ARK: Survival Evolved – Basic Reaper Guide (Aberration)

This is a quick guide on how Reaper Kings work and how the different variants function, as well as how to tame one.

Other ARK Guides:

• All Aberration Creatures.
• Aberration Creature Taming.
• Breeding.

Reaper King

All credit goes to Stay Positive!

Reaper King’s are the weaker counterparts to the Reaper Queens. They occur in the Bioluminescent Mushroom Biome, as well as everything beyond that biome, Rockwell’s arena, and the surface.

All wild Reaper King’s are untameable.

Reaper King’s are heavily affected by charge, provided through the lightning charge gun, lantern pets, Plant Species Z grenades, or even wild animals that naturally produce charge (e.g glowbug). It is always recommended to have access to charge when fighting or avoiding Reaper King’s as they recieve a damage and health reduction as well as a health regeneration reduction which is very important.

The Subterranean Reaper King will spawn when 10 Nameless have spawned near the player. Subterranean Reaper King’s are the second weakest form of Reaper King, and offer little to the player other than an environmental hazard.

A Surface Reaper King spawns randomly on the surface biome. They are the third strongest Reaper King, and again offer no benefit to the player other than experience, raw meat and hide.

An Alpha Surface Reaper King spawns randomly on the surface biome. They are the strongest Reaper King, and offer large amounts of experience. They can be looted for Alpha Reaper King Barbs.

An Elemental Reaper King only spawns in Rockwell’s arena and is the weakest form of Reaper King. They do not offer experience and are simply a hazard in Rockwell’s boss fight.

A Tamed Reaper King is the second strongest form of Reaper surpassed only by the Alpha Reaper King in damage, but not even in health. A player may only recieve a Tamed Reaper King through the taming process (discussed below) and is comparable to a tamed Giganotosaurus in strength.

Controls

• Left Control will activate the Reaper King’s roar. It cannot move while doing this.
• RMB will activate the Reaper King’s tail attack, sending flying green projectiles forward that deal torpor and straight damage.
• C will activate the Reaper King’s AOE attack, making it spin in a circle, knocking back enemies and dealing light damage.
• You may burrow your Reaper King when you are not riding it in the radial.

Choosing a Lantern Pet

Picking a Lantern pet is more important than many people realise when fighting Reaper King’s and Queen’s, as they have different advantages over one another.

Always have your key bound to the “Light” emote to turn your pet on and off, and depending on the Lantern pet, it is recommended to enable the “Activate at Full Charge” option found on the radial.

Lantern Pug

The pug, while having the highest charge capacity isn’t exactly the best when fighting Reaper King’s and Queens. Often when entering Nameless biomes you will want to turn your pet on before you enter. The issue is while the Lantern Pug can last a long time, if it ever runs out while you’re fighting a King/Queen, it can turn off for very long durations due to its incredibly slow charge regeneration stat, which can lead to dangerous situations.

Feather Light

The Feather Light is my personal favorite when fighting Reaper King’s, as they have the highest charge range. This range often allows the player to abuse the AI of the Reaper into a location where it can’t reach you, allowing you to fire at it with ranged attacks and stand further back with your increased radius. In saying that, Feather Light’s have very low capacity and should only be used with a Rock Drake, avoiding all ground contact as possible, while keeping your pet off until you actually find a Reaper to fight, in which you turn the Feather Light on.

Glowtail

The Glowtail is probably the best lantern pet for fighting Queens and Kings. They have very high natural charge regeneration, making them incredibly good lantern pets as they will often stay on for atleast 5 minutes and only go offline for 6 seconds to recharge back to full again. They are also handy to have due to Seekers wanting to consume your charge. When they consume your charge, it never is a big deal as it will regenerate incredibly quickly.

In my personal experience, the best way to hunt for Reaper Queen’s is to keep your lantern pet off to avoid Seeker’s interfering until you actually find a Reaper. While this will attract Nameless, use a Rock Drake to stay high off the ground when searching for one. When you find one, turn it back on and leave it on until your Reaper encounter has completely ended.

Taming & Reaper Queens

Queens spawn in the deep, radiated pink region of the map, they spawn underground and will unburrow if you get within range. If you see Seekers nearby it is very likely you are in Queen territory (provided you aren’t on the surface)

Queens have around 45000 health and 105 base damage, and a very damaging torpor attack. They are reasonably killable compared to the difficulty of a Giga but still very dangerous and challenging.

In order to tame a Reaper, you must first locate a Reaper Queen to impregnate you.
Upon locating a Queen, attack it until it is below 5-10% of its maximum health. This is easier said than done, and it is recommended to use high level Rock Drakes, Karkinos, or firearms, all combined with charge to weaken the Queen. You are not hurting the Queen without charge.

When a Queen gets lower and lower health, her chance of impregnating you is increased. You can only be impregnated when you are dismounted and being actively attacked by the Reaper Queen. It is technically an attack, and the Queen can miss her impregnation attack. The chance of her impregnating you is entirely random, and you can get unlucky.

How you deal with the Queen’s mobility is entirely up to you. You can trap it with a large bear trap and stone dinosaur gates, carry a glider and hope you can get away if you are on the verge of death, or try your luck with tanking it entirely. There are many guides of how to do this, but whatever you do, as long as you’re being attacked by the Reaper Queen you could be impregnated. Many people carry Riot Shields or Metal Shields to avoid as much damage as possible when being attacked, these of course can break and do if you’re unlucky.

For my first time getting impregnated I did so using the following method:

Equipment to Prepare

• 3 Hazmat Suits (you may be down there for a long time)
• 8 Stone Dinosaur Gates
• 3 Large Bear Traps (incase something wanders in)
• 190+ Rock Drake with meat for healing
• Cooked Meat and Medical Brews (20-30 each)
• 10 Metal Shields
• 130 Level Glowtail 
• Glider Suit (security)
• Magnifying Glass
• 300 Stim Berries (if you’re Drake is getting too high torpor from the Queen)

What to do

1. Find Queen (Rock Drake feathers will tingle if you are near one)
2. Once Queen is found, de-agro and run a reasonable distance away, place all 7 gates in a circle and leave an opening. Place a Bear Trap in the middle. Kill everything dangerous in the area.
3. Lure the Queen into the trap. 
4. When she steps on the Bear Trap, trap her in with the remaining gate.
5. Activate Lantern Pet and start attacking Queen with the Rock Drake. Use the Magnifying Glass on the Rock Drake to check the Queen’s health.
6. Attack the Queen until she has 500-3000 remaining health. 
7. When she is low, dismount, insure your Lantern Pet is fully charged. Equip it but don’t turn it on. The Reaper Queen will only impregnate you if it’s turned off.
8. Let her break 1-2 Shields, if Nameless start appearing, turn on your Lantern pet with your hotkey and jump back on the Rock Drake, kill them, and then repeat until she impregnates you. 
9. If all your shields break and she simply won’t impregnate you, go make more and try again. It happens.

Now that you have been impregnated (hopefully), looking after the baby while it’s inside you is actually quite important.

Looking After your Baby

Firstly, if you take any radiation damage the baby inside you will die. Now is probably a good time to equip a new set of Radiation gear if you have any left. Retreat with your baby to a non radiated zone before anything else. If you die the baby doesn’t necessarily die (unless it’s to radiation), but the timer for birthing will be reset.

Leveling

You have to gain experience yourself in order to level the baby while you are impregnated. You can gain up to 52,500 (+75 levels) experience while the baby is still inside you. You can do this by crafting, killing, gathering etc. This will make the Reaper’s level whatever the level of the Queen was that impregnated you + the levels you earn it. For example if you are impregnated by a 120 Reaper Queen and get all 52,500 experience it will be birthed at level 195.

Birthing and Raising

In order to imprint and birth the Reaper baby successfully you will have to consume Reaper Pheromone Glands before it is born. You can get these from Reaper Queens. Make sure you consume them BEFORE it is born or it won’t work. Once you have imprinted the Reaper, insure you have plenty of Pheromones to consume (each one lasts 5 minutes) until the Reaper has reached the juvenile stage. Once juvenile, it will not be aggressive. The Reaper will eat meat as it grows up just like any normal carnivore raise, so there is nothing complicated there.