The Gigantoraptor was released on February 28th as a mod to The Island on ARK Survival Ascended. It’s start was a little chaotic as it was introduced as a community voted creature for ARK Survival Ascended Ragnarok but then reshuffled to be announced with The Center. When the Center got delayed without providing a new Release date, we got the Gigantoraptor as a temporary mod instead. The Gigantoraptor is also the first new creature that got released with ARK Survival Ascended.
On Which Map Does the Gigantoraptor Spawn?
For now as it is a mod, it will spawn on the maps you install the mod on. It shares spawns with the Therizinosaurus. As soon as the Gigantoraptor is added to the base game, it will spawn exclusively on the Center.
How Do You Tame the Gigantoraptor?
Taming of this creature is very unique as it is a special tame and not a knockout tame like many creatures on ARK Survival Ascended are. It combines the idea of only being able to tame the offspring like with Wyverns and Deinonychus but also adds a unique mechanic to it as you don’t simply steal eggs but the baby.
1. Dance for them
Yes you heard that right. the main taming mechanic of the Gigantoraptor is an emote minigame that has to be done by the player. You need to find a Gigantoraptor nest with a baby in it and a parent around. You then will have to distract the parent by throwing any fertilized egg close to it. It will start feeding on the egg, ultimately getting distracted that way. The bigger the egg, the longer it will feed on it. You can also drop several eggs.
When the parent is distracted, sneak to the nest and press E (or the equivalent key on your gamepad) to hide in the nest. This will trigger the baby to wander to the nest, see you and happily jump into the air. It will then do one of 3 emotes. Your screen shows you which button you have to press to imitate this emote. Each successful imitated emote will give you progress until your baby is tamed. You then can bring it home and raise it.
2. Adopt it
Once you have an adult Gigantoraptor, you can adopt orphaned Gigantoraptor babies from their nests. And if they are not orphaned yet. You know what to do. Once the parent is gone, you do the “seeking baby” yell by pressing C (or the equivalent key on your gamepad) and then you can walk to the baby and claim it with E. There is a catch to that though and I will explain it further down in the article.
Claiming Babies With the Gigantoraptor
ARK Survival Ascended introduced wild dinosaur babies to the game. As a player you can claim orphaned babies and raise them as your own. The catch is though – You don’t get extra levels on them opposed to when you knockout tame a dinosaur, making babies most of the time a bad choice to get. The Gigantoraptor is here to fill that gap as it allows you to claim wild babies and get extra levels as if you tamed them.
Extra levels
There are some different flavours to it:
- Your Gigantoraptor must itself have a 100% Taming Effectiveness (TE)
- Your Gigantoraptor must have 88 levelled levels (the full amount)
to get 50% of the initial levels of the baby as extra levels. On a 150 dino baby this would be 75 additional levels. Where you put the levelled levels does not matter.
This is to get the full amount of levels. If you have not reached those numbers yet, you will still get a boost in extra levels but not the full amount. So the TE on the baby is going to be low.
Preferred Stat
But your Gigantoraptor can also influence where extra levels go by having your preferred stat as its own top stat. The flavours to this are looking like this:
- You Gigantoraptor needs to have at least 60 base levels &
- 254 mutation levels in the stat you want to be preferred
to get the full 6.25% bias on that stat. Lower levels and mutation levels will still give you an advantage but a lower one.
Bonding with baby dinosaurs / Gigantoraptor Buffs
The Gigantoraptor has a saddle that can either hold two babies or two eggs. Or one of each. When holding babies (and the Gigantoraptor and the baby are imprinted on you), you can go on a hunt with the baby for the bonding event. A little display will appear left and right of your hotbar, depending on which side the baby sits and informs you if the baby is resting or wants to go on a hunt. It also informs you how often it wants to go hunting and what level creatures you need to hunt. The higher level the baby is, the higher level is the amount of kills that need to be done.
When the baby wants to go hunting, the game scans for creatures close by that fit the requirements. If it finds one, it will put a red skull icon where it is and you need to then run there with your Gigantoraptor and kill the marked animal with the Gigantoraptor. This will fulfil one bonding event. Repeat this until the bonding is complete.
This will give your Gigantoraptor parent 5 stacks of the buff “Alloparental Pride“.
Alloparental Pride / Alloparental Fury
Allparental Pride is a buff the parent Gigantoraptor gets during events with its adopted offspring. Alloparental Pride gives the parent a damage and an experience buff. A buffed parent is surrounded by a yellow cloud.
These are the things that will fill the Alloparental Pride Stack:
Adopted baby BONDS: 5 stacks
Adopted, bonded baby BECOMES ADULT: 5 stacks
Adopted, bonded baby HAS A LEVEL UP: 2 stacks
Adopted, bonded offspring KILLS SOMETHING : 1 stack
Adopted, bonded offspring DIES: 15 stacks
Once you reach 15 stacks on your Gigantoraptor parent, “Alloparental Pride” switches to “Alloparental Fury”. The yellow cloud turns into a red cloud similar to an alpha buff.
Alloparental Fury gives the parent a damage and an experience buff and 10% more movement speed.
Adopted Love / Adopted Rage
The bonded babies also receive a buff during this time. When the parent is below 15 stacks, the child will have the Adopted Love buff that provides 10% damage resistance. Once 15 is reached, it switches to Adopted Rage which will add 5% more damage to the damage resistance.
Incubating Eggs / Feeding Babies
When holding eggs in the saddle the Gigantoraptor will incubate them. When holding babies, it will feed them when food is in its own inventory. It is important to mention that the babies will ONLY be fed when a rider is in the saddle.
Imprinting Babies With the Gigantoraptor
While the Gigantoraptor does not imprint the babies by itself it makes it easier when riding it and having the babies in its saddle. When a baby wants an imprint, you simply press R (the reload button) and it will open up a radial menu with the imprints that need to be done. Make sure to have imprint food on the last slot of your hotbar.
When finishing the bonding event you will also get and additional free imprint.
Plucking Feathers From the Gigantoraptor
Once a day you can pluck a feather from every adult Gigantoraptor that will give you the feather item with two attached values. One is a stat icon, for example Melee Damage or Health and one is a percentage. When you put this feather into the inventory of a female before mating it, the percentage on the feather determines the chance of your offspring to get the better stat of the stat on the feather. The chance to get the better stat without a feather is 55%. A feather with 58% will give 3 additional percent to the standard probability. Higher level Gigantoraptors will give you higher percentage feather up to 75%.
Only one feather can be used per female and the feather is used up upon mating.
How To Craft the Gigantoraptor Saddle
The Gigantoraptor Saddle can be crafted in the Smithy once you have reached player level 69.
These are the resources needed to craft it:
- 160 x Fiber
- 285 x Hide
- 55 x Metal Ingot
- 120 x Wood
What Are the Color Regions Of the Gigantoraptor?
Which Stats Should I Level On the Gigantoraptor?
It really doesn’t matter too much. I would suggest life and melee for the ones you use for fighting. Stamina is also a good idea as the stamina gain is very poorly. For farmers melee and weight are good choices as the Gigantoraptor is fairly lightweight even with many levels.
What Does the Gigantoraptor Eat?
The Gigantoraptor is an Omnivore and will enjoy berries and meat alike. Vegetables and fish will both be enjoyed as well.
Additional Qualities Of the Gigantoraptor
Even when not used for the very in depth mechanics as a breeding helper, the Gigantoraptor is an excellent early game mount that can harvest berries, thatch and wood but also meat and hide. It combines several early game farmer animals while being less maintenance to acquire than a Therizino.
Frequently Asked Questions:
Why can’t my Gigantoraptor claim or put babies in the saddle?
The babies need to be either the same level as the Gigantoraptor or lower level. This means you need to tame high level animals and mutate them to make them useful with your breeders or boss animals.
Why Do I get “Imprinter Mismatch” on my Gigantoraptor?
Either the Gigantoraptor or the Baby are not imprinted onto you. This is required for you to do the bonding event with the baby.
I can’t tame the baby Gigantoraptor, it only sits there and does nothing!
The wild parent has no free access to the nest. Either because it fell down a cliff, or its fighting or it is somehow stuck. The baby will not proceed with the taming if any of this happened.
My babies starve in the Gigantoraptor saddle but the parent has enough food
The Gigantoraptor only feeds babies when you are sitting in the saddle. Otherwise it won’t. The reason for this is that its intended to prevent babies from starving when you go hunting with them. They are not meant to be a replacement for the Maewing.
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