Do dinos mature and grow?

[BobInSeattle]

I've been on the hunt for a male companion to the 168 Female Baryonix I recently snagged, but I'm only coming across really low levels and something occurred to me. I recently ran into a situation where I had to wipe all dinos on the server, so I did. I'm now wondering, does this mean that all these baby dinos I am coming across are going to need time now to mature, or do they stay the same level all their life? On the re-spawning after a server wipe, do they all come in at random levels or do they come in as babes and mature up?

[Joebl0w13]

2 minutes ago, BobInSeattle said:

I've been on the hunt for a male companion to the 168 Female Baryonix I recently snagged, but I'm only coming across really low levels and something occurred to me. I recently ran into a situation where I had to wipe all dinos on the server, so I did. I'm now wondering, does this mean that all these baby dinos I am coming across are going to need time now to mature, or do they stay the same level all their life? On the re-spawning after a server wipe, do they all come in at random levels or do they come in as babes and mature up?

They all spawn in as fully grown dinos at random levels. There's no correlation between level and maturity.

[BobInSeattle]

Ah I see. So a level 10 is just as fully grown as a level 150, just not as powerful. I assume this also means they never gain levels in the wild. Thanks.

[Joebl0w13]

20 minutes ago, BobInSeattle said:

Ah I see. So a level 10 is just as fully grown as a level 150, just not as powerful. I assume this also means they never gain levels in the wild. Thanks.

Yes to both. 

[GrumpyBear]

4 hours ago, BobInSeattle said:

Ah I see. So a level 10 is just as fully grown as a level 150, just not as powerful. I assume this also means they never gain levels in the wild. Thanks.

In a best case scenario, you get just under 50% more levels added upon taming.  This means the level 10 can reach 14, while the 150 will typically end up 224 in best case.  We do have reasons to tame level 5s, but that's a much later game activity.   When we hunt for stats, anything over level 120 is fair game for hunting.  But you can usually tell if you have a good shot by looking at the pretame stats.  You can analyze those using dododex to get an idea if you are starting with good numbers.

 

By good #s , I mean to say look at the ratio of a high stat value to the overall level of the animal.  The levels is the combined total of points in all stats +1.  If a dino has 7 stats health/stamina/oxygen/food/weight/melee/runspeed and is a level 150, that means they average just over 21 points per stat.  If you find a pretame stat that's popping in the 30s, you have a candidate that could really benefit from a good roll of the dice.  I commit to taming anything over 32, but I reserve excitement for 35+ pretame.  This is on a standard 7 stat animal. There are 6 stat animals, such as your flyers, the math is the same logic but we are looking for even higher numbers in those cases.  149 split over 6 stats comes out to almost 25 points on average.

[Griffin998]

I tend to search for 130+ with max difficulty 150, but it's really what you're comfortable with taming. Mastercraft longneck with (I think) almost 200% damage makes taming a breeze. Got that off of a regular drop. Mad. Tried taming a 145 bronto once. It was almost down, but glitched into the wall. Wasted almost 20 darts on that thing. And just so you know, torpidity scales with level. There's no points into torpidity for creatures. Points into fortitude for humans makes it more difficult for you to get knocked out though.

Cheers, good luck taming, and happy ARKing! Laters gators!

[Pipinghot]

14 hours ago, BobInSeattle said:

Ah I see. So a level 10 is just as fully grown as a level 150, just not as powerful. I assume this also means they never gain levels in the wild. Thanks.

As you've doubtless already discovered, higher level dinos are more risky and take more resources. Something that makes this all much easier (just in case you don't use them already) is to construct taming pens. Find an area where the species (or specieses?) that you want to tame spawn and then build a pen that's just large enough for them to fit into. Smaller animals (like doed's and anky's) will fit into a 1x2 pen (and maybe even a 1x1), and you work your way up from there.

There are a variety of highly customized taming pen designs for some of the more esoteric creatures in ARK, but for The Island you can just start with a basic square type pen with some doorways on the bottom level and ramps that you can use to get stuff to chase you into the pen. You run out the doorway on the other side and can knock them out at your comfort & leisure.

There are also some good videos for how to build taming pens on a raft, which lets you go on the road and tame anything near a shoreline or rivers. I can be pretty satisfying to park your taming raft in a good location and tame anything good nearby, put them in crypods and sail back to your base with your newfound tames.