ARK: Survival Evolved – Aberration Creature Taming

A concise compilation of all the basic information you might need to tame all of the new creatures added in the Aberration DLC.

Glow Pets

All credit goes to Godith Shadowind!

There are four creatures in Aberration which can create a ‘charge light’ aura, and ride on the player’s shoulder. A charge light aura is required to protect oneself from and to damage Nameless and Reapers, and as such it is essential to have one of these glowing pets with you in many areas of the map. They are completely passive: they will not fight if attacked, and require hand-feeding to tame. Plant species Z seeds work best for this, but as they can be time consuming to collect I prefer to just use mushrooms, their second favorite taming food.

Bulbdog

• Location: green zone
• Prefered mushroom: aquatic (hydration/frost protection)
• Diet: meat
• Skillset: highest charge capacity, lowest recharge rate
• Challenge rating: low (they’re ugly and everywhere, so don’t feel bad if you lose them. They are very easily replaced).

Glowtail

• Location: fertile cave (green X)
• Prefered mushroom: ascerbic (narcotic)
• Diet: meat
• Skillset: lowest charge capacity, highest recharge rate
• Challenge rating: moderate (take your time clearing out threats before you try to tame a gecko. I recommend taming a ravager or two inside the cave to help clear it out and to help you retrieve the artifact within).

Shinehorn

• Location: blue zone
• Prefered mushroom: aggeravic (health regen/hallucination protection)
• Diet: berries
• Skillset: medium charge capacity, medium recharge rate
• Challenge rating: moderate (you will need another glow pet to safely traverse the area where shinehorns are found, and there are many threats in the area as well) 

Featherlgiht

• Location: red zone (easiest entrance is at the purple X)
• Prefered mushroom: auric (heals radiation sickness/dehydrates)
• Diet: berries
• Skillset: low charge capacity, high recharge rate, can fly and therefore keep up with the player without riding on your shoulder
• Challenge rating: high (the area where featherlights live is difficult to get to, requires a full hazmat suit to even enter, and is filled with the most dangerous creatures on the ark, including reaper queens, which have over 45,000 health! in addition to this, featherlights often fly around, and that makes them difficult to follow and feed. They sure are pretty, though)

Mid-Game Creatures

RollRat

• Location: everywhere except caves and the surface
• Saddle requirements: level 58, metal, cementing paste, green gems
• Taming method: passive
• Taming food: honey (must be thrown at the rat while it is burrowed)
• Diet: berries
• Skillset: can carry two riders in addition to the ‘driver’, can ‘roll’ very quickly and without taking damage(though if you hit anything the saddle will take damage, and steering is not easy), and wood weighs 20% less in its inventory than in the player’s or other creatures’.
• Challenge rating: easy (neutral temperment, will only attack in self defense or if you take the gems they dig up) 

Ravager

• Location: everywhere except the surface
• Saddle requirements: level 47
• Taming method: standard tranq’n’feed
• Diet: meat
• Skillset: can climb up and down ziplines, get an ‘alpha’ buff when in groups, and can carry twice as much of most resources(wood, thatch, metal ore, green gems, fiber, crystal, and stone all literaly weigh half as much in the ravager’s inventory as they would in the player’s or other creatures’). the one downside to ravagers is that they are not immune to radiation, and thus require regular feedings of mushroom brew to use in the red zone.
• Challenge rating: moderate (they travel in packs, are difficult to see due to their lack of bioluminesence, and wild ones do a ‘gnash’ attack which slows the victim for 10 seconds; more than enough time to ‘gnash’ again, essentially paralyzing them.) 

Karkinos

• Location: shallow water
• Saddle requirements: level 65, blue gems
• Taming method: tranq’n’feed, except narcotics do not work on it so you will have to use blunt force trauma, such as with catapults, ballistas, or cannons.
• Prefered food: carbonemys(turtle) egg kibble
• Diet: spoiled meat
• Skillset: can breathe underwater, can carry small to medium sized creatures in its claws, and is a very good jumper.
• Challenge rating: high (if it grabs you or your mount you are in big trouble, and aiming a cannon at it can be very frustrating and consume a lot of resources.)

End-Game Creatures

These creatures are all EXTREMELY difficult to tame alone, and I have NOT tamed them myself yet, so this section may not currently be entirely accurate, though I will do my best to gather good information for it, and I will update it as soon as I complete these tames personally.

RockDrake

• Location: adults can be found in the blue and red zones, eggs can be found at the red X on the map.
• Saddle requirements: level 75,metal, red gems
• Taming method: adults cannot be tamed, you must steal an egg and hatch it.
• Imprinting food: nameless venom
• Diet: nameless venom until adulthood, then meat
• Skillset: can climb sheer cliffs, glide, detect reapers, and can ‘cloak’, turning nearly invisible.
• Challenge rating: high (to get to the eggs requires radiation protection and you must be able to get past reaper queens. As soon as you pick up an egg, all the many adult drakes in the area will attack, and they are nearly impossible to evade.)

Basilisk

• Location: everywhere, but rare
• Saddle requirements: level 85, metal, cementing paste, green gems
• Taming method: cannot be knocked out, place eggs and get it to unborrow and eat them
• Taming food: fertilized rockdrake eggs
• Diet: meat
• Skillset: powerful, can burrow, has a powerful ranged attack, and can knock creatures unconcious with its venom
• Challenge rating: high (spawn sparingly and are hard to spot when burrowed. The only eggs it will accept are fertilized rockdrake eggs, which are extremely difficult to get, and they can be finicky about eating them)

Reaper

• Location: queens are found in the red zone, kings are found on the surface and can be summoned by nameless.
• Taming method: the only way to get yourself a reaper is to be impregnated by a queen and then successfuly ‘give birth’ to a king while under the effect of a reaper pheromone gland, gathered from dead reaper queens.
• Imprinting food: reaper pheromone gland
• Diet: meat
• Skillset: it’s like having your own pet boss; though they do not obey whistle commands, and until they reach juvenile growth stage they will attack anything not under the effect of a reaper pheromone gland.
• Challenge rating: high (reaper queens live in the irradiated red zone, have a minimum of 45,000 health, are hard to spot, do tons of damage, and are very fast. You will need multiple max level, imprinted, mate boosted creatures to stand a chance against these things.)