open/close all folders
Past Survivors
John Dahkeya
John Dahkeya is a gang leader and robber. He appears to be from 19th century "Wild West" Texas/Arizona.- Belligerent Sexual Tension: With Raia, due to their opposing outlooks.
- Bolivian Army Ending: His last explorer's note has him decide to try to kill as many wyverns as he can before they get him.
- Cassandra Truth: All the signs John sees that the obelisks are actively interfering with the town's advancement are ignored by Raia.
- Dark and Troubled Past: His explorer's notes confirm he's an Apache from the time of The Wild West, meaning he had to watch his people slowly be destroyed by the United States as they fulfilled Manifest Destiny. He ended up joining an outlaw gang, which wasn't exactly conductive to becoming a better person.
- The Gunslinger: He comes from The Wild West, and learned much in the art of gunslinging there.
- Heel–Face Turn: Upon realizing that here, nobody knows his reputation as an outlaw, John decides to stop being one and becomes a local lawman/military leader instead.
- Jade-Colored Glasses: Owing to his past, which included witnessing the gradual destruction of his people by the United States, and his life in an outlaw gang, he's a rather jaded individual.
- The Wild West: Which leaves him well-suited to Scorched Earth.
Helena Walker
Voiced by: Amber Lee Connors (Initial voice for ARK: Survival Evolved), Madeleine Madden (ARK: The Animated Series, redubbed voice for ARK: Survival Evolved, and Dossier voiceovers in ARK: Survival Ascended)
Helena Walker is the creator of the Dino Dossiers. She appears to be a biologist from modern Australia with her notes written in English.- Ascended Extra: While she has a large role in the game's backstory, she mainly appeared in journal entries and didn't make a physical appearance till the ending of Extinction but Genesis has her place part of herself in a Robot Buddy construct to travel with and aid the survivor.
- Ascended to a Higher Plane of Existence: Installs what seems to be either an Overseer processor core or some other ARK construct in her specimen implant, gaining immense knowledge and the power to briefly repel the King Titan. After Mei Yin brings her to the Tomb of Ascension, she undergoes Brain Uploading and becomes a Homo Deus, surviving her body's death and integrating with the ARK network as a whole, becoming an Overseer in her own right. After spawning the player, she monitors them via their specimen implant, only revealing herself after the King Titan's death.
- Badass Bookworm: She's the creator of the Dino Dossiers, an accomplished biologist, and as both the Explorer's Notes and animated series show, fully capable of handling herself in a fight.
- Big Good: Helena is this for the storyline, leaving behind plenty of notes for future survivors (e.g. you) to figure out how to survive and ultimately best the ARK's Ultimate Lifeforms.
- Broken Pedestal: She's heartbroken by what became of her friend and mentor Edmund Rockwell.
- Covers Always Lie:
Word of God is that the raptor-riding riflewoman on the cover of the original game is Helena. At no point on any of the ARKs does she ride a raptor (Mei-Yin was actually the one who had a raptor companion), and she has no gun training until Aberration. - Cuteness Proximity: Tends to slip into this when confronted with a particularly cute creature, particularly Jerboas and Shinehorns.
- Death by Despair: Helena's arrival on the Island was revealed in The Animated Series to be the result of her mixing pills and wine in response to Victoria's death.
- Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: After fusing the TEK prism with her implant, she manages to drive off the King Titan.
- Expy: Of the Island survivors, Helena represents the type of players who tries to learn as much as they can about ARK's lore, searching high and low for all dossiers, explorer notes or any other hints and piecing them together. Like them, Helena spent most of her time travelling throughout the Island rather than settling down in one place and her tames are the bare minimum she needed to survive. As such, she is the most knowledgeable about the ARK and its creatures, just like how the efforts of such players are the reason we know as much as we do now about how the creatures, the lore and the mechanics in the game works.
- Go Out with a Smile: She seemingly burns out (taking your implant with her) as she watches the sunrise over an Element-free Earth she feared she would never live to see. The trailer for Genesis Part 1 indicates she's still around, though, just unable to act.
- Meaningful Rename: Her explorer's notes in Extinction are all written under the name of "The One Who Waits", because Helena has Ascended to a Higher Plane of Existence and is now waiting for the player to finish what she started to end the element infestation.
- Pro Human Trans Human: Is the only Homo Deus still actively monitoring the ARK Network by the time of the Player Charater's creation, and seems to take over the network entirely as global Overseer once the King Titan is dead and the Return Protocol is activated. She claims the rest of her new species have completely lost touch with three-dimensional reality and are now drifting aimlessly in their enlightenment, a fate she fears will also be her own eventually.
Mei-Yin Li
Voiced by: Michelle Yeoh
Mei-Yin Li is a Chinese warrior; her notes are themed like ancient poems and are written in traditional Chinese. She appears to be from the Three Kingdoms era, after the Yellow Turban Rebellion in China.- Action Girl: A Chinese warrior woman who handles being in a land filled with dinosaurs fairly well.
- Better with Non-Human Company: Even at her best, she's standoffish and somewhat rude to humans, but tames and trains a powerful army of beasts in every Ark she appears in, including semi-boss creatures like a Giga.
- Big Damn Kiss: A heartfelt battlefield reunion with the respawned Diana Altaras in Extinction apparently involved one, although Mei Yin's note is more subdued about it.I surely left my blood and tears on her lips
- Clone Angst: She does not take the discovery that all of the survivors are actually perfect clones of someone from the past instead of that person merely yanked forward through time very well.
- Expy: Of the Island survivors, Mei Yin represents the solo or small tribe player, with her preference for simply surviving and being heavily reliant on the large number of creatures she tamed rather than having the safety of a big tribe. She also represents the type of players who go out of their way to help another, less fortunate one from hostile players or from the dangers of the Island. Naturally, like most solo or small tribe players, she is wary of anyone that approaches her and has a large variety in the type of creatures she tamed, from the Utahraptor to a Giganotosaurus. She is also the only one who did not actively seek out the obelisks, at least until Helena convinced her to, similar to how most solo or small tribe players rarely ever bothered with boss fights.
- Fling a Light into the Future: Though not her original intention, leaving Helena in the Tomb of Ascension is what allowed her to eventually find her way to the player and start the dominoes that would ultimately save Earth.
- Imperial China: She appears to be from this era.
- Non-Human Sidekick: Early in her notes, she tames a raptor and names him Wuzhui, and he quickly comes to lead the pack she acquires from her tames. The fact that he both sensed his master's distress upon learning that The chances of escaping the ark are slim to none (due to the Ark's barriers on the sea and air to prevent leaving) and comforted her, and Stayed with her to the end and carried her to safety, even as he took a mortal injury, Mei's Giganotosaurus became enraged, and his entire pack was killed off by the New Legion shows how loyal and close he had came to be with Mei.
- Promoted to Love Interest: Mei-Yin is gradually built up in The Animated Series as a love interest for Helena, despite showing no interest in her in the games and them only being friends (although Helena was revealed to be gay in The Animated Series, her sexuality in the games was never stated, and Mei-Yin would ultimately show interest in Diana by the time of Extinction).
- Red Baron: She's known as the "The Beast Queen" by people outside her tribe.
- Revenge Before Reason / Roaring Rampage of Revenge : Goes after the New Legion when she is ambushed with Helena by the New Legion after taking on the Megapithecus, leading to the death of all of her dinosaurs, including Wuzhui. It's not known if she was victorious, but she did clearly make it far enough at the very least to kill most of the Legion on her own before taking on the leader. When Helena arrives on the scene at last, Neither Mei's, nor the New Legion's leader's bodies were found, save for some blood from their battle. Aberration reveals she did indeed manage to kill him and survive.
- Survivor Guilt: After "ascended" Rockwell destroys the village in Aberration, and again after the Death Titan destroys the camp in Extinction, Mei-Yin blames herself for failing to protect the people she considered friends.
- The Bus Came Back: After being absent from the notes since The Island, she returns in Aberration.
Gaius Marcellus Nerva
Voiced by: Gerard Butler
Gaius Marcellus Nerva is a Roman centurion who wrote his notes in Latin.- Alas, Poor Villain: Nerva spent his entire time on the Island as an antagonistic figure towards nearly everyone not under the banner of The New Legion, especially Mei Yin and Helena. However, his final note, written after sacrificing everything he had to defeat the Overseer, has him despair over how everything he did led to nothing and his once absolute faith in the Roman gods he served shook for the first time, with him even believing that they abandoned him. His pride and dreams now in pieces, his note ended with him merely stating that he was betrayed, destitute and alone. It is difficult not to feel sorry for him.
- Arc Villain: Nerva served as one for the story told in the Island's Explorer Notes. While he was manipulated subtly by Rockwell later on, as the commander of the New Legion, he became the biggest obstacle that Helena and Mei-Yin faced on their journey through the Island, seeking dominion with his armies.
- Benevolent Boss: For all of his flaws, Nerva truly cares for his tribe. He does not see any of his followers as expendable, always noting the losses The New Legion suffered every time a battle took place. He gets furious when the tribe is harmed and when they opted to celebrate any big victories, he allowed it despite not joining in. He is also open to suggestions, listens to any concerns they had and his later notes clearly conveyed how proud he is of The New Legion. So good to his tribeman he was that they, in turn, have Undying Loyalty to him, even going with him on a one-way trip to the Tek Cave despite some of them harbouring doubts over whether the trek to the unknown was worth losing their undefended territories to rival tribes.
- The Chosen One: Nerva considers himself chosen by the gods to turn the Ark's survivors into an army of conquest for Rome. As of Extinction revealing that all of Earth has been corrupted by Element and the ARKs were creating an army to cleanse it by force, he's not wrong.
- Despair Event Horizon: After sacrificing nearly everything he had in search of power from the Tek Cave, only to turn up with nothing, Nerva's faith in his own gods shook to the point that he believed they betrayed him. He was eventually hunted down and cornered by Mei Yin and the once proud centurion barely put up a fight against his vengeful enemy.
- Disc-One Final Boss: While the Overseer serves as one in gameplay for the player, being their main obstacle to overcome to access the other ARKs, Nerva filled this role in the Explorer Notes written on the Island. Being one of the only antagonists to write Explorer Notes (the only other one being Rockwell), his defeat on the Island and absence from later maps allows Helena to prove herself as an adept survivor as well as being mostly unburdened by direct antagonists (until Rockwell's betrayal).
- Expy: Of the Island survivors, Nerva essentially represents the average PvP player, with his preference for raiding and conquering the Island under the banner of his tribe rather than learning about the Island or the ARK itself. He even came up with the idea of soaking; using a bunch of tough but expendable creatures to absorb enemy fire while his weaker but fast and deadly creatures assault their weakspots and flanks. His tribe, The New Legion, represents the average Alpha Tribe, the most powerful tribe on the map and the one most likely to call the shots. Like most Alpha Tribes, they are prone to assimilate or attack and wipe out any tribes that could threaten them in any way.
- Fatal Flaw: Hubris. Nerva's continued success in building up The New Legion and defeating other tribes swelled his ego, eventually causing him to believe that he was The Chosen One. Though it doesn't change his goals or diminished his care for his followers, it made him more susceptible to grandiose promises from Rockwell and made him willing to take dangerous risks that doesn't have any obvious benefit. This culminates in his trek to the Tek Cave, where he convinced his follower to press on despite their pleas to turn back and protect their besieged territories, even though he did not truly know what lies beyond aside from vague promises of power. It ended with him and Rockwell the sole survivor of the fight against the Overseer and the great power he expected from the Hall of History amounted to nothing.
- Genius Bruiser: Pretty much a given as a Roman centurion. Not only does he personally lead his followers in many of their early raids, he is also tactically savvy enough to know how to approach certain tribes that have notable strengths over The New Legion. The Painted Sharks, for example, are dominant in the seas but their foothold on land are only a few outposts at best. In order to combat them, he pull back all of his naval forces and focus entirely on driving them off the Island's mainland, cutting off their supply lines and rendering their ocean dominance moot. Only when he consolidated his maritime territories does he finally commit to a ocean assault.
- Another instance is his solution to dealing with enemy fliers. Rather than simply shooting them down or blocking off their access to his base, he instead left apparent holes in his aerial defenses that enticed them in, only to find themselves in a killzone. Nerva believed that controlling the actions of his foes is paramount and it shows.
- Like a Duck Takes to Water: Once firearms are explained to him, he readily begins using them.
- Manipulative Bastard: Upon realizing the mercenary hired by the Painted Sharks, Mei Yin, is more powerful than the New Legion's army, Nerva uses sabotage to convince the Sharks that Mei Yin betrayed them. Once they drive her away, they're easy prey. He also plays Helena and Rockwell against each other to get information from both.
- Meaningful Rename: The tribe he conquered isn't mentioned by name, but as Nerva retrains them into his army they rename themselves "The New Legion".
- Noble Demon: Nerva spends most of his time on the Island leading The New Legion to conquer or assimilate other tribes and as befitting a centurion from ancient Rome, he is brutal and methodical in his methods. However, he is not above recruiting from his former enemies, genuinely cares for his followers and legitimately believes he is doing the right thing; bringing civilisation to a savage land. Even at his worst, he does not dismiss the concerns of his soldiers and is even open to new ideas that he himself never considered.
- Pet the Dog: Most of his sympathetic moments comes from his interactions with his followers. There's a reason why his tribe was one of the largest on the Island.
- When the first tribe he conquered renamed themselves "The New Legion", he found the name amusing at first but quickly adopted it and the tribe ultimately became his greatest and proudest achievement before his trek to the Tek Cave.
- Whenever his tribe scores a big victory, he is content to just let them celebrate despite still being on guard and continuing his duties himself. To him, they deserve the break.
- He is open to deserters or turncoats from his enemies, incorporating them into his tribe and treating them like his own.
- Every time a huge battle takes place, he never fails to note the losses The New Legion suffered.
- Even during the trek to the Tek Cave, where Nerva's egomania is at its worst, he notes the concerns of his followers regarding the territories they were losing to their enemies. He understood the instinct of wanting to go back and defend their homes but convinced them to see their current mission through.
- Villainous Breakdown: When he defeated the Overseer, at the cost of all of his followers, he was elated to have finally reached what he believed to be the halls of his gods and searched for his reward...only to find nothing. When the reality of the situation began to sink in, he succumbed to Despair Event Horizon, having sacrificed his followers, his tribe and his dreams for nothing. When Mei Yin finally confronted him, he barely put up a fight.
- Visionary Villain: Nerva is sincere about his desire to unify the Island, and establish itself as the Emperor of a Pax Arcum, which Rockwell notes isn't a wholly bad idea...
Raia
An Ancient Egyptian priestess.- Actual Pacifist: At the beginning, Raia considers pacifism a requirement of her faith. Once this just makes her a target for criminals, and John Dahkeya shoots even the surrendering in her defense, Raia convinces him to give her some basic marksmanship training so she can defend herself with as little loss of life as possible.
- Belligerent Sexual Tension: With John Dahkeya, due to their opposing outlooks.
- Cool Old Lady: Between the destruction of the town and Helena's arrival in Scorched Earth, Raia raised a flight of wyverns and became a roving hermit/vigilante. Helena describes Raia as elderly, but healthy and smart.
- Eye of Horus Means Egypt: The symbol for her Explorer Notes is the Eye Of Horus despite that her actual patron deity is Hathor and later, Sekhmet.
- Good Shepherd: Raia teaches the faith of her people to those she meets in Scorched Earth, leads those she converts in worship and charity, and becomes an unofficial leader to the town.
- Survivor Guilt: Because she led the locals in worshiping the obelisks and ignored John's warnings, Raia blames herself for the destruction of the town by the obelisks' power.
Edmund Rockwell
Voiced by: David Tennant
Sir Edmund Rockwell wrote the Recipes for Consumables and Kibbles but is most famous for his Mindwipe Tonic. He appears to be a chemist from 19th century London, with his notes written in cursive style English.- Adaptational Villainy: While he eventually became evil in the backstory of the games, he started out as a somewhat decent person, if a bit amoral and egotistical, and had a genuinely amicable relationship with Helena before it soured. In the animated series however, he not only joined Nerva's New Legion much earlier, but even takes part in their raids. He's also much more openly cruel in his treatment of both animals and captives, and openly sexist (and possibly racist) towards Helena.
- Alas, Poor Villain: His death in Genesis Part 2 is portrayed tragically, first lashing out at the survivor and HLN-A for defeating him and dooming the ship with them. When HLN-A stayed behind to perform a Heroic Sacrifice to save everyone else in the ship, he angrily ranted at her about what he preceived to be a betrayal from Helena, to which the little AI was nothing but gentle and understanding. The moment the ship's bridge was about to expolde, he called out for Helena and started sobbing, admitting to being afraid, before HLN-A reassured him that "she knew".
- An Arm and a Leg: The Animated Series' rendition of Rockwell loses a hand to Thunder Comes Charging.
- Badass Bookworm: He's an extremely well read chemist, and he is also the final boss of Aberration and both parts of Genesis.
- Big Bad: Of Genesis Part 1 with the Corrupted Master Controller acting as a proxy and a more direct one in Part 2. Taking the explorer's notes into account, he's this to the entire story, as he's directly responsible for many hardships that both the past survivors and the players have/had to deal with.
- Body Horror: His corrupted form in Aberration is a massive deformed monstrosity with a warped face and tentacles. His appearance in Genesis Part 2 is even worse, his central form is fused into the ship with malformed appendages sprouting from his face and body. In addition, his flesh is growing and spreading through the ship and forms body parts like tendrils, eyes and even entire faces coming out of the walls which can and will occasionally mock you as you pass by.
- The Corruptor: By the time of the Genesis Duology, he's apparently replaced the King Titan as the central neuron of the Element Hive Mind and even become its central consciousness, allowing him to taint pretty much everything he touches. He infests the Genesis Colony Ship with his biomass, including the entirety of one of the habitat rings, and mutates every survivor in stasis he can get his claws on, turning them into monstrous HumanoidAbominations that make the Corrupted Dinos of Extinction look almost normal.
- Dragon Ascendant: The Stinger for Extinction shows him crashing the Aberration ARK onto Earth after the defeat of the King Titan.
- Driven to Madness: Studying the nature of the Arks and element eventually drives Rockwell insane.
- Eldritch Abomination: His ascended form from Aberration and the form he takes in the Genesis DLC Duology are so radically mutated that the only reason that it's recognizable he Was Once a Man is that the ascended form still has a human head, torso, and left arm, while his Overseer form only has a recognizably human face atop a vaguely humanoid-shaped mass "sitting" atop a Meat Moss throne of even more biomass.
- Expy: Of the Island survivors, Rockwell, like Helena, represents the type of players who tries to learn as much as they can about the ARKs. However, unlike Helena, Rockwell's focus is more narrow, particularly the cooking recipes and his obsession with Element, and his reasoning for seeking this knowledge is mostly for his own benefit. Thus, one could argue he represents the type of PVP players that know all they need to know about game but then use that knowledge against newer players or those less savvy to gain an advantage. Naturally, he ended up allying with Nerva, the other character that represents PVP players and true to such character, he still uses what he learned to manipulate the less savvy Nerva and The New Legion for his own ends.
- Face–Heel Turn: Starts out as a jovial, if eccentric chemist and inventor whom gets roped into the New Legion. But he is gradually driven insane and possessive by the effects of the obelisks and the Element, with the implication he was subjected to a type of radiation poisoning that altered his mind.
- Fatal Flaw: His need to surround himself with followers, as shown with his boss fights, while he simply stays in the exact same spot and attacks you from there. Additionally, Pride, as him being left out of one expedition Helena took immediately and permanently soured his relationship with her and set him on the path to becoming the literal and figurative monster he is now.
- Faux Affably Evil: Much of his speech in Genesis part 1 is chummy and chipper when talking to the survivor while also constantly going on about how inferior they are to him as well as occasionally dropping the tone all together when irritated.
- Final Boss: His mutated form is this for Aberration, and his hijacking of the master controller for the Genesis simulation also makes him the final boss of Genesis Part 1. His true form is the final boss of Genesis Part 2, making him the True Final Boss of Ark: Survival Evolved's storyline.
- A God Am I: His slow descent into madness starts off as paranoia and ends in ranting that amounts to this trope. Taken to 11 when he finally injects himself to "ascend" proclaiming as he injects himself that he is an unstoppable merciless god. As soon as he transforms, he wastes no time attacking the town he has been residing in to test his new power.
- The Genesis Part 2 trailer is basically a minute-and-a-half of Rockwell invoking this trope.
- Greater-Scope Villain: The lesser of the 2 in the storyline, the other being the Colossus/King Titan. The Titan has the bigger effect on the storyline, but Rockwell is the greater scope villain of Aberration and presumably Earth after the death of the titan, as he causes the earthquakes and controls the reapers and nameless due to his status as the Ark's overseer. He ultimately moves into Big Bad territory for the Genesis duology.
- The trailers for the second part of Genesis and the animated series seem to be building him up as one for the franchise as a whole.
- It's All About Me: His efforts to study and understand the AR Ks and Element are driven largely by his own ego and his inability to admit the possibility that he's not an era defining genius who alone can solve the mysteries of the universe. What starts as simple scientific curiosity quickly turns into For Science!, followed by a full on Face–Heel Turn who turns to manipulation and outright murder to get what he wants. And that's before he started injecting himself to with liquid element, turning himself into an Eldritch Abomination.
- Load-Bearing Boss: His true form is so deeply fused to the Genesis Ship that when he's mortally injured, the ship starts to break down and ultimately explodes.
- Loved by All: From what we get from his (and Helena's) explorer notes, he is very well-respected on the main island, and being friends with him can get someone very far when confronted with other tribes.
- Not That Kind of Doctor: Early in Scorched Earth, he gets forcibly recruited by locals to assist with a childbirth on account of his title. Oops!
- Omnidisciplinary Scientist: He's a 19th century chemist who somehow has enough technical knowledge to disrupt a virtual reality, create an avatar of himself and corrupt the minds of the survivors inside of it.
- One-Winged Angel: His grotesque "ascended" form is the final boss of Aberration. As is his appearance as the final boss of Genesis Part 1. His final form in Genesis Part 2 is by far the worst, being little more than a massive tree of flesh and Element with his face at the top.
- Pet the Dog Despite being beyond angry at Helena and Mei Yin for driving him into the belly of the Aberrant ARK, he actually sees fit to let them escape via Santiago's portal gate, because however furious he was in the moment, they basically left him an entire ARK full of raw Element and without an Overseer to contest him, which he seems genuinely thankful for. In Genesis Part 2, he'll sound genuinely amused and commend the Survivor on their attempt to kill him if you die in the attempt, even stating you've earned his "divine mercy" since he allows H-LNA to respawn you as normal.
- Recurring Boss: He's faced three times across the storyline, each time as the Final Boss of the Ark he is occupying - first in Aberration, then in Genesis Part 1 as the Corrupted Master Controller, and one last time in Genesis Part 2.
- Sanity Slippage: Rereading his notes in chronological order shows Rockwell becoming increasingly egotistical (Island), then paranoid (Scorched Earth), and finally maniacal (Aberration) as a result of his exposure to the Element.
- Stationary Boss: His boss forms are immobile, though his "Ascended" form in Aberration both has a justification for this (it's implied he physically can't leave the pool he's in) and also Downplays this by being able to submerge into the pool he's otherwise trapped in. His final form fought in Genesis Part II is also this, on account of having literally grown into the ship.
- The Stinger: After killing the Alpha Titan King, the post-credits bonus scene zooms in on the corrupted obelisk of the Aberrant ARK, which still managed to land despite its heavy damage. As the obelisk suddenly flickers to life with a familiar purple hue, Rockwell's roar is heard: he's still alive, and he just brought a new Element contamination to Earth. Taken even further as some keen listeners can hear the words "I'm coming for you" in the midst of his roar.
- Suddenly Voiced: He finally speaks clearly in Genesis Part 2.
- Toxic Friend Influence: Became this for Gaius Nerva, goading him into further studying Element and the Obelisks, including fighting the Ultimate Lifeforms, until he convinced Nerva to sacrifice everything against the Overseer using only vague promises of the power Element offerred.
- Villainous Breakdown: When he's finally defeated and realizes he won't be able to survive the ship's explosion, he's driven to tears.
- Vocal Dissonance: Zig-Zagged. His voice in Genesis sounds remarkably human-like despite him being an immense eldritch horror but only about half of the time, sometimes it takes on a reverb and becomes distinctly inhuman midsentence, particularly when he's angry or gloating. Averted in the Animated Series trailer, since that occurs before he transforms due to injecting himself with Element.
Santiago Da Costa
Voiced by: Vin Diesel
A special forces soldier from the 24th century, where humanity had used Element to usher in a golden age of technology. He was a tribe leader on the station that would later become the Aberrant Ark, using his knowledge of TEK to accelerate his tribe's development, and was also apparently the architect of the portal gate that is used to escape the ARK network. While one of the most well-prepared survivors and familiar with much of the Tek machinery he encounters, he too has little knowledge of how he got on the ARKs.- Bad Future: He's actually from a very good future, where Element was still relatively safe and used to revolutionize everything from domestic life to warfare... but after seeing the ravaged landscape around Sanctuary, he comes to the grim conclusion that, true to historical form, his future managed to screw itself over with extended overuse of Element and TEK weaponry, creating the Corrupted and the Element hive mind purely by horrific accident.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Led his tribe and several others on a full-scale raid of their ARK's observation platform. When the local Overseer activated and fought back, he elected to detonate a massive Element-augmented nuclear explosive. This blew the platform apart, shearing the station arm it was attached to in half, and almost completely destroying the ARK's atmospheric shields. Solar radiation quickly sterilized the surface, forcing all life to dig underground, and the station's Element reserves were ruptured, causing the massive lakes of it deep in the caves. Santiago not only created the Aberrant Ark, he crippled the station's AI, which allowed Ascended Rockwell to somehow usurp or assimilate it and become the new Overseer.
- The Federation: Was part of a military for one that spanned most of Earth. He's fairly certain it was years of war with a rival faction he calls the URE that caused the Element contamination now covering the planet.
- Humongous Mecha: His answer to the Corrupted and the Titans. When the King Titan shows its face for the first time, his answer to that is an even bigger mecha formed from four of the original model.
- Last Stand: Performs one to allow Helena, Mei Yin, and the rest of the survivors to escape when the Corrupted attack Camp Omega. Players can find his Mek's sword stabbed into the ground in one section of Sanctuary, a grave marker left by Diana.
- That Man Is Dead: In the trailer for Ark II, another incarnation of Santiago shuts down a pod containing his biological data, opting instead to live apart from his past and the man he was."Lights out, old friend."
Introduced in The Animated Series
Thunder Comes Charging "John"
Voiced by: Zahn McClarnon
Alasie
Voiced by: Devery Jacobs
Henry Townsend
Voiced by: Jeffrey Wright
Deborah Walker
Voiced by: Deborah Mailman
Victoria Walker
Voiced by: Elliot Page
A humanitarian aid worker and Helena's wife back in her time. Her death sent Helena into a depressive spiral that led to her suicide, sending her to the island.- Chronic Hero Syndrome: She went on a very dangerous mission to save refugees because she felt that they needed her help. It got her killed.
- Living Emotional Crutch: During a difficult presentation, Helena looks to her in the audience, and her mantra is "You're here, and I'm here." Losing her was what caused Helena's suicide, but the memories of her are what drive Helena to try and survive regardless.
- The Lost Lenore: Her death was what drove Helena into her depression and into mixing pills and wine.
- Themed Tattoos: She and Helena shared a fish fossil tattoo on the inside of their left wrists. Helena reacts badly to seeing that the implant has destroyed hers.
Gladiatrix
Voiced by: Cissy Jones
Lucius Cassius Virilis
Voiced by: Malcolm McDowell
Chava
Voiced by: Juliet Mills
Queen Sigrid
Voiced by: Ragga Ragnars
Captain
Voiced by: Alan Tudyk
Bob
Voiced by: Karl Urban
A US Army Ranger who was storming the beaches of Normandy when he was taken. He's the first human Helena meets. After being killed off in The Animated Series, Bob would go on to be the subject of a DLC campaign for Survival Ascended, "Bob's Tall Tales"- Canon Immigrant: Bob makes the jump to Survival Ascended in "Bob's Tall Tales", showing what he's been up to on other maps.
- Decoy Protagonist: He's the first person Helena meets, has an interesting personality, is voiced by a well-known actor, and advertising for the series implied that he'd be the one teaching Helena how to surivive. Instead he dies within the first fifteen minutes.
- Deliberate Values Dissonance: He doesn't show any sexism towards Helena, but is surprised that she's a professor, since female professors (let alone professors of color) were very rare in his time.
- Dramatic Irony: He says he can tell that Helena is new here and won't survive 30 minutes, but decides to help her anyway. He's the one who dies.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He's standoffish and blunt, but despite it all he saves Helena and does his best to help her. When they see a downed Parasaur, he tells Helena it's better to leave it to die, then begrudgingly helps her pull out the arrow.
- Mr. Exposition: He's the one that explains to Helena the time travel aspects of the Ark and gives her his clothes and back.
- Naked People Are Funny: Downplayed. He runs around in just his underwear, "just as nature intended". That, and he was tired of uniforms and taking orders.
- Surprisingly Sudden Death: There's no indication that there are other hostile humans on the island until he's shot through the head mid-sentence.
Han Yuan
Voiced by: Ron Yuan
Kor the Prophet
Voiced by: Russell Crowe
Cassia Virila
Voiced by: Monica Bellucci
Dinosaurs
Allosaurus
- Animal Jingoism: The Allosaurus's favorite food is made from Diplodocus eggs. Fitting, considering how often these species are (perhaps rightfully) depicted as enemies.
- Infinity -1 Sword: While not as strong as the Rex or the Giga on a one-to-one basis, Allosaurus can make up the difference with its pack bonus and is just as suitable for fighting bosses.
- Lightning Bruiser: Wild Allosaurus are noticably faster than the wild T. rex or Carnotaurus (Despite what the dossier says, the Allosaurus actually has a faster sprint speed than the Carnotaurus, though the Carno can sprint for much longer); even worse, they always come in packs of at least 3.
- Mook Commander: The highest level pack member acts as this, having a "pack boost" that gives it a certain degree of authority over other members of the pack.
- Vegetarian Carnivore: Played with in a bizarre fashion. Of course, a wild Allosaurus will behave like a any other carnivore in the game, attacking anything it deems prey, and a tamed one will only accept meat for sustenance. However, this dino's preferred kibble (made from Diplodocus eggs) is one of the few kibbles in the game whose list of ingredients does not include meat, the latter being replaced with flowers! Perhaps the flowers' description saying that their smell "makes you slightly angry" hints at the fact that these have a lot of substances in them normally found in meat? Averted after the Homestead update changed how kibbles work; Allosaurus now prefers superior egg kibble, made with prime meat jerky.
- Use Your Head: The Allosaurus's primary attack looks more like a headbutt than a bite, and makes a distinctive thud sound upon connecting with the victim. A likely case of Science Marches On — as some scientists once believed Allosaurus had relatively weak jaw muscles but a strong neck, and could use its forehead as a bludgeon to overpower its prey, but has been given much skepticism since.
- Zerg Rush: Allosaurus work best as a pack, allowing them to destroy enemies far faster than a solo Rex.
Ankylosaurus
- Achilles' Heel: Backing up. Its pathetic land speed (one of the slowest in the game) combined with relatively short reach enables anyone with a spear or pike to easily kill a wild Anky just by poking its nose and backing away.
- Beware My Stinger Tail: It has a clubbed tail that can break through rock.
- Graceful in Their Element: Inverted. They are surprisigly competent in the water despite their armored bodies and can swim faster than they can run.
- Misplaced Wildlife: It shows up frequently in the Snow biome for reasons unknown.
- Pintsized Powerhouse: While far from small, the Anky is much smaller than many of the powerhouse animals like Brontos and Rexes. From its size you'd never guess it, but this little guy is just as tough and strong as a Spino.
- Strong as They Need to Be: Despite its impressive stats for its size, the main use for a tamed Ankylosaurus is not combat (the creature is just agonizingly slow and still not good enough compared to traditional tanks to compensate for this weakness) but mining rocks, extracting flint, stone, metal and obsidian from them (and oil if you're feeling adventurous enough to take it underwater or into the Snow biome). However, the Ankylo is incapable of damaging stone structures — those ramshackle-looking houses made from the very same rocks, barely held together by thatch if their crafting recipe is anything to go by. Especially strange considering that several other dinos that have the same specialization, like the Dunkleosteus and the Magmasaur can.
Baryonyx
- Achilles' Heel:
- While this dinosaur's sleek profile and below-average size grant it impressive agility and maneuverability, they also come with a sting in the tail. Attacks from larger creatures will hurl a Baryonyx through the air.
- The dinosaur's piscivorous diet can also be viewed as a weakness. For larger tribes, it means you either need to gather food for your pet Baryonyx separately from food for other creatures or use fish meat for all tamed carnivores, which, while lasting longer without spoiling, also has much lower nutritional value than regular meat and thus needs to be harvested in larger quantities. Meanwhile, players looking for a high-level wild specimen may find themselves disappointed after taming this creature: if you do not own its favorite kibble, you will have to use fish meat for the tame, resulting in a horrendous loss of taming effectiveness and thus bonus levels which are the very reason you look for high-level wild animals in the first place.
- Beware My Stinger Tail: Uniquely for a carnivore, when a Baryonyx (regardless if wild or tamed) enters a water body deep enough for it to swim rather than walk, a secondary tail swipe attack is enabled. Any other (non-allied) player or creature caught in the initial area of effect will be unable to act, including alpha predators, and the dinosaur can perform this attack as often as it or its rider wants to, resulting in a Cycle of Hurting.
- Balance Buff: Later updates made it immune to bolas and being carried by an Argentavis.
- Cycle of Hurting: The players and creatures caught by the tail swipe are completely at the attacker's nonexistent mercy, not to mention a very likely chance of drowning. The only thing that may force the Baryonyx to stop the cycle besides death is it passing out from stamina loss/tranquilizers.
- Gameplay and Story Segregation: The dossier massively understates the threat this dino poses to the Survivors. Not only does it have no problem attacking anything sufficiently small (including humans) on land; engaging a Baryonyx in deep water often equals suicide thanks to the aforementioned Cycle of Hurting. Many a survivor has been killed by this frail-looking dinosaur upon its initial release, simply because of underestimating its power.
- Infinity -1 Sword: It's about on par with a Carnotaurus in terms of combat effectiveness, despite only being slightly larger than a basic Raptor.
- Lightning Bruiser: The Baryonyx is about as tough as a Carnotaurus, but much faster, capable of easily catching up even to high-level speed build players who can effortlessly outrun Raptors, Carnos, and T. rex.
- Savage Spinosaurs: Smaller than its cousin Spinosaurus, but still a dangerous predator.
- Underestimating Badassery: Can and will exploit this to have you for lunch. Mostly occurs due to Gameplay and Story Segregation mentioned above, but new players who have no idea what a "dino dossier" is may fall for this trap all the same because of how relatively harmless the creature looks.
Brontosaurus
- Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Sauropod dinosaurs were the largest land animals that ever lived, and Brontosaurus, being found in many early game areas, is the first case of this if it is provoked into fighting.
- Beware My Stinger Tail: It attacks by using its tail as a whip.
- Gentle Giant Sauropod: Its temperament is listed as "docile".
- Infinity -1 Sword: Only dinosaur on land with a heavier hitting melee attack is the Giganotosaurus and Titanosaurus, which ties it with the Tyrannosaurus. It also has some of the highest HP in the game, an excellent attack and collection reach; and can be given a platform saddle to be built on.
- Mighty Glacier: Has a powerful tail and a lot of health to make up for a slow movement speed.
- Savage Setpiece: The most extreme case of this trope in the game (Titanosaurus may be more extreme, but it's too rare to be considered a proper setpiece). Considering its tendency to appear near starting survivor spawn locations, it's not uncommon for a new player on a server to spawn right next to a Brontosaurus or even between its feet, but so long as this marvelous beast remains calm, it cannot harm humans. However, this changes very quickly once a Bronto gets hit by pretty much anything: it charges at its attackers, swinging its tail left and right, and in this state is not only capable of squashing anything it steps on, but can obliterate wooden houses and groups of players in seconds. Fortunately, these giants are very easy to outrun, which in most cases is the only way for a player on foot to survive their retaliation.
- Walking Tank: Given a fully armored platform saddle, turrets, and siege weapons, and a crew to man it, the Bronto basically becomes the in-game equivalent to the Imperial AT-AT Walker. Except here, there are no spaceships to deliver the dinosaur to the front lines. The deployment can be simplified by uploading the creature into a supply crate or obelisk and downloading from another such object close to the enemy, then constructing a base on its back, but this has obvious downsides.
Carcharodontosaurus
- Achilles' Heel: Like the Giga, it hasn't got the best stamina, as well as its slow swimming speed.
- Climax Boss: A Carcha replaces the Giga that once guarded the final area of the Tek Cave, guarding the portal leading to the base game's Final Boss.
- Gathering Steam: For every opponent it kills, the Carcha gains a Bloodrage stack, which increases its damage and its healing. At 100 stacks it will heal incredibly quickly and deal 175% more damage.
- Lightning Bruiser: It's extremely strong and also moves very quickly, and can even get a speed boost if it manages to kill something. Its also got slightly better stamina than the Giga (though still nothing to write home about).
- Power Glows: Their eyes light with an ominous glow when they kill something.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: Its eyes glow red when it is enraged.
- Status Buff: Whenever it kills something it gains a Bloodrage buff, which boosts its damage and healing, and a Killing Frenzy buff, which boosts its movement speed and makes it immune to stun for ten seconds.
- Support Party Member: Its roar clears its Bloodrage stacks and converts them into Incited buff, which increases movement speed for nearby allies.
- Wound That Will Not Heal: Its attacks inflict a Shredded debuff that reduces healing from all sources.
Carnotaurus
- Achilles' Heel: This otherwise superb, well-rounded mount can absolutely cripple its master with its slow stamina regeneration, prohibiting escape from an unwinnable fight that the rider could have initially misjudged.
- Armor Is Useless: TLC Pass 3 gave the bite attack an armor-piercing effect.
- Disc-One Final Boss: Tied with the Therizinosaurus (who is stronger but easier to avoid), the Carnotaurus is the most dangerous animal roaming the zones many new players call home, such as the Southern Islets or the Footpaw on the classic map. When you or your tribe have a means of defeating these beasts, you can feel mostly safe in your base's immediate area (provided it's built in one of these locations), which means you've practically beaten the first stage of the PvE challenge provided by this game: survival on a day-to-day basis, also known as Early Game Hell.
- Infinity -1 Sword: Doesn't hit as hard as the Tyrannosaurus or Spinosaurus, but still has respectable damage and bulk, and is a lot easier to house.
- Informed Attribute: Despite both it's own dossier and those of it's contemporaries claiming that the Carno is one of, if not the fastest theropod in the game, being considered the Fragile Speedster of the group (it's own dossier compares it as the "Cheetah" to the Rex's "Lion") it's sprint speed is actually quite slow compared to the likes of the Allosaurus and Baryonyx, and only slightly above the Rex, which is exacerbated by it's extremely low stamina regen rate. The only thing that it can claim over the others in terms of movement ability is that it's stamina also drains fairly slowly, allowing it to run for a much longer period than similarly leveled contemporaries, which is ironically the opposite of how a real-life Cheetah operates; Cheetahs usually prefer extremely short bursts of impressive speed. The same long downtime between runs still applies to the both of them however.
- King Mook: The Alpha Carno is a bigger, faster and stronger version of the regular Carnotaurus, also capable of buffing other nearby predators. As such, it takes considerably more effort to kill one, but if you manage to pull it off, you’ll be rewarded with a large experience bounty, a pile of raw prime meat, and possibly high-quality tools and weapons.
- Lightning Bruiser: Helena even calls it the cheetah to the Rex's lion, a beast with an incredible sprint but long downtime between runs. Fortunately, this means that wild versions can be outpaced by mid-level survivors with reasonably upgraded movement speed.
- Use Your Head: Its secondary attack is a headbutt which has more powerful knockback, but is otherwise identical to the primary attack, dealing the same amount of damage and even harvesting corpses!
Compsognathus
- Animals Not to Scale: Surprisingly averted — the compys are about as big as they were in real-life, though matching the larger French specimen rather than the more typical German one — closer to the size of a turkey than a chicken.
- Feathered Fiend: It has a few feathers on its head.
- Picky Eater: When taming a Compy, the only food it will accept is raw prime meat and (since the Ovis has been added to the game) raw mutton. Ordinary raw meat, or anything cooked, won't work.
- Zerg Rush: Compies become more aggressive based on how many individuals there are together, gaining a small damage boost as a result, and a Mate Boost if both genders are present.
Dilophosaurus
- Animals Not to Scale: Suffers from Jurassic Park scaling and is about a quarter the size it should be.
- Poisonous Person: It spits venom that blinds and slows.
- Shout-Out: It has a frill and spits venom. It also rarely drops Nerdy's glasses, based on Dennis Nedry from Jurassic Park.
- Zerg Rush: Though not to the same extent as others.
Diplodocus
- Beware My Stinger Tail: Averted. Inexplicably for a sauropod, Diplodocus has no tail-related attack.
- Dumb Dinos: The animal is completely passive, and incapable of inflicting damage, especially due to being described as friendly.
- Gentle Giant Sauropod: Exaggerated given it can't hurt anything, at all.
- Lethal Joke Character: Don't let its lack of damage fool you. For PvP, its knockback can shove all but the largest of dinos, making it a potential death sentence near cliffs. Additionally you'll be hard pressed to survie the DPS of 10 assault rifles shredding you and your own dinos appart.
- Lightning Bruiser: Played with. Diplodocus has the tankiness and the surprising speed fit for the trope, but lacks damage output entirely, instead relying on its passengers to do the hurting. Still counts as a mild example, as the passengers cannot move freely while mounted, almost merging with their ride.
- Mechanically Unusual Class:
- In PvP, large dinosaurs are usually employed as a sort of living landslide, sending them straight at enemies in hopes of causing as much chaos and soaking as much damage as possible while the player characters provide cover fire and pick off defenders. Diplodocus, on the other hand, works by outmaneuvering other large creatures with its superior speed and large knockback from its primary attack, then turning its broad side to face the target, allowing its passengers to unload their magazines from an advantageous angle.
- This dinosaur is also highly unusual in how one should tame it, being the first creature to support both standard knockout and passive taming methods (with the passive being favored, requiring three times less food but, interestingly enough, only about 33% less time). Additionally, during passive taming, the Diplodocus doesn't become temporarily untamable when aggroing the player. It doesn't even break grappling hook lines when doing so, allowing the survivor to stay attached to the dino for the entire duration of the tame and preventing knockback altogether!
- Too Dumb to Live: Its dossier notes that they often get themselves killed in attempts to befriend any attackers.
Gallimimus
- Artistic License – Paleontology: Has almost no feathers and a beak full of teeth.
- Fragile Speedster: The fastest land animal while sprinting, but also one of the weakest.
- Misplaced Wildlife: You'd think an animal most known for its speed would prefer large open plains where it can utilize its advantage to the fullest as its habitat. Nope! They're most commonly found in the densely vegetated and populated redwood forest.
- Toothy Bird: Gallimimus did not have teeth like it does in the game.
Giganotosaurus
- Achilles' Heel: Its terrible stamina, as well as its slow swimming speed, make it particularly susceptible to drowning.
- Animals Not to Scale: At over 70 feet tall, it's easily four times the size its real life counterpart was.
- Awesome, but Impractical:
- On PvE servers, a tamed Giganotosaurus has little more use than a Bragging Rights Reward. The only thing it can do that a Tyrannosaurus cannot is reliably kill an annoying Titanosaurus stuck in or near your base. In other fields, it's bigger, clunkier, less stat efficient, harder to tame and breed, and consumes a lot more food.
- On PvP servers, while a Giga can shred all opposition (including stone structures) in seconds, it is large enough that the would-be victims can see it coming from far away and deal enough damage to whip it into an Unstoppable Rage, more likely than not resulting in it slaughtering a good portion of its own tribe or alliance.
- Boss in Mook Clothing: A huge jump in stats above the Tyrannosaurus and Spinosaurus to the point where it takes a group of either to kill it. It's often better for players to run from one rather than face it.
- Climax Boss: A Gigantosaurus serves as the final obstacle in the Tek Cave, guarding the portal leading to the base game's Final Boss, until later versions that replaced it with Carcharodontosaurus.
- Fake Difficulty: Mostly due to how their stats work. Nothing a player can tame is capable of fighting a wild giga, not even a much higher level giga. The only reliable ways to kill them is luring them into the sea where they can easily be drowned or using flying mounts capable of ranged combat against them.
- Can be overcome with powerful bred dinosaurs, but they're still a risky fight solo. High level bred Giga's can consistently kill wild ones due to having much higher DPS and damage reductions.
- Gameplay and Story Segregation: Despite what its dossier states, it is not slow! In addition, when considering the in-game portrayal, the raw power of the Giganotosaurus regularly bans players from bringing it to boss arenas, yet in the Explorer Notes, Mei-Yin used one when fighting the Megapithecus.
- Hair-Trigger Temper: Its dossier lists its temperament as "Angry".
- Inconsistent Spelling: It's Giganotosaurus, not Gigantosaurus, please, thank you. Amusingly, when first released, the creature laid eggs labeled "Gigantasaur egg".
- Lightning Bruiser: The strongest tameable carnivore and still one of the quickest. Ironically, their sprint is just barely faster then their walk, it's literally the sheer size of their strides that makes them so fast.
- Nerf: Has been on the receiving end of so many that it became
a meme all of its own. Originally, the Giganotosaurus was introduced as an unstoppable force of nature that remained a threat throughout all of the game's stages in response to players complaining about wildlife being too easy to kill after acquiring powerful tames. The intention was that not even a tamed Giganotosaurus could stand up to a wild one. And it always held true, however, a tamed Giga could act the same way, except could appear anywhere and go after anyone on its owner's command. Due to an even greater outcry, the animal as a whole was nerfed. Then again. And again. To the point where tamed Gigas often have worse health than good battle Rexes, not to mention stamina which has always been this way. - Power Glows: Their eyes light with an ominous glow when they get mad.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: Its eyes glow red when it is enraged.
- Rent-a-Zilla: As the largest theropod dinosaur and the largest terrestrial carnivore native to The Island, Giganotosaurus with its behemoth size easily recalls Godzilla.
- Unstoppable Rage: When it gets pissed, everything becomes a target regardless if it's tamed or not, will throw it's rider off and if wild can whip other members of it's kind into a rage as well.
Iguanodon
- Irony: In Real Life, Iguanodon, along with Megalosaurus, was one of the first dinosaurs to ever be described in scientific literature. In ARK, it was one of the last creatures to be released before the game finally came out of its 2-year-long beta phase.
- Mugging the Monster: Because of its herbivore status and resemblance to other herbivores that are completely non-violent, like the Parasaur and Gallimimus, inexperienced players may try to kill it for meat and hide, only to find that unlike those other herbivores, the iguanodon will fight back if attacked. Fortunately, once you're tough enough to take on Carnos, the Iguanodon is entirely killable.
- This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman: It only really becomes useful when you needs loads of seeds, which any regular gathering herbivore can do anyway.
- Useless Useful Spell: This dinosaur is particularly proficient at gathering plant seeds, so much so that it can turn all berries and advanced crops in its inventory into their respective seeds on demand. Sounds great, right? Well, the thing is, every herbivorous animal in the game that can gather berries from bushes also collects seeds along the way. The amount of seeds obtained during this process is more than enough for a solitary survivor or a tribe of any size, since the only use for them is to plant them in your garden (one seed per one crop plot) in order to have a steady supply of the respective berry or crop. The main limitation preventing your agriculture from expanding usually isn’t lack of seeds — it's lack of space to build greenhouses and fertilizer to facilitate crop growth.
Kentrosaurus
- Berserk Button: A Giganotosaurus trying to take a bite out of a high-level Kentrosaurus will take enough recoil damage to trigger its own Unstoppable Rage almost immediately.
- Beware My Stinger Tail: Has more spikes on its tail than its larger and more famous relative.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Kentrosaurus's main attack can impale smaller creatures on its tail spikes, resulting in the victim being unable to escape and carried around by the dinosaur instead.
- Muscles Are Meaningful: Stegos being rideable means they can wear saddles which grant them armor and increase their survivability in ways that Kentros have no access to. Moreover, the former's back plates are large enough to protect their riders from ranged fire, making these dinosaurs ideal for absorbing bullets from enemy turrets, even those that are programmed to only attack players.
- Pintsized Powerhouse: Despite being smaller, Kentrosaurus actually has higher damage output than its larger cousin, as well as a comparable health pool.
- The Spiny: Kentrosaurus's spikes will hurt anything brave enough to attack it.
Megalosaurus
- Feathered Fiend: Ironically enough given the actual species belonged to a family feathers aren't known from.
- Lightning Bruiser: Only at night. In the daylight it's almost harmless.
- Took a Level in Badass: Massively so in Aberration. Not only is the day time effect nullified and they lack the need for sleep on that map, but the Aberrant variants are immune to radiation in the maps depths. This makes the Megalosaurus go from a night time specialist on other maps, to a smaller, faster, more agile version of the Tyrannosaurus. An imprinted, well leveled Aberrant Megalosaurus can easily be one of the most powerful creatures on the map and defeat even the dreaded Reaper Queen when under charged light. Inverted in Extinction, where they're virtually worthless thanks to the Endless Daytime.
- Weakened by the Light: In the light of day Megalos are barely a threat, even to a single person on foot. In the dark, well...
Microraptor
- Dirty Coward: Wild Microraptors only attack the player when they know the latter is vulnerable – they jump into mounted survivors' faces and knock them down, then tear into them while the victim is dazed. Once you come to your senses after the fall, or if you approach the dinosaur on foot, it darts away immediately.
- Feathered Fiend: While not a bird, instead only being a feathered dinosaur related to birds, Microraptor can be fierce when it knocks players off their mount.
- Pirate Parrot: Can serve as a replacement for one. It can be perched on your shoulder, and while unable to truly fly, launching one into the enemy's face and taking them captive can be great fun.
- Toothy Bird: While not technically a bird, inexperienced players mistake Microraptor for Archaeopteryx (which is in fact a bird) all the time.
- Trademark Favorite Food: Regardless of server settings, a wild Microraptor of any level can be tamed with exactly one Rare Flower once you knock it out.
Oviraptor
- Fake Difficulty: Oviraptor are very common, fairly easy for even a new player to catch and knock out. Oh, what's that? You wanted to tame one? Well, hope you have time, resources and nerve to spend hours babysitting a dinosaur with no combat or resource-related capabilities whatsoever! Because unless you happened to stumble upon an extremely rare and valuable Giganotosaurus or Quetzalcoatlus egg, you will have to feed it hundreds of Dodo or bigger eggs. They restore a fairly high amount of Food points too, which is the reason for the absurdly long taming time.
- Fragile Speedster: While its speed is of no use to the player, Oviraptor flees at a surprisingly quick pace when attacked.
- Invasion of the Baby Snatchers: Well, egg snatchers at any rate...
- Love Is in the Air: They cause nearby animals to lay more eggs.
- Picky Eater: It will only eat eggs, and its tame rate with the smaller variants is fairly low.
Pachycephalosaurus
- Headbutting Pachy: Guess how it attacks enemies...
- Instant Sedation: Unlike most tranquilizing effects in the game, the Pachy's attacks deliver all their torpor immediately, meaning you often don't have to wait as long for the target to be knocked out. Justified, as in this case the sedation is achieved through beating the victim with a blunt object (which has been known to knock out instantly on occasion), rather than applying chemical substances of any kind.
- Not the Intended Use: While Pachies are ridable, their weight stat is so low that a survivor riding one can barely afford to carry any equipment, meaning they aren't very effective as mounts. Besides, their favorite kibble has much better uses (such as taming invaluable Ankylosaurus and Doedicurus), so few to no players attempt taming high level specimens. As such, the main reason for keeping a tamed Pachy is for their eggs: these are an ingredient for the favorite kibble of the mighty Paraceratherium, also used in raising dinosaur babies in order to increase their stats.
- Ramming Always Works: How it's able to break through certain (albeit weak) structures, as well as knocking out certain creatures.
- Use Your Head: You'd never guess!
Pachyrhinosaurus
- Deliberate Injury Gambit: Their Rage-attracting status can be used to make taming creatures such as Tapejara and Gallimimus much easier, since the main difficulty in taming them normally lies in how fast they flee.
- Failed a Spot Check: When the Pachyrhinosaurus releases its pacifying chemicals, what actually happens is the dinosaur itself gets affected by a buff that says "Hidden", implying the chemicals actually make the Pachyrhino (and its rider) undetectable.
- Hate Plague: The alternative chemical attack afflicts the Pachyrhinosaurus with a "Rage" buff, making all nearby wild animals, even normally skittish ones like Parasaurolophus and Pteranodon, attack it viciously.
Parasaurolophus
- Adaptational Badass: Parasaurolophus in the games is a herbivore that typically runs from fights, and is not as versatile a combatant as other dinosaurs. In The Animated Series, the Parasaurolophus that Helena Walker befriends is shown as a much better fighter that helps her through many rough scrapes and can hold its own against other dangerous dinosaurs.
- Animal Mecha: It has a Tek variant, which behaves the same as the regular but has a higher wild level cap, and drops scrap metal, electronics, oil, and small amounts of Element dust when slain instead of meat, hide, and keratin. They are still capable of breeding, somehow.
- Aquatic Hadrosaurs: They're better swimmer than the other dinosaurs, being their main defense strategy.
- Author Appeal: Parasaurs are the favorite animal of Jen aka bubblywums, one of the chief community managers working at Team Wildcard. As such, they frequently appear in unexpected places, such as update teasers, with players often engaging in a minigame of sorts in order to try and find them, and one would even befriend Helena Walker in The Animated Series.
- Crutch Character: Easy to tame, easy to use, but loses relevance very quickly as the game progresses.
- Enemy-Detecting Radar: The new TLC update gives it the ability to detect hostile players and dinosaurs, which the player may not be able to see at first.
- The Immodest Orgasm: Successfully mating Parasaurs ends with the female using her battle honk.
- Ironic Name: Helena's Parasaurolophus in The Animated Series is named "Scary", yet its a docile herbivore like the rest of its species and occasionally licks her affectionately, making it anything but scary.
- Joke Character: The Parasaurolophus can serve as a decent starting mount and berry gatherer, but is overshadowed in pretty much every way by any other creature capable of these things. More experienced player prefer a Triceratops or Iguanodon as their first mount, both being only slightly more difficult to tame while being much better at both harvesting and combat. Not to mention other advantages such as the high starting weight stat of the Triceratops and the Iguanodon's infinite stamina while sprinting in its quadrupedal stance.
- Mighty Roar: After the second TLC, it has a honking ability that can scare away creatures like Raptors and Direwolves.
- Piñata Enemy: On par with the Phiomia. Parasaurs are harmless and drop similarly large amounts of meat and hide. They also come with an added benefit of laying eggs, which can serve as a Berserk Button to make them attack you so you don't have to chase them across the map in order to kill them.
- This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman: Quite literally, the only outstanding quality of this dinosaur is its ability to swim. No longer quite the case after the TLC update, as they also gained the ability to scare away smaller predators.
Pegomastax
dinosaur is, for the most part, a small and gentle herbivore and prey animal. However, Pegomastax are extremely mischievous and will steal items from players' inventories. They are tamed passively by letting them steal berries from your inventory.- Feathered Fiend: It's covered in proto-feathers.
- Mechanically Unusual Class: The only animal in the game tamed by letting it continuously rob you. Low-level specimens are often tamed by accident, attacking a distracted survivor, stealing the right kind of berry, and instantly becoming bound to him/her.
- Percussive Pickpocket: It does a small amount of damage when it steals your items.
- Sticky Fingers: Once they spot you, they quickly leap at you causing minor damaging and nabbing an item. They then turn tail and run for it.
Spinosaurus
- All Animals Are Dogs: It runs and swims like a dog, wags its tail, and makes a deep bark-like sound.
- Dual Mode Unit: It has the regular quadrupedal stance that it's seen in, and has the ability to go into a bipedal stance if the player commands it to do so. Said bipedal stance allows it to run faster and deal more damage to any target that has been selected.
- Infinity -1 Sword: It's considered a top tier carnivore and an even comparison to the Tyrannosaurus.
- Jack of All Stats: It has decent movement speed, great damage output, and a great hunter and war mount.
- Lightning Bruiser: The Spinosaurus is the ATV of the large dinosaurs, able to keep a good pace over uneven terrain, deep water, and flat ground. The Spino also has an incredibly high attack rate, which often more than makes up for its slightly lower stats compared to the T. rex. This high attack rate gives the Spino a decent chance of beating the T. rex in a one-on-one fight, and also gives the Spino a good chance of beating an Alpha Raptor, whereas even a T. rex will get wrecked by one unless there's a massive level disparity between the two of them.
- Savage Spinosaurs: Spinosaurus aquareliga is a deadly predator to both players and other creatures both on land and in the water.
- Stance System: Spinos have two different modes that affect their abilities. On four legs they are extremely quick runners and their attacks have longer reach. On two legs they hit harder, strike a large area directly around themselves, and can pivot in place making them extremely capable melee fighters.
Stegosaurus
- Animal Mecha: It has a Tek variant, which behaves the same as the regular but has a higher wild level cap, and drops scrap metal, electronics, oil, and small amounts of Element dust when slain instead of meat, hide, and keratin. They are still capable of breeding, somehow.
- Beware My Stinger Tail: It has a spiked tail (technical term thagomizer) that is used as a weapon.
- Mighty Glacier: Like most large Herbivores, it's very powerful and very slow.
- Stance System: A TLC update released in late 2020 gave Stegosaurus a three-stance system, each with different material harvesting and combat specialties.
- Walking Tank: In addition to having a very large base health, Stegosaurus's back plates give it 50% damage reduction at all times, and protect the rider as well in Hardened stance. As an herbivore, it takes further reduced damage from fire and can heal using Sweet Vegetable Cakes.
Therizinosaurus
- Disc-One Final Boss: Tied with the Carnotaurus (who is weaker but more common and much more aggressive), the Therizinosaurus is the most dangerous animal roaming the zones many new players call home, such as the Southern Islets or the Footpaw on the classic map. When you or your tribe have a means of defeating these beasts or at least safely luring them away from your property, you can feel mostly safe in your base's immediate area (provided it's built in one of these locations), which means you've practically beaten the first stage of the PvE challenge provided by this game: survival on a day-to-day basis, also known as Early Game Hell.
- Feathered Fiend: Unlike most other dinosaurs, Therizinosauruses are covered with feathers. Unlike other herbivores, they also turn hostile without provocation if approached too closely by players.
- Herbivores Are Friendly: Very much averted, it's hostile to any player characters.
- Infinity -1 Sword: Bred and imprinted Therizinosaurus are a good choice for boss battles, especially against the Dragon. Their damage output and total health are lower than the standard T. Rex, but as herbivores they take reduced damage from fire and can heal by eating Sweet Vegetable Cakes.
- Infinity +1 Sword: Amongst harvesters.
- Jack of All Trades: Amongst harvesters. However, it has no special ability to carry materials it harvests (most specialized harvesters consider their preferred materials lighter).
- Lightning Bruiser: Despite their relatively small size, Therizinosaurus are almost as dangerous as a T. rex, having about 80% as much health (significantly more than other hostile dinos of similar size like the Carnotaurus and Allosaurus), hitting almost as hard, and being somewhat faster on foot. Their ability to damage stone structures (something only the likes of Alpha Predators and Gigantosaurus can usually do) also makes them uniquely dangerous.
- Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Despite being slightly smaller than the Carnotaurus and quite a bit smaller than an Allosaurus, the Therizinosaurus is actually in the same combat tier as the much larger Spinosaurus and T. rex.
- Wolverine Claws: They have well-developed clawed hands, which makes them excellent harvesters and also makes them one of the few non-Boss in Mook Clothing predators able to damage stone structures, making them especially dangerous to your bases.
Titanosaurus
- Animals Not to Scale: This thing is a mountain with feet!
- Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Even the Giganotosaurus, its only possible predator, is small next to it.
- Kaiju: Biggest dino in the game, even dwarfing the Giganotosaurus and most of the boss monsters. Only the Titans of Extinction exceed its might.
- Mighty Glacier: It's slow, but it can take on a Giganotosaurus and win easily. An entire tribe's worth of firepower may not even be enough to fell it if it has proper support.
- Walking Tank: The undisputed king of this trope in ARK. Its platform saddle can carry anything from a mobile mansion to a rolling fortress littered with turrets.
- Screw the Rules, I Make Them!: The starvation rule is only ironclad on Official servers. Private servers (and single-player) can add a parameter that allows Titanosaurus to be fed normally like other dinos, meaning any tribe with the food output to sustain it can keep the behemoth indefinitely.
- The Juggernaut: It's one of only a few creatures that can destroy metal structures, and the only non-boss that can destroy a TEK base on its own power. If you anger one of these things or its riders want you dead, literally nothing in this game will stand in its way. And putting the creature itself aside, there's the base on its back, likely full of humans and dinos just itching to clean up what it doesn't stomp into paste...
Triceratops
- Animal Jingoism: It's described as being a hostile adversary to Tyrannosaurus.
- Animal Mecha: It has a Tek variant, introduced in "Genesis: Part 1" which behaves the same as the reguar but has a higher wild level cap, and drops scrap metal, electronics, oil, and small amounts of Element dust when slain instead of meat, hide, and keratin. They are still capable of breeding, somehow.
- Charged Attack: Similar to the Woolly Rhino, the longer it charges, the more damage it does.
- Hair-Trigger Temper: Its dossier lists its temperament as "Short-Tempered". This doubles as a Berserk Button, as it gets a strength buff whenever they're near Rexes, Spinos, or Gigas.
- Let's Get Dangerous!: Whenever faced with a Tyrannosaurus, Spinosaurus or Giganotosaurus, it gains a red mist around it and charges towards the predator, dealing more damage to them than it would to any other creature in the same situation.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: Its dossier states that it is a hybrid of Triceratops and Styracosaurus.
- Summon Bigger Fish: Triceratops are relatively common, entirely passive towards players as long as you don't attack them, and are particularly easy to aggro against hostile carnivores. Low level players being harassed by major carnivores can lure them near wild triceratops and hide behind the trike, which usually results in the two fighting and giving you a chance to help kill the predator or escape.
- Temper-Ceratops: Usually averted, unless you provoke it…
Troodon
- Blood Knight: Troodon are very vicious nocturnal predators, and their immunity to tranquilization makes them tough, they like the challenge of fighting tamed animals.
- By the Lights of Their Eyes: Their eyes shine in the night. It's usually the only way to detect them while they are attacking you at that point.
- Eats Babies: The easiest way to tame Troodon, as baby dinos have very little ability to fight back but give Troodon all the experience/affinity of an adult.
- Feathered Fiend: Though not fully feathered unlike the real dinosaur it’s based off, it still has some feathers on its body. It is also a small, but deadly, predator with a venomous bite.
- Hunting the Most Dangerous Game: To tame a Troodon, you have to allow it to hunt... no, not you yourself, but your tames. The more powerful and aggressive, the better. The Dino Dossier theorizes they enjoy the challenge, and choose to obey a human who has proven a Worthy Opponent.
- It Can Think: Helena thinks they are able to teach each other instead of having to learn through experience, which implies language.
- Pint-Sized Powerhouse: They have rather high health for their size and speed, and despite their small size (they can easily be mistaken for Compys at a distance by inexperienced players), Troodons are incredibly dangerous and can fell even experienced players in heavy armor, due to their high speed and incredibly powerful paralytic poison (stimberries or stimulant can protect against one Troodon, but a pack of them attacking all at once can be lethal even with stims).
- Poisonous Person: It has a toxic bite that can paralyze humans.
- Raptor Attack: Its family are related to the dromaeosaurs, the family that contain raptors, and they are slightly similar in appearance.
- Shout-Out: It's nocturnal and has a toxic bite that can paralyze humans.
- Stupid Sacrifice: It is tamed by sacrificing tamed animals to it.
- Zerg Rush: If Troodon weren't bad enough on their own, they almost always attack in packs.
Tyrannosaurus
- Animal Mecha: It has a Tek variant, which behaves the same as the regular but has a higher wild level cap, and drops scrap metal, electronics, oil, and small amounts of Element dust when slain instead of meat, hide, and keratin. They are still capable of breeding, somehow.
- Always a Bigger Fish: Unlike many other carnivores, the Rex will attack more or less everything else around it, including other carnivores. If you're lucky, a Rex that enters an area may help clear it of faster, more numerous enemies such as packs of Allosauruses, Troodons, or Terror Birds.
- Animals Not to Scale: About twice the size of the real animal.
- Bring My Brown Pants: Tyrannosaurus' roar forces various smaller animals and the player to poop, making them stop moving for a few seconds.
- Infinity -1 Sword: The Rex is one of the more powerful mounts, though far from the strongest. In the base game, the Giganotosaurus outshines it in raw power, while other creatures may be more effective in specific tasks.
- King Mook: The Alpha Rex is a bigger, faster and stronger version of the regular Tyrannosaurus, also capable of buffing other nearby predators. As such, it takes considerably more effort to kill one, but if you manage to pull it off, you’ll be rewarded with a large experience bounty, a pile of raw prime meat, and possibly high-quality tools and weapons.
- Lightning Bruiser: Despite statements in other dossiers, it is actually one of the fastest animals in the game at a sprint.
- Mighty Roar: One that can stun enemies and make them crap themselves.
- Misplaced Wildlife: Like the Ankylosaurus, It shows up frequently in the Snow biome for reasons unknown. This is lampshaded by Helena.
- T. Rexpy: Helena's dossier reveals that it isn't actually Tyrannosaurus Rex but a fictional species she calls Tyrannosaurus Dominum. However, most people on the island can't tell the difference and just call them Rex anyway.
Utahraptor
- Animal Mecha: It has a Tek variant, which behaves the same as the regular but has a higher wild level cap, and drops scrap metal, electronics, oil, and small amounts of Element dust when slain instead of meat, hide, and keratin. They are still capable of breeding, somehow.
- Butt-Monkey: When a dossier depicts an animal getting brutally attacked, that animal is usually a Utahraptor.
- Feathered Fiend: Though just barely, having only a few feathers.
- King Mook: The Alpha Raptor is a bigger, faster and stronger version of the regular Raptor, also capable of buffing other nearby predators. As such, it takes more effort to kill one, but if you manage to pull it off, you’ll be rewarded with a large experience bounty, a pile of raw prime meat, and possibly high-quality tools and weapons.
- Mook Commander: The highest level pack member acts as this, having a "pack boost" that gives it a certain degree of authority over other members of the pack.
- Overshadowed by Awesome: Terror Birds are better than Raptors in pretty much every regard, having similar abilities, speed and maneuverability, but higher overall stats (including damage, critical for the creature’s usability as a mount), not to mention their Not Quite Flight granting them escape opportunities a Raptor rider could only dream of. The developers always acknowledged this, and a 2018 update known as the TLC Pass Phase 2 largely rectified this by granting Raptors a unique ability to pounce on their target and pin it down a la the infamous Muldoon scene as well as a leader boost for packs.
- Raptor Attack: Only partly feathered. Not the usual suspect (Velociraptor), however.
- Santa Claus: During the Winter Wonderland event, "Raptor Claus" can fly in his sleigh and drop special items for players to find. In addition, letters can be crafted for him to gift players sleeping at night depending on whether they've been naughty (killing enough peaceful creatures, in which Raptor Claus will dump less useful gifts such as poop and even summon hostile creatures) or nice (killing enough hostile creatures, in which Raptor Claus gifts what the player asks for, such as a new creature or saddle).
- Warm-Up Boss: Although not truly a boss, this Alpha is considerably easier to kill than other similar creatures, requiring only a low-to-mid tier mount or a just bunch of (cross)bows and arrows and a vantage point. It is designed to give you a first taste of the kinds of Alpha and boss battles that await you.
Yutyrannus
- Bring My Brown Pants: If the Yutyrannus scares a dino to the point of making them flee, they will defecate while attempting to flee.
- Feathered Fiend: A large predatory dinosaur cloaked in fur-like feathers.
- Lightning Bruiser: The Yutyrannus is every bit as powerful as a T. rex, with the added ability to scare off tamed dinos and summon Carnotaurus as reinforcements. It's also ridiculously fast, and small enough to fit through normal dino gates.
- Mighty Roar: Its main ability. It can either bolster your allies, or cause any creatures nearby to flee in terror.
- Mook Commander: Usually found in the wild with two or three Carnotaurus companions, using its Mighty Roar to bolster them and terrify prey for easier kills. It is possible for one of these companions to be an Alpha Carno. This is also usually its role while tamed, bolstering the rest of your creatures for difficult battles.
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Its full species name (with the epithet) translates into "cruel feathered tyrant". Considering running away in fear is precisely what this beast makes your tamed animals do, this kind of name is more than justified.
Mammals and Synapsids
Basilosaurus
- Gentle Giant: Its dossier states that it is this way towards humans.
- Healing Factor: The closer they are to the surface of the water the faster their health recovers. Take them too deep however and it starts to take damage instead.
- Infinity -1 Sword: A rather easy tame and of similar size to Megalodon, surprisingly Basilosaurus's stats are actually more comparable to the much harder to tame Elasmosaurus, with the trade-off being their below-average speed and lack of ability to wear platform saddles.
- Mighty Glacier: Slower then a Megalodon, but also with four times the health pool and slightly more damage.
- No-Sell: To any and all forms of status effects besides direct Torpor damage. They can't be stunned by Cnidaria or Electrophorus, nor can they be grabbed by Tusoteuthis.
- Prehistoric Monster: Curiously, inverted; Basilosaurus is probably the only case in ARK of a predator that ended up being less monstrous than its real-life counterpart. The real Basilosaurus was an apex predator that hunted sharks, while the ARK Basilosaurus, though fairly tough, is passive and relatively harmless.
Castoroides
- Berserk Button: Normally friendly creatures unless you desire to screw around with the dams they build, at which point it will voice its displeasure by giving you an impromptu facelift with its teeth.
- Herbivores Are Friendly: Its dossier lists its temperament as "Friendly". And it is... unless you mess with their dams.
- Infinity -1 Sword: Among the smaller creatures on the ARK. It can halve the weight of resources, including wood and stone, and acts as a mobile Smithy that players can use.
Chalicotherium
- The Alcoholic: It can only be tamed through Beer Jar or Wheat Beer (Primitive Plus).
- Homing Boulders: Subverted, while it can throw boulders at enemies, it doesn't target them directly.
- Snowball Fight: The dossier states that they do this in the wild.
- Walking Tank: Or rather, a walking siege weapon.
Daeodon
- Big Eater: You have to feed it constantly in order to keep it from starving.
- Hyperactive Metabolism: Once it keeps eating, the eating boosts its attack.
- Full-Boar Action: Not really a boar as its closer related to hippos and whales surprisingly, but are piglike enough to count, being nicknamed "Hell-Pigs".
- Healing Factor / The Medic: It heals significantly whenever it eats something, and heals its allies at the same time.
- Lightning Bruiser: They're incredibly tough for a creature of their size and speed; their health and damage output is about 70-80% that of a T. rex, yet they're significantly faster (about as fast as a direwolf) and their relatively small size makes it relatively easy for them to ambush you.
- Zerg Rush: Like direwolves, Daeodon often attack in packs. What's worse, each individual Daeodon is about 70-80% as tough as a full-on T. rex, and they can heal each other! Unless you have a decent predator pack of your own, or have learned how to craft at least a double-barrel shotgun, you're likely to be outmatched by them.
Dimetrodon
- Crippling Overspecialisation / This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman: Player characters may see it as either of these, since it's only real use to the player is acting as a living radiator, and any advanced tribe could easily use electrified Air Conditioners instead of another mouth to feed.
Direbear
- Bears Are Bad News: Its near endless stamina and high damage output makes it this whenever you attack it.
- Jack of All Stats: It has good damage output, decent speed and stamina, can eat just about anything, and keeps the player warm in cold climates.
- Lightning Bruiser: Big-time. The Direbear has incredible sprinting speed and can both dish and endure large amounts of damage, being about on par with a Carnotaurus in terms of stats, only with a much more aggressive melee attack speed.
- Trademark Favorite Food: Honey, of course. In addition to honey being the second fastest taming food (after kibble), a TLC patch gave tame direbears reduced damage from bee stings, and players won't be dismounted, making them ideal for raiding wild beehives.
- Underground Monkey: There's a polar bear variant that dwells in the Snow Cave on The Island, the Ice Cave on Extinction, and found throughout Ragnarok.
Direwolf
- Alpha and Beta Wolves: There's always an alpha member (recognizable by a mist identical to the pack boost on an Allosaurus) of the pack that pretty much calls the shots, since it's the highest level Direwolf in the pack. If it's killed, then the next-highest level Direwolf will take its place.
- Canis Major: These wolves are about the size of a horse.
- Glass Cannon: Since it can't be saddled/armoured, it doesn't last a long when attacked, though it does have great movement speed and damage output.
- Mook Commander: The highest level pack member acts as this, having a "pack boost" that gives it a certain degree of authority over other members of the pack.
- Savage Wolves: When attacking things in the wild, it behaves as this, and when tamed is the opposite.
- The Nose Knows: The TLC update gives it the ability to sniff out players, dinos, and explorer notes.
- Zerg Rush: Since they tend to come in packs, they will usually attack in this way when hunting for food.
Doedicurus
- Beware My Stinger Tail: It has a spiked, clubbed tail that can break through rock.
- Rolling Attack: Can curl into a ball and roll, similar to an armadillo.
- Strong as They Need to Be: Like the Ankylosaurus, this creature is incapable of damaging stone structures, despite being highly efficient at breaking rocks these structures are made from.
Equus
- Composite Character: It takes traits from various horse species and varieties from various areas of time, such as taking the stripe pattern of the extinct quagga.
- Cool Horse: Once it's with players, it can fulfill this role.
- Horsing Around: To tame one, you have to feed it, then mount it and repeatedly feed it in quick-time events while it tries to buck you off. Its secondary attack is also the classic hoof-to-the-face kick with both back feet, which does tremendous torpor damage. A properly trained Equus can literally kick the consciousness out of almost any other animal, saving you valuable ammunition and reducing the narcotics needed for taming to only what's needed to keep your target asleep.
- Unicorn: Only one exists on the map at any given time, but otherwise is the exact same as the standard Equus. A server parameter allows a new wild unicorn to spawn if the previous one was tamed, which is the only way to acquire a breeding pair without cryopod shenanigans.
Gigantopithecus
- Berserk Button: Wild ones will aggro onto a player if they get too close to it. It was Exaggerated due to a bug when it was introduced in early Alpha where the aggro range was larger than the entire map, meaning anger one and it would never stop chasing you and bring every single Gigantopithecus it meets along the way. Fortunately, this was fixed.
- Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti: It has the bipedal stance of a human or sasquatch. Caves in the snow biome even have actual yetis, which are untamable albino specimens of this animal.
- Fastball Special: It will throw player over walls and gates extremely high, ready for them to get in on any action that they might face.
- Underground Monkey: An almost literal example with the Yetis in the Snow Cave. The Winter Wonderland event also features two different Yetis, Santa's Big Helper Yeti and the Abominable Snowman, which can be encountered.
Hyaenodon
, Hyaenodon are usually found in the Snow Biome. These pack hunters only hunt those with low enough health to be easily overwhelmed. Although too small to ride, tamed Hyaenodon are excellent hunting companions, thanks to their ability to regenerate health with each attack. They must be tamed passively by petting them.- Big Friendly Dog: You have to pet it to tame it and gets a bonus while being petted.
- Healing Factor: It will heal much faster when attacking an enemy.
- Heinous Hyena: Downplayed. They have the appearance and the "laughing" cry, but are otherwise more dog-like than this trope.
- Implacable Man: They are sometimes so resilient they will jump over spiked walls if there's food on the other side.
- Mundane Utility: The meatpack "saddle" for Hyenodon acts as a meat preserver, greatly extending its spoil timer as long as Hyenodon is carrying it.
- Pragmatic Villainy: It only really targets the weaker creatures of the ARK, since they are easier to overwhelm. Kill some of the pack, and they'll decide you're more trouble than you're worth.
Lystrosaurus
- All Animals Are Dogs: LOVES getting petted, and will do a stumpy-legged dance as a sign of affection. This also raises morale in all tamed animals within close proximity, granting them increased experience gain.
- Herbivores Are Friendly: Probably the best example of this trope in the game.
- Undying Loyalty: Will have this to the player after being tamed.
Megaloceros
- Fragile Speedster: Mostly the females, since they are faster than the males.
- In a Single Bound: It will be able to jump very far when given enough speed.
- The Marvelous Deer: A magnificient Old World deer with the largest antlers of any deer species.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: They will use their high speed to quickly run away from anything that attacks it.
Megatherium
- Arch-Enemy: Treats any insect, or insect-like creature on the island as this.
- Ascended to Carnivorism: It's depicted as an omnivore, even though the real Megatherium was an herbivore.
- Heavily Armored Mook: It's stated in the dossier that it has a decent amount of armour, though it's best not take it into battle.
- Mighty Glacier: It's slow and heavily armoured.
- Turns Red: If it kills an arthropod, it enters a frenzy state, massively increasing all of its stats. Wild ones will attack everything in sight. Tamed ones are a good choice against the Broodmother, since slaughtering her Araneo minions will activate the state.
Mesopithecus
- Dung Fu: Once tamed, it can and will throw poop at your enemies.
- Fake Difficulty: While something as small and harmless as this may seem to be easy to tame, it's anything but.
- Fastball Special: You can throw it into a base and get it to open doors for you.
- Maniac Monkeys: If they ever turn hostile towards any player character.
Moschops
- Ascended to Carnivorism: It is depicted as an omnivore, despite being a herbivore in reality.
- Attack! Attack... Retreat! Retreat!: While Moschops can be used as a battle mount and will readily fight so long as you're steering it, if you get dismounted in any way, the beast will, at most, take a single bite out of whatever yanked you off its back (maybe two if you're lucky) before immediately fleeing. It may also perform this single bite when commanded to attack, but it will flee as normal if this doesn't kill the target.
- Boring, but Practical: It can't fight on its own, and it's slow at running or swimming. But if left to wander, it will autonomously gather organic resources with great efficiency, and can be specially trained to collect rare resources. It's basically the poor man's Therizinosaurus.
- Cornered Rattlesnake: If immobilized by a bola or trapped by terrain, it will on very rare occasions turn around and bite its attacker. If this kills the assailant, it will immediately finish consuming the corpse to heal before resuming its escape. But a Moschops is at its most dangerous when an equally desperate human tribemate jumps on its back - the comforting presence of a rider gives it the courage to fight anything on any ARK, even apex predators and bosses.
- Covers Always Lie: Its dossier states that lives solely in the redwood biome, in-game however, it will spawn just as frequently in all of the other biomes on the island.
- Dirty Coward: Moschops flees at even the slightest damage. In fact, commanding it to attack usually causes it to run away! A TLC patch gave players the ability to ride it and thus force it to battle. If you've got nothing else, Moschops does have a good base Melee damage stat, but poor defenses and speed. And it will immediately bolt if you get pulled or shot off its back.
- Extreme Omnivore: Moschops are tamed by feeding them any of a variety of items including Rare Flowers and Mushrooms, Prime Meat and Fish Meat, Leech Blood, Organic Polymer, and Sap.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: A Moschops will follow a rider's directions without complaint, even in combat, but the second the human is ripped off their back by, say, a Purlovia or Microraptor, it will instantly remember that everything terrifies it and run like hell.
- Shout-Out: Its dossier lists its temperament as "Cowardly".
Onychonycteris
- Bat Out of Hell: They can quickly become this if you aren't prepared to deal with them.
- One-Gender Race: They all have their gender listed as "N/A". This is likely due to developers having not implemented gender for them yet.
- Typhoid Mary: Rarely, Onychonycteris can carry a fast-acting rabies variant that infects players and dinosaurs it bites.
- Zerg Rush: You always encounter groups of them, and unless you're covered in Bug Repellent, they'll attack you immediately.
Otter
- Cute Little Fangs: Have two little teeth visible at all times.
- Good Bad Bug: Otters were, probably mistakenly, left out of a patch preventing players and dinos from carrying more than one artifact each. So by carrying an otter, you can camp the artifact spawn point in each cave and collect multiple artifacts, making boss farming easier.
- Killer Rabbit: A tamed otter can be a deceptively deadly shoulder pet, as players will level their attack stat to boost the temperature insulation bonus they give you. Getting too close to an otter's owner while attacking them could see you take massive damage out of nowhere and possibly even die.
- Playful Otter: As a passive animal, the otter is easily this.
- Ridiculously Cute Critter: Among the cutest in the game.
Ovis
- Joke Character: They're slow and cannot fight at all.
- Metal Slime: Ovis drop mutton, the best non-kibble taming food in the game. They're also very rare and only found in the snow biomes, which require significant preparation (fur armor and shelter/heat sources to avoid freezing to death) for the player to survive in.
- Picky Eater: Only tamed through feeding it a Sweet Veggie Cake, which isn't easy to make. This is subverted in that you only have to feed it one cake, and after being tamed it will happily eat berries.
- Ridiculously Cute Critter: Among the cutest creatures in the game.
Paraceratherium
- Infinity -1 Sword: Essentially an easier to use but weaker Bronto. Replaces them on Scorched Earth and Aberration too.
- Lightning Bruiser: When compared to its saurian counterpart, the Bronto.
- Rhino Rampage: An early relative of the rhinoceros.
- Walking Tank: Not quite on the scale of the Brontosaurus, but it can be fitted with a platform saddle and carry a small base or turret nest on its back, and is the only available option for this in Scorched Earth and Aberration.
Phiomia
- Honorable Elephant: Though to a lesser extent than the Woolly Mammoth is.
- Joke Character: It's large, and of little use if tamed, unless you want it's poop.
- The Load: Will be seen as this by most players.
Procoptodon
- Animal Gender-Bender: For some reason, the males have pouches.
- Artistic License – Paleontology: In real life, Procoptodon was too heavy to hop like a modern kangaroo and instead walked upright like a human. It also had a much shorter face befitting a niche for browsing for leaves. Neither the real Procoptodon nor modern kangaroos can jump backwards. Also, the males somehow have pouches.
- In a Single Bound: Given the opportunity, it can will be able to jump very far.
- Kangaroo Pouch Ride: One of the players riding it can go into the pouch. It can even give rides to babies of many species (see Team Mom below).
- Land Down Under: Being from the Pleistocene megafauna of Australia, it is easily associated with that environment.
- Team Mom: A TLC update allows Procoptodon of either sex to nurture babies of other species in its pouch, improving their imprint rates.
Purlovia
is used by survivors as a living trap of sorts. Purlovia are able to burrow and remain in wait for days on end until some unlucky creature steps over its burrow, which at that point, the creature leaps from the earth and mauls its victim.- Ascended to Carnivorism: It is depicted as a carnivore, despite being a herbivore in reality. Its dossier even lampshades this.
- Hidden in Plain Sight: It can be hiding absolutely anywhere when it buries itself.
- Troll: They attack out of nowhere due to hiding underneath the ground, and their unavoidable first hit from this surprise attack will paralyze you for several seconds, which is more than enough for it to kill you unless your health and armor is late-to-endgame level. They can essentially end your life abruptly out of nowhere until you get a decent mount to ride around on or start running with a posse of pets for support.
Smilodon
- Cartoony Tail: It's got a long tail similar to modern big cats', despite real Smilodon having very short tails.
- Fragile Speedster: Only in comparison to other carnivores on the island.
- Panthera Awesome: Of the prehistoric kind.
- Sole Survivor: In the Explorer Notes on "Scorched Earth", a Smilodon accompanying John Dahkeya and Raia is the only surviving tamed animal from the sandstorm that destoys Nosti.
Thylacoleo
- Always a Bigger Fish: It's depicted in its dossier as pouncing and taking a bite out of a Smilodon. In real life it was the smaller of the two by a good margin.
- Death from Above: If they knock you off a flying mount and the fall damage doesn't kill you, then it will rip your face off.
- Improbable Aiming Skills: Wild Thylacoleo will always hit when they jump down at you from a redwood. It doesn't matter how quickly you're moving by, the attack will connect, even if you're moving through at superspeed with the flying cheat code—they'll fly right after you horizontally and start mauling you.
- Land Down Under: One of the Pleistocene megafauna of Australia, from a forested environment befitting this stereotype, and being one of its top predators, complete with the strongest bite of any mammal.
- Wall Crawl: Though mostly useful with the redwood trees on the island.
- Yowies and Bunyips and Drop Bears, Oh My: In game, they're basically just drop bears. Justified, as paleontologists think they might have inspired drop bears.
Woolly Mammoth
- Drums of War: After TLC Pass 3, the mammoth saddle is equipped with war drums by default, and a second "seat" (standing) for someone to play them.
- Honorable Elephant: Wild mammoths are non-hostile to humans and will help fight any hostile predators that come near them. They serve as similar role in the Arctic biomes as dinos like triceratops do in the warmer areas.
- Lightning Bruiser: In comparison to similarly sized creatures, mammoths are a lot faster.
- Mighty Glacier: They're not nearly as fast as most carnivores, and can easily be outpaced by players with even moderately upgraded movement speed. To compensate, they have quite a lot of health and hit pretty hard.
- Mighty Roar: TLC Pass 3 gave their trumpeting an effect which lowers the attack of all carnivores (or players) that hear it.
- Mundane Utility: Turns out those tusks and trunk are great for gathering and carrying wood.
- Walking Tank: Though not to the extent of other, larger creatures on the ARK.
- War Elephants: Can be used as this by players.
Woolly Rhino
- Charged Attack: The longer you charge at the intended target for, the more damage it does.
- Lightning Bruiser: As a rhinoceros, it can run fast and hit hard.
- Herbivores Are Friendly: Its dossier lists its temperament as "Friendly". If something attacks it, it very quickly stops being friendly.
- Knockback: What it does to creatures on the receiving end of its Charged Attack.
- Rhino Rampage: Downplayed. They can be very dangerous when provoked but otherwise they are generally peaceful creatures, much like real rhinos actually.
Amphibians and Reptiles
Beelzebufo
- Glass Cannon: Despite being exceptionally good at just about every regard, it has a low health pool, and won't last long in a direct fight.
- In a Single Bound: One of their abilities is to jump extremely high, and extremely far.
- Jack of All Stats: It has great movement and swim speed, a large jump that helps it reach higher places, and its tranquilizing tongue can certainly help with PvP combat.
- Multipurpose Tongue: It's long tongue can be used to either tranquilize targets, or eat small insects, which allow it to create cementing paste.
- Poisonous Person: Its tongue delivers a tranquilizing venom to anything it hits.
Carbonemys
- Heavily Armored Mook: Its shell gives it an awful lot of armour, which makes it hard to battle unless you have a very powerful mount.
- Mighty Glacier: Extremely slow on land and very durable.
- Vegetarian Carnivore: It is depicted as a herbivore, despite being a carnivore in reality.
- Walking Tank: A very durable turtle and has surprisingly good attack damage.
Dimorphodon
- All Flyers Are Birds: It has feathers, whereas the other pterosaurs are either scaled or furred.
- Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Surprisingly powerful for something of its size.
- Zerg Rush: When provoked, Dimos swarm their opponents — a tactic that is usable when tamed in large flocks. A large, well-leveled swarm can tear even a T. rex to shreds.
Diplocaulus
- Crutch Character: Diplocaulus is relatively slow while moving (especially if caught on land), small enough to immobilize with a bola, easy to knock out, always flees when attacked and requires no saddle to ride. All these traits make it an easy tame for even low-level players who want to start exploring the ocean’s depths sooner than later. However, it’s only encountered in places crawling with dangerous creatures who think even a wild Diplocaulus will make a yummy snack. So, not only will you need to worry about keeping the amphibian from waking up and constantly gather narcotics, you must also fend off hostile creatures you’re barely equipped to deal with at that point in the game that can potentially spawn right in front of you. Despite being a very useful asset in the early game, few survivors actually try taming them because of how dangerous this endeavor ends up being.
- Trademark Favorite Food: Is highly proficient at killing trilobites and harvesting their corpses.
Elasmosaurus
- Covers Always Lie: Its dossier depicts it as being relentlessly attacked by a Megalodon, even though it's more likely to be the other way round in-game.
- Infinity +1 Sword: The plesiosaur is a strong mount which can help players in the ocean when it is tamed.
- Lightning Bruiser: It's extremely quick despite its size.
- Living Ship: It will become this with the use of its platform saddle, which will allow tribes and players to have a mobile base on them at all times.
- Rule of Two: They tend to be encountered in pairs, often near underwater caves.
- Shown Their Work: Unlike most depictions of plesiosaurs, Ark's elasmosaur have non-flexible necks — you won't see one raising its head high above the surface of the water like in Fantasia or the Surgeon's Photo.
Ichthyosaurus
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: When near the Snow Biome, they will attack Kairuku with little hesitation, and with little reason as well.
- Fragile Speedster: Of the aquatic variety, and one of the fewer examples of aquatic ones in the game.
- Friendly, Playful Dolphin: Although it's technically a dolphin-like reptile. Or at least, it's friendly to humans.
- This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman: Ichthyosaurus has no torpor meter, making it immune to Eurypterid's poison and a viable choice for hunting black pearls despite its low melee.
Kaprosuchus
- Animals Not to Scale: Its back legs are depicted as being much longer than they were in reality.
- Artistic License – Paleontology: Technically we don't truly know if Kaprosuchus was actually a land-based crocodyliform, as all we have to go on it is a very incomplete skull. The creature of ARK, on the other hand, is in many ways more reminiscent of the unrelated planocraniids.
- Fragile Speedster: It's best to use it for its lunge ability only, and not for direct combat.
- Glass Cannon: While it has great speed and attack damage, it won't be able to hold its own in a direst fight.
- Never Smile at a Crocodile: While only a crocodyliform and not as closely related to modern crocodiles, its ability to lunge and rush down prey, plus grabbing them, makes it a fierce animal to avoid.
Liopleurodon
- Animals Not to Scale: Averted. For once, it's accurately sized (25 feet long, not 25 meters).
- Artistic License – Paleontology: One of the few aversions, the in-game Liopluerodon is accurately sized at 25 feet, instead of 25 meters like it’s counterpart in Walking with Dinosaurs.
- But Now I Must Go: When a tamed Liopleurodon's timer is up, it teleports away, never to be seen again.
- Later-Installment Weirdness: Arguably even more so than anything you can see on Scorched Earth.
- Similar to Lazarus Chowder, riding a Liopleurodon improves the rider's oxygen procession so they can stay underwater longer without needing a SCUBA tank or a high Oxygen stat.
- Said improvement also apparently affects the rider's luck, somehow increasing the quality of items the player can receive from loot crates. If said crate was already opened and the contents were seen, they will be replaced with something better. Magic!
- When a wild Liopleurodon gets attacked or a tamed one's timer expires, it teleports away in a brilliant flurry of rainbow-colored sparkles. It doesn't come back.
- Picky Eater: You can only tame it by passively feeding it honey.
- Shout-Out: Its magical qualities allude to the Liopleurodon from Charlie the Unicorn, with a number of direct quotes from that cartoon cropping up around the creature.
- Undying Loyalty: Averted. This creature does not hesitate to disappear once its timer runs out. Unlike Titanosaurus who exits the stage by starving to death, Liopleurodon seemingly just decides it has been loyal long enough and quits. The game still says "Your Liopleurodon was killed!" though.
Megalania
- Death from Above: It can do this if you let it get the better of you.
- Land Down Under: The other top predator of the Pleistocene megafauna of Australia, a lizard which could run down prey several times its size.
- Poisonous Person: It has a hemotoxic bite.
- Typhoid Mary: Rarely, Megalania can carry a fast-acting rabies variant that infects players and dinosaurs it bites.
- Underground Monkey: An Aberrant variant was introduced in Fjordur after being left out of Aberration for level design reasons.
- Wall Crawl: It can scale any wall and ceiling that gets in its way.
Mosasaurus
- Cartoony Tail: It is portrayed with a paddle-like tail more like in old-fashioned portrayals, rather than the shark-like tails mosasaurs are known to have in real life.
- Infinity +1 Sword: Amongst underwater creatures.
- King Mook: The Alpha Mosa is a bigger, faster and stronger version of the regular Mosasaurus, also capable of buffing other nearby predators. As such, it takes considerably more effort to kill one (to the point of requiring multiple tamed Mosasaurs), but if you manage to pull it off, you’ll be rewarded with a large experience bounty, a heaping pile of raw prime meat, and possibly high-quality tools and weapons.
- Living Ship: They can carry small bases on their back when equipped with a platform saddle. Sadly, Tek Generators cannot be placed on a platform saddle without mods, which means you can't use vacuum compartments to keep the water out.
- Mighty Glacier: Compared to the Lightning Bruiser Tusoteuthis. The Mosa is tougher, slower, and lacks the Tuso's plethora of abilities, trading them for the option of a platform saddle.
- Power Armor: Has access to Tek Armor.
- Sea Monster: An absolutely massive creature that can easily take on anything else in the sea in shear power alone, and that's not even counting its Alpha variant.
Pteranodon
- Animal Gender-Bender: The females are depicted as looking the same as the males. In reality, female Pteranodon were smaller and lacked a crest.
- Boring, but Practical: It's not exactly the most awe inspiring thing to ride on, but its saddle engram can be learned relativley early and are quite common to find. Combined with its quick speed and you've got an expendable cheap and swift method of flight/transportation.
- Fragile Speedster: While likely the first flyer players will tame, and very fast, it does not have good defense.
- Toothy Bird: Has small teeth in its bill, which is jarring for an animal whose name literally means "Toothless Wing".
Quetzalcoatlus
- Animal Mecha: It has a Tek variant, which behaves the same as the regular but has a higher wild level cap, and drops scrap metal, electronics, oil, and small amounts of Element dust when slain instead of meat, hide, and keratin. They are still capable of breeding, somehow.
- Giant Flyer: Exaggerated when equipped with a platform saddle and a base on top.
- Living Ship: The only flier that can take a platform saddle, making it either the ultimate mobile home or a terrifying gunship that can lay low almost any ground-bound foe, and even some of its fellow fliers.
Sarcosuchus
- The Dreaded: When ever it enters the water, piranhas will try to flee as best they can to avoid it.
- Fatal Flaw: It's enormous turning radius is without a doubt its biggest drawback.
- Lightning Bruiser: Fairly beefy, does pretty good damage, and is extremely fast in water.
- Mighty Glacier: On land, Sarcos can keep pace with a level 1 player, but are easily outrun after putting several points into movement speed. Like Titanoboas, they make an excellent source of large amounts of meat and hide once you get your movement speed up a decent amount and learn how to make a bow and arrows.
- Never Smile at a Crocodile: While a crocodyliform closer to modern crocodilians than Kaprosuchus, its behavior more closely recalls its relatives, and it is a dangerous threat to those that get too close in or near water.
- Stock Animal Behavior: As of the TLC 2, it can lunge out of the water and perform a death roll animation on its prey.
Tapejara
- The Ace: Among the flying mounts, seeing as it allows player to attack while saddled, and can grip onto the walls and trees when doing so (if commanded by the player).
- Ascended to Carnivorism: It is carnivorous in the game, despite the fact the real animal was more likely a frugivore.
- Jack of All Stats: It can allow its riders to do just about anything (see The Ace above), including wearing a TEK saddle that makes it much more dangerous.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: It takes features from the two pterosaurs above.
- Power Armor: Has access to Tek equipment.
- Shown Their Work: Most pterosaurs in the game lack pteroid bones, but the Tapejara is one of two types in game that has them, the other being the Tropeognathus.
Titanoboa
- Artistic License – Paleontology: It has neck frills (like the Dilophosaurus) and has a venomous bite. The original Titanoboa was a constrictor snake.
- Eats Babies: You have to feed it fertilized eggs to tame it.
- No-Sell: It's completely immune to the affects of narcotics.
- One-Gender Race: They all have their gender listed as "N/A".
- Poisonous Person: Despite being a boa, it has a venomous bite that delivers enough torpor to drop a low-level player in one hit.
- Snakes Are Sinister: Very much so, since they attack in such a sinister way.
- Zerg Rush: They tend to do this when they attack the player in the caves.
Birds
Archaeopteryx
- Crutch Character: It's a relatively small dinosaur that is relatively difficult to tame, but relatively easy to feed once they are tamed, flees whenever a player character gets close, and is in a relatively dangerous biome (redwood). You'll have to worry about all of these dangerous creatures, as well as fending them off and keeping your Archae unconscious. While some survivors will tame it, it can easily run out of stamina and greatly hurt the player character; as such, many more players would simply get a parachute in order to do what it allows the player to do, since parachutes are relatively easy to craft.
- Picky Eater: It will only ever eat chitin, both before and after taming.
- Toothy Bird: One of the first dinosaurs to have definitively evolved into a bird, it has a number of saurian traits that modern birds lack, including its bony tail, clawed hands, and beak full of teeth.
Argentavis
- Feathered Fiend: Like the Terror Bird, the Argentavis is a predator that will attack other nearby creatures (including you) for sport. However, its aggro range is very short compared to other carnivores, similar to the Therizinosaurus, so you can avoid starting any trouble with them by simply not approaching them too closely.
- Giant Flyer: It's even larger than a Pteranodon and significantly meaner.
- Healing Factor: If the Argentavis is allowed to devour a corpse by itself, it gains a very powerful healing buff that will rapidly bring it from the brink of death to at least half health from just one corpse. A smart player can use this to gain some very significant self sustainability and allow it to back off, kill a weak dino, eat it, and return to a fight when most other cases would simply find the best results in fleeing altogether if a player cannot heal them through some other means.
- Jack of All Trades: The Argentavis has a good amount of health, can carry a relativity large amount of weight, reduces the weight of many common materials (notably metal and polymer), it's melee attack is quite potent, can carry a sizable list of other creatures (including other players, for co-op AND PvP purposes), functions as a smithy when equipped with a saddle, can heal itself with corpses, is a strong alpha killer when controlled manually, and so much more. Best of all, the Argentavis is on every map and fairly common, so losing one isn't to big of a deal.
- Mighty Glacier: The Argentavis is one of the toughest birds in the game, but its flight speed is significantly slower than most other fliers, and even a bit slower than the running speed of Terror Birds or Raptors.
- Utility Party Member: Of all the flyers barring the Quetzal, the Argentavis tends to have a significant weight to start with, along with it's ability to pick up most dinos and players, making it an ideal early to mid flying pack mule/transport. Not to mention the fact that it's saddle also acts as a Smithy to survivors.
Dodo
- Com Mons: The weakest, most abundant, and easiest to tame creatures in the game.
- Doofy Dodo: They just wander about obliviously until attacked, upon which they flee...very slowly.
- The Goomba: They are among the easiest of things to kill on ARK.
- Idiot Hair: Close inspection reveals a cowlick of longer feathers on the crown of the dodo's head.
- Too Dumb to Live: They're essentially walking free food for the predators on the ARK. The explorer notes even lampshade this heavily.
Hesperornis
- Solid Gold Poop: Hesperornis rarely lays a a special golden egg instead of the regular kind, which can be used to greatly increase experience gain for the dino it's fed to or for making extraordinary kibble after the Homestead update. In fact, before Yutyrannus eggs were reclassed as special, Hesperornis was the ONLY source for special eggs on the Island or Center.
- This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman: A player would only typically tame one if it wanted it's special eggs, or couldn't be bothered to fish themselves.
- Toothy Bird: Resembles a loon with teeth, being from one of the toothy bird lineages that became extinct at the end of the Cretaceous Period.
Ichthyornis
- Sticky Fingers: Although not as aggressive as Pegomastax, they do occasionally attack without provocation (especially if you get too close or start a fight near them). They like to steal your food items one stack at a time (which they gulp down instantly so you can't recover it by killing them), but they can also knock your weapons and tools out of your hand if you're not carrying any food.
- Supreme Chef: Fish and small dinos hunted by an Ichthyornis can develop a golden glow, allowing you to harvest prime meat and fish from creatures that normally would not yield these cuts (like dodos and coelacanths). The Dossier describes this as "somehow infusing the meat with extra nutrients".
- Toothy Bird: Resembles a seagull with teeth.
Kairuku
- This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman: Players would ever really tame it if they need to stand near one to stay warm, or if they're too lazy to catch their own fish.
Pelagornis
- Boring, but Practical:
- Pelagornis deals ten times damage to coelacanth, piranha, and salmon, and automatically harvests on a killing strike, but cannot harvest prime fish.
- Rod fishing, normally done from a placed chair (that can block spawn points) can be done from a swimming Pelagornis.
- Although it won't win any races, Pelagornis is good for exploring rivers and coastlines since it can recover stamina by swimming instead of having to stop.
- Crippling Over Specialisation: Because it's a seabird, it can't grab any creatures with its feet, using them to paddle along the surface instead.
- It has a large harvest multiplier for organic polymer, but no increase to damage against any of the creatures that possess it.
- Giant Flyer: One of the largest birds in the game.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: If you try flying over lava, it will drop you off its saddle and fly the heck away.
Terror Bird
- Dungeon Bypass: Back when the Island’s Tek Cave was first introduced, no boss awaited players at its end, meaning you only had to reach said end in order to achieve the objective. As such, speedrun techniques that allowed players to do so while skipping most of the fighting were developed. One technique consisted of a lonely survivor riding a Terror Bird and simply gliding down to the very bottom of the cave, causing most hostile creatures to either ignore the duo or kill themselves in the cave’s lava pools while trying to take a bite, as demonstrated here. Of course, now that the teleporter at the end simply takes you to the Final Boss, the birds are no use there and pretty much never taken to the cave anymore. It does still work for other caves with steep drops and dangerous slopes filled with aggressive wildlife.
- Feathered Fiend: They're basically slightly tougher and faster Raptors, with feathers.
- Fragile Speedster: Subverted. They have low health pools relative to other carnivores, but are still beefier than most small mounts while being extremely fast to boot.
- Not Quite Flight: They can dramatically reduce their vertical speed while falling by rapidly flapping their stubby wings, nullifying fall damage even jumping from heights that would result in death otherwise. Just make sure your bird has enough stamina before jumping! An imprint boosted Terror Bird with points into speed and stamina can, if taking a running start from a mountain, can easily cross huge swaths of The Island or other maps.
- Superior Successor: Terror birds overshadow Raptors in pretty much every regard, having similar abilities, speed and maneuverability, but higher overall stats (including weight, critical for the creature’s usability as a mount), not to mention their Not Quite Flight granting them escape opportunities a Raptor rider could only dream of. Subverted later on with the TLC patch giving the Utahraptor some unique abilities of its own to balance the two out, and still later with the release of Valguero and Deinonychus overshadowing them both.
Fish
Angler
- Animal Gender-Bender: The males and females are depicted as looking the same. In reality, the male is far smaller than the female, and lacks a lure.
- Bioluminescence Is Cool: That is if you want to farm a lot of these things, and travel in the dangerous oceans at night.
- Gameplay and Story Segregation: The original version of the Dossier describes the Angler as "Skittish", yet instead of fleeing from players, it attacks them. A later version of the Dossier properly describing it as "Aggressive" eventually replaced it, amending this in-game.
- More Teeth than the Osmond Family: Like any stereotypical fish of this kind, it has a whole lot of teeth in its mouth.
Coelacanth
- The Goomba: Like the Dodo, it's among the easiest things to find and kill in the ARK.
- One-Gender Race: They all have their gender listed as "N/A".
Dunkleosteus
- Heavily Armored Mook: Both a blessing and a curse; a blessing in that it's a decent mount to use in underwater raids, a curse in that it takes a long time to knock out and tame.
- Mighty Glacier: Big and tough as a glacier. And slow as one too.
Electrophorus
- Informed Species: It looks more like a moray eel than an electric eel.
- Nerf: Once upon a time these eels would outright stun everything their electricity hit. This could easily result in getting stun locked to death for even extremely powerful creatures. Thankfully the ability was removed in favor of the slow/damage down effect they have now.
- Psycho Electric Eel: If sufficiently angered by any creature that attacks it.
- Scary Teeth: Has a mouthful of fangs. Real electric eels are toothless.
- Shock and Awe: They have the ability to generate huge burst of electricity, getting hit by the burst slows your movement speed and lowers your melee damage.
- Shown Their Work: Its dossier describes it as not an eel but a knifefish.
Leedsichthys
- Berserk Button: Rafts. It hates them so much it can bypass the sunken foundation hull and directly damage the vessel itself, usually breaking it in three hits or less. An Alpha can simply one-shot a raft and leave its occupants easy pickings for the rest of the ocean's denizens.
- Border Patrol: It seems to spawn right near the furthest edges of the oceans on The Island.
- Gentle Giant: Although it will attack rafts on sight.
- Obvious Rule Patch: Originally meant to delete abandoned ships and free up tame slots on a server, Leedsichthys's raft aggression has a much more blatant purpose as a check against seafaring tribes, known for hiding on the edges of the map where it spawns the most frequently.
- Shout-Out: Alphas are albino specimens described by the dossier as so rare that men and women have been driven mad with obsession in hunting them, "as if all evil were visibly personified and made practically assailable in this one creature".
Manta
- Beware My Stinger Tail: It has a barb at the end of its tail.
- Fragile Speedster: One of the fastest ocean mounts in the game and highly mobile, but can die very quickly if the player isn't careful.
- Gameplay and Story Segregation: The Dino Dossier describes mantas as being passive unless provoked, yet in the actual game, they are hostile on sight. The animal's temperament being properly listed as "Aggressive" in a revised version of the Dossier, on the other hand, zigzags this.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: They have physical characteristics of both Manta Rays, and Sting Rays.
- Picky Eater: You can only tame it by passively feeding it Angler Gel, which is extremely hard to find. After taming it however, it will eat meat like any regular carnivore.
- Zerg Rush: They travel in a huge pack around wild Basilosaurus, getting too close or attacking the whale causes all of them to rush the offender.
Megalodon
- Boss Rush: One can encounter up to three of these in a single group of creatures in the underwater caves, resulting in unexpected difficulty that can turn a spelunking expedition into a world of pain for unsuspecting players.
- King Mook: The Alpha Megalodon is a bigger, faster and stronger version of the regular Megalodon, also capable of buffing other nearby predators. As such, it takes considerably more effort to kill one, but if you manage to pull it off, you’ll be rewarded with a large experience bounty, a pile of raw prime fish meat, and possibly high-quality tools and weapons.
- Mighty Glacier: Megalodon are one of the slower ocean creatures, and have a large turning radius, making it easy to escape one or kite it around for combat or taming. Alpha Megalodon are a different story, of course...
- Summon Bigger Fish: Being chased by a Rex, Carnotaurus, pack of Allosauruses or any other large predator? Get on a raft and bait them into the ocean. More often than not a Megalodon will show up to eat the dumb dino.
- Threatening Shark: With Megalodon being the largest marine predator to have ever existed, it is very much the most threatening shark around, although other animals are scaled up to be larger than it.
Megapiranha
- One-Gender Race: They all have their gender listed as "N/A".
- Piranha Problem: Submerge yourself in a body of water and chances are you'll be swarmed by a bunch of them.
- Zerg Rush: One of its primary tactics, especially given how most of the wildlife is larger then the average piranha.
Sabertooth Salmon
- Berserk Button: Attacking just one of these fish will cause the entire school that they would most certainly be travelling with to attack back, overwhelming the opponent with a Zerg Rush.
- One-Gender Race: They all have their gender listed as "N/A".
Invertebrates
Achatina
- Historical Badass Upgrade: Achatina is a real genus of snail, but these are much bigger than any species of them.
- Picky Eater: The food needed to tame them and the only thing they will eat in captivity is Sweet Vegetable Cake. Fortunately, their hunger depletes quite slowly after the initial taming.
- Required Secondary Power: Organic polymer takes three times longer to decay in Achatina's inventory, since otherwise it would decay faster than the snail produces it.
- Solid Gold Poop: Their slime is functionally identical to cementing paste, and in domesticity they produce about a stack in their inventory every other day. They also secrete organic polymer at a much slower rate.
Ammonite
- Metal Slime: The Ammonite Bile that you can harvest from its corpse will allow you to Troll your enemies or other creatures using the Bile to craft Pheromone Darts that when shot at a target, will cause every creature in the vicinity to attack them.
- Summon Bigger Fish: Their pheromones provoke aggression in nearby wild predators, causing them to come after you. By collecting the pheromone, you can create darts that produce the same effect.
Araneomorphus
- Covers Always Lie: It's dossier states that it's too small to ride, even though they were later given saddles after the first Fear Evolved event.
- Giant Spider: Worse, it's a composite of all the most nightmarish abilities of spiders as a whole.
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Araneomorphus amalgotantibus translates roughly as "a spider-shaped mashup of nightmares".
- One-Gender Race: They all have their gender listed as "N/A".
- Poisonous Person: They have torpor-inducing venom, similar to the Titanoboas in the same caves.
Arthropleura
- Achilles' Heel: The Arthropleura is strong against melee attackers, as its acid blood will damage any who attack it in close quarters, as well as destroying melee weapons and armor. However, it takes a large 3x damage from most ranged attacks (arrows, bullets, etc). Combined with headshots, it will take a lethal 7x damage from anybody with decent aim. While explosives can't headshot, they also deal 5x more damage to the Arthropleura.
- Armor-Piercing Attack: Not only does their acidic blood burn through your armor, but they are capable of firing it at you when you are mounted on another animal. They are also one of only two tamable animals that can damage builds made with Tek metal, meaning a swarm of them can tear apart even endgame bases if left unchecked.
- Ascended to Carnivorism: It;s depicted as a carnivore, despite being a herbivore in reality.
- Big Creepy-Crawlies: As the largest terrestrial arthropod that ever lived, Arthropleura fits this well.
- Bloody Murder: It has acidic blood.
- Creepy Centipedes: Technically a millipede, but qualifies for this trope anyway.
- Inconsistent Spelling: The animal's name is spelled as Arthropluera in-game.
- One-Gender Race: They all have their gender listed as "N/A".
Cnidaria
- Cycle of Hurting: The Cnidaria's attack can stun almost everything for 3 seconds, which doesn't seem like much, but that small amount of time doesn't matter when the Cnidaria keeps attacking till either it or the stunlocked victim is dead.
- Electric Jellyfish: Being attacked by one causes an electric effect. The bio-toxin that can be harvested from their corpses also has visible electricity coursing through it.
- Gang Up on the Human: The Cnidaria is supposedly "not generally aggressive, because it lacks normal perceptive senses." according to its bio. In actuallity, it is VERY aggressive. Whereas other predators can be seen attacking each other, the Cnidaria will only specifically track and attack players and their mounts.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: The dossier states it's a mix of several species of real-world jellyfish.
Dung Beetle
- Big Creepy-Crawlies: A larger version of the dung beetles.
- One-Gender Race: They all have their gender listed as "N/A".
- Solid Gold Poop: Or rather, they turn ordinary dung into valuable oil and fertilizer.
Eurypterid
- Beware My Stinger Tail: No real Eurypterid species has a stinger tail, though.
- One-Gender Race: They all have their gender listed as "N/A".
- Poisonous Person: Its sting acts as a tranquilizer.
- Scary Scorpions: Well, not actually scorpions, but related.
Giant Bee
- Beware My Stinger Tail: Like the real world bumblebee, they have a smooth, non-serrated stinger, so they can repeatedly sting you at no risk to themselves.
- Flunky Boss: A tamed queen's soldiers will serve both her and you in battle.
- Metal Slime: Taming your own Queen Bee will allow its hive to create honey, which every single animal loves, and is the only way to tame a Liopleurodon.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: They share traits of both honeybees and bumblebees.
- Scary Stinging Swarm: Breaking open the hive (or attacking it in general) will result in the bee soldiers attacking whoever broke it.
- Zerg Rush: As bees tend to do.
Leech
- Instant Leech: Just Fall in Water!: Play around too much in swamp water and you might find these latched onto you or your dinos. You can pick them off your pets with a bladed tool, but removing them from yourself requires standing in a cooking fire until they burn off.
- Kill It with Fire: One of the only ways to get rid of one from your body.
- Typhoid Mary: The "diseased leech" variant carries swamp fever, and will happily pass it on to you.
Meganeura
- Big Creepy-Crawlies: Being from a group of dragonfly relatives known as griffinflies, and being larger than modern flying insects, it easily fits as one.
- One-Gender Race: They all have their gender listed as "N/A". This is likely due to developers having not implemented gender for them yet.
- Poisonous Person: Its bite has a venom that drains stamina.
- Zerg Rush: Whenever a creature dies in or near the Swamp biome, you can expect a bunch to immediately swarm the corpse and attack any predators eating it.
Pulmonoscorpius
- Artistic License – Paleontology: The creature in the game is the size of a Great Dane, but the real Pulmonoscorpius was only as big as a house cat. To be fair, that's still pretty dang huge for a scorpion.
- Beware My Stinger Tail: It's its main form of attack against its prey and assailants. It can also be used to tranquilise creatures in order to tame them.
- Big Creepy-Crawlies: A giant scorpion capable of hunting large terrestrial vertebrates in the game.
- Know When to Fold 'Em: It won't attack any creature larger or stronger than itself, unless it is attacked first.
- Poisonous Person: Its sting acts as a tranquilizer.
- Scary Scorpions: When in groups, angered, or attacked.
Rhyniognatha
- Artistic License – Paleontology: Even by the standards of this game, this is taken to the point of absurdity - Rhyniognatha currently can't be given any specification beyond being an arthropod, with current evidence suggesting it's either an insect or a centipede. Even if it is an insect, it is far too primitive to have most of the traits it has in game, to say nothing about the laws of physics. Helena openly admits in its dossier to having no idea how such a creature can exist.
- An arthropod that big would probably be crushed under its own body weight, and would struggle to breath without lungs.
- It's a parasitoid, which is unlikely though not impossible.
- The size of its hosts indicates that the larva about as big as a dodo, which still runs afoul of the square-cube law.
- Shooting a hardening fluid out of its tail is incredibly unlikely, while the pheromones it releases are practically impossible.
- Big Creepy Crawly: The largest bug in the game.
- Face Full of Alien Wing-Wong: It reproduces by injecting eggs into another dino.
- Giant Flyer: It's enormous, able to carry medium-large size dinos like the rex or the diplo.
- Wacky Cravings: The host dino will have cravings every few minutes. What it craves can be anything from Battle Tartare soup to giga eggs.
Titanomyrma
- Big Creepy-Crawlies: Though much smaller than most of the animals in the game, the real Titanomyrma was the size of a hummingbird while the game creatures are as big as small dogs.
- One-Gender Race: They all have their gender listed as "N/A". Given the gender structure of modern ants, they are likely all females.
- Poisonous Person: Its bite has a venom that drains stamina.
- Strong Ants: Averted, as they are fairly easy to kill.
- Zerg Rush: A small group of them will attack any survivor that accidentally wanders too close to them.
Trilobite
- One-Gender Race: They all have their gender listed as "N/A".
Tusoteuthis
These giant squids are true terrors of the deep to both divers and sea life. They possess powerful combat traits like tentacles that prevent victims from fleeing and drain blood while healing them, as well as ink clouds that increase their speed and blind enemies. They passively produce oil, but when tamed (passive feeding with black pearls; a difficult task), they are among the strongest creatures in the game.- Combo Platter Powers: Has a huge number of secondary abilities for this game.
- Combat Tentacles: Not only can they smack targets with their tentacles for some alarming damage they can grab other creatures as well which both slowly tranquilizes the victim and allows the squid to leech health back to itself.
- Difficult, but Awesome: A very powerful aquatic mount but their backwards facing swimming method makes them difficult to maneuver, especially in tight spaces.
- Giant Squid: A prehistoric king at least.
- Infinity +1 Sword: The strongest tameable sea creature. Not even the Mosa is as powerful.
- King Mook: The Alpha Tusoteuthis is a bigger, faster and stronger version of the regular Tusoteuthis, also capable of buffing other nearby predators. As such, it takes considerably more effort to kill one, but if you manage to pull it off, you’ll be rewarded with a large experience bounty, a pile of raw prime fish meat, a treasure trove’s worth of black pearls and possibly high-quality tools and weapons.
- Life Drain: The "crush" attack it uses when grappling an opponent only inflicts 100 damage regardless of melee modifiers, but it also heals the Tuso.
- No-Sell: To the grab attacks of other Tusoeuthis.
- Picky Eater: The best way to tame it, is to get a lot of black pearls to feed it.
- Status Buff: Using the ink cloud ability increases it's speed for a short time.
- Smoke Out: Can release a cloud of ink to escape threats or easily re-position. This blinds and slows enemies in the cloud and gives the Tuso a short speed boost.
Scorched Earth
The DLC Scorched Earth has several animals that cannot be found on The Island or The Center, so we've put them in their own category for convenience.
These enormous, untamable burrowing monsters strike from beneath the sands to consume any creature they deem prey (which is literally any creature). If their first lunge misses, however, survivors will find an opportunity to attack or flee. They also come in the rarer and vaster Mega Deathworm variant.
These cute little desert rodents hop about the wastes, being hunted by survivors for their hides and predators for their flesh. In a world that is semi-regularly wracked by sandstorms and thunderstorms, though, survivors will find that Jerboas serve more than cuddly companions, thanks to their instinctive ability to sense changes in weather.
Jug Bugs are a curious species of beetle-like insect that derives their name from the sack-like organ on their backs that stores water like a honeypot ant. Because they are untamable yet totally harmless to survivors, a living Jug Bug's sack can be collected for valuable resources. Two types exist — green ones that carry water and red ones that carry oil.
Also known as the Desert Moth, Lymantria is a slow-moving flyer that when releases toxic spores from its abdomen when attacked. Survivors can use this natural defense to turn a Lymantria into an aerial bomber of sorts, damaging and slowing victims with its poisons.
At first glance, the Mantis may seem to be simply just another overgrown insect, but the truth is far more dangerous. The Mantises of Scorched Earth have opposable digits on their forelimbs. Combined with their intelligence and ability to leap like grasshoppers, this means they can only be tamed by passively feeding them Deathworm Horns (a player will also need Bug Spray to avoid their aggression). When domesticated, they make for excellent combatants and can wield tools and melee weapons, allowing riders to let their mounts mine at stones or swordfight.
The Morellatops is a fictional herbivorous dinosaur resembling a camel mixed with a hornless Triceratops. It is unique in its ability to store water in its sail-like hump, allowing players to use them as mobile water tanks. Otherwise, a Morellatops is a strong and reliable choice of pack animal for the desert survivor.
Completely unlike any other creature in the game, wild Rock Elementals spend their time in dormancy, disguised among boulders and rock piles. Players who attempt to mine those rocks will quickly find themselves being pummeled by an enraged colossus unless they flee a sufficient distance. These lumbering brutes are tamed in the same manner as a Titanosaur and only harmed by explosives, armor-piercing rounds, wyverns, other Rock Elementals, and of course bosses, making them formidable siege engines. A weaker, untamable variety called the Rubble Golem exists in caves.
An elusive bird that only appears during the semi-regular super-intense heat waves that plague Scorched Earth, the Phoenix is very difficult to tame due to its shyness, ability to immolate attackers with its bite, and diet of flames. A domesticated Phoenix can be ridden with no saddle, giving riders mastery over its fiery powers, allowing one to cook meat and smelt ore, as well as set creatures aflame.
This giant relative of the real life Thorny Devil is referred to as a Spiny Lizard by some because of its quill-like defenses. These poisonous spines can be hurled from the lizard's tail, making the Thorny Dragon a strong war beast. Their saddles also act as mobile smithies.
The Vultures of Scorched Earth strongly resemble modern day species of Old World Vultures. Although Vultures become aggressive in the presence of carcasses, they are tamed by passively feeding them spoiled meat. When domesticated, a Vulture can collect meat and items while perched upon the player's shoulder or flying and also accelerate the spoiling time for any meat it is carrying, so that players can make more narcotics for taming.
The Wyverns of Scorched Earth are found only in the so-called World Scar, where they attack any creature they see. Because of this ferocity, adult wyverns are untamable, so players must steal eggs from their nests and raise the young to maturity. If all goes well, a survivor will find a powerful aerial mount that needs no saddle and can breathe deadly blasts of elemental power at their foes.
Deathworm
- Border Patrol: Helena's notes speculate that the Deathworms serve this purpose; to prevent inhabitants of the Scorched Earth ARK from wandering outside the designated artificial environment. They essentially do what the ocean does for the Island ARK.
- King Mook: There is an rare Alpha variant that appears in the same area, and is much larger, stronger and faster than the average Deathworm.
- Our Cryptids Are More Mysterious: Based on the Mongolian Death Worm. Its genus is even Khorkoi, derived from the local name for the creature.
- Rare Random Drop: If one searches their inventory before tearing up their corpse, one can find Leech Blood, Angler Gel, Black Pearls or Organic Polymer, all of which are incredibly useful.
- Sand Worm: It's an enormous worm that lives in the sand, go figure.
- Shout-Out: A double dose, if you count the above. Full scientific name? Khorkoi arrakis
Jerboa
- My Significance Sense Is Tingling: It is able to sense when a storm is coming, making them very useful pets.
- Ridiculously Cute Critter: "...an adorable little fuzzball and I just want to hug it forever", to quote Helena.
Jug Bug
- Big Creepy-Crawlies: A benevolent example, being a bug that provides water or oil.
- Boring, but Practical: They're absolutely no threat to the player, and they don't have to be killed in order to gather their resources.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: It seems to have been inspired by the Honey Pot Ant, and some species of beetle.
Lymantria
- Ascended Fanon: It was originally conceived as a giant Lepidoptera on the Ark fan art forums, before officially being implemented into the game proper.
- Poisonous Person: It's spores are poisonous to most species on Scorched Earth, except for other Lymantria.
- Support Partymember: It can't deal any damage on its own, but its spores drain stamina and reduce the move speed of anything (other than another Lymantria) caught inside the spore cloud, exposing hostiles for you and your tribe/dinos.
Mantis
- Big Creepy-Crawlies: As a giant mantis, it is very creepy and dangerous.
- Dual Wielding: Whenever it's given a weapon the mantis will always be holding two.
- Gaia's Vengeance: Helena believes they may have been created directly by the Overseer to destroy large settlements (thus explaining their intelligence and power) but this was foiled by Dahkeya exploding their sulfur filled den.
- Genius Bruiser: It can kill with not just its leaping ability, but by using weapons to battle directly.
- In a Single Bound: It can jump quite far when given the order.
- It Can Think: They not only know how to use tools, but Helena believes they might even have a language. This means the mantises may be the insect equivalent of cavemen forming primitive tribes.
- Mundane Utility: Once equipped with the right tools, a tamed mantis can harvest any resource a player can, at the greater efficiency levels of a creature specialized to do so. However, like the Therizinosaurus, it receives no weight reduction bonus, so its ability to carry what it collects is limited.
- Slaying Mantis: One of the most deadly, and intelligent species in the entire game.
Morellatops
- Boring, but Practical: It may not seem like something one should tame, but given how important water is on Scorched Earth, taming it is a must.
- In-Series Nickname: It has the nickname of 'Camelosaurus', for obvious reasons.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: It's a ceratopsian that's similar to a camel thanks to convergent evolution. The genus name indicates that two dinosaur genera, Morelladon and Ceratops, were combined together to create this animal.
Rock Elemental
- Dishing Out Dirt: Their ranged attack involves ripping a huge boulder from the ground and flinging it.
- Eat Dirt, Cheap: Rock Elementals can only be fed Stone, Clay, or Sulfur.
- Golem: Sort of. Helena outright mentions the mythical Golem of Prague in its file. Its variants are even called Golems (Rubble, Ice and Chalk).
- Hidden in Plain Sight: They disguise themselves as large rocks when idle, leaving you with a nasty surprise if you try to mine it.
- The Juggernaut: Without the above mentioned weapons or creatures, it will simply walk through any defense you mount and only metal or Tek walls can slow it down.
- Mighty Glacier: Slow as molasses but it can tank (and kill) an alpha deathworm or rip through thatch, wood, and stone buildings with ease.
- Takes One to Kill One: They seem to be very good at killing each other.
- Underground Monkey: An almost literal example with the Rubble Golems that exist in the caves.
Phoenix
- Kill It with Fire: Averted, you have to blast it with flame-based weaponry in order to tame it. Played Straight later on where you do in fact kill enemies with its flaming attack.
- Mundane Utility: As well as simply being able to set your enemies and targets on fire, it can also cook meat and smelt ores for you.
- The Phoenix: It's a large fiery bird that can only survive during a heatwave, and disintegrates into ash once the heatwave ends, but can revive itself from ashes when the next heat returns.
- Playing with Fire: It's covered in flames and can also launch them as projectiles. It can even cook meat passively.
- Wreathed in Flames: The only explanation one would have if it is being ridden.
Thorny Dragon
- Beware My Stinger Tail: It shoots spines from its tail, which is its primary form of attack.
- Living Weapon: It's decent attack damage, as well as its ability to shoot spines from its tail, make it this.
- Poisonous Person: The spines have a tranquilizing effect on those hit by them.
- Spike Shooter: Or rather spine shooter, which it shoots at its targets in order to tranquilize, or defeat them.
Vulture
- Circling Vultures: It will sometimes do something similar to this.
- This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman: Given that meat already spoils more quickly in Scorched Earth, the fact that it makes it spoil more rapidly makes it rather annoying to have unless you have big ambitions for taming your own personal army of creatures.
Wyvern
- Acid Attack: Green Wyverns breathe acid. (Though interestingly, it can be countered by a gas mask.)
- Breath Weapon: Four variants — acid, fire, lightning or ice — depending on the wyvern's color.
- Color-Coded for Your Convenience: A wyvern's color determines the type of elemental breath it has.
- Gaia's Vengeance: A variation. Dahkeya's and Helena's notes theorize they might have been created by the Ark's Overseer to scatter the city of Nosti after it's first attempt with the manti failed.
- An Ice Person: Cyan Wyverns have ice breath. Unique to Ragnarok.
- Infinity +1 Sword: For Scorched Earth.
- King Mook: There are the Alpha variant that, like all other alphas, are larger, faster and stronger than the average variant (though they only come in the fire wyvern form).
- Our Wyverns Are Different: They are smaller and weaker relatives of the dragon boss monster, and can be tamed and ridden as mounts if raised from the egg. They come in several variants:
- Common wyverns come in fire, poison, lightning and ice variants, distinguished by their scale colors and associated Breath Weapons.
- Forest Wyverns are a specific kind that only spawns during the Forest Titan fight, does not attack and largely serves as a source of convenient mounts during the fight, until they die or despawn.
- Alpha wyverns are larger, stronger and rarer variants of common fire wyverns.
- Zombie wyverns are undead wyverns that spawned during the 2016 Halloween event. Dodo wyverns, which spawned during the same event, had birdlike beaks and could use the breath weapons of the regular fire, poison and lightning variants.
- Picky Eater: Baby wyverns will only eat Wyvern Milk, only obtainable from knocking out wild female wyverns. Without that, the only way to raise one to maturity is to overload a Daeodon with food and use its healing aura, but then you'll miss out on the imprinting bonus.
- Playing with Fire: Red Wyverns breathe fire.
- Poisonous Person: The green wyverns breathe a poisonous acid at targets.
- Shock and Awe: Dark blue Wyverns breathe lightning.
Oasisaur
A creature introduced in Ascended's Scorched Earth, although it can't be tamed without the Frontier Adventure Pack.- Base on Wheels: It's large enough to build a small building on its back.
- Death Is Cheap: It has the ability to revive your slain dinosaurs. This is also the taming method.
- Flight: It has the ability to take flight.
Fasolasuchus
A large crocodile-like lizard that dwells in the outer desert of Ascended's Scorched Earth.- Sand Is Water: It has the ability to burrow and move in the sand as if swimming.
Ragnarok
The non-canon DLC Ragnarok has few creatures exclusive to the map, mostly consisting of variants of creatures found in Scorched Earth, as well as two mini-bosses.
These mighty half-lion, half-eagle beasts are powerful fliers and incredibly aggressive. While challenging to tame, they are extremely mobile mounts and able to perform fearsome divebombs on their enemies.
Griffin
- Death from Above: Their specialty is a high-velocity dive that can send its victim flying on impact.
- Distaff Counterpart: To the Tapejara on the regular island, having very much the same abilities as the Tapejara as well as some more.
- Never Trust a Trailer: They were seen in the trailer for the Valguero map, but were removed prior to its release.
- Our Griffins Are Different: Difficult to tame creatures that do not need a saddle to ride, and have a dive bomb ability that's very effective.
Iceworm Male
Icy variants of the Death Worms, found in the Frozen Dungeon in Ragnarok. They have a blue colour scheme and are generally weaker than the normal Death Worms, but still a very difficult opponent to defeat.- Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism: They are male deathworms, that are much smaller that their boss, the Iceworm Queen.
- Fatal Flaw: So long as someone is in front of them, they will not move, this makes them surprisingly easy to deal with, combined with their relatively low health. The Iceworm Queen also shares this flaw.
- Glass Cannon: In comparison to the normal Deathworms, these have only a fraction of their health, though they still hit very hard.
- Palette Swap: It's a cyan-coloured version of the regular Deathworms found on Scorched Earth.
- Rare Random Drop: See the regular Deathworm above for details.
Iceworm Queen
The boss of the Frozen Dungeon, and a much larger version of the Iceworm Males that also dwell in the same dungeon.- Cool House: Or rather, a cool lair. She and her brood burrowed a lair deep into a glacier, and called it home.
- Fatal Flaw: See Iceworm Male above.
- Final Boss: Of the Frozen Dungeon.
- King Mook: Or rather Queen Mook of the Iceworms on Ragnarok.
- More Deadly Than the Male: It's only confirmed female of its species in the DLC, and just so happens to be the boss of said species.
- Mother of a Thousand Young: It's heavily implied that she is the mother of the Iceworm Males also present in the Frozen Dungeon.
- Villain of Another Story: Judging by all of the dead and dying dinos that we find in the Frozen Dungeon.
Ice Wyvern
Cyan-coloured versions of wyverns found only on Ragnarok. They fly around the map stunning players and their mounts with their icy breath.- An Ice Person: An odd variation, it has an ice breath ability, but it mostly just stuns its targets rather than freezing them.
- Breath Weapon: Like the other wyverns.
- Palette Swap: It's an cyan-coloured version of the wyverns found on Scorched Earth.
Lava Elemental
A variant of the rock elementals found on the Scorched Earth map with orange Tron Lines all along it. It acts as its own dungeon boss.- Dishing Out Dirt: Like the Rock Elemental, it throws rocks at its enemies, though these ones are red hot.
- Final Boss: Of the Volcano Dungeon.
- King Mook: Possibly this for the Rock Elementals of ARK.
- Magma Man: A lava-based monster covered in rocks.
- Rock Monster: One that is fused with lava to live.
- Volcano Lair: Where its situated, and where you battle it.
Aberration
The DLC Aberration has a number of creatures unique to its mutated, subterranean environment.
These gigantic snakes wait for prey beneath the surface, with only their distinctive forked tails visible, attacking by spitting globs of deadly venom. Brave enough survivors can domesticate these monsters to use their ambush tactics against enemies.
A curious and harmless bioluminescent creature resembling a hybrid of a pug, a frog, and an anglerfish. Because it produces a light energy called Charge, it is one of several small animals that survivors can befriend as a living light source of Aberration's underground world. Of the four Light Pets, the Bulbdog has highest base Charge, but with the lowest recharge rate.
Owl-like birds that dwell in only the deepest caverns of Aberration's bizarre world, relying on Charge to illuminate the dark. Featherlights are one of of a plethora small and harmless creatures that acts as a living light source for beginning survivors. It is the last of the various critters that can be domesticated as a source of Charge.
Giant fireflies that light up Aberration's underground environment with their Charge. They are among the defenseless and peaceful creatures that provide light for survivors, but they cannot be tamed.
A bioluminescent reptile resembling a gliding lizard of some kind. It is the third of the tamable sources of light and Charge needed to survive in the darkness of Aberration for new survivors. Of the four Light Pets it has the lowest maximum charge but the fastest recharge rate.
Enormous spider crabs that prowl the shores of lakes, Karkinos have four pincers that allow them to grab prey and crush them to death, smash them against the ground, or throw them at hard surfaces. They are also frighteningly agile for their size. For these reason, survivors like to tame these monster crustaceans to use on their enemies.
Giant bioluminescent lampreys that menace Aberration's precious water sources. They produce a debilitating poison that can only be cured with a special antidote when they latch onto prey.
An enormous and heavily armoured cousin of the naked mole rat. These burrowing herbivores frequently churn up valuable minerals when they dig, but are very protective of those treasures, attacking by rolling up into a ball and smashing into threats. Survivors can tame these massive rodents to utilize their attacks with a special saddle and carry two additional riders.
Mysterious and degenerate monsters that hunt in packs. The Nameless attack any survivor not protected by Charge, striking from underground under the command of their pack alphas.
Enormous carnivores that resemble predatory dinosaurs, Reapers are in fact much more alien creatures, as evidenced by their ability to impregnate survivors with their deadly larvae by stinging victims with their tails. These burrowing alpha predators cannot be tamed, but a lucky survivor can get a youngling to imprint on them if they possess a Reaper Pheromone Gland.
Subterranean dragons that have adapted to the underground world of Aberration through the ability to change color as an effective form of invisibility. These ferocious gliders can only be tamed by stealing an egg and raising the hatchling to adulthood, providing a powerful mount that is also able to detect the presence of their natural enemies, the Reapers.
These untamable monsters resemble hideous hybrids of lizards, squids, and bats. They feed of Charge and viciously attack any survivors wielding a source of it, attacking in swarms.
A swift but tiny deer-like animal commonly found only in Aberration's Blue Zone, it can produce Charge Light similar to the Bulbdog, Featherlight and Glowtail.
Basilisk
- Basilisk and Cockatrice: These gigantic serpents are clearly inspired by the more serpentine depictions of the basilisk.
- Breath Weapon: Fires blasts of explosive poison.
- Child Eater: Can only be tamed by feeding it fertilized Rock Drake eggs.
- Fast Tunnelling: Can hide itself and its rider underground allowing it to move even faster over rough terrain. This makes it completely invulnerable to most types of damage. Though notably a rider will eventually suffocate as if they were underwater.
- Fatal Flaw: Its humongous turn radius. Also, the fact that its tail sticks out of the ground, giving away its hiding place.
- Great Serpent: An absolutely massive serpent.
- Hidden in Plain Sight: It hides in the ground, waiting for something to walk over for it to eat.
- Infinity -1 Sword: Along with the Rock Drake. They aren't as powerful as a Reaper, but are much easier to tame.
- Jack of All Stats: It has the speed, strength and carry weight that's perfect for a map like Aberration.
- King Mook: There's an Alpha variant that's bigger, faster and stronger than the regular kind.
- Lightning Bruiser: This creature is alarmingly quick for its size. It's actually one of the fastest ground creatures in the game and can power over most terrain without even stopping. Stat wise it's comparable to a land bound 'Mosasaurus'.
- Not the Intended Use: It has no Oxygen stat to prevent suffocation while burrowing, which means it can be used underwater without drowning. However, it can't swim very well.
- Poisonous Person: It shoots a ball of poison towards its target.
- Snakes Are Sinister: They are by far one of the most terrifying predators that you will find on the ARKs.
- Weapon of X-Slaying: It appears to be very good at targeting and killing Nameless.
Bulbdog
- Gameplay and Story Segregation: The dossier states that it's a herbivore, but it will gladly eat meat if the player feeds it that.
- More Teeth than the Osmond Family: Has these and a wide mouth but these only give it it's Ugly Cute apperance.
Featherlight
- Cool Helmet: Unlike most tames, it has the ability to wear a helmet.
- Fragile Speedster: It's described as this.
- Herbivores Are Friendly: You must feed it plants if you want to tame it, it will eat meat after that.
- Pirate Parrot: The dossier discusses how it could be used as this.
- Vegetarian Carnivore: Its look evokes several species of birds-of-prey but the Featherlight itself is omnivorous.
Glowbug
- Boring, but Practical: It does absolutely no harm to the player, and it doesn't need to be killed in order to extract Charge Light.
- Cool, but Inefficient: On the other hand however, it can be kept around as an untamed pet, and the survivors will have a plentiful source of Charge light on hand, though it will take a while for the Glowbug to recharge itself after having the Charge extracted.
- Living Battery: It is essentially this, as you can extract the Charge from them and let them recharge before extracting again.
Glowtail
- Butt-Monkey: The dossier states that it's an easy meal for many of the creatures on Aberration, and that it sits at the bottom of the food chain.
- Fragile Speedster: Speed is it's main defence mechanism.
- Gameplay and Story Segregation: Like the Bulbdog, it says that it's a herbivore, yet if the player feeds it meat, it will eat that.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: The dossier states that it looks like a combination of a Gecko and the Common Flying Dragon.
- Ugly Cute: The dossier makes mention of this when describing how it looks.
Karkinos
- Facepalm of Doom: Can grab creatures and crush them. Due to the animation it tends to snag them by the head.
- Fastball Special: It can lob the creatures it has grappled pretty far. Smaller creatures can be thrown right out of view.
- Giant Enemy Crab: Looks like a massive, mutated spider crab.
- In a Single Bound: These things can jump a very long way. If you attack one from higher ground don't be surprised to see it sailing through the air at your supposedly safe position.
- Jack of All Trades: It has great movement speed, an epic jumping ability, can breathe underwater, harvest some materials and can carry creatures around the entire map.
- King Mook: There's an Alpha variant that's bigger faster and stronger than the regular variant.
- Mixand Match Critters: It resembles a Spider Crab, has a second set of pincers that bring the harvestman's spider to mind, and has blood of a similar colour to a Horseshoe Crab.
- Multi-Armed and Dangerous: It has two pairs of pincers, though only the larger pair are ever used.
Lamprey
- Beneficial Disease: An attached lamprey takes radiation for the victim.
- Fatal Flaw: Its bioluminescence allows survivors to spot it before it can get to them, giving said survivors a chance to get away.
- Instant Leech: Just Fall in Water!
- Poisonous Person: What causes pain to the survivor it has clung onto.
Roll Rat
- Berserk Button: Don't touch their gems!
- Be the Ball: As their name suggests, they can roll into a ball to move quickly and their saddles have to fold into a cage in order for it's rider to stay on.
- Charged Attack: Like the Woolly Rhino, it gains more speed and momentum the more it travels, albeit in its ball form.
- Gameplay and Story Segregation: The dossier states that it can harm metal structures in its ball form, yet in-game, it doesn't even put a small dent in any metal structure.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: While it's clearly a relative of the Naked Mole Rat, It has armour on its back that resemble those of armadillo, and can curl into a ball like a hedgehog.
- Rodents of Unusual Size: A relative of the naked mole rat that's big enough to for three people to ride.
- Sweet Tooth: They can only be tamed by being passive fed with honey.
Nameless
- Always Chaotic Evil: They are viciously aggressive towards humans and unlike most other creatures, can't be tamed by any means.
- Chupacabra: More or less what they are based on visually. Their behavior is nothing like it though.
- Genius Bruiser: It knows when it's losing a fight and burrows underground to heal itself before it can fight again.
- Mook Commander: One among a pack will transform into an alpha, which if not killed quickly enough, will summon a Reaper King to join the fight.
- Straight for the Commander: A requirement to keep any fight involving them from spiraling out of control. If the Alpha isn't killed quick enough a Reaper joins the battle.
- Super-Persistent Predator: In dark areas these things will not leave you alone, not even if you are near a tamed creature that can butcher them like cattle.
- To Serve Man: They seem to hunt humans excessively, the only things they will attack besides people are things that get between them and people.
- Summon Bigger Fish: If you don't kill or escape them fast enough, they'll do this to you by calling a Reaper King to join the battle. Taking out the Alpha of the group stops this from happening.
- Weakened by the Light: Charge Light specifically, normal light doesn't help. Charge light drives most Nameless away and those that do try to fight are easy pickings for any defenders.
Ravager
Monstrous canines that prowl Aberration's caverns in hunting packs. They are able to clamber onto the natural and artificial zip lines used by survivors to travel over chasms. Survivors that admire their mobility and pack-hunting ferocity like to tame these beasts.- Canis Major: Is easily the size of a horse and while it looks like a giant, ground dwelling bat of sorts; the dossier lists its taxonomic name is Canis barghest, revealing it to be a bizarre looking giant canine.
- Genius Bruiser: The dossier states that it perfectly adapted to life in the caves of Aberration, with its zipline ability, and being able to take on a lot of weight by itself.
- Meaningful Name: Its scientific name, Barghest, is in fact the name of a creature from English folklore that usually takes the form of a monstrous black dog, and is seen as the omen of death, much like the Ravager itself.
- Mook Commander: In any pack, there's always one alpha that is the strongest of the pack, and will have to be taken down if one is to survive both it and its comrades' attack.
- Mundane Utility: It has 50% weight reduction for most of Aberration's resources, making it a good beast of burden.
- Overshadowed by Awesome: The dossier states that it definitely has what it takes to be top predator, but in Aberration, it has to compete with the likes of the Basilisks, Reapers and Rock Drakes, forcing it to occupy the middle part of the map's food chain.
- Wall Crawl: Of sorts, not as much as the Thylacoleo or Megalania, but it can go up vines and navigate the ziplines.
Reaper
- Achilles' Heel: A near unstoppable killing machine on land but when it enters the water it can only paddle very slowly, loses access to it's tail attacks and has no diving ability to speak off.
- Alien Blood: Its blood is yellow.
- Beware My Stinger Tail: They have spikes along their tail that contain narcotic venom. They can throw these like a toxic shotgun-blast at targets. The tail of a Queen also acts as an impregnating organ, which really targets humans.
- Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism: Queens are twice the kings' size and have fins on their heads while males have crests. The queens also have an ovipositor at the end of their tail.
- Face Full of Alien Wing-Wong: Queens use their ovipositor tail to implant parasitic young into live humans. The host has to use a pheromone gland to a) survive the "birth" and b) get the baby to imprint on them.
- Fast Tunnelling: Capable of this. The wild ones use it to ambush targets or escape death.
- In a Single Bound: Fully capable of clearing huge cliffs, ravines, or base defenses in a single hop.
- Infinity +1 Sword: The strongest tame in Aberration.
- Kaiju: Queens are nearly as large as the Giganotosaurus.
- King Mook: Or rather, Queen Mook, which is much bigger and can impregnate survivors with its tail. There's also the Alpha Surface Reaper King, which is much bigger than the average Surface Reaper King.
- Kryptonite Factor: Charge light weakens them drastically, making them easier to deal with.
- Lightning Bruiser: Just as powerful as it's size would suggest and much faster than you'd think, not to mention the aforementioned leaping ability.
- One-Gender Race: Zig-zagged, while it's fairly obvious that the King is male, and the Queen is female, they themselves aren't shown having genders, instead being listed as N/A.
- Raised by Humans: The only way to tame one of these monsters is to let a queen implant you, survive the resulting birth, and raise the baby. Tamed Reapers are always male (a King), but they are much stronger then other males if imprinted fully and can easily take on a wild Alpha or Queen.
- Shout-Out: They look like the end result of a Xenomorph impregnating a T. rex. The queens even have the ability to implant a Chest Burster in a host and the player can go full on Weyland-Yutani and raise the resulting baby as a pet.
- Underground Monkey: There are four kinds, the first three native to Abberation:
- The Elemental Reaper King, which is the Glass Cannon of Reapers.
- A literal one with the Subterranean Reaper King, which is the second most common one encountered.
- And then the Surface Reaper King, which only exists on the irradiated surface of the Aberrant ARK.
- Genesis Part 2 introduced the R-Reaper.
Rock Drake
- Always a Bigger Fish: Think the Nameless and Reapers are bad? The Rock Drake considers them their natural prey.
- Infinity -1 Sword: Along with the Basilisk. Much weaker then a tamed Reaper, but possessing a lot more utility and easier to acquire.
- Invisibility Flicker: It employs this tactic to stalk its prey. It also passes this invisibility on to its rider.
- Lightning Bruiser: It's very fast and can even glide faster than most airborne creatures can fly but they also have have high HP and attack strength.
- My Significance Sense Is Tingling: It can detect when there's a Nameless pack, or a Reaper close by. When it senses their presence, its quills/feathers stand on their ends.
- Not Quite Flight: While it can't fly, per se, it can glide long distances.
- Not the Intended Use: It makes for a surprisingly good water mount.
- Shout-Out: Given its impressive leaping abilities, ability to turn invisible (and doing so in a decidely mechanical nature) and enmity with Reapers, the Rock Drake appears to be a reference toward the Predator.
- Wall Crawl: Much like Thylacoleo and Megalania, the Rock Drake can scale walls with ease, making it an excellent mount for exploring Aberration's caverns.
Seeker
- Bilingual Bonus: Their scientific name, Chimaeram odiosus, loosely translates into "Chimera are annoying". This makes sense, given the frustration Helena expresses with the creatures in her Explorer Notes. (Even better when you realize Helena probably named them!)
- Eldritch Abomination: Possibly the best way to describe them.
- Genius Bonus: The tentacles they have on their mouths are extremely similar to the Star-Nosed Mole, another underground-dwelling creature. They may even have the same function.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: They are a monstrous combination of lizards, squids, and bats.
- Super-Persistent Predator: More of an annoyance most of the time, but if they get near a source of Charge Light they go crazy.
- Weakened by the Light: Soundly Averted, these things are attracted to and strengthened by Charge Light, meaning that survivors need to carefully thread the use of Charge to keep them, and other creatures at bay.
- Zerg Rush: Their main tactic in attacking a player character.
Shinehorn
- Loved by All: The dossier says that it is beloved by all survivors that tame it.
- The Marvelous Deer: Although the dossier notes that it's probably closer related to the Ovis.
- Ridiculously Cute Critter: Even Mei-Yin isn't immune to its cuteness.
Extinction
The DLC Extinction taking place on Corrupted Earth is the final test of all the skills, know-how and experience the player has amassed. It is by far the hardest map.
Sloth-like creatures that dwell deep in the earth. They eat literally anything and can produce crystals from their backs that can likewise contain pretty much anything when broken open.
Strange caterpillar-looking creatures which inhabit the wastelands. Survivors will quickly find that their name is very apt.
Perhaps the most unusual creature in the game, the Managarmr is a wyvern with jet boosters in its feet. No, we don't know how either, we just know it's awesome.
Small flying machines that patrol the ruined city in Extinction. Be warned: commit no violence where they can see you.
Large owls native to the tundra zone in Extinction. They've evolved special icy powers to help them survive.
A dinosaur-looking lizard. They can be mistaken for a large raptor from a distance, but get to close and you'll get a spiky surprise.
The Corrupted
Earth has been infected with raw element which, as seen with Rockwell in Aberration, mutates and corrupts any life it comes in contact with. These corrupted monsters come in many familiar forms, but they are all completely hostile to all other forms of life no matter their temperaments before.- Barrier-Busting Blow: All corrupted creatures deal MASSIVE damage to any kind of structure, including Tek which only a few things could damage before.
- Body Horror: The Corrupted all suffer from horrifying deformations in their flesh. Huge sections of every creature are twisted with black root like growths that leave large parts of the animal covered in holes. This can include their chests and faces.
- The Corruption: it's in the name. Terrifyingly in seems to be able to infect anything organic. Everything from dinosaurs, to fantasy dragons, to the sci-fi Reapers have fallen to it. It even twists the very soil it touches.
- Color Motif: Black and purple matching with all forms of raw Element. Contrasts against the silver and blue of refined element/tek.
- Covers Always Lie: The dossier for these creatures has a Bronto on it, even though a Corrupted Brontosaurus is not seen in Extinction at all.
- The Dark Side Will Make You Forget: A lot of corrupted creatures have forgotten how to use their special abilities. They make up for it by being tougher and stronger then they should be.
- Eating Optional: Seemingly at any rate. Corrupted creatures will attack anything, but even the carnivores won't eat the corpses except accidentally while attacking something else.
- Enemy to All Living Things: They attack literally anything alive that isn't one of them.
- Fearless Undead: While not literal undead they do have a lot of similarities. They are also completely without fear and will fight until they are dead even if the species would normally flee.
- Hive Mind: Stated to have this. It manifests in game as massive aggro ranges. Getting in a fight with one corrupted creature will pull any of them within a sizeable range.
- Immune to Bullets: Or at least those fired by automated defenses like turrets. For example: Tek turrets normally do in the range of 400-500 damage a hit. Corrupted will only take 15 damage per shot. Thankfully player controlled weapons work fine.
- Purple Is Powerful: The gaps in their flesh glow with eerie purple light to warn you these things are much nastier then they appear.
Enforcer
Machine protector of the city. They attack any corrupted that wander to close as well as responding to hostiles tagged by scouts.- Big Guy, Little Guy: The big guy to the Scout's little guy when patrolling the city in the wild.
- Knock Back: They do this in their default attack.
- Mechanical Lifeforms: They move very organically for machines. They are also not tamed and are instead built by the player.
- Teleportation: Another of their powers lets them blink forward short distances.
- Wall Crawl: Capable of this. It helps getting around in the cities complex skyscraper terrain.
- Weapon of X-Slaying: Corrupted slaying in this case. They do huge bonus damage to any corrupted creature.
Gacha
- Can't Live Without You: They tend to get very sad if they are separated from their mate.
- Color Motif: Like all creatures with refined Tek in them they have silver and blue implants.
- Cyborg: They have Tek implants which are visible along their underbellies and necks. Strangely these are apparently a natural part of their physiology.
- Extreme Omnivore: They can eat pretty much anything that isn't poop. This includes solid rock and even metal buildings.
- Gentle Giant: Stated and proven many times.
- Meaningful Name: In the dossier, Helena names them after one of the people in her tribe mentions their similarity to the Gachapon machines from Japan.
- Random Drops: Their entire purpose. You feed them stuff and they in turn produce random things for you. This can be anything from resources to extremely powerful weapons.
- Santa Claus: Even on maps created prior to Extinction, during the Winter Wonderland event, "GachaClaus" can spawn and wander around, dropping Christmas-themed items.
- Trademark Favorite Food: Eating snow owl pellets seems to improve the quality of items a gacha produces, as well as the rate at which they're tamed.
Gasbags
- Bizarre Alien Locomotion: They can slowly shuffle about with their tiny legs but their main form of travel is flight, specifically after they inflate themselves, they release jets of air from their underside which allows them to fly like a runaway balloon and slow their descent to land.
- Cockroaches Will Rule the Earth: They're an evolutionary descendant of the tardigrade, a creature known for its survivability.
- Color Motif: Like all creatures with refined Tek in them, they have silver and blue implants.
- Cute Giant: Despite being a gigantic version of a bizarre-looking microbe, they are surprisingly adorable with their big eyes and turtle-like beak. Plus, the sounds they make are both funny and precious.
- Cyborg: They have Tek implants which are visible along with their underbellies. Strangely these are apparently a natural part of their physiology.
- Gasshole: They can inhale huge amounts of air and use it to either reduce damage, float off in the sky, or blast attackers away.
- Gentle Giant: Larger than a rhino (especially when inflated) but they are passive and prefer to retreat from danger rather than fly.
- Innocent Blue Eyes: They often have these.
- Mechanically Unusual Class: They’re a weird pseudo-flying creature that gets around by floating. No other creature in the game has a mechanic even close to this.
- Not Quite Flight: Jet propulsion.
- Stronger Than They Look: They look extremely squishy. Don't let that fool you though, not only are they one of the toughest things in the game, at least when inflated, they can also carry huge amounts of weight, more then brontos in fact.
- The Unexpected: In this case a waterbear surviving isn't the unexpected thing, that's what they're known for after all. The unexpected part is how huge the things are considering normal waterbears are microscopic.
Managarmr
- Bizarre Alien Biology: The jetpacks in it's feet are hollow bone chambers in which it mixes explosive gases for propulsion.
- Color Motif: Like all creatures with refined Tek in them they have silver and blue implants.
- Cyborg: They have Tek implants which are visible in their legs and underbellies. Strangely these are apparently a natural part of their physiology.
- Foil: Gameplay wise it could be considered one to the Gasbag. The Gasbag has low offence but high durability and it's movment is very slow over short distances but can fly through the air over a large area. The Managarmr has strong attacks but low health for it's size and it's jets allow it to move with incredible speed over a short distance but it's incapable of sustained flight.
- An Ice Person: It can unleash powerful blasts of super cold air that can freeze targets solid in seconds.
- Jet Pack: Managarmr do not flap their wings at all, instead they achieve lift via the Tek rockets in their feet. This makes them the fastest flyers in game bar none. What could possibly be faster then a jet-dragon?
- Our Dragons Are Different: A very strange, but still recognizably draconic creature. For extra awesome it's a rocket powered dragon. Helena's tentative classification puts it in the Draconis genus with wyverns and rock drakes.
- Our Dragons Are Different: It's body shape resembles the Wyvern but it's fur, lynx-like face and the fact it gives live birth indicates that it's a mammal. Not to mention the whole rocket booster thing.
Scout
- Berserk Button: They don't tolerate any fighting or taming in their vicinity. They also flag down players that are carrying guns.
- Big Guy, Little Guy: The little guy to the Enforcer's big guy.
- Enemy-Detecting Radar: They can help players see other players and creatures while being used as a drone. See Infrared Xray Camera below.
- Infrared Xray Camera: Or something like it anyways. It highlights various creatures in different colors to disguish them easier.
- Mechanical Lifeforms: Of a sorts, they seem to have a sense of what's right and wrong, and have to be built instead of being tamed, like the Enforcer.
- The Medic: It's able to heal Meks when hovering above them, proving essential in fights with the Titans.
- Target Spotter: They can work like this. "Wild" ones react to any violence near them and set off an alarm which draws nearby Enforcers. The player can do this too, but they also allow you to tag a target to easily keep track of it's location.
- Useless Security Camera: Thoroughly Averted, this thing is very good at what it does, especially if you end up doing something wrong in the city.
Snow Owl
- Color Motif: Like all creatures with refined Tek in them they have silver and blue implants.
- Cyborg: They have Tek implants which are visible in their feet and eyes. Strangely these are apparently a natural part of their physiology.
- Death from Above: It has a dive bomb ability similar to the Griffin. See An Ice Person below.
- Harmless Freezing: Even more unrealistic then normal if you can believe it, being frozen by a Snow Owl actually heals the target.
- An Ice Person: Has control of ice and can freeze things near it solid. It can do this on a larger scale if done from a dive bomb, turning it into an icy missile.
- Innocent Blue Eyes: They evoke this sometimes.
- Shown Their Work: Like real owls, snow owls do not poop. Instead they vomit compacted pellets of the indigestible parts of whatever they've eaten recently, and metabolize everything they can.
- Solid Gold Poop: Or close to it anyways. Snow Owls create owl pellets which are the Gacha's favorite food. Considering the things Gachas can make well...
Velonasaur
- Color Motif: Like all creatures with refined Tek in them they have silver and blue implants.
- Cyborg: They have Tek implants which are visible in their frills. Strangely these are apparently a natural part of their physiology.
- Fatal Flaw: When shooting, they will stand still, which some survivors can take advantage of.
- Flechette Storm: Oh, boy can they ever pull this off. The sheer number of projectiles these things put out makes them one of the most devastating creature on any Ark despite being of comparable size and stats to a Carno. They can annihilate much larger creatures with terrifying ease.
- Glass Cannon: Possibly the most extreme case in the game. They have a health pool similar to a carno, yet can out damage pretty much anything. Even super predators like gigas, rexs, wyverns, and reapers have trouble keeping up with them in terms of sheer damage output.
- Raptor Attack: Resembles one at any rate. They behave a lot like an overgrown dilophosaurus though.
- Slurpasaur: A somewhat unusual variation. It greatly resembles a theropod dinosaur but it's heavily implied to be descended from modern lizards.
- Spike Shooter: What they do when they open their facial frills. Rather then spit like dilos, they can shoot spikes at their targets like a living minigun or launch them all over the place while flailing around as an AOE.
- Spin Attack: The second way that they can shoot projectiles, which allows it to be protected from all sides if attacked.
- Superior Successor: To the Dilophosaurus, as these shoot much more effective projectiles, as well as being larger and stronger than them.
- Vocal Dissonance: When attacking they make an appropriately reptilian snarl but when calm they make a warbling noise more befitting a bird.
Valguero
One of the non-canon DLC ARKs available for free download, Valguero combines much of what Scorched Earth and Aberration had, as well as a small number of exclusive features, such as multiple wyvern trenches, a white cliffs biome, freezing air (Cold Desert only) rainbows, auroras, and a [very] small selection of unique creatures.
The Deinonychus is Valguero's only totally unique creature, being a relative of the Raptor (as well as being around its size), having a large amount of feathers covering its body, and being able to grapple onto most creatures larger than itself, and living a semi-arboreal lifestyle.
Deinonychus
- Eaten Alive: The dossier states that it begins to eat its prey while still latched onto it and when its still completely alive.
- Feathered Fiend: Possibly the most feathered non-bird in the game.
- Hunting the Most Dangerous Game: The dossier states that it loves doing this.
- Mama Bear: If one steals an egg from any nest, all of the Deinonychus in the area will immediately aggro onto the player, showing a sense of honour and comradery that no other creature of its type is seen doing in the game.
- Mook Commander: Like its close relative, the Raptors, the highest level pack member has a "pack boost" that gives it a certain degree of authority over other members of the pack.
- Raised by Humans: Like Wyverns and Rock Drakes, you can only successfully tame one of these creatures by stealing one of its eggs in the wild, hatch it, and raise it yourself.
- Raptor Attack: Slightly different from the other Raptor in-game, they still pounce on you as a means of ambush, but also latch onto many creatures, making this in particular, very hard to deal with.
- Spanner in the Works: When latched onto another creature, it will slow down that creatures movement speed, making it a very annoying creature to deal with in the wild.
- Wall Crawl: The hooked claws that it uses to latch onto prey can also be used in order to climb up walls and large-enough trees.
Chalk and Ice Golems
These Rock Elemental variants, unique to this ARK, are very much the same as their Scorched Earth counterparts, just having a different item to throw at people and located in their own unique biome; The Chalk Golems being located in the White Cliffs biome, and the Ice Golems being located in the Snow Desert biome.- Dishing Out Dirt: The Chalk Golem more so given its type, since the Ice Golem throws, well ice.
- Elemental Embodiment: Of a different type than mainstream ones, being a specific kind of rock and state of water.
- Fatal Flaw: While they are disguised as rocks, just like regular Rock Elementals, their disguises have something about them that gives them away; The Ice Golems' rock form sticks out like a sore thumb since it has no snow covering it, and the Chalk Golems' rock form has no moss on it, in a biome where every other type of rock does.
- Hidden in Plain Sight: The Chalk more so than the Ice (see Fatal Flaw above).
- Palette Swap: Of regular Rock Elementals.
- Underground Monkey: Of the other Rock Elementals, though there isn't really anything special about them other than their colour palette.
Genesis Part 1
Occuring After the End of main storyline of the game (which ended with Extinction), Genesis is a simulation across 5 biomes in the form of mini-maps: Artic, Bog, Lunar, Ocean, and Volcano. Instead of Explorer Notes, the map contains "glitches", the information within which will be provided by HLNA, and missions that need to be completed to progress. There are several unique creatures within these biomes.
Astrocetus
The Astrocetus is a creature that dwells in the lunar biome of Genesis Part 1. It is rarely seen but highly sought after for its unique ability to warp short distances through space, destroying anything that gets in the way of said warp, something that makes it an excellent siege animal.- Extra Eyes: It's got a total of 14 eyes (7 on each side of its head).
- Flying Brick: It will smash through anything, especially during warp.
- Gameplay and Story Segregation:
- Basic information on this creature states that it's docile, yet getting close to it, accidental or not will get it to aggro on the player.
- Information on Ambergris states that the Astrocetus regularly leaves it behind, since it appears on rocks instead.
- Gentle Giant: It's completely docile creature, unless you get too close to it.
- In-Series Nickname: Going up to it in-game will display its name as Space Whale rather than Astrocetus.
- Meaningful Name: Astrocetus just means "star whale".
- Mighty Glacier: As with any incredibly large creature in ARK, it has a ton of health but very slow.
- Multi-Armed and Dangerous: Or rather multi-finned and dangerous: It has 4 pectoral fins, and 2 pelvic fins, far more than regular whales. Luckily, it isn't always dangerous.
- Not the Intended Use: While it can successfully swim in water, like a normal whale, it will do so at an incredibly reduced speed.
- Power Glows: Every time it shoot from its blowhole, it will gain a short speed buff, which will be marked by its glowing fins as it gains more momentum.
- Space Whale: ARK's version of one, it's even named as such in-game.
- Teleportation: It can "warp" through space, which makes it an incredibly valuable tame.
Bloodstalker
A denizen of the Bog Biome, the Bloodstalker is a large spider-like creature that web swings its way across its home, waiting to suck the blood out of its prey. Its webbing ability means it can reel in any small to medium-sized creature.- Building Swing: Its most distinguishing ability. It can web as a means of getting around, or in order to grapple onto unsuspecting prey.
- Giant Spider: Sort of, considering its multiple legs and webbing ability, though it's more Mix-and-Match Critters (see below).
- Jack of All Stats: It has surprisingly good carry weight, it's incredibly fast, and can traverse across any/all terrain, including water. All this mean that it can help the player with taming, egg stealing, cave exploration, and harvesting hard-to-reach resources.
- Mix-and-Match Creatures: It has six squid-like legs that it uses to walk and crawl, and six mantis-like legs that it uses for eating, and it has the webbing ability of spiders.
- Picky Eater: It's a Sanguinivore, meaning it consumes blood only.
- Super Not-Drowning Skills: It can walk on water, or it can submerge and swim with surprising efficiency. Its swimming motions seem to be based on those of feather stars.
- Walk on Water: Its unique legs allow it to achieve this, allowing it to help the player harvest resources from the water.
Ferox
Dwelling in the snow biome, the Ferox may seem like a cute, harmless creature at first, but upon consuming some Element, it transforms into a hulking monster, capable of challenging anything, at least until the effect of the element wears off and it returns to its normal size.- Addiction-Powered: If it's fed enough Element, it will become addicted, and it will transform into a large monster, which will make it a better battle mount.
- Bizarre Alien Reproduction: Maximum Element addiction (95% or higher) is required to breed Ferox.
- Dual Mode Unit: It has its normal form, which is completely harmless, and its large form, which has far more uses (and dangers).
- From Nobody to Nightmare: Upon the consumption of Element, it will go from a harmless, adorable creature, to a hulking beast that can destroy anything in its path.
- Lightning Bruiser: Its large form is both incredibly fast, and incredibly strong.
- Meaningful Name: Its name in Latin can mean: wild, fierce, and arrogant. Can also be read as a portmanteau of "ferocious" and "fox".
- Multi-Armed and Dangerous: It has a total of six limbs, which it uses to full effect in both its forms.
- Ridiculously Cute Critter: In its normal form. Its large form, not so much.
- Wall Crawl: Its large form has the ability to stick to vertical surfaces, though it can't move around like some other mounts can.
- Wolf Man: Its large form resembles an enormous, multi-limbed werewolf.
Insect Swarm
These swarms patrol the Bog Biome, searching for a corpse to consume as soon as they see one.- No Name Given: They names are simply stated as Insect Swarm, and they don't have a proper name as such.
- The Swarm: It's in their very name.
- Zerg Rush: What they do when they set their sights on a corpse.
Magmasaur
This magmatic reptile, found only in the Volcano Biome, and is totally dependent on the biome for its survival, with trips to the other biomes proving to be unsuitable for its physiology. It's a formidable opponent and like the Pheonix from Scorched Earth can act as a forge and furnace, making it an incredibly desirable mount.- Charged Attack: The Searing Spit, which can be charged up and then launched a good distance away towards the desired target. Trying to hold the effect for the Spit for too long however, will result in a shrapnel attack, which can possible harm itself.
- Kill It with Fire: Most of its attacks burn its opponents, meaning they are likely to burn to death.
- Magma Man: It's a reptile, with flesh upon it, that can survive and swim in lava.
- Mundane Utility: Just like the Phoenix on Scorched Earth storing metal and meat in its inventory will get it to smelt and cook them respectively. Downplayed in that it can then use the metal for its searing spit.
- Picky Eater: The babies can only be fed Ambergris, will one will have to mine off of the green rocks in the Lunar Biome. With the release of the Lost Island as an official map, which has Magmasaurs but lacks ambergris, baby Magmasaurs can now be raised on sulfur instead.
- Raised by Humans: Like the Wyverns and Rock Drakes before it, the player must steal an egg of a Magmasaur and raise the baby if they want to tame it. Unlike those, domestic Magmasaurs can then be bred.
- Super Spit: Its Searing Spit attack, which is Anti-Armor and can even melt through Tek structures - something very few things in the game can do.
- Unstoppable Rage: It can induce this by using its smoke effect on those nearby.
- Weaksauce Weakness: Due to being a magma-based creature, it's vulnerable to any sort of low temperature, meaning one has to be careful when taking it out of the Volcano biome.
- What Could Have Been: In-Universe example. HLNA states that it was originally supposed to be introduced in Scorched Earth but it was removed. This could be the reason as to why it drops Sulfur.
Megachelon
A resident of the Ocean Biome, this humungous terrapin can support an entire base on its back, and grow rare resources upon its shell, and despite its size and lack of speed and turning radius, it's a very useful creature to have tamed.- Breath Weapon: Underwater, it has the ability to shoot a high pressured stream.
- Extra Eyes: It has a total of 6 eyes on its head.
- Mighty Glacier: Both in water and on land it has large amount of attack, defense and HP, but it's horribly slow and has a terrible turn radius.
- Multi-Armed and Dangerous: Subverted, despite having six legs, it's largely harmless to due its slow speed.
- Turtle Island: Players can use it as one, by building a base on its shell and just allowing it to surface on the water.
- Underwater Base: As well as Turtle Island above, any structure on the shell, will be completely water-tight, allowing for a truly underwater base on a creature for the first time in ARK.
- Walking Tank: When on land, due to its durability and speed.
Parakeet Fish School
The oceanic counterparts of the Insect Swarms, these schools of fish will attack anything on sight, making them incredibly hard to deal with when swimming in the Ocean Biome.- Attack! Attack! Attack!: They will do this to literally anything they see, player and creature alike.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: They seem to have characteristics from Parrotfish, Parakeets (it's in their name) and some form of microbes (since that's what they show up as when encountered).
- Pint-Sized Powerhouse: These things are surprisingly strong for small creatures, and they require several hits to kill.
- The Swarm: In the same way that the Insect Swarms are in the Bog Biome.
- Zerg Rush: Their main tactic upon seeing any living thing.
Genesis Part 2
Set aboard the Genesis starship, this map puts every skill the surivor has learned to the test against bizarre creatures and machines, all in preparation for the final battle with Rockwell.
Astrodelphis
A smaller relative of the Astrocetus, these creatures dwell in the space between the biomes of the ship, and provide one of the most bizarre flying mounts in the game.- Extra Eyes: Has a total of four eyes, one pair above the other.
- Power Gives You Wings: The Astrodelphis saddle gives it mechanical, batlike wings that aid in maneuverability, while also giving it laser cannons.
- Space Whale: Its name literally means space dolphin. Notably, it isn't a genetically engineered or mutated creature like all the other animals on the arks or ship but a naturally occuring extraterrestrial species.
Maewing
A bizarre platypus like creature, the Maewing is specialized in caring for infant creatures, and can even entice wild ones to abandon their parents.- Belly Flop Crushing: One of its more effective attacks, with a modest area-of-effect.
- Body Horror: Downplayed but they have eight large nipples going down their sides which can look a bit disturbing.
- Cuteness Proximity: HLN-A tries to insist the mission to collect baby Maewings is for purely scientific purposes, honest!... while squeeing and creating the portmanteau "kittles" (from squirrel "kits" and platypus "puggles").
- Interspecies Adoption : Its raison d'etre is to be mom to your baby dinos, carrying them in its saddle baskets and nursing them using the food from its inventory the way most dinos would eat from a trough.
- Jack of All Trades: They are competent on the ground, skilled at swimming and have the ability to glide which allows them to be useful on most terrain.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: Has the general body plan of a platypus and the gliding membranes used by flying squirrels.
- One-Gender Race: Apparently hermaphroditic. They have no gender markers, any two Maewings can mate with each other, and both will produce fertilized eggs after mating.
- Puzzling Platypus: Somewhat ironically Inverted here, as while the Maewing appears to be a cross between a platypus and a flying squirrel, it is nowhere near the weirdest creature in the game.
- Required Secondary Powers: Because it needs to provide nutritious milk for dinos with all sorts of dietary requirements, the Maewing is itself an omnivore.
- Ridiculously Cute Critter: Despite the bizarre nipples, they are adorable, with huge eyes and fluffy tufted ears.
Noglin
This creature's silly appearance belies its ability to overtake the mind of any human it encounters, making it one of the more dangerous creatures aboard the Genesis starship.- Adorable Abomination: This thing does not look like any creature living on Earth, but leans more toward cute than repulsive.
- Hypnotic Creature: It can mind control humans by locking its jaws and mouth tendrils around their heads.
- Meaningful Name: A portmanteau of "noggin", "gnaw", and "goblin". It's a goblin that gnaws your noggin!
- Overly-Long Tongue: One that branches at the ends. It apparently controls dinosaurs by jamming its tongue into their brains, and can kill them by remaining implanted this way long enough.
Shadowmane
A ferocious predator, possessing both the ability to teleport and a secondary power dependent on the gender of the individual: females grant area of effect invisibility while males have a roar that boosts the courage of allies.- Cats Hate Water: Inverted. They appear to have fish-like traits, which make them very skilled swimmers, and allows them to breathe in water. They even get a hydration bonus similar to the spino.
- Chain Lightning: More like a chain lightning charge, but it's the same concept. One of the Shadowmane's most brutal attacks is that they can dash from enemy to enemy and paralyze them all in the process.
- In a Single Bound: Only fliers get more air-time than Shadowmanes, who have hands down the strongest jump in the game, allowing you to reach high places or cross a decent amount of distance with a charged jump.
- Invisibility: Shadowmanes can do this regardless of gender via their stalking stance, but females can give this ability to nearby allies while in said stance.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: A cross between a lion and a lionfish.
- Pun-Based Creature: It is a literal lionfish.
- Status Buff: Males can roar to grant allies buffs.
Summoner
Minions of Rockwell, these creatures can attack directly, but they can also summon forth other creatures to attack for them.- Eldritch Abomination: This creature completely defies categorization, with H-LNA implying it is actually an enormous white blood cell for :Rockwell.
- Enemy Summoner: The name isn't exactly subtle. Summoners will occasionally fire off orbs that turn into flesh versions of the creatures you can find in Genesis Part 2.
- Eyes Do Not Belong There: It has eyes inside of its mouth.
- Flower Mouth: It has a flower-shaped mouth that is filled with eyes.
Strider
Gigantic machines that patrol the Genesis starship.- Base on Wheels: Takes this further than other examples in the game - its body comes with a pre-installed tek platform saddle and respawn point. It also spawns with a rig that can make it better at one or more tasks.
- Hacking Minigame: It is tamed via one of these.
- Mechanical Horse: Striders are shaped sort of like a hoofed creature, each with attachments on its head and torso that give it more specialized abilities, like laser blasts for combat or tractor beams for resource collection.
Voidwyrm
A space-dwelling dragon that appears to be made of element.- Batman Can Breathe in Space: It lives inside of the space between the rings of the Genesis ship.
- Our Dragons Are Different: This one appears to be made of living element.
- This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman: It is excellent at destroying structures, and terrible at destroying creatures, so it's clearly meant for PvP.
Crystal Isles
Crystal Wyvern
The Wyverns of Crystal Isles are different from their cousins in that they can actually be tamed. Like other wyverns, they are powerful, fast flyers that can be ridden without a saddle and can breathe deadly blasts of elemental power at their foes. They come in three variants: Tropical, Blood and Ember.- Bioluminescence Is Cool: Their bodies, particularly their wing membranes, glow the same color as their skin. It's very difficult to see during the day but they stand out very clearly in the dark.
- Breath Weapon: Three variants — water, blood or fire — depending on the wyvern's color.
- Fragile Speedster: Compared to the standard Wyverns they are smaller, have less health and their bites do less damage but are much faster and have a quicker turning radius.
- Gem Tissue: They have jutting out from their skin and is most prominent around the head and neck.
- King Mook: There are an Alpha variant called "Heirs" that, like alphas, are larger, faster and stronger than the average variant.
- Making a Splash: Tropical Crystal Wyverns have a water based breath attack that reduces health and stamina.
- Our Wyverns Are Different: They are slightly smaller and less aggressive than previously mentioned wyvern types, and can be tamed and ridden as mounts. They come in several variants:
- Blood Crystal Wyverns, which use The Power of Blood to drain the health from their victims.
- Ember Crystal Wyverns which have a traditional fire breath attack. Though compared the the Fire Wyvern it's narrower, has a longer range and does more damage the more it's used.
- Tropical Crystal Wyverns have a water based breath attack.
- Picky Eater: Baby crystal wyverns will only eat Primal Crystals.
- Playing with Fire: Ember Crystal Wyverns breathe fire.
- The Power of Blood: Blood Crystal Wyverns' breath attack inficts a short-lived drain status effect that damages the enemy and heals them.
Tropeognathus
- Cool Plane: The saddle has gasoline-powered rocket boosters and a grenade launcher, making the Tropeo effectively a jet fighter.
- Giant Flyer: It has a wingspan of 27 feet.
- Shown Their Work: Alongside the Tapejara, it's one of the only pterosaurs to have pteroid bones in its arms.
Lost Island
Amargasaurus
- An Ice Person: The chilling blue spikes can freeze enemies in their area of effect, slowing and stopping their movement as ice encases them.
- Armor Is Useless: The neutral brown/purple spikes can reduce the armor of whatever they strike to primitive quality.
- Fire-Forged Friends: After using a temperature-affecting soup to approach it, Amargasaurus is tamed by helping it battle carnivores and periodically giving it food to recover its strength.
- Playing with Fire: The burning orange spikes set fire to enemies and structures in their area of effect.
- Required Secondary Powers: Riders are insulated against their Amargasaurus's own thermal attacks.
Dinopithecus
- Bring My Brown Pants: Dinopithecus's Ground Pound attack has a chance to make affected creatures poop themselves.
- Dung Fu: Can disable Tek equipment, slow dinos, and conceal grenades. Dinopithecus's regular attack can also be used to gather poop from other dinos to use as ammo.
- Good Bad Bugs: To keep it from being overwhelmed by other predators in the redwoods, Dinopithecus is flagged as a T-Rex. This also means most cave creatures won't touch it, which along with its Wall Crawl makes Dinopithecus a good choice for spelunking.
- Maniac Monkeys
- Wall Crawl: A bit buggy at release, but they can climb walls or ziplines.
- You Killed My Father: Only the pack leader may be tamed, and it must be subdued by killing all of its subordinates first. Once it loses leader status, it will become passive and accept hand-feeding.
Sinomacrops
- Arch-Enemy: Deals increased damage to arthropods... or to chitin-wearing humans.
- Picky Eater: Only eats chitin, much like Archaeopteryx.
- Pint-Sized Powerhouse: It's a shoulder pet, but can fly carrying a much-larger human.
Fjordur
Andrewsarchus
- Angry, Angry Hippos: Not a true hippopotamid, but Andrewsarchus is very closely related to them and bears a number of physical similarities.
- Shown Their Work: It is correctly depicted as a whippomorph, which the dossier also classifies it as, rather than a mesonychid as in outdated portrayals.
Desmodus
A vampire bat that can be encountered in the caves of Fjordur.Fjordhawk
A hawk on Fjordur which can retrieve the inventories of fallen players. Bosses
Broodmother Lysrix
A massive spider, she is the first of ARK's "Ultimate Lifeforms", bosses summoned by the obelisks to challenge experienced survivors and tribes. She makes her lair under the green obelisk.- Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: A huge giant spider that is lethal to players and their tames.
- Dual Boss: Teams up with Megapithecus for the boss fight on The Center.
- Flunky Boss: Constantly spawns Araneomorphus during the fight.
- Giant Spider: The largest of them all, probably making it the King Mook of all the other spiders on the Island.
- Hive Queen: Implied to be this for the Araneomorphus. Helena even thinks she may have dug out the Island's cave network.
- Mother of a Thousand Young: It's heavily implied that she is the mother for much of the Araneomorphus on the island.
- Poisonous Person: Likes to spit venom at her prey as a ranged attack.
Megapithecus
The second of the Ultimate Lifeforms, this massive silverback lairs under the blue obelisk with his army of apes.- Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: A King Kong-sized giant ape who can throw rocks at its enemies.
- Dual Boss: Teams up with Broodmother Lysrix on The Center. He also teams up with Dragon and Manticore on Valguero.
- Flunky Boss: A small legion of Gigantopithecus and Mesopithecus fights with him.
- Good Scars, Evil Scars: It has three apparent burn scars on his right shoulder, chest, and face, the last of which is complete with a milky-blind eye. None of these old wounds slow him down in the slightest.
- Killer Gorilla: Invokes this to the max.
- Lightning Bruiser: This creature is savage and unrelenting in his assault upon you and can move faster than you can.
The Dragon
The last of the Island's Ultimate Lifeforms, this scaly, fire-breathing beast lives under the red obelisk with a legion of flying dinos. It also appears as a timed mount in the Survival of the Fittest tournament mode.- Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: A behemoth dragon who is the largest of the three initial bosses on The Island.
- Breath Weapon: It's a dragon, so this is to be expected.
- Dual Boss: Teams up with the Manticore on Ragnarok. It teams up again with the Manticore and the Megapithecus on Valguero.
- Fireballs: Will alternate between spitting large balls of fire at you from a distance or trying to singe your face off with a large jet of brimstone.
- Flunky Boss: It summons absolute swarms of Pteranodon and Dimorphodon.
- Giant Flyer: Can fly as easily as a bird despite being bigger than a Giganotosaurus.
- Kaiju: The second-largest organism in the base game after the Titanosaurus.
- Lethal Lava Land: This is where you battle it.
- Lightning Bruiser: The fastest of all of the bosses in the game, and possibly one of the strongest as well.
- Our Dragons Are Different: It is an insanely massive monster that breathes fire and can be tamed for a short period of time. It resembles a typical European-style dragon, though.
- Shout-Out: It is purple with orange wings.
- Weapon of X-Slaying: It deals bonus damage to carnivores that it faces, so it's better (strategically) to take high-damage herbivores in with you instead, such as Therizinosaurus.
Dodorex
Originally a fan-made joke creature, this abomination became real thanks to the Fear Evolved Halloween events. It is currently the most powerful boss in the game.- Ascended Fanon: It was originally conceived as a fan-made joke dossier.
- Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: A giant hybrid of dodo and Tyrannosaurus which breathes fire.
- Breath Weapon: Will spew fire in your face just to make it that much harder for you.
- Feathered Fiend: Being part Dodo and all.
- Joke Character: It was originally conceived as one.
- Lethal Joke Character: This thing is a monster. It can outrun most dinosaurs, break metal with its melee attacks, has a mountain of health, and breathes fire.
- Lightning Bruiser: It is disturbingly fast for an animal for its size and its titanic health pool makes hunting the other carnivorous dinosaurs look like easy mode. Only the Giganotosaurus or Titanosaurus would even stand a chance.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: It is a hybrid of a Dodo and a Tyrannosaurus.
- No Fair Cheating: Unless the Fear Evolved event is active, even a server admin cannot spawn it with the console. Mods, of course, can get around this.
- Rent-a-Zilla: It is larger than the Giganotosaurus.
- That Was the Last Entry: Whoever tried to write the dossier for this monster only managed to draw a colored sketch before the beast painted the file with their blood.
The Overseer
The endgame boss of the Island, this mysterious alien creature lives in a strange space station that monitors the ARKs, protected by legions of robotic drones. Its lair is only accessible from the Tek Cave, the game's endgame dungeon.- Disc-One Final Boss: Despite apparently overseeing the entire ARK network, you defeat it very early on in the storyline, at the end of The Island.
- Ditto Fighter: The Overseer's true form is a swarm of nanites in the shape of an ARK crystal, but as it takes damage it will transform into a copy of each of the Island's 3 Ultimate Lifeforms, each one with its own separate health bar.
- Flunky Boss: It constantly summons Attack Drones and Defence Units to back it up during the fight.
- Marathon Boss: The Overseer is basically 4 boss fights rolled into one, thanks to its Ditto Fighter ability.
- Punch-Clock Villain: The Overseer is simply doing its job administrating the Island's ARK system. However, you have to defeat it to escape the Island ARK and move on to the next ARK.
- The Unfought: The Overseers of the Scorched and Aberrant ARKs. The Scorched Earth Overseer apparently sealed off its Tek Cave as punishment for humans trying to build a city around its entrance, and the Aberrant Overseer was completely obliterated beyond hope of restoration by Santiago's tribe.
The Manticore
The only Ultimate Lifeform of Scorched Earth, this beast is the final challenge for a desert survivor or tribe.- Beware My Stinger Tail: Not only can it sting you for massive torpor, its tail can fire large purple spines of tranquilizing venom.
- Dual Boss: Fights alongside the Dragon on Ragnarok. It teams up again with the Dragon, as well as the Megapithecus on Valguero.
- Flunky Boss: It starts the battle with a large number of deathworms as backup and multiple rock elementals lying in wait around its arena.
- Our Manticores Are Spinier: Not man-faced, but otherwise true to the classic image — dragon wings, lion body, ram horns, and scorpion tail.
Dodo Wyvern
The Scorched Earth counterpart to the Dodorex, appearing in the second Fear Evolved event.- All Your Powers Combined: It can shoot projectiles from all different types of wyvern on Scorched Earth.
- Distaff Counterpart: To the Dodorex on the Island.
- Feathered Fiend: Being part Dodo and all.
- Flunky Boss: It has a legion of Zombie Wyverns trailing it at every turn.
- Giant Flyer: Being part wyvern, of course.
- Lethal Joke Character: It looks and sounds ridiculous, but it is incredibly dangerous.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: Part dodo, part dragon.
- Multi-Armed and Dangerous: Or rather, multi-winged and dangerous, since it has a set of both wyvern wings, and dodo wings.
- That Was the Last Entry: Just like the Dodorex its dossier is covered in blood.
Rockwell
The final boss of Aberration. See his entry in Past Survivors.
Desert Titan
One of the three roaming Titans of Extinction; all three must be defeated to summon the King Titan.- Flunky Boss: The Desert Titan is surrounded by a swarm of fliers known as the Flock that serve as its primary means of defense. They are capable of knocking humans off their flying mounts, spelling certain death for anyone without a glider, parachute, or TEK armor.
- Living Ship: Beats the Quetzal hands down in this aspect with its massive platform saddle. It even has its own gravity field to help secure any loose objects or creatures on it while in motion.
- Rent-a-Zilla: Basically the same size or slightly larger than the Titanosaur, previously the game's largest lifeform by far.
- Shock and Awe: Its primary weapon aside from its defensive flock is lightning, which it can make land on points in mid-air.
- Space Whale: It's basically a giant sky whale.
Forest Titan
One of the three roaming Titans of Extinction; all three must be defeated to summon the King Titan.- Flunky Boss: Inverted. The Forest Wyverns encountered in the same area as the Titan will actually help you fight it, and their ability to fly is crucial for defeating it.
- Green Thumb: Can thrust its root fingers into the ground to pin opponents, or sprout protective thorns all over its body to reduce damage.
- Rent-a-Zilla: A giant monster over twice the size of the Titanosaur, the game's previously largest lifeform.
- Walking Tank: If you manage to tame it, it comes with a small platform saddle that, while probably not large enough for a sophisticated siege base, can comfortably serve as a mobile home.
- When Trees Attack: It's almost literally a giant Middle-Earth Ent!
Ice Titan
One of the three roaming Titans of Extinction; all three must be defeated to summon the King Titan.- An Ice Person: Breathes a stream of frost.
- Horns of Villainy: It has three horns on its head.
- In a Single Bound: Can make ridiculously high and long jumps for its size.
- Rent-a-Zilla: A giant monster over twice the size of the Titanosaur, the game's previously largest lifeform.
- Walking Tank: If tamed, it will automatically have a platform saddle attached. Given its mobility, this makes it a terrifyingly effective mobile base.
King Titan
Also known as the King of Shadows and the King of Death, it's the final boss of Extinction.- Flunky Boss: He spawns corrupted tumors that gradually evolve into stronger and stronger forms of Corrupted if they aren't killed.
- Greater-Scope Villain: One of a two-parter with Rockwell in the ARK storyline. The King Titan has the bigger effect of the 2, as his awakening and attack on humanity is what prompted the final push towards humanity's non-corporeality and the creation of the ARKs.
- I Have Many Names: As well as being called the King Titan, it's also been called the King of Shadows, and the King of Death.
- Kaiju: To date, the largest organism in the game by a long shot, even towering over the other Titans.
- Kill It with Fire: Can summon meteors and slam the ground with a fiery punch.
- Load-Bearing Boss: The King of Shadows isn't the actual consciousness of the Element Hive Mind - it doesn't seem to have a central intelligence with the possible exception of Rockwell - but it is noted to be the primary neuron of the Hive Mind, so destroying it will severely cripple Element's control over the Corrupted.
- No Ontological Inertia: Destroying it doesn't completely eliminate Element, but it does weaken the Element infection sufficiently that the ARKs can land and their purification systems, combined with the armies that have evolved on them, can take care of the remaining Element on Earth. Until the Aberration ARK, still under Rockwell's control, also crash-lands and brings a fresh Element infestation to Earth.
- Rent-a-Zilla: Over two to three times as big as even the regular Titans, he's 156.8 meter (514 feet) tall, 264.6 meter (868 feet) long and is basically an Expy of Godzilla.
- Weapon of X-Slaying: It deals 5 times more damage to the other Titans on Extinction.
Moeder, Master of the Oceans
The midway boss on Genesis Part 1, The Moeder is a gigantic fish capable of producing electrical attacks. It's the first aquatic boss in any ARK.- Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: She's the third largest boss in the game, only beaten by Extinction's King Titan and Aberration's Rockwell.
- Bioluminescence Is Cool: It's a humongous fish with bioluminescent scales.
- Flunky Boss: She constantly summons Eel Minions throughout the fight.
- More Teeth than the Osmond Family: The mouth of this creature is brimming with hundreds of teeth.
- Mother of a Thousand Young: The Eel Minions are her children. Its name in Dutch even translates to mother.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: It form takes inspiration from Electric Eels, Angler fish, and (most of all) the Frilled Shark.
- Shock and Awe: It constantly uses electrical attacks on the survivors who face it.
Corrupted Master Controller
The final boss of Genesis Part 1, who wants to use the Genesis program in order to farm and enslave the survivors entrapped in the program.- Contractual Boss Immunity: It's completely immune to attack until the final stage.
- Flunky Boss: It constantly summons corrupted avatars, dinotars and aerial drones, to attack you and make it hard for you to get the keys. These flunkies get much more powerful as the stage goes on.
- Flying Face: Its form is a floating, immobile head. When you beat it, it shows the face of what is assumed to be Rockwell.
- I Shall Taunt You: Most of its lines involve belittling you and glorifying itself.
- Orcus on His Throne: It simply hovers in its place as a disembodied head, being immune to attack much of the time, and summons minions to kill you.
- Purple Is Powerful: It constantly glows purple.
- Recurring Boss: He is in fact Rockwell, who escaped Aberration and hacked into the Genesis program, hence why the purple he shows is identical to that seen throughout Aberration.
- Turns Red: It summons much more powerful avatars and dinotaurs in the later stages, when it begins to lose quite a bit of health.
Rockwell Prime
The twisted, mutated form of Rockwell, now in command of the Genesis starship. See the Past Survivors folder for more details.- True Final Boss: The very last thing you will face in ARK 1.
