ARK: Breeding Guide

Pointers and information for the players who want to breed on our Cluster.

Our Clusters are set up for Breeders to enjoy the experience of Breeding "That Ultimate Dino" that you've ever wanted. To help this along we have added this page and some pointers and links to videos to help the newly inspired breeder, or the 'Old Hand' breeders to get their "Dino Groove" on.

Creature Levels in both ASE and ASA:

Creature Levels:

Dinos/Creatures spawn with a level of 5 to 210 in our arks. The following dino/creatures are an exception: (Other levels apply like every other dino based on difficulty setting however.)

Wyvern, Rock Drake, and VoidWyrm - 5 to 266
Specific event creatures like GachaClaus - 50 to 900
All Corrupted Creatures - 1 to 500+ (If spawned from Orbital Supply Drop or Element Node, depending on difficulty.)
All Tek Creatures - 20% higher level (7 to 253)
All Titans - 1500 to 2350
Jerboa, Leedsichthys, and Alpha Leedsichthys - 1 (ignores difficulty setting)

The max dino level (without breeding) after taming and leveling is 372 on our servers. (i.e. 210 wild level + 74 level taming bonus + 88 domesticated level ups). There are a few exceptions to this rule:

Tek creatures - As stated above, they can naturally spawn up to 253 with a maximum taming efficiency of +89 levels and up to 88 levels after taming, making their max possible level 430 outside of breeding.
Reaper Kings - Queens spawn at a maximum level of 210, but their offspring can receive up to 75 additional levels during pregnancy and another 88 once matured, making their max level 372.
Enforcers and Scouts - Spawn naturally up to level 210 and can receive an additional 88 levels after being assembled, making their max level 298.
Deinonychus Egg - naturally spawn up to 210 and can receive an additional 88 levels after maturation, making their max level 298 outside of breeding.
Crystal Wyvern Egg, Wyvern Egg, and Rock Drake Egg- can spawn naturally up to 266 and can receive an additional 88 levels after maturation, making their max level 354.
Magmasaur Egg - naturally spawn up to 210 and can receive an additional 88 levels after maturation, making their max level 298 outside of breeding.

Breeding Level Caps: On our servers, Creatures have NO hard-capped limit on breeding. Levels of 1750 to 1800 is possible (maxing all stats at 254 x 7 +1 =Maxed out dino of 1750) .

PLEASE NOTE: Once you have reached a Dino with 255 in each stat value. You realistically cannot add any more domestication level points into that specific stat. If done, the stat will revert to a LEVEL ONE DINO value in that stat. And you will lose all the value of months of breeding.

Tamable creatures introduced in the Genesis DLCs,

R-Creatures and

X-Creatures, and Lost Island's

Dinopithecus are the only exception, they can go over the 1750 up to 1800.

ASA Unique Items:

Gigantoraptor Feathers.

Feathers for Breeding: Once per 24-hour cooldown (Or every 4 hours on Host-Local/Singleplayer), you can pluck a Gigantoraptor Feather from the Gigantoraptor that improves the chance of babies being born with the higher parental stat; the feather will tell you which stat and what percent chance. To use the feather, place the feather in the inventory of the female and male dino you are breeding. The feathers will be consumed after the female lays a fertilized egg or begins gestating.

Traits 🆕 (Added in the Bob's Tall Tales - Aberration

The Traits are a new mechanic that came out along with Aberration on ARK: Survival Ascended.

General

Traits are additional passives that affect on certain ways the creatures that posses them. Every time a creature appears or hatches from a WILD fertilized egg it will have a random trait and level of this one. This information can be known by looking at the creatures with the Gene Scanner and holding H key, this menu will bring more information about the traits that the creature has.

Usage

Traits can be extracted from tamed creatures by hitting them with the Gene Scanner, then the traits can be stored on a Gene Storage or on the same Gene Scanner that was used for the extraction, but it can only store up to 10 at the same time.

If the creature is an adult, it will be unable to receive any traits, including ones extracted from that creature. However, any creature that has not reached full maturity is able to freely transfer traits. Each creature can have up to 5 traits at the same time.

List of Currently Known Traits.

Durability Traits

Tenacious: Damage taken by this creature is reduced by 0-2.5% as Health goes down to 50-25%, reaching maximum damage reduction value at 25% and below. Stackable 2 times.
Numb: 25% of the damage this creature takes is dealt over a 5-second damage-over-time (DoT) effect. The DoT cannot be reduced by other means of damage reduction.
Athletic: This creature gains 0.05 health regen and 0.0005 stamina regen for each point in the Oxygen stat. Stackable 3 times.
Fatty: The creature gains 0.1 armor per point invested in the Food stat. Stackable 3 times.
Vampiric: This creature gains life steal based on 5% of all damage it deals. Smaller creatures can gain twice the amount of life steal.

Defensive Traits

Warm: The dino and its rider gain 40 Hypothermic Insulation as well as 5% damage reduction from Cold-based attacks. Stackable 3 times.
Cold: This critter and its rider gain 40 Hyperthermic Insulation as well as 5% damage reduction from Heat-based attacks. Stackable 3 times.
Distracting: Non-allied targets that take damage from this Creature's melee attacks deal 5% less damage to all other targets for 20 seconds.
Protective: This Creature's rider gets a 15% damage reduction. The effect lingers for 10 seconds after dismounting. Stackable 2 times.

Mobility Traits

Nocturnal: This dino has 2.5% reduced stamina consumption at night. Stackable 3 times.
Diurnal: This creature has 2.5% reduced stamina consumption at night. Stackable 3 times.
Carefree: The creature gains a 7.5% movement speed bonus, which is temporarily lost for 20 seconds after receiving/dealing damage and/or gaining a new rider.
Aggressive: Dealing damage to a non-allied target grants a 2.5% movement speed bonus. Refreshes on every melee hit. Stackable 2 times.
High Endurance: Stamina consumption from Sprinting is reduced by 4% while riding this creature.
Aquatic: The creature swims 7.5% faster. Stamina drain from swimming is reduced by 4%, and Oxygen drain while submerged is reduced by 12.5%.
Cowardly: If this creature receives damage from a non-allied target, it gains 2.5% extra movement speed. Buff refreshes on receiving additional damage. Stackable 3 times.

Economic Traits

Fast Learner: The dino gains 15% extra experience. Stackable 3 times and can be replaced on mature dinos.
Frenetic: The torpor drain rate is increased by 7.5%. Stackable 3 times.
Slow Metabolism: The creature has a 5% reduced Food resource drain. Stackable 3 times and can be replaced on mature dinos.

Melee Traits

Heavy-Hitting: The creature's basic attacks are 5% slower and deal 2.5% more melee damage. Stackable 3 times.
Quick-Hitting: The dino's basic attacks are 5% faster and deal 2.5% less melee damage. Stackable 3 times.
Excitable: When the creature lands basic attacks successfully, it reduces the cooldown of all other abilities by 0.25 seconds.
Angry: Damage dealt by this creature is increased by 0-2.5% as Health goes down to 50-25%, reaching maximum damage reduction value at 25% and below. Stackable 2 times.
Giantslaying: The creature deals 7.5% more damage to non-allied creatures with a drag weight of 500 or above, but deals 2.5% less damage to non-allied creatures with a drag weight of 200 or below. Stackable 2 times.
Kingslaying: This critter deals 5% more damage to Alphas and bosses, but 10% less damage to all other targets. Stackable 3 times.

Carriage Traits

The following traits reduce the weight of specific resources by 15% while they're in the dino inventory. All of these are stackable 3 times.

Desert-Bearing: Silk, Raw Salt, Sand, Cactus Sap, Sulfur
Carcass-Bearing: Chitin, Hide, Keratin, Organic Polymer, Pelt, Wood
Meat-Bearing: Raw Meat, Raw Mutton, Raw Fish Meat, Raw Prime Meat, Raw Prime Fish Meat
Plant-Bearing: Thatch, Wood, Fibers, Berries, Crops, Seeds
Mineral-Bearing: Flint, Stone, Crystal, Obsidian, Metal Ore
Cave-Bearing: Blue Gem, Red Gem, Green Gem, Congealed Gas Ball, Elemental Ore
Exotic-Bearing: Angler Gel, Black Pearls, Element, Leech Blood, Oil, Silica Pearls

For now, these are all the traits added to ARK Survival Ascended. We'll update this article if more are introduced in a future update.

Breeding Mechanics

Specialized Parents

To maximize the stats of the offspring, specialized parents with a good value in few stats are needed. The more specialized a creature is in one stat, the higher it can be. To get a really good breed you need 6 creatures, each with a high upleveled (only the wild-leveling counts here) different stat. After at least 3 generations a creature with the best of the stats can be bred.

Dinos with a 55 to 80 in a stat are possible to capture on our ARKs. Mostly trap those in the 189 to 210 for exceptional base stats.

ASA - To make this process faster the player can use Gigantoraptor Feathers from a tamed Gigantoraptor specialized on every stat that the player needs from a breeding line to do this step quicker.

Every generated feather will randomly have a percent above 55% and a specialize into a specific stat between Health; Stamina; Oxygen; Food; Weight; Melee Damage

To use one put it inside a female inventory and it will automatically be consumed after the mating process ends, the baby will have a higher chance of inherit the higher stat levels of that stat.

The stat-values (not the stat-levels) of the offspring are calculated (RNG) like for a creature that was just tamed with a 100% taming effectiveness with the taming effectiveness bonuses applied.

Baby's Stats:

The stat-values (not the stat-levels) of the offspring are calculated (RNG) like for a creature that was just tamed with a 100% taming effectiveness with the taming effectiveness bonuses applied. For example a hatchling with 56, 48, 50,48,52,46,42 would be a level 343 (56 + 48 + 50 + 48 + 52 + 46 + 42 + 1[this represents the offspring's own base level] = 343.

The resulting level of the baby is the sum of (base stats) of each of its parents. So a breeding pair of Adults both lv 210 with matching stats of 56, 48, 50,48,52,46,42. The offspring would be born with a level of 210 up to 600 if a perfect doubling of all stats happened.

For this process it’s not important that after some time your male will have more then 20/20 mutations. As long as your female has 0/20 on the matrilineal side you can always get a mutation. The female dino provides a possible mutation and the male dino better stats.

Remember if both creatures have 20+/20 mutation in their respective side (male on patrilineal and female on matrilineal side) you can’t get a new mutation. This is when you move to the Unlimited Mutations Method described below.

Mutation Colors

When a mutation occurs, two things always happen; a stat is selected at random and 2 wild levels are added to the "chosen" parent's current stat level and the mutation counter is increased by 1 (over the originally calculated sum), and a color region is randomly selected to apply a random color to.

This region could have been any of the 6 used in Ark, even if that species doesn't make use of that region (it's not visible). Once a region has been chosen, a color within the current size of the color definitions array is chosen, completely at random.

The random color has an equal chance of being a "vibrant" color as it does any other color. The code selects an index that corresponds to the colors listed in the definitions array. You can very easily end up with a color that your creature could have spawned with naturally or even the same color it had originally, it's all up to RNG.

The Above Section on "Breeding" is from the ark.wiki.gg site and edited to fit our server clusters Base stats.

Unlimited Mutations Method

So, what if we've got a super breeding line at its cap of 20 mutations?

So, what if we've got a super breeding line at its cap of 20 mutations? Well, simply inbreed them 28 generations, overflow the counter, and since a negative number is always less than 20 they can start to get mutations again.

How this is done!

The mutations counter is a 32 bit signed integer. If your pet has 1 mutation, in binary he has 00000001 mutations. If you mate them with another 1 mutation pet, he will have 2, or 00000010 mutations.

If you inbreed that generation, you have: 00000010 + 00000010 = 00000100 mutations, or 4. Do it again, you have 00001000 mutations, or 8. As you can see, every doubling of mutations moves the 1 left.

Now, for a little bit of computer fun, computers don't use the 32nd bit of a signed integer as a quantity, they use it as the positive or negative sign. 0 = positive. 1 = negative.

So, what happens after our 31st generation of inbreeding? 01000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 (1,0731741,824 mutations) + 01000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 (1,0731741,824 mutations) = 10000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 ( -2,147,483,648 mutations)

Yes, that is negative 2,147,483,648 mutations. (for computer math reference, negative 1 is binary all 1s, all 0s is the 'biggest' negative number) if you inbreed that generation, the 1 is pushed off the 32 bits containing the integer and we're back at 0.

The Above Section on "Unlimited Mutations Glitch (Dirty Breeding)" is from Redit user: Wulf2k, February 28, 2019 and edited to fit our server clusters Base stats.