The Rhyniognatha was released on June 2th for PC as a result of a creature vote that happened with the announcement of ARK Survival Ascended and the delay of ARK 2. It is now officially the last Dinosaur that will be added to ARK Survival Evolved and and takes that spot away from the Carcharodontosaurus that held this title until then.
On which maps do the Rhyniognatha spawn?
The Rhyniognatha spawn on only The Island and Lost Island. They are exclusively available in the Swamp areas of these maps. They are also very rare, so you may have to look for them for a little and free off the spawns from low level Rhynios to get an appropriate leveled one.
How do you tame the Rhyniognatha ?
The Taming of the Rhyniognatha is a special tame and not a knockout tame like many creatures on the ARK are. It is very similar to aquireing a Reaper, but with a twist, because it uses your tame as a host.
1. Have a “host” dinosaur you don’t need anymore and that has good stats
Rhyniognatha are not tameable but you can get offspring of them that then become your tamed animal. This is very similar to Reapers, where the baby incubates in a players body just to forcefully burst on when it’s ready. Here we take a tame instead.
Your tame needs to have a high drag weight and good stats. Tames with a dragweight below 300 don’t work, several other tames are also blacklisted to be used – for example water tames. The most efficient are tames with a drag weight of at least 900 as it represents the maximum boost modifier.
The highest drag weight animal that we could get impregnanted was a Spacewhale (Astrocetus) with a weight of 4000 but since they are not breedable and the fact that you will lose the animal, it’s not reasonable to use those.
The best choice of giving you good results and that are breedable are Gigas, Carchars and Megachelons. Brontos work as well as they have a drag weight of 1000, but I would assume since this is an endgame tame, people might have mutated Gigas over mutated Brontos. But all these options are valid. You will lose the creature in the end, so don’t take your favorite dino for this.
Get yourself Rhyniognatha Pheromone:
The Pheromone is needed to turn your host dino into an acceptable target for the Rhyniognatha. Without the Pheromone it will simply just attack the dino instead. To get the Pheromone, find a male Rhyniognatha and kill it. It will have one Pheromone in its inventory and one is enough to get one dino impregnated.
2. Preparing the female to lay the egg
Once you have your host dinosaur, it’s important to find a high level female Rhyniognatha to provide the egg. It’s important to get a high level one since the level decides how good the overall offspring will be in the end. As with Reapers, you can get several babies from one female if you keep it trapped and rendered. As always, a good trap for this is provided by YouTuber “Captain Fatdog”. But I also had success in just leaving the female flying and providing Pheromone to all of them.
- When you found a high level female Rhyniognatha, lure it to your host dino and set your dino to passive. You don’t want it to chomp on her.
- Injure the Rhyniognatha to below 100 health. You can net-trap it with a Harpoongun and net ammo, but it works with a good old shotgun as well.
- Feed the Pheromone to your dino – it has limited timer, so it’s better to do it right before.
3. Impregnation
The female will now attack your dino a few more times before it finally impregnates it and then flies away. If you have a trap, you can now feed the pheromone to the second dino and repeat the process. It’s important to keep an eye on her health tho, because once she heals up, you will need to injure her again.
4. Pregnancy
Your now pregnant dino needs a lot of care before the baby is born. You will now see two timers on your dino. The first one is the time you have until the baby is born and the second timer is the time until your dino will have pregnancy cravings.
- Your dino will have 5 cravings during the time that give 20% craving satisfaction each. You don’t have a lot of time to get the items that it needs so, have them prepared. Also IMPORTANT: You can’t reroll the cravings by cryoing the dino as it will reset the pregnancy and you will lose the rhynio baby.
- List of items the Dino wants to be fed during cravings: Absorbent Substrate, Achatina Paste, Ammonite Bile, Battle Tartare, Black Pearls, Golden Hesperonis Egg, Carcharodontosaurus Egg, Giganotosaurus Egg, Quetzal Egg, Element, Gasoline, Giant Bee Honey, Superior Kibble, Exceptional Kibble, Extraordinary Kibble, Calien Soup, Enduro Strew, Focal Chili, Fria Curry, Lazarus Chowder, Shadow Steak Saute, Sweet Veggie Cake, and Woolly Rhino Horn.
- Your dino will constantly loose food and health during the process. While you can force feed kibble too fill up the food, healing didn’t work in my experiments. Not even with a Daeodon.
- After the first timer on top is done, your dino will die and a baby Rhyniognatha will show up at 30% maturation progress to be claimed by you. You now care for it and feed and imprint it like you would with every other baby as well.
Careful: You can force the birth on the radial menu of your dinosaur. It will release your Rhynognathia baby within a few seconds. But because you’re lacking the craving care, the baby with always have lower stats than one that has been fully cared for.
Stats and Inheritance
Three factors play into the inheritance of good stats on your Rhyniognatha offspring:
- Drag Weight of the host dino affects the amount of levels the offspring can get from the host animal
- The amount of successful fulfilled cravings influences the amount of levels both “parents” can give to the offspring
- The level of the Rhynognathia female
The additions are multipliers. If you are interested in the calculation formular, this is how it’s calculated:
[Baby Stat] = [Host Stat] × (<Craving Satisfaction %> × 75% + 25%) × <Host Size Quality %> × <Egg Quality %> [Baby Stat] = [Mother Stat] × (<Craving Satisfaction %> × 75% + 25%)
- Host size quality = drag weight of the host dinosaur
- Egg quality = Level of your Rhyniognatha female
Color Inheritance
Colors are inherited by the host animal and the female Rhyniognatha alike. Unused color regions will simply become colorID 0 on the Rhyniognatha offspring.
Abilities of the Rhyniognatha
Range attacks
- The Rhyniognatha has 3 different range attacks that are utilizing resin. Resin is made by putting sap into the Rhyniognathas inventory.
- Bomb, Needle and Rocket Modes can be switched in between.
- Bomb: You shoot resin that explodes and leaves a resin spot on the ground that constantly slows enemies to the point they can’t move anymore.
- Needle: An assault rifle like rapid shoot mode.
- Rocket: More like a sniper shot. Slower than needle but does more damage. When holding right mouse button down, you can also switch to a homing rocket.
How to craft the Rhyniognatha saddle?
The Rhyniognatha saddle can be crafted in the Smithy once you have reached Player Level 96.
These are the resources needed to craft it:
- 30x Crystal
- 200 x Fiber
- 150 x Hide
- 150 x Metal Ingot/Scrap Metal
- 60 x Polymer
What’s important to know about breeding the Rhyniognatha?
The Rhinoagnatha is not breedable but you can raise and imprint one to yourself with the unique taming method that is simlar to the taming method of a reaper.
Only use Host-animals that you don’t want to lose because you WILL lose it. There is no trick that makes you keep the animal after the Rhynio is born because the game deletes the creature.
The netgun can be used on wild Rhyniognathas which makes it incredible easy to shoot them down without getting attacked.
Pheromone needed to get the wild Rhyniognatha to impregnate the host animal can only be aquired by killing a male Rhyniognatha. The level does not matter.
What’s special about the Rhyniognatha?
Rhyniognathas live in the swamps of The Island and Lost Island.
The Rhyniognatha can walk over water and even swim. It makes it one of the few flyers that won’t dismount you when touching the water surface.
What are the color regions of the Rhyniognatha?
Which stats should I level on the Rhyniognatha?
There are two stats that stick out as being very high on the Rhynio and that is Life and Melee Damage. Especially in PvP those two matter. If you use it as a carrier for farming or an utility tame, focus on Weight and Stamina.
What does the Rhyniognatha eat?
Unlike other insects in ARK the Rhyniognatha is a carnivore and eats raw and cooked meat but also Kibble just like any other carnivore in ARK.
What’s a Rhyniognatha good for?
The Rhyniognatha possesses an exceptional capacity to transport colossal beings, including T-Rexes, and specific structures, for example Vaults. Its similarity to the Exo-Mek in this regard provides an intriguing perspective on the creature’s role as a carrier.
The creature’s airborne capabilities make it an effective aerial combatant. By utilizing its tail projectile, it can engage adversaries from a heightened vantage point. Moreover, players can simultaneously employ weaponry while riding this creature, effectively transforming it into a formidable armed helicopter.
The Rhyniognathas ability to nullify the weight of Vault contents while being carried introduces an exceptional farming strategy. Specifically, this capability enables uninterrupted resource farming runs or the transportation of other weighty resources. Notably, the creature’s capacity to transport an Ankylosaurus within the Vault simplifies farming trips until its capacity is reached.
I can’t find Rhyniognathas in my game?
First you need to make sure that you are on the Island or on Lost Island. In both cases the Rhyniognatha will spawn in the swamp areas. They are very rare, so some searching will be needed in order to find one. In case there is really no way for you to find one, consider a wild dino wipe and give it 2-3 Ingame days for the map to repolulate the creatures.
To wipe the dinos, make sure you are an admin and type the following command into the console:
admincheat DestroyWildDinos
Video Taming Guide
This guide is in a more compact form in this video demonstrating how the taming is done.
(coming soon)