question about tranq arrows

[GameFreak]

does the torpor stack with each arrow like the dart does? i remember back when i started playing that something didnt stack torpor but i dont recall what, but i figure it was the arrows, but the wiki says that the torpor stacks with each arrow.  i tried to tame two direbears the other day, a lv 94 and lv 60, and they both died before they got knocked out by the arrows at about 1/3 to 1/2 of the amount the wiki says should knock them out. so either i have the worst luck with the hp on the direbears or the wiki is wrong.

[Rippy]

Good morning @GameFreak, Direbear's health compared to torpor is alot lower, so you are required to use tranq darts at intervals to safely take one down without it dying. The wiki was right, with the amount of arrows it would have taken to knock one out, though it didn't take in to account the fact it would die first.

[GameFreak]

then what is the point in being able to make a direbear saddle long before you can make darts

[Rippy]

1 minute ago, GameFreak said:

then what is the point in being able to make a direbear saddle long before you can make darts

If you head shot a dire bear at the perfect 5 (or maybe 10) second intervals with tranq arrows you might be able to knock it out, not sure.

Though remember this game is currently pre-release (effectively alpha) so the stats haven't been optimized yet. Come full release, the Dire Bears might be very different, especially noting how strong they currently are.

[keightley60]

13 minutes ago, GameFreak said:

then what is the point in being able to make a direbear saddle long before you can make darts

scorpion maybe?

[GameFreak]

scorpion wouldnt survive, the direbear has the same base damage as the spino

[GameFreak]

well i just knocked out 2 direbears, a 68 that drowned and a 32 i tamed, and they had about 1/4 to 1/3 of their health left when they dropped so im guessing you torpor doesnt stack on arrows and that is one of the reasons i killed the ones i found before.

[Rippy]

1 minute ago, GameFreak said:

well i just knocked out 2 direbears, a 68 that drowned and a 32 i tamed, and they had about 1/4 to 1/3 of their health left when they dropped so im guessing you torpor doesnt stack on arrows and that is one of the reasons i killed the ones i found before.

So you did it at 10 second intervals head shots? I guess the torpor doesn't stack, maybe just resets the timer.

[TheRealTFreezy]

Torpor does stack, it just does less on hit and more spread through 5 seconds. So say an arrow does 100 damage (all made up numbers for easy math) and 50 torpor on hit. Then it does 100 torpor over 5 seconds. If you hit a bear every second for 5 you would do 500 damage and 350 torpor (50 torpor 5 times plus 100 from the first arrow).

however if you spread your shots to every 5 seconds and still did 5 shots you would do 500 damage and 750 torpor, it would just take longer. 

So if you can see the math and understand it in your head it shows that while you do the same damage if you were to do repeated arrows over and over you do more damage quicker thus negating any regen and not getting max torpor before hitting max damage.

at least this is how I understand arrows to work

[Gelantious]

It's a pain with the bears and some other with this, haven't tried it but could let them run through a couple of narco traps first.
Just make sure your shot is what downs them, though I think this is stupid too that you can't tame stuff that was downed by the traps....

 

[Jerryn]

Tranq arrows(and darts) both do immediate topor plus topor over time.

However, the topor over time does stack, but in sequence, not in parallel.

For example, using a crossbow, a tranq arrow hits for 35 damage(to health), plus 70 topor and then another 87.5 spread over 4 seconds(21.875/second).

So, if you shoot an animal with 1 tranq arrow, it would lose 35 health and gain 70 topor immediately.  Then over the next 4 seconds, it would gain an additional 87.5 topor.  During these 4 seconds, the animal's topor will not drop; just like when you pump them with naracotics during a tame.

At about 5 seconds, the topor will start to drop again; each type of animal has a different rate of drop, just like you see during a tame.

If you were to shoot the animal three times in a row, it would lose 105 health and gain 210 topor, plus it would gain 262.5 topor over the next 12 seconds.  It will be the exact same result whether you fired 3 rapid shoots and waited or it you timed your shots so that one hit exactly as the topor over time from the previous shot was done.

This is why shot timing is very important on some animals, especially those with low health and/or high topor.  If you take too long between shots, it will have a topor drop, which means you need more shots.

So, for something like a bear, you can either calc the number of shots you need, pump it with the exact number and wait for the topor over time to take full effect(number of shots times 4, starting from when the first tranq arrow hits), or you can space your shots 4 to 5 seconds apart.

 

The other think to take into account is the damage bonus from the weapon.  If you have a crossbow with 120% damage, then all of the damage and topor numbers above will increase by 20%.

Finally, for animals that are affected by head shots, all of the damage and topor would be increased by another 250%.  And, fliers still take 150% damage from arrows, assuming it is still the same with all of the adjustments made a while back.

 

So, with all of that said, if you took an average lvl 100 bear, it should have 6940 (1000 + 60*99) topor and 1520 health (400 + 80 * 14; 14 is 99 levels divided by 7 stats).  Unfortunatley, it takes 45 tranq arrows to knock out an average lvl 100 direbear, but it only takes 44 to kill it.  

However, if you find a direbear with slighly better than average health, then it can be done with tranq arrows; it the average lvl 100 direbare had 15 levels in health, you could knock it out, but with 0 shots to spare.

Because of how stat leveling works in the game vs topor levels, it is much easier(less chance of killing it) to tranq a low level direbear than it is to tranq a high level one, at least with tranq arrows.

[Tindalen]

@Jerryn Very well written. 

[kd0t]

To tame a direbear use a crossbow with decent damage i.e. not primitie.  If you use dododex it tells you chance to kill using different weapons so if you add your highest you will get a rough estimate.

Also looking through the levels when I was going for one from memory from 16 to about 40 you cannot get with a standard crossbow, higher than that should be fine in most cases though.  I tamed a level 20-30 on primitive.

[Rancor]

18 hours ago, Rippy said:

Good morning @GameFreak, Direbear's health compared to torpor is alot lower, so you are required to use tranq darts at intervals to safely take one down without it dying. The wiki was right, with the amount of arrows it would have taken to knock one out, though it didn't take in to account the fact it would die first.

Killed the first 120 we found this way  

 

Also I suppose you could use a bear trap and high melee damage to try clubbing one? GG?

Whats the damage from a slingshot like compared to its torpor? Also read you can use a narco trap on wilds but you have to get the final torpor shot from the bow to be able to tame it. 

[TheRealTFreezy]

Quick question here, the dododex recently updated to show the chance of killing things using a certain tool for knock out. Most of the time the crossbow is higher than the bow in terms of chance to kill.

my question is, if I only slightly pull the arrow on a bow does it do a percent of damage but full torpor? Or partial of both? Same question regarding the slingshot.

[Jerryn]

1 minute ago, TheRealTFreezy said:

Quick question here, the dododex recently updated to show the chance of killing things using a certain tool for knock out. Most of the time the crossbow is higher than the bow in terms of chance to kill.

my question is, if I only slightly pull the arrow on a bow does it do a percent of damage but full torpor? Or partial of both? Same question regarding the slingshot.

As my understanding, topor is basically a multiple of damage, so if you did less damage with the bow, you would do less topor.

[TheRealTFreezy]

Just now, Jerryn said:

As my understanding, topor is basically a multiple of damage, so if you did less damage with the bow, you would do less topor.

Yeah that's how I understand it as well. I'll have to test it to be for sure. I would hope that maybe a good way to down a bear would be using a bow, would take a lot more arrows but if it only did small damage when not drawing it back all the way but full torpor that would be pretty cool. 

I know darts is the best way to go but I prefer a primitive server (though I can not find one) and obviously darts are not an option.

[Jerryn]

1 hour ago, Rancor said:

Killed the first 120 we found this way  

 

Also I suppose you could use a bear trap and high melee damage to try clubbing one? GG?

Whats the damage from a slingshot like compared to its torpor? Also read you can use a narco trap on wilds but you have to get the final torpor shot from the bow to be able to tame it. 

The narcotic trap is a good idea.  A set does not do a lot of topor; 240 for the pair.  But, every 240 you did would save you about 1 1/2 shots(for a stand crossbow), or 6 shots if you could get it to set off 4 sets 2; so long as you had that happen early on.

[Janna3921]

@Jerryn  Thanks for the info on torpor.  I have never tranqed a dino yet, my son stepped in and tamed the Pateradon (I need to learn how to spell it correctly) for me.  He left me to take care of any dinos that wanted to attack up.  Plus get some meat for her.

Anyhow, that will help me when I tame some more dinos later on. 

[Jerryn]

17 minutes ago, TheRealTFreezy said:

Yeah that's how I understand it as well. I'll have to test it to be for sure. I would hope that maybe a good way to down a bear would be using a bow, would take a lot more arrows but if it only did small damage when not drawing it back all the way but full torpor that would be pretty cool. 

I know darts is the best way to go but I prefer a primitive server (though I can not find one) and obviously darts are not an option.

Did a full draw and then a short draw.  Full draw did twice the topor on a wolf than the short draw.

[Rancor]

22 minutes ago, Jerryn said:

Did a full draw and then a short draw.  Full draw did twice the topor on a wolf than the short draw.

Was the damage doubled as well? I'm going to assume it was.

[Jerryn]

6 minutes ago, Rancor said:

Was the damage doubled as well? I'm going to assume it was.

LOL...that is a good question.  I was focused on watching the topor and didn't check the damage.  I will have to retest later, but I am pretty certain that it is.

[GameFreak]

11 hours ago, Jerryn said:

Tranq arrows(and darts) both do immediate topor plus topor over time.

However, the topor over time does stack, but in sequence, not in parallel.

For example, using a crossbow, a tranq arrow hits for 35 damage(to health), plus 70 topor and then another 87.5 spread over 4 seconds(21.875/second).

So, if you shoot an animal with 1 tranq arrow, it would lose 35 health and gain 70 topor immediately.  Then over the next 4 seconds, it would gain an additional 87.5 topor.  During these 4 seconds, the animal's topor will not drop; just like when you pump them with naracotics during a tame.

At about 5 seconds, the topor will start to drop again; each type of animal has a different rate of drop, just like you see during a tame.

If you were to shoot the animal three times in a row, it would lose 105 health and gain 210 topor, plus it would gain 262.5 topor over the next 12 seconds.  It will be the exact same result whether you fired 3 rapid shoots and waited or it you timed your shots so that one hit exactly as the topor over time from the previous shot was done.

This is why shot timing is very important on some animals, especially those with low health and/or high topor.  If you take too long between shots, it will have a topor drop, which means you need more shots.

So, for something like a bear, you can either calc the number of shots you need, pump it with the exact number and wait for the topor over time to take full effect(number of shots times 4, starting from when the first tranq arrow hits), or you can space your shots 4 to 5 seconds apart.

 

The other think to take into account is the damage bonus from the weapon.  If you have a crossbow with 120% damage, then all of the damage and topor numbers above will increase by 20%.

Finally, for animals that are affected by head shots, all of the damage and topor would be increased by another 250%.  And, fliers still take 150% damage from arrows, assuming it is still the same with all of the adjustments made a while back.

 

So, with all of that said, if you took an average lvl 100 bear, it should have 6940 (1000 + 60*99) topor and 1520 health (400 + 80 * 14; 14 is 99 levels divided by 7 stats).  Unfortunatley, it takes 45 tranq arrows to knock out an average lvl 100 direbear, but it only takes 44 to kill it.  

However, if you find a direbear with slighly better than average health, then it can be done with tranq arrows; it the average lvl 100 direbare had 15 levels in health, you could knock it out, but with 0 shots to spare.

Because of how stat leveling works in the game vs topor levels, it is much easier(less chance of killing it) to tranq a low level direbear than it is to tranq a high level one, at least with tranq arrows.

thanks for the help and detailed info, i could have sworn when i first started playing ark back when it first got on xbox that the arrows did not stack torpor (although its completely possible they didnt and it got changed in a patch later), i kinda figured it was the health but i was hoping it was not. i hope they adjust the health on the dinos or the torpor on the arrows so that you dont end up killing a dino like i have been with the direbears and a 120 gali that i found

but at least this forum also helped out other people who were curious about how tranqs work

[GameFreak]

side question, anyone know if it is possible to kite a spino and rex by running around them while tranqing them with a standard bow? ive seen people do it in sotf streams so i was curious if it can be done in the normal game.  although i believe the dinos in sotf have reduced speed and other stats for balancing but not sure.

oh also if anyone knows if the tranq requirements in sotf are different than the normal game i am wondering about that too, i think they still require the same amount of arrows to get knocked out as in the normal game but not too sure.

[Rancor]

11 minutes ago, GameFreak said:

side question, anyone know if it is possible to kite a spino and rex by running around them while tranqing them with a standard bow? ive seen people do it in sotf streams so i was curious if it can be done in the normal game.  although i believe the dinos in sotf have reduced speed and other stats for balancing but not sure.

oh also if anyone knows if the tranq requirements in sotf are different than the normal game i am wondering about that too, i think they still require the same amount of arrows to get knocked out as in the normal game but not too sure.

All the dinos in SoTF are also low levels so you have to keep that in mind. They will have higher torpor the higher level, so if you have your game settings where max dinos are 120 you may need a lot more tranqs. Also Yes there are ways to knock out Rex/Spinos but often you can't simple out run them. You need to make use of trees and rocks to slow them down while they charge you.