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Here are the most important reasons and taming mechanics describing why everyone, including you, should be stealing babies in ARK: Survival Ascended.
ARK: Survival Ascended has introduced several new mechanics and improved features. One of those new additions to the prehistoric world of ark are wild baby dinosaurs, mammals, and birds. As you explore, you may encounter tiny Triceratops following their mothers in the grasslands. And if luck is on your side, you might discover nests filled with Argentavis chicks. While these additions to ARK: Survival Ascended are fantastic for immersion, the new taming mechanic related to baby creatures and the act of stealing them offers new gameplay and benefits you may not know about.
Why Everyone Should Be Stealing Babies in ARK: Survival Ascended
ARK: Survival Ascended introduced wild baby creatures, and it turns out to be one of the most enjoyable and valuable game mechanics. Stealing baby creatures offers a new alternative to traditional taming, allowing you to adopt a baby from its parents and raise it as your own, similar to breeding creatures. To do this, you must kill the baby creature’s parents.
Why Taming Babies is Beneficial in ARK: Survival Ascended
Here are the key benefits of taming babies in ARK:
- Early Access to High-Level Creatures.
- Eliminating the need to tranquilize creatures; instead, you kill the parent, which is often easier.
- Resource Efficiency – no need to craft tranquilizer darts or arrows.
- Safety – you can lead the babies to your base rather than taming creatures in dangerous areas.
- Imprinting Bonus – just like regular babies, you can care for them to enhance their stats.
However, there is one downside to this approach. When you steal a baby from its parents, imprint, and raise it, you won’t receive the extra levels (an additional 50% of total creature levels at max) that traditional taming provides for adult creatures. As a result, it may not be the best end-game strategy. Nonetheless, it’s an excellent choice for beginners. It offers a highly enjoyable experience and is the easiest method when creature levels aren’t a primary concern and don’t need them for breeding.
Because both methods have their pros and cons, you will eventually also use the regular taming method in ARK Survival Ascended. Traditional taming involves more preparation, such as crafting tranquilizer arrows or darts to immobilize dinosaurs. Next, you need to feed them their preferred food to tame them. Providing high-level food results in a level bonus to their statistics, typically yielding better values than baby imprinting. Therefore, traditional creature taming can be considered an end-game mechanic, primarily because of the breeding process and its mechanics.
Stealing Babies vs. Traditional Taming
When you breed tamed adults, their babies inherit various statistics, including health, melee damage, weight, and stamina, from their parents at random. Consequently, the higher the parents’ level, the higher the statistics their offspring can potentially have. However, while babies can inherit the level bonus from their parents, they cannot inherit the imprinting bonus.
Therefore, for breeding, you’ll want to use parents with the highest possible levels. On official servers, this often means aiming for parents with a base wild level of 150 plus the 74 levels from the taming bonus, resulting in a maximum level of 224. In summary, traditional taming remains valuable due to its role in the breeding process. Breeded babies from your tamed creatures can also receive imprinting bonuses to increase their stat values further and make them even more powerful. So, at the end game, you want to stack both: regular taming level bonus and breed parents to create offspring and receive the imprinting bonus for proper care.
Stealing babies is a fantastic alternative to traditional taming. It takes less effort, and if you are lucky, you can get decent tamed creatures quickly with good statistics. Also, it’s available early in the game. While it’s not the best end-game strategy, it still proves valuable and enough in most cases. As a result, everyone, including you, should be stealing babies in ARK Survival Ascended!
How to Steal Babies, Raise, and Tame Them in ARK Survival Ascended?
How to Steal Babies? To steal babies, first, kill a parent with a white heart icon above their species name. Once the parent is out of the picture, approach the baby with a baby pacifier icon and press the action button to imprint it.
This action allows you to name your new baby creature, and it will start following you, much like it followed its parents. It may seem drastic, but that’s the process. Sometimes, you may encounter a group of animals, like three stegosauruses with two juveniles or babies. If you want to successfully steal, raise, and tame the young ones, you will need to eliminate all adults, as they will all aggressively react, not just the parents.
Caring for Baby Creatures
Raising baby creatures is similar to caring for any other offspring in the game. You’ll need to ensure they receive proper nutrition. Keep them out of harm’s way and keep them safe from potential predators. The advantage of this method is that it’s easier than traditional taming. You can transport the youngsters to your base and ensure their safety there until adulthood.
As the baby continues to grow and consume food, similar to the regular breeding process in Ark Survival, you can “care” for them at specific time intervals. This will increase their imprinting percentage. The imprinting bonus boosts all creature statistics but depends on the percentage number and your server settings. That includes health, stamina, and melee damage.
To “care” for a baby, check the baby tooltip window and wait until the timer next to “wants care in:” expires. It will then indicate the action required to receive an imprinting bonus. These tasks can range from offering special food to cuddling or going for a walk with the baby. The difficulty can vary, and it may be an easy task, challenging, or even impossible if you have low-level characters and limited resources.
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