how much food do Dinos eat? and how much food should i leave in a food trough?

[Stewbawl]

i'm having difficulty deciding how much meat i should be leaving in a food trough when i log out for the night.  

i know that raw meat lasts 40 minutes in a food trough, but an unknown is how frequently to Dinos eat?  i'd like to have a better understanding than just "i fill the whole thing to make sure there's enough".

i'm breeding Deinonychus, and getting to the point i have several out at a time and don't want to be spending a bunch of time pod'ing them up and getting them back out every time i want to breed them.  

has anyone done any research, or does the wiki state how frequently Dinos eat?  i've searched and haven't found this info.  i'd like to be able to be a little bit more accurate when determining how much meat i need to leave in my food trough each night.

[DirkInSA]

I guess it depends on how many are chowing from that trough?

If you do NOT  have juvenile dinos on the trough then zero in the trough should well last through the (real time) night. Any adult will not die of starvation in a real time over night gap - they will just reduce the "food" stat a bit. But nowhere close to 0.

If you you have juvenile "eat a lot" then the game changes a lot ... And here I can't give you good answers- it depends on the count of growing kids and the kind and etc. So there it comes back to your least desired answer which is "a lot"

[Dreadcthulhu]

Adult creatures that are not moving/healing up around use little food. Maybe two rows of meat a day will feed a whole boss army of rexes easily.  You would want more if you are having them heal up from a boss fight.

Juveniles eat a ton of food, so always have multiple full troughs, or even better, loaded up maewings nearby. Leveling up the nursing effectiveness will increase how much of the food stat gets refilled per unit of food. 

[GrumpyBear]

http://ark.crumplecorn.com/breeding/

 

Its not perfect, but it works for most stuff.  

[wizard03]

If your concerned about it, just go ahead and cryo them up for the night. Especially with the juveniles who are constantly eating. They will destroy a trough load of meat and starve out before you know it.

As for the adults, not so much. Iv had 5 yuties, quetzal, 2 or 3 rex's, and two thylo's on a trough and I had more spoiled meat than empty slots the next day

[Biomesh]

When possible you really want to use cooked meat for those dinos that will eat it.  Not only does it last longer but it stacks to 50 so it is a win win.

[invincibleqc]

4 minutes ago, Biomesh said:

When possible you really want to use cooked meat for those dinos that will eat it.  Not only does it last longer but it stacks to 50 so it is a win win.

Bad idea. Cooked meat is less nutritious than raw meaning not only you will have to collect twice as much meat, but you will also have to waste time cooking it.

[GrumpyBear]

42 minutes ago, Biomesh said:

When possible you really want to use cooked meat for those dinos that will eat it.  Not only does it last longer but it stacks to 50 so it is a win win.

cooked sorta had a place before when stack sizes were 20 raw meat per stack.  Now that they are 40 per stack, its not worth the space.

[Biomesh]

Guess I am a little confused because nutritious or not the question was about making sure he had enough food to last the night and a stack of 50 cooked lasts longer then a stack of 40 uncooked.   

[invision]

fill the trough to the max every 2-3 days and youll be fine

[GrumpyBear]

2 hours ago, Biomesh said:

Guess I am a little confused because nutritious or not the question was about making sure he had enough food to last the night and a stack of 50 cooked lasts longer then a stack of 40 uncooked.   

it would, but since it gives less nutrition, they eat 2x as much. 

[Pipinghot]

10 hours ago, Stewbawl said:

i'm having difficulty deciding how much meat i should be leaving in a food trough when i log out for the night.

The only good answer is "it depends".

It depends on how many carnivores you have, it depends on whether you're doing breeding, it depends on how important it is to keep all your dinos topped off at all times.

As long as you log on a couple of times a week you almost don't need to worry about your troughs unless you're doing breeding. As long as you have even a couple of stacks of meat & berries in the trough when you log off, nothing will starve before you log on and feed them again. The main benefit of troughs is they provide you with a margin of safety in case you can't log on for too many days in a row, but it's pretty rare for healthy, adult animals to starve as long as they're all full when you log off.

If you're extra paranoid then have some extra stacks in your trough when you log off, it all depends on how easy it is for you to have a consistent schedule for your play time.

If you're breeding...? Well then you can never have enough meat, but that's a separate conversation.

[Stewbawl]

On 7/26/2022 at 4:54 PM, GrumpyBear said:

http://ark.crumplecorn.com/breeding/

 

Its not perfect, but it works for most stuff.  

thank you for this link.  

[DeHammer]

"Practice makes perfect". Since we have no idea what your server settings are like, we can't really say what would work best for you. Experiment. Determine what works best for you.

 

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