropluera: Broth of Enlightenment

• Basilosaurus: Exceptional Kibble
• Chalicotherium: Beer
• Charged Light creatures (Aberration DLC): Plant Species Z Seed, with a specific mushroom per species: Bulbdog eats Aquatic Mushroom, Featherlight eats Auric Mushroom, Glowtail eats Ascerbic Mushroom, and Shinehorn eats Aggeravic Mushroom.
• Crystal Wyvern (Crystal Isles DLC): Primal Crystal

• Diplodocus: Regular Kibble
• Dung Beetle: Feces
• Giant Bee: Simple Kibble
• Gigantopithecus: Regular Kibble
• Ichthyosaurus: Simple Kibble
• Lystrosaurus: Rare Flower
• Manta: AnglerGel
• Mantis: Deathworm Horn
• Mesopithecus: Basic Kibble

• Moschops: randomly asks for Cooked Prime Fish, Cooked Prime Meat, Giant Bee Honey, Mejoberry, Organic Polymer, Rare Flower, Rare Mushroom, Raw Prime Fish Meat, Raw Prime Meat, or Tintoberry.
• Onyc: Raw Mutton
• Otter: Sabertooth Salmon
• Sinomacrops: Chitin
• Vulture: Spoiled Meat

To start a non-violent tame, place the creature’s food in the far-right slot of your item hotbar, then feed it:

1. Approach the creature and feed it by pressing the use key: E on PC, Y on Xbox controller, or Triangle on PlayStation controller.
2. If the creature runs before you can approach, equip Ghillie Armor to close the distance without spooking it.
3. Wait until the creature is nearly at full hunger again before feeding it a second time. Wait time varies a lot between creatures.
4. Repeat the feeding cycle until the creature is fully tamed.

Note: a few creatures behave differently while you’re feeding them. The Diplodocus will play and move you around. Touching a Gigantopithecus or Manta during taming causes it to attack, and touching a Mesopithecus causes it to run. Bug Repellant is worth using around Araneo, Arthropluera, Dung Beetles, Manta, and Onyc, since these creatures attack the moment they see or feel you.

Unique Taming

A handful of ARK creatures need their own dedicated method. Here’s how to tame each one:

• Amargasaurus: sync with its temperature using insulated armor and Calien Soup or Fria Curry, then feed it Exceptional Kibble. It proves itself to you by killing off aggressive creatures nearby during taming.

• Astrodelphis: feed and pet it with Element. It flees regularly, so you’ll need to follow it through the process.
• Basilisk: this egg eater needs a fertilized Magmasaur Egg, Rock Drake Egg, Voidwyrm Egg (Genesis Part II DLC), or Wyvern Egg placed on the ground.
• Bloodstalker: hold blood packs in your inventory and let the creature latch onto you to drain them. It takes 10 blood packs per creature level to finish the tame. Bring a parachute for the descent once it releases you.
• Dinopithecus: kill off the rest of its pack, then wait for it to flee before taming it passively.
• Equus: ride the creature and feed it Rockarrot each time it tries to kick you off.

• Ferox: feed it Element, then step away. It grows larger and more aggressive for a while before returning to normal, at which point you can feed it again.
• Gacha: prefers structure items fed in stacks of ten.
• Hesperornis: drag dead fish to the creature for it to eat.
• Hyaenodon: pet it without scaring or angering it.
• Liopleurodon: a temporary tame lasting 30 minutes. Drop Giant Bee Honey in the water nearby, and it swims over to eat it.
• Megachelon: while in the ocean, lure a Parakeet Fish School toward it so it can eat. It can’t take any damage during the tame.
• Noglin: this creature mind-controls your other tamed dinosaurs, with its taming bar rising after each session. Bring low-damage, durable tames so they don’t kill each other while under its control.

• Otter: drag dead fish to the creature for it to eat.
• Pegomastax: keep berries, ideally Fresh Barley, in the far-right slot of your inventory. It steals them, deals minor damage, and runs off. Repeat until it’s tamed.
• Phoenix: burn it constantly during a heat wave with a Fire Wyvern or a Flamethrower.
• Roll Rat: throw Giant Bee Honey on the ground, and it eats it while burrowing nearby.
• Shadowmane: feed it from a filled Fish Basket (Aberration DLC) while it rests in the afternoon. It teleports away to a random spot after eating, so you’ll need to track it down each time.
• Tek Stryder: hack this machine with Mutagel (Genesis Part II DLC).

• Troodon: expect it to kill your other tames during the taming process.
• Tropeognathus: pin it down with a Chain Bola, then feed it Exceptional Kibble.
• Voidwyrm: weaken the creature until you can force-ride it, then use Mutagen (Genesis Part II DLC) to calm it before it barrel-rolls.

Fish-Basket Taming

The Fish Basket method arrived with the Aberration DLC and covers creatures that prefer fish. Set a Fish Basket up in the water and it captures smaller creatures automatically. You can tame those creatures directly or feed the basket’s contents to other creatures to tame them, though anything left inside too long will spoil. A creature tamed this way is set as force-tamed, so it behaves a little differently than a creature tamed the normal way.

Temporary Taming

A temporary tame only accompanies you for a short while, and it doesn’t count as an official tame for your tribe.

• Amargasaurus: requires ongoing synchronization with you. Once that sync breaks, the tame completes, or the creature dies, it stops following you.

• Carnotaurus: a Yutyrannus can recruit a Carnotaurus as a temporary tame for 60 seconds, during which you can command it.
• Forest Wyvern: spawned by a wild Forest Titan, you can ride it for as long as it holds its flame.
• Giant Bee: sometimes spawned by Giant Queen Bees as temporary guardians.
• Titanosaur: tamed with turret taming, firing a cannon at its head until it’s ready for a saddle. Once saddled, it stops eating and has roughly 16 to 20 hours before it starves.

Raise-Only Taming

A handful of ARK creatures can only be tamed by raising them from birth:

• Deinonychus: found in the White Cliffs of the Valguero DLC. Steal an egg from a nest and raise it to an adult.
• Magmasaur: found in the Volcanic Cave of the Genesis Part I DLC. Steal an egg from its nest and raise it to an adult.
• Reaper King: found in Rockwell’s Proliferation in the Genesis Part II DLC. Fight a Reaper Queen down to under 2,000 health with any charge light turned off, then get its attention and let it impregnate you. You’ll give birth to a baby Reaper King, which you then raise to an adult.

• Rock Drake: found in the Aberration DLC. Steal an egg from a Rock Drake nest, then hatch and raise it to an adult.
• Wyvern: for any Wyvern type, steal an egg from its nest and raise it to an adult.

Craft-Only Taming

• Enforcer: destroy Enforcers around the Sanctuary to collect Blueprints, then build one at a City Terminal or Tek Replicator.

• Mek: unlocked with a level 51 engram, which lets you craft level 51 Meks. Better Mek blueprints drop from hard and legendary Orbital Supply Drops.
• Scout: take out Scouts around the Sanctuary to collect Blueprints, then build one at a City Terminal or Tek Replicator.

Mega Mek Taming

A Mega Mek is a powerful suit built for fighting the Alpha King Titan boss. Craft one with a MegaMek Operational Materialization Interface, combining four Meks while inside the Alpha King Titan’s arena.

Turret Taming

Several ARK creatures need turret taming, damaging the creature’s head with a turret weapon until it’s ready to tame. Creatures tamed this way include:

• Astrocetus
• Karkinos
• Rock Elemental
• Titanosaur

Titan Taming

Four Titans appear in the ARK Extinction DLC, and you can tame three of them: the Forest Titan, the Desert Titan, and the Ice Titan.

1. Begin battling the Titan you’re taming.
2. Locate the corrupted spots that appear temporarily on its body. Spot locations vary between Titans.
3. Attack the spots with a fast-shooting weapon, such as an Assault Rifle.
4. Destroy each spot as it appears. Three groups of spots appear across the fight.
5. Move to the next spot while keeping overall damage as low as you can. The less damage the Titan takes, the higher its level once it’s tamed.
6. Once every spot is destroyed, the Titan becomes tamed and saddled automatically.

Eerie Taming

An Eerie creature, found exclusively in ARK Mobile, carries a Creature Implant that blocks normal taming. Kill the creature, remove the implant from its inventory, then revive it at an Obelisk or Revival Platform to tame it.

ARK Admin Command Taming

ARK admin commands let you instantly tame any creature you find on your server, skipping the food and tranquilizer steps entirely. To tame a creature this way:

1. Join your ARK server and confirm you’re set up as an ARK admin.
2. Approach the creature you want to tame and look at it until its name tag appears.
3. Open the in-game ARK console: Tab key on PC, L1 + R1 + Square + Triangle on PlayStation while paused, or LB + RB + X + Y on Xbox while paused.
4. Type cheat ForceTame and run the command to tame that creature.

Pro Tip: to force-tame every creature in an area at once, stand at the center of the group and type cheat ForceTameAOE <radius>, using a radius between 1000 and 4000.

Untamable Creatures in ARK

Most ARK creatures can be tamed through one of the methods above, but a few can only be force-tamed with admin commands, and one can’t be tamed at all. Creatures you can’t tame the normal way include:

• Alpha Creatures

• Ammonite
• Bosses: Alpha King Titan, Broodmother Lysrix, Dragon, King Titan, Manticore, Megapithecus, Overseer, and Rockwell.
• Boss minion creatures
• Brute creatures
• Cnidaria
• Corrupted creatures
• Deathworm
• Enraged creatures

• Eurypterid
• Ferox (mutated form)
• GachaClaus
• Genesis DLC mission creatures
• Glowbug
• Jug Bug
• Leedsichthys
• Meganeura
• Nameless: the only creature in ARK that can’t be tamed under any circumstances, even by force. If you try to force-tame a Nameless with admin commands, it burrows and disappears instead.

• Reaper Queen
• Seeker
• Summoner
• Titanomyrma

Build Your Tribe

You’ve now got every taming method ARK: Survival Evolved throws at you, from knocking out a Rex to hatching a Wyvern egg. Pick a creature that fits how you and your tribe play, whether that’s a flying mount for scouting or a heavy hitter for boss fights, and start building your roster on your own ARK server.