Taming is a core mechanic in Studio Wildcard’s Ark: Survival Evolved. The chance to tame and keep your own animals can certainly be an appealing point of interest. However, this aspect is not limited to one single method. This not only makes it extremely fun, but useful as well.
Taming creatures more than double your height can feel extremely intimidating. It takes a long time to find and tame your desired animal. However, that’s where starve taming comes into play. This method can increase your taming efficiency significantly. Here is how it works.
As the name suggests, starve taming is essentially a method that requires you to wait until a creature is hungry enough. Once this prerequisite is met, you can proceed with the feeding process.
Dinosaurs and other creatures are useful tools for gathering resources, attacking enemies, and defending against enemies. You also get to keep your dream Jurassic park with tons of scalability and customizability to boot.
Almost every creature on the island can be tamed. They also possess their own set of stats and features. This includes inventory storage, resource production, and much more!
What is Taming In Ark: Survival Evolved
As mentioned, taming is a method to turn hostile creatures into friendly ones. In order to tame a creature, you will have to feed certain consumables to it. The success rate is entirely dependent on the kind of food you feed them. We recommend kibble for most processes.
With that said, there is a multitude of taming techniques that can be performed in Ark. Some of the major ones are listed below:
- Knock-out Taming (KO)
- Non-Violent Taming (NV)
- Unique Taming
- Fish Basket Taming
- Temporary Taming
- Turret Taming
- Raise-only Taming
- Craft-only Taming
- Mega Mek Taming
- Titan Taming
- Eerie Taming
- Starve Taming
Your taming requirements will be solely dependent on the taming method. There are certain taming methods that are generally faster than the others but take more resources. Therefore, choose whatever meets your requirements.
What is Starve Taming?
In Knock-out Taming, you get to render the targeted creature unconscious. After that, simply open its inventory and feed it the appropriate food items. Starve taming is an advanced version of this method.
With starve taming, once the creature has been rendered unconscious, you need to wait for its hunger meter to lower down to a certain point before adding food or Narcotics to its inventory.
Is Starve Taming Faster in Ark: Survival Evolved?
Waiting for a creature to get hungry can add its own chunk of time to the taming process. Therefore, it would be better to look at it from a different perspective. Starve taming is convenient because of the extra time it gives you to seek food and materials needed for the taming process.
Unlike other taming methods, you don’t risk losing food by using starve taming. Furthermore, depending on the expiration timers, it can either be easier or harder.
Related: How to Stop Dinos from Spawning in Your Base in Ark
Benefits of Starve Taming
This technique is mostly used by players that want to minimize the risk of losing extra resources while taming a creature. This usually happens when the targeted creature is attacked in the middle of the taming process. Therefore, it is much easier to give it the exact amount of food needed for the taming process to complete.
Starve taming lets you decide the amount of food needed. Animals only eat food once they get hungry. Therefore, you are essentially speeding the process by making them eat everything in a single sitting. The taming process is shorter and there are lesser chances of the animal getting attacked.
Starve Taming: Tips & Tricks
Here are some tips to note to make starve taming more effective:
- Spoiled Meat can make the hunger bar fall faster. This can also be done with a stim, but it is much trickier to use.
- Starved dinos typically consume narcotics at a faster rate than normal.
- You can also continually knock a creature out in order to decrease its hunger bar faster. However, only do this if you do not care about the level bonus.
- Prime meat taming can be much more efficient using the starving method. Therefore, use this method for most carnivores.
- Starve taming does not directly impact taming effectiveness, but the food does.
- Use the Dododex calculator in order to keep a decent track of your animal’s starve times.
- Starve taming cannot be used with passive taming. Therefore, do not confuse it with non-violent forms of training.
Starve taming generally works better in scenarios where you want to protect the tame and the food. Simply, knock it out > check time > calculate the total tame time > come back after the duration > load the inventory with food and you are good to go!
How To Starve A Tame Manually
Dododex can get confusing at times and it can be hard to keep track of the timers. Therefore, it makes perfect sense to opt for another method. Here is how you can starve tame a creature manually:
- Simply do the math, set your timer for a minute, and observe hunger numbers.
- Your loss per minute will be dependent on the number of hunger points lost in the observed minute.
- Now, divide the remaining food bar by your loss per minute. This will give you the time taken for the entire bar to be empty.
- You may also calculate the time it would take for your creature to eat a certain consumable food.
It is also worth understanding that some creatures get more / less food per bite. The creature will die as soon as its hunger meter reaches zero. Therefore, make sure to prevent the hunger meter from dropping to extreme lows.
Ultimately, the taming methods are dependent on the type of creature you wish to tame. KO taming can work better for one animal while passive can be better for the other. However, if you do choose to starve taming, then make sure to follow the proper procedure in order to avoid losing food.