Ark is a survival game, and just like any other survival game, you start with absolutely nothing but underwear and an implant in your arm. You have to learn to live and survive among the freely roaming dinosaurs on the island.
Now it is a long way from here till you make progress in the game. Picking the right kind of dinosaurs for your future endeavors is quite essential for your progress. It is all about smart choices that lead to a smoother flow of the game for you.
Dinosaurs not only help in harvesting and gathering materials, but they are quite essential for PVP combat. You must select a dinosaur with the perfect balance between its ability to help you gather resources as well as help you in combat. You will be faced with a bunch of combat scenarios in Ark. Each of these scenarios is best dealt with a certain dinosaur or more than one dinosaur (combination of dinosaurs).
Let us see some of the common scenarios that you may be faced with on the island and the dinosaur that will help you in overcoming those scenarios and emerging victorious:
Guerilla Warfare
When you start the game, you will not have a lot of weapons or dinosaurs. You will need to use guerilla tactics in order to win early game combat scenarios. At this stage in the game, your best option would be the good old raptor. They are perfect for when trying to pull off the hit-and-run attacks at smaller levels.
Raptors are one of the fastest creatures that can be tamed on the land of Ark. It has the cheapest saddle as it does not require a lot to make, and you can access it pretty early in the game. Make sure that you put a good number of points on the melee attack. By focusing your points on melee attacks, your time to stay in combat will be greatly reduced.
Raptors are not only fast to be trained on the game, but they are also very fast in regards to speed. This proves to be very helpful when the tide starts to turn against you, and you start losing in combat. The quick speed of the Raptor dinosaur will help you escape to safety, where you can take your time to heal with some kind of force-fed meat and then head right back to the fight.
Rex’s and Other Large Animals
As you progress in the game, you will be faced with bigger dinosaurs. When you come in face to face with bigger dinosaurs, you can proceed with the situation in one of the two ways to counter them.
The first one being, you go big too. Using your heavy hitters and throwing them against the enemy dinosaur’s heavy hitters in battle will look like a scene out of the Godzilla movie. The second one being, you take out the weaker humans controlling the bigger dinosaurs.
When faced with a Rex, the land is the last place you want to be, especially without one of your own dinosaurs. To prepare for a scenario with Rex, you need to find your nearest air-borne animal and start taming it. Your best choices for air-borne animals would be ‘Argentavis’ and Pterodons’. These animals are able to grab dinosaur riders directly from their saddles and fly away with them.
When you are faced with the army of Rex riders, and they are getting in close, the best way to engage them is by swooping in from above and get close enough to snatch them from their saddles. You can carry these riders in the talons of your birds and fly to a good height and then drop them to their death.
Be careful that you do not carry the riders for too long as they do have weapons on them, and they might be able to harm your birds even when they are being carried away by your birds.
Small Dinosaur Packs
The quantity of dinosaurs is also a big factor in the game. Sometimes it’s the numbers that count rather than the size of the dinosaurs. Even the weakest of dinosaurs in large packs can become lethal for larger beasts. Dilo is an example of such a dinosaur.
When faced with such a scenario where there is a swarm of smaller beasts, it is suggested that you go with a beast that has a large attack area. One of the best large attack area dinosaurs would be the ‘Trike’. The Trike has a large frontal attack cone which is basically the basic attack of the dinosaur that hits a large area in the frontal vicinity of it. It is very effective and perfect for dealing with weak dinosaurs in swarms or packs.
Although dinosaurs like the Trike or Mammoth have good large area attacks, they can easily be flanked and are generally slow. It could become a very unpleasant combat situation when faced with faster dinosaurs. It is suggested that you charge head-on at the enemy dinosaur before they get a chance to maneuver you.
Survivors with Rifles
Some players can have armed rifles on them that can do a lot of damage. You can approach them and take them on in many different ways. One of these ways could be you running at them with large dinosaurs like the T-Rex that can absorb countless bullets and act as a shield for you and protect you from bullets as well.
You can also choose to go with faster dinosaurs like a ‘Raptor’ or a ‘Sabre tooth’. These dinosaurs are not able to protect you from getting shot physically, but they are quite fast and can carry you away to safety. It is a lot harder to shoot at a moving target, let alone a player on a fast-running dinosaur. Make sure that the melee damage is great for fast dinosaurs so as to avoid coming face to face with a rifle longer than it needs to be.
Best Ark Dinosaurs for you to Start Taming
There are so many dinosaurs in the Ark that can be tamed. It can be confusing or difficult to know which dinosaur to invest in, which dinosaur is worth spending your time and resources on. Should you play it safe with a ‘Carno’? or go bold with a ‘T-Rex’? Keep an ‘Argentavis’ or level a ‘Pteranodon’? These Jurassic Park-related questions have never been asked before Ark.
To see which dinosaur is the one for you, let us look at a few dinosaurs that have been considered for their utility, base stats, and the difficulty of taming the dinosaur overall:
10. Doedicurus
Doedicurus is also known as doed. The first dinosaur under discussion is an armadillo look-alike mammal. It is typically found near the Red Peak, Grand hills areas of the island, and Frozen tooth. It is a useful dinosaur for harvesting resources like obsidian and stone. It is also a very useful dinosaur for transportation facilities as its rolling ability enables it to travel distances faster.
Doedicurus is also a good PVP dinosaur for combat. It has a very hard shell which makes it super hard to kill this dinosaur. One of the dinosaur’s defense mechanisms is that when its health drops below one-third, then the dinosaur will crawl up into a ball and simply take less damage from the attackers.
If you want to be able to take out a Doedicurus then keep some tranquilizer darts with you and aim directly for its head. For taming this dinosaur, it is suggested that you keep dilophosaurus kibble as food as it will reduce the taming time by a lot when given to a doedicurus.
9. Therizinosaurus
This is the most dangerous animal you will encounter during the early parts of the game. It is commonly found around the island’s beaches. Pretty much anyone who has played the Ark: Survival Evolved is familiar with this one. It is a very useful creature, and the potential of its usefulness is fully realized when you are able to tame it completely.
Some of the things you can do with this creature after it has been tamed are collect berries, wood, thatch, meat in abundance, and hide. It has claws that hit multiple times as well per attack. Its attack makes it a super mount and is great for taking into combat with you.
If you come across this creature and wish to tame it, keep a bunch of tranquillizers and narcotics. Distance is key to taming this one and make sure you keep enough Megalosaurus kibble or vegetables to feed it.
8. Argentavis
Argentavis is another one of the best choices you can make if you want to safely get around the map. Although Pteranodons are similar to Argentavis, these have higher stamina and health. It also has a fair damage output which is more than enough to make up for the lack of speed.
They are very handy with the fact that they are able to carry around smaller animals. This way, you are able to move around unconscious creatures to a safer spot to tame them for later. Basically, they make your journey around the map way easier. It is highly suggested that the taming food you use is stegosaurus or raw mutton.
You can also knock out this creature by blows to the head with projectiles or by setting up a bear or chain bola traps. This creature is quite commonly found around Far’s Peak that is near the northeast side of the map.
7. Quetzal
Just like the Argentavis, Quetzal is a flying mount and definitely worth taming. You can get a platform saddle and transform this creature into a flying base. Filling the base up with turrets and stacking up resources to take with you.
With this creature, you can also transport farming animals across the map, like the ankylosaurus and doedicurus. The Argentavis cannot do this, and this is why the Quetzal is perfect for taking with you when you are planning on mining. You can put forges on its back and make your own little portable smeltery.
The catch with this perfectly useful creature is that it is super hard to tame. It is constantly in the air, and for that, you will also require a flying mount to keep up with it wherever it goes and then shoots at it from the ground. You can also shoot tranquilizers and use a tapejara from the passenger seat. Make sure to keep T-Rex kibble or raw mutton to feed it.
6. T-Rex
T-Rex is one of the greatest and dominant creatures on Ark Island. There are many other large predatory creatures on the island, but T-Rex is simply the best. The T-Rex has health and stamina in tremendous amounts when you compare it with other predators. The T-Rex can also be taken to boss arenas.
If you want to tame a T-Rex, the best possible way for you to do so is by building a platform to shoot tranquilizer darts from or if you can find a ridge that would work too. Stay out of reach as much as possible and when you knock it down to the ground, feed it pulmonoscorpius kibble or raw mutton.
5. Mammoth
The Mammoth is no doubt the best creature on the game for collecting wood. It is commonly found in the snowy northern areas of the island and has many other dangerous creatures surrounding it, which can make the taming process for the Mammoth a bit harder.
It is still, however, worth taking the risk. The Mammoth is not only good for its harvesting skills but its ability to take damage in higher amounts. It is a perfect tank and is significantly fast as well as portable than the brontosaurus and diplodocus.
You will need tranquilizer darts and vegetable or raptor kibble to tame the Mammoth.
4. Ankylosaurus
Ankylosaurus is another one of the important creatures in the game. It is a spiky dinosaur and has a club for a tail. It is perfect for gathering metal, flint, and crystals in large amounts, which makes this creature very important for mining. It is also very easy to tame because of its pace being a bit sluggish.
You will need to knock out this creature using slingshots, tranquilizer arrows, or tranquilizer darts and keep dilophosaur kibble for food. Once you tame this creature, collecting ore will be far from a chore.
3. Carnotaurus
It is a predatory creature. The Carnotaurus is quite fast and deals comparatively more damage than the raptor. It also helps in collecting high amounts of prime meat. This creature can easily be used to gather food for yourself and your tamed creatures. They are seen commonly on the Dead Island. They can also be found near the northeast shores and the Redwood Forest.
To tame the Carnotaurus, you can knock it out quite easily with the help of tranquilizer arrows. Keep ankylosaurus kibble with you. Make sure that you are in a safe spot, as they can be a handful in the wild if you are not careful.
2. Ichthyosaurus
Ichthyosaurus is quite a remarkable creature on Ark. Even though a lot of players on the game like to go for the megalodon instead due to the ichthyosaurus being more formidable in the water, but it is still quite better because of its remarkable speed.
It is quite fast in the water, which makes it easy for it to escape any drastic situation that you can face in the ocean with underwater predators. It is so fast that it can take you to the bottom of the ocean and back to the shore in a matter of seconds. It can prove to become an amazing resource for pearl farming.
The taming process for the ichthyosaurus is quite simple too. You need to place some dodo kibble in the lost slot on your hot bar and start feeding the creature, and it will be tamed in no time.
1. Beelzebufo
Beelzebufo is a large amphibian and is native to the swamp biome. This is a very useful creature for taming mount as it has the ability to torpor prey. It can also act as a means of transport because it can hop quite hell.
It is no doubt one of the best creatures on the Ark for framing in large quantities of cementing paste and chitin that is important to upgrade your base to metal. It is very useful to have around.
To tame this creature, you will need to keep your distance. You need to find a rock to get some height and then pummel it with tranquilizer arrows until it is knocked out. Keep pulmonoscorpious kibble or raw mutton to feed it afterward.
Conclusion
And here you go, the best PVP dinosaurs in the Ark: Evolved listed and defined with their abilities in the game to help you get around. This detail should be enough to ensure that you not only survive but emerge victorious in almost all of your battles.