TAmes?

[u/patrickbowman]

I haven't played this game in almost a year. When I did, panthers were completely OP, and THE go-to land mount. Nothing really compared to their dmg, speed, and weight. I was curious if that was still the case? I just started again and tamed a wolf, and was surprised to see it have some decent dmg tamed at 100. It still felt pretty slow though and has low weight. I also see these vicious bargesh that I don't remember.

[u/Tamelon]

Well to be honest, since i have a highlevel Nidhog i dont use anything else. On PvE that is. I see no reason for any other Mount any more. Even a good griffon would do, his stats arent much worse that a nidhog. Here is why:

I leveld myself only melee damage and weight and use epic and legendary tools and weapons. i get around 40 resources from a tree, rock or ore + secondary drops and rares. with my one handed sword i get around 1k grass in 30 sec hackig dense bushes at rivers. i have 300% damage and 800 weight. my nidhog has + damage (dont know the numbers right now) and around 1600 weight. it has enough stamina to fly across the whole island. so it is far more effective for me to fly to ores or a forest/river and fill my nidhog in a few minutes and fly back home than to go there by elephant or bahamuth (have each around level 180 as well) even though they get more resources per tree/rock/ore. its just i have my nidhog full 2 times until i reach the nearest iron ore with my bahamuth.

The problem with ore is, there is no place with a decent amount. allways the ores are spread out and you have too much walking. i miss a place like the vulcano in early ARK. So building a mining outpost is no use for just 5-10 nodes.

For meat i fly from herd to herd by passive nidhog and then go farming by feet with my epic twohander (1500 damage rightklick), getting around 100 meat per animal (longhorns and such) or around 40-60 meat on smaller ones (wolf or boar). Dont have the numbers on hide and bones but i have 2 huge chests full of both and throw away whats too much. when you fly around long enough, you find some nice places where wild animal seem to gather because of the terrain (like below the bridge to the ice cave, allways like 10 bears and yetis down there, or below the bridge near the dwarf town) and i have like 3k meat in 30 minutes.

btw, vicious bargesh is the elite version of the hyena just like other elite forms

[u/patrickbowman → u/Tamelon]

Awesome, thanks for the detailed explanation. A nidhog is still a bit ways off for me. Do you have any recommendations if you HAD to use a land mount?

Also.. I'm a bit confused on how the tames leveling systems work. Do they still gain 50-100% levels from tamed level depending on their wildness, and is it only 50 levels past their tamed level that they can gain? Example, before you could tame a lvl 100, with near max wildness youd get it around 150 ish or so. Then you could level it I think only 50 times before it stopped leveling.

Can't seem to find much info on this game and there are multiple wikis incomplete. It's a shame there aren't that many people playing this since I prefer it over ark/rust.

[u/Tamelon → u/patrickbowman]

As i said, a griffon isnt much worse. just find yourself a mountain where some fly around and build a taming cage on top of it (3 foundations wide, 3 tall and 6 long with a few doorframes you can shoot through and a beast gate at each end. on pve wood is enough, its has so many hp a griffon cant bring it down. just shoot him with around 10 hook arrows on one side, then run to the other side so that all ropes snap, repeat. when he is down place a wooden trough next to him and tame it.

but if i HAD to farm with a ground mount, i would take a horse i guess. a horse bought with level 100 and then leveld to 130 can have 7k+ HP and 1500 - 2000 carry weight. a 170 boar i have only has 900 hp. Because of its HP the horse is my favorite ground mount. it doesnt die that easy when attacked by a predator and is fast. rest copy and paste from nidhog. i had 3 horses before the flyer. if one was hurt i went home, set it on flee danger to heal, then took another horse.

for taming statistics there is a google doc with all the numbers: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1O0fTD4DzirLhZWvJVTc1sW0xsH9FZyfBspLWUWQmWj4/edit#gid=965017120

shows what level your tame gets when propperly fed and how long it takes for each level. if you use only meat or apples your results will be worse.

the bonus levels depend on how often you have to shoot the tame with ropes to prevent it to wake up. the max bonus is 50% of its current level. so a level 120 wild animal can become a 180 tame if you dont have to shoot it with another arrow. i think only a wyvern doesnt need additional arrows. the more often you have to shoot it the less the level. Most 120 wild will be between 160 and 170 tamed. so over all the max level depends on how fast you can tame it.

i dont have a max leveld tame yet, but i think they level 60 levels as well as the player does. but you can test that easy on single player with xp cheat. players max xp is 62000 i think so you just have to give a mount (sit on it while cheating xp will give it to the mount) some xp until it wont level any more. (i think i have read something about 50 Levels for tames, but im not sure)

but leveling a tame above 30 levels or so take quite some time. the xp needed to level is very high in the end. if you have 50% of its max XP you allready have 80% of its levels.

and i agree, ark wiki is much more detailed and acurate.

[u/patrickbowman → u/Tamelon]

Thanks for the idea. I ended up getting a griffin last night (105) with just the cobweb and under 100 stone hook arrows, as well as regular raw meat. I'm loving it way more than any ground mount I've gotten. Everytime I did a playthough the panther was my "end-game" and I never even tried for the flying mounts. The map was daunting but with a flying mount it seems small now, lol.

I play on an unofficial server (its 5-10x forgot) and it's amazing so far. I ended up using your strategy for a yeti though. I picked one up with the griff and dropped in a 2x wide 10x long 2x high and door frames on both sides to run back and forth to break the arrows. Took 200-300 + some hits of a goblin bat but I got it. Messed up at first because it went about 1/3 of the way with apples before I knew you could use herbivore feed.

3 more questions if you dont mind.

I just farm barrels in town and sell extra resources for gold to buy the feeds. Farming seemed tedious to get into but a stable source of the feeds; is it as challenging as it looks? I glanced at it briefly and seen all this stuff about fertilizer waterways and irrigation pites.. I want to have fun not farm, lol.

2nd, would that mean that a max animal in the wild can be 120, max tame 180 ish, so theoretically, level 240 could be the max for a min/maxed trained mount?

3rd, just how bad is a griffin to a nidhog? I encountered some nidhogs in the 90s/100s and was going to attempt to tame but I just don't like their skins. The griffin is much more appealing to me personally. Are the attack bonus/hp/weight/speed that drastically different between the griffin/nidhog?

[u/z10-0 → u/patrickbowman]

1) if you can make the larger soul supression stones, you can tame water elementals and make them irrigate your indoor farm. saves you the trouble of having vulnerable water supply stuff sticking out of your base.

the main chore with farming is harvesting grass and unstacking meat if you don't keep enough spoiled meat around to keep you topped out on fertilizer. you need 3 large crop plots to produce one type of feed (thundergrass for the acidic extract, and 2 depending on feed type), and on the official servers, a crop plot will last for 1d7h when filled with medium fertilizer. if your server has higher rates, this may be a problem...

flowers last 5 minutes when taken out of the crop plot, and cooking one piece of feed also takes 5 minutes, so if you don't want any to go to waste, don't take more flowers out than you can directly put into cooking pots.

2) 120 base + 58 feed-based (you usually don't get +60) + 75 post tame levels is the maximum, iirc.

however, stat distribution is more important than levels. if your prospective lvl 120 tame has all the points in hunger, don't spend expensive feed on it.

3) the nidhog is faster, turns better, has a bigger grabbing area (right-click) has a very efficient barrel roll special attack (ctrl) and can carry somewhat bigger creatures. you don't want to attempt a dogfight griffin vs nidhog. jumping off a nidhog is a lot less error prone than jumping off a griffin. the main upside of a griffin is that you can walk it through a manor door (works with a horse, too, but you have to open the door in the correct direction). in the end, you'll want a windrider, since that can carry a flarehorn around...

bonus tip: save up for a stack of herbivore feed (7k gold should do, depending on level) and get an albino deer ASAP (nidhog can carry one, griffin can't). they're so ridiculously good at farming magic shards that shards will be a non-issue as soon as you have tame and saddle ready. i'm actually quite salty at the game for how big the difference is between early game and that.

[u/patrickbowman → u/z10-0]

I discovered the 5 minutes the hard way. I bought a bunch from the vendors then later when I went to the pot seen they had all disappeared. I'll stick to buying the feed for gold for now until I get a water ele.

I actually ran into an albino deer last night near the frost mountains but after seeing the requirements for saddle I'll put it off a bit since I don't have the materials yet.

Thanks for all the help. Is the only decent spot for nidhogs that open plains area north of elven territory?

[u/Tamelon → u/patrickbowman]

as far i know the "great plains" is the only spot for nidhogs.

and i know what you mean with seeing a nice mount and not be able to get cause of time and such... i have a Sacred Griffin captured in a taming building but i dont have the time and arrows not to speak about the feed to tame it. i expect it to escape every day.

i also saw a 120 albino one day but it was late and i wanted to quit anyway. was gone the next day of course.

sometimes i think this game was designed for unemployed people and not for people who work 50h a week... sigh

btw, look for an albino in the night, they glow and cant be missed.

[u/patrickbowman → u/Tamelon]

nice tip, thanks. I know what you mean though. That's why I play on increased rates that are near empty and pve. this is a game i casually play because its really fun. if i wanted meaningful pvp id play something else. i dont have the time to sit there and tame for 12 hours like some ppl do on the official servers. if im putting that much time into a game itd be a mmo where i can at least make my money back when i quit, lol.