Breeding for mutations in ARK can be chore even for the ones that enjoy taking care of their virtual animals. In the past years we got more and more tames that would support us in our quest to breed super dinos. I want to show you a list of dinos that will help you achieve your goal easier —especially on official and unmodded servers. With this knowledge you are ahead of many players and can gain an advantage.
Dimetrodon – incubates
The Dimetrodon is not talked about enough especially not since its place is often taken by mods or now the incubator. A tamed Dimetrodon can influence the surrounding temperature to the point where it can help to incubate your eggs without air conditionings.
Dimetrodons are not super easy to tame, since they wake up very quickly once they are knocked out. On the other hand they are also simple knock out tames, that only require prime meat or kibble and nothing fancy to be tamed.
The important stat to be levelled or mutated is melee damage. The higher the level, the more efficient the temperature insulation. In case your Dimetrodon is not strong enough to incubate the egg you try to hatch, it is possible to use several Dimetrodons and stack their effect.
Procoptodon – imprints
The Procoptodon is a huge help in raising animals that grow slowly or starve quickly. The kangaroo can take baby animals into its pouch. If it also has a mate around for the “mate boost”, which you can tell by the heart above its name, then babies in the pouch eat less—only 75% of the original amount.
At the same time, if you imprint babies in the pouch, they get double the imprint. This takes a little stress out of having to be there on time for all imprints on official servers, because otherwise you don’t get to 100%, and then you can’t get the full imprint bonus. Walk imprints with slow running babies are also no problem in the kangaroo. Just whistle the baby in the pouch to follow and then bounce around with the Procoptodon.
Be aware of one glitch happening with the kangaroo, that when you leave render distance, the babies can visually appear somewhere else. Often at the coordinates 50/50. They won’t be there physically but you may not be able to see them any more.
Maewing – takes care of everything
The Maewing is probably your #1 tame that you want to have in your base when breeding in ARK, because a Maewing filled with your baby’s favourite food acts like a feeding trough for them. It doesn’t matter if it’s Wyvern milk, sulphur or Blood bags. Before the Maewing was introduced with Genesis 2, babies had to be hand fed up to 10% growth. That was especially annoying with dinos like the Giga who had to be handfed for almost 24h.
This could quickly become a full time job, especially if you had a lot of babies to raise. Maewings make this a lot easier. You just need level up Nursing Effectiveness and the radius in which the Maewings function as a baby trough becomes even larger and on top the food will be more efficient and fill up more food on the baby.
If you are on PvP you can do two more things with the Maewing. If you are close to an enemy base with the Maewing and have access to their babies, the Maewing can steal these babies. When you press C, the Maewing grabs the babies—up to four of them—and claims them as your property.
The Maewing can also transfer the imprint name within the tribe. To do this you have to unclaim the baby whose imprint you want to transfer and the person who should get the imprint claims the baby with the Maewing theft attack. The imprint name will then be transferred to the person. It is important that the animal is not yet fully grown, otherwise the Maewing cannot steal it.
Desmodus – imprints
The Desmodus has only been in the game for a short time but is already super helpful for breeders. When you have farmed 200 blood bags with Desmodus, you can make a liquid in his inventory called Sanguine Elixir. If you drink this while standing in front of a baby, then that baby will directly get 30% Imprint. The Desmodus can also help you get perfect tames. Especially on servers with fast rates you can get a max-tame of 225 with the Sanguine Elixir.
Parasaur – notices
This one helps you only indirectly with babies but when they hatch or are born, they show you where the babies are if the alarm function of the Parasaur has been activated.
Shadowmane – wakes up
The Shadowmane can also help you breed. Wondering how? This is more of a PvP topic, but since some here play PvP too, I’m sure you’ll find this interesting. If you uncryo dinos then you can not avoid that they lie on the ground with cryosickness. Especially if you collect babies in cryos to raise them all together.
Babies that are asleep will not eat from the Maewing or the trough, but only food from their inventory. To prevent them from starving you can make the Boost Scream with your Shadowmane. This is done with the male, and works as soon as the male has a mate boost. That means you need a female nearby when you do the Shadowmane scream. When buffed the torpor disappears much faster. By the way, this also works with adult animals.
Hyaenodon
This cute little puppy is a pain to tame and can’t be used as a mount afterwards but has another really nice ability. When wearing his little saddle pack “meat pack”, any food in its inventory is just as protected from spoilage than in a fridge.
When you don’t have access to Maewings and you have to hand feed babies, it’s always nice to have one of these puppies following you and carrying your baby food for you. On official servers we always had dedicated baby food puppies around in the hatching room.
As a breeder you should consider using some, if not all of these animals to simplify your breeder life. Breeding itself is already extensive enough that you should not do without the help of these creatures. My personal favourites are especially the Desmodus but also the Maewing. You see, even I, who is really equipped with all the luxuries of a modded server, use vanilla mechanics to advance my breeding.