Teratus

Same ^^ I'd love to see this creature in the game regardless of how WC choose to implement it, and I completely agree that Aberration would be one of the most fitting map's for it tbh. It's so alien looking and freaky, it would fit really well in that map despite there not being all that much water. There's certainly a lot of different ways Hallucigenia could be done as a creature in ARK, and I really like the way your idea focused more on toxins and hallucinating too. I did try to include a little of that into my idea design as well but it was more of an afterthought to the main things I wanted to focus on. It is good to see other people trying to include things in their creature designs that are not really all that commonly used in the PvE game. Like how you mentioned using Pheromone Darts as part of the taming process, I love that ^^ I can't say I've ever had a reason to use those in PvE tbh, same for things like Tripwire Traps which could also be a really fun thing to add into a creature's taming requirements one day.

Probably my favourite modded creature in ARK ^^ Love the ARK Additions mod.

I do hope a water creature wins this time around. ARK has so few official maps with major water area's that we've all had to rely mainly on mod maps to provide it lol. Plenty of land creatures have won, and a flier won the last one. Time for Water to get a win

Looks like you beat me too it this time OP and our entries got merged lol Apologies to the mods for not noticing that btw. I'm glad to see Hallucigenia is gaining some popularity, it already has more votes this time time around than the first time I submitted it. I love how alien and out of this world it looks despite being a legit, extinct, real world life form so it totally qualifies in the rules for these competitions. Admittedly that is one of the reasons I choose it I do hope WC will allow for fantasy/fictional creatures when the Aberration and maybe Extinction creature submissions come around, at the very least for Aberration considering it's theme and all, and of course mythology for Fjordur. But I guess we'll have to wait and see about that. Until them we have Hallucigenia to keep submitting in the hope that it's strange and alien like appearance may win over enough people to make it into the game ^^ But if it doesn't, I hope at least once.. a water creature wins one of these. We've had land winners and flier winners. Now, water needs to win one!!

We are back for Round 3 people!! ^^ With Rag being one of the few big maps in ARK with large regions of water I am once again re-submitting my idea for this wicked little worm to make it into ARK. Thanks again to everyone who supported this creature in previous competitions. Introducing Hallucigenia: The spiked worm. Hallucigenia is an extinct species of worm that lived in the ocean, likely a scavenger and around the size of a human finger. They had several leg like tentacles they used to walk around on similarly to how a Star Fish does and several sets of long spikes protruding from their backs, as well as a head, eyes and a mouth. Idea and basic concept for Hallucigenia in ARK. In ARK I propose like many other creatures that Hallucigenia is given a pretty significant size increase, equivalent to most other shoulder pets. Although unlike most shoulder pets Hallucigenia will be worn like a spikey bandolier, wrapping itself around the players naked torso to protect them. The idea is that once tamed, Hallucigenia and the player will form a symbiotic relationship, with Hallucigenia becoming a shoulder pet that acts like living armour for the player, protecting them in exchange for the player serving as Hallucigenia's never ending food source. I also intend for the existence of Hallucigenia in ARK to help promote the use of a couple of (in my opinion) underused tames while making a few others feel a bit more threatening/dangerous. Where to find Hallucigenia in ARK. Hallucigenia would only be found roaming the deep ocean floors, often nearby Eurypterid or Ammonite spawns and are non hostile to tamed and wild creatures. They would not be able to picked up by any tamed or wild creatures either. Wild Hallucigenia are only hostile to players and will rear up when swimming players get close and latch on to them if they get too close, breaking their chest armour in the process. No worries though.. well some maybe, but this is part of how you will tame Hallucigenia. The taming process. After a wild Hallucigenia has attached itself to you it will start slowly draining your health and possibly stamina and food stats until your inevitable death. And the only way to remove a wild Hallucigenia, is much the same as a leech, by setting yourself on fire.. not so easy to do underwater. The player now needs to swim back to the surface before they die and leave the water entirely to start taming Hallucigenia. Players should be unable to mount their tames while a wild Hallucigenia is attached to them (with exception to Diplocaulus) to add an extra level of challenge to the taming process, as well as more danger for those who are unlucky to get grabbed by one unintentionally. Once you are back on land Hallucigenia is smart enough to understand that it will suffocate and die if it looses it's new human host, so it stops feeding on the player (draining your health and/or stamina) and starts using you as an oxygen tank, only draining your food stat from this point on. During this time the player must go around killing other creatures on foot with melee weapons to raise Hallucigenia's taming bar, which will be displayed above the player in 3rd person camera. Hallucigenia's taming affinity however will be based on how much recoil damage the player is able to do by taking melee damage without dying, this affinity will slowly drop if you remain out of combat for too long, so bring plenty of healing items, food, water and good armour for your remaining slots + repair resources or backups to help you survive this process. This bar should also be displayed above the player while in 3rd person camera. It goes without saying that if you die while taming Hallucigenia, there are no second chances, Hallucigenia will suffocate quickly on land without it's human host and you will most likely have to track down another one. Tamed Hallucigenia behaviour. The same also goes for Hallucigenia that are tamed by players. If the player is killed, knocked out or logged off in water Hallucigenia will sink down as far as it can and will wait for it's player to retrieve it. If the player is killed, knocked out or logged off on land Hallucigenia will drop like any other shoulder pet and will curl up into a spiked ball to protect itself in the location it lands in and will then start suffocating, loosing oxygen over time like any drowning creature or player would. The player must return to their place of death etc and pick up their Hallucigenia before it's low oxygen and health stats drain completely and it dies. Reclaiming Hallucigenia will also mean that the player must now heal it of any damage it sustained from suffocating, so until the creature is fully healed it will feed off the players food stat until it is back to full health similarly to how players regenerate health as well, if the player's food stat is low this could be dangerous and could result in the player starving to death. Breeding and maturation. Underwater breeding. Hallucigenia must be underwater to breed and will produce water only eggs like Squids and Frogs. Symbiotic nature. Because Hallucigenia forms a symbiotic relationship with the player wearing it, it's only possible for one player to raise one Hallucigenia infant at any given time. When picked up, a baby Hallucigenia will attach itself to the player similarly to a leech, minus the horrifying screen blocking effect. During this time the player will be able to wear chest armour, but the Hallucigenia infant will not provide any additional armour nor any recoil damage or other additional benefits like the adult would. Instead the Hallucigenia infant will drain the player's food and water stats at a much increased rate as it grows but will thankfully have a fairly short maturation time, requiring only a few hours of the players time at most (on official rates) to fully mature, so the player will need to keep themselves hydrated and fed during this process. Once fully matured the players armour (if wearing any) will be unequipped automatically and the now adult Hallucigenia will auto equip itself as a shoulder pet. Imprinting. Due to the symbiotic nature, imprinting Hallucigenia will be pretty unique. Prompts and info about what Hallucigenia wants during feeding intervals, as well as the feeding interval timer will be displayed above the player when in 3rd person camera. Running around with Hallucigenia when it want's to go for a walk will trigger the walk requirement successful. When Hallucigenia desires a specific food item, the player themselves must consume that specific item to trigger the feeding requirement successful. (Occasionally Hallucigenia may want you to eat something pretty gross though like raw or spoiled meat so keep that in mind) As for the cuddle requirement, Hallucigenia will just simply want some attention from you and you can provide this by having your player use any Emote while the prompt is active, doing this will trigger the requirement successful. A fully imprinted Hallucigenia should gain a pretty nice damage increase to it's recoil damage as well as the general stat increases imprinting usually gives. This would be a big incentive for players to actually go for 100% imprint. (Important) Potential food stat misuse issue. Since Hallucigenia doesn't use it's food stat nor does it's food stat drain like normal creatures it's important that baby Hallucigenia unlike the adults, have a natural health drain while unattached to a player, even when they are in water. This will ensure that negligent players do not end up causing issues with server performance by having tons of Hallucigenia babies piling up at their bases. Baby Hallucigenia must have human player interaction to survive, or they will die fairly quickly after birth due to their low health stats. Living Armour, the pro's. 1. Equipping a tamed Hallucigenia provides the player with living armour, granting the player some additional armour to their total and giving the player the ability to inflict decent recoil damage on hostile creatures and players that attack you with a melee attack, similarly to a Kentrosaurus. I think the additional armour Hallucigenia provides should probably be based on it's health stat but with a fair hard cap somewhere. 2. Due to the protection it's spiked body provides, a player equipped with Hallucigenia also cannot be picked up or grabbed by almost any tamed or wild creatures. This means that players using Hallucigenia, cannot be dismounted either by almost any attack that is considered a "grab" giving them significant protection from enemy fliers and squids, though their mount may still be able to be grabbed. I want to give an exception for armour protected grabbing creatures like the Karkinos as well, so Karkinos should still able to "grab" a player wearing a Hallucigenia. Players with Hallucigenia can also still be dismounted by Microraptors as they do not technically "grab" you either, making them a more viable counter to mounted Hallucigenia players in pvp settings. 3. While a tamed Hallucigenia is equipped the player will loose oxygen while swimming at a much slower rate, the Hallucigenia acting like a sort of living Scuba tank substitute to some degree allowing players to stay underwater longer than they normally could with their oxygen stat. Hallucigenia will also provide some camouflage properties similarly to what a Ghillie chest piece provides although not as much. (These abilities are to make up for the inability to wear chest armour with Hallucigenia, however Hallucigenia will not provide any protection against hot and cold) 4. Hallucigenia may be a tameable deep sea creature but it's utility is universal, Hallucigenia can be transferred to any map, even ones where water is extremely limited like Scorched Earth and still be usable as it's intended to be in those more hostile environments. 5. Uses the player as a food source while equipped thus has no need for typical food items like meat or berries and will not drain feeding trough supplies. While unequipped underwater Hallucigenia uses extremely little energy thus it can survive for extremely long periods of time without feeding. (It doesn't need nor actively use it's own food stat, much like some creatures do not need or use their oxygen stats) 6. Decently short maturation time and fairly easy to imprint by active players. Additional benefits could be: Hallucigenia has a small chance of it's recoil damage inflicting a short bleeding effect on tamed and wild creatures, and a greater chance of inflicting a bleeding effect on tamed/wild creatures that attempt to grab it's host player. Likewise Hallucigenia has a small chance of inflicting a Dizzy Spore like effect on human players who try to attack a Hallucigenia equipped player with a melee weapon. While wearing a tamed Hallucigenia, players could become immune to the stealing effects of Wild and Tamed Pegomastax and Ichthyornis. They will still attack players like normal but in doing so they will take recoil damage from your Hallucigenia instead of stealing your items. The con's of Hallucigenia. Well every creature needs weaknesses and Hallucigenia is no different. 1. First of all I think Hallucigenia should have extremely weak health and oxygen stats, even when bred up in order to ensure there is always a big risk of loosing it should the player die on land while traveling with it.. a fitting punishment that helps promote the symbiotic relationship you share with this tame. 2. I also think a good trade off for using a tamed Hallucigenia is that while it is equipped, players cannot also equip any chest armour.. you must choose one. This would mostly impact your max armour rating but I think that's a fair trade for the recoil damage Hallucigenia provides. This also means that you will not be able to use Scuba tanks while a Hallucigenia is equipped, thus providing a good reason for Hallucigenia giving it's player reduced oxygen drain while underwater. This inability to use Scuba will also make the Diplocaulus a more appealing and useful tame for those who wish to use Hallucigenia underwater, and will be essential to taming them in the early game while remaining a useful creature for taming them later on as well since they are the only creature a player can still ride while a wild Hallucigenia is attached to them. Choosing Hallucigenia also means you can't use any Tek Jetpacks either, this maybe a deal breaker for some but at the end of the day the choice is yours and in some situations I would think taking Hallucigenia is the better option. 3. While Hallucigenia provides some compromise bonuses for the inability to use Ghillie and Scuba chest pieces, as well as the natural armour. It will not provide any protection from the elements, so no hypothermal or hyperthermal protection. 4. Taming Hallucigenia won't be too easy due to multiple factors: It can only be found in dangerous deep ocean territory. Wild Hallucigenia will instantly break a player's chest armour when it attaches to them. It must be carried to the surface by a player while it is draining the life from them, leaving them more open to other dangerous ocean threats like Meg's, Squids and Mosa's. Players will be unable to be grabbed by any tamed/wild creatures while a wild Hallucigenia is attached to them, with one exception being Karkinos. Players will be unable to mount any tames while a wild Hallucigenia is attached to them, with one exception being Diplocaulus. Taming efficiency must be raised by actively taking melee damage. Taming progress must be raised by killing wild creature with melee weapons. Wild Hallucigenia attached to players will not provide any armour benefits, leaving you effectively without any chest armour until Hallucigenia is tamed or you are killed. Taming Hallucigenia could potentially drain significant amounts of food and healing resources, so be prepared. While taming Hallucigenia other annoying threats like Ichthyornis and Pegomastax stealing your weapons, food or healing items would be significantly higher and could be the deciding factor in your failure. 5. A single player can only raise one Hallucigenia baby at a time due to unique maturation mechanics. 6. Popular mod benefits like the S+/SS Nanny can only auto imprint Hallucigenia babies if the player stays within range of them. Additional cons could be: Hallucigenia dislikes hot environments like deserts and thus will also drain the players water stat to hydrate itself while in those biomes. Hallucigenia is terrified of fire and if the player is set on fire while below a certain HP threshold, Hallucigenia will be forcibly dismounted from the player. This will make Fire Wyverns, the Dragon boss and flame based weaponry more dangerous to players using Hallucigenia. Thank you for your consideration. Well, that's my current idea for this creature submission anyway. I really want some kind of water based creature to win one of these competitions and this was probably the most unknown and unusual creature I could think of to submit. Thanks to anyone and everyone who votes for it and if you've never heard of Hallucigenia before, say Hello to this strange little guy in the picture attached. (Credit to the artist who made this image)

Just for Scorched Earth?.. I may have misread or blanked that but I don't recall seeing anything about the new creature being for Scorched Earth >.< (Edit: just checked and yep.. it was there the whole time, I did a dumb XD my bad.) While it definitely wouldn't be possible to tame Hallucigenia on SE if WC did use the ideas I had for this creature and make it a deepsea creature, the concept I went with for this creature would still allow you to use Hallucigenia on Scorched Earth, just as you would any other map. Though due to the limited amount of natural water there wouldn't be many places you could breed them or leave them in safety.. and the risk of loosing them upon death would be pretty high naturally. WC tends to do their own thing with creatures though so even if Hallucigenia was able to make it into the game at some point it would probably be quite different to the way I envisioned it lol But yeah, I did think about other maps, especially Scorched Earth when I knew I definitely wanted to submit a water creature, doing my small part to show love to that area of the game which is sadly imo seemingly often neglected. That's pretty much how I ended up choosing Hallucigenia for my entry and came up with the idea of wearing it like a spikey bandolier lol I found the idea of a deep sea creature being usable anywhere and everywhere in ARK, even in a literal desert was pretty funny but also really unique as well ^^ i'll keep the entry up though since while my original idea was for a deep sea creature and I'd certainly prefer it to be, there's definitely ways Hallucigenia could be utilised in Scorched Earth as a cave threat or a hazard/trap creature that hides in the sand waiting for prey to fall into it's pit of spikes.

Cool another living armour creature suggestion ^^

Introducing Hallucigenia: The spiked worm. Hallucigenia is an extinct species of worm that lived in the ocean, likely a scavenger and around the size of a human finger. They had several leg like tentacles they used to walk around on similarly to how a Star Fish does and several sets of long spikes protruding from their backs, as well as a head, eyes and a mouth. Idea and basic concept for Hallucigenia in ARK. In ARK I propose like many other creatures that Hallucigenia is given a pretty significant size increase, equivalent to most other shoulder pets. Although unlike most shoulder pets Hallucigenia will be worn like a spikey bandolier, wrapping itself around the players naked torso to protect them. The idea is that once tamed, Hallucigenia and the player will form a symbiotic relationship, with Hallucigenia becoming a shoulder pet that acts like living armour for the player, protecting them in exchange for the player serving as Hallucigenia's never ending food source. I also intend for the existence of Hallucigenia in ARK to help promote the use of a couple of (in my opinion) underused tames while making a few others feel a bit more threatening/dangerous. Where to find Hallucigenia in ARK. Hallucigenia would only be found roaming the deep ocean floors, often nearby Eurypterid or Ammonite spawns and are non hostile to tamed and wild creatures. They would not be able to picked up by any tamed or wild creatures either. Wild Hallucigenia are only hostile to players and will rear up when swimming players get close and latch on to them if they get too close, breaking their chest armour in the process. No worries though.. well some maybe, but this is part of how you will tame Hallucigenia. The taming process. After a wild Hallucigenia has attached itself to you it will start slowly draining your health and possibly stamina and food stats until your inevitable death. And the only way to remove a wild Hallucigenia, is much the same as a leech, by setting yourself on fire.. not easy to do underwater. The player now needs to swim back to the surface before they die and leave the water entirely to start taming Hallucigenia. Players should be unable to mount their tames while a wild Hallucigenia is attached to them (with exception to Diplocaulus) to add an extra level of challenge to the taming process. Once you are back on land Hallucigenia is smart enough to understand that it will suffocate and die if it looses it's new human host, so it stops feeding on the player (draining your health and stamina) and starts using you as an oxygen tank, only draining your food stat from this point on. During this time the player must go around killing other creatures on foot with melee weapons to raise Hallucigenia's taming bar, which will be displayed above the player in 3rd person camera. Hallucigenia's taming affinity however will be based on how much recoil damage the player is able to do by taking damage without dying, this affinity will slowly drop if you remain out of combat for too long, so bring plenty of healing items, food, water and good armour for your remaining slots + repair resources or backups to help you survive this process. This bar will also be displayed above the player while in 3rd person camera. It goes without saying that if you die while taming Hallucigenia, there are no second chances, Hallucigenia will suffocate quickly on land without it's human host and you will most likely have to track down another one. Tamed Hallucigenia behaviour. The same also goes for Hallucigenia that are tamed by players. If the player is killed, knocked out or logged off in water Hallucigenia will sink down as far as it can and will wait for it's player to retrieve it. If the player is killed, knocked out or logged off on land Hallucigenia will drop like any other shoulder pet and will curl up into a spiked ball to protect itself in the location it lands in and will then start suffocating, loosing oxygen over time like any drowning creature or player would. The player must return to their place of death etc and pick up their Hallucigenia before it's low oxygen and health stats drain completely and it dies. Reclaiming Hallucigenia will also mean that the player must now heal it of any damage it sustained from suffocating, so until the creature is fully healed it will feed off the players food stat until it is back to full health similarly to how players regenerate health as well, if the player's food stat is low this could be dangerous and could result in the player starving to death. Breeding and maturation. Underwater breeding. Hallucigenia must be underwater to breed and will produce water only eggs like Squids and Frogs. Symbiotic nature. Because Hallucigenia forms a symbiotic relationship with the player wearing it, it's only possible for one player to raise one Hallucigenia infant at any given time. When picked up, a baby Hallucigenia will attach itself to the player similarly to a leech, minus the horrifying screen blocking effect. During this time the player will be able to wear chest armour, but the Hallucigenia infant will not provide any additional armour nor any recoil damage or other additional benefits like the adult would. Instead the Hallucigenia infant will drain the player's food and water stats at a much increased rate as it grows but will thankfully have a fairly short maturation time, requiring only a few hours of the players time at most (on official rates) to fully mature, so the player will need to keep themselves hydrated and fed during this process. Once fully matured the players armour (if wearing any) will be unequipped automatically and the now adult Hallucigenia will auto equip itself as a shoulder pet. Imprinting. Due to the symbiotic nature, imprinting Hallucigenia will be pretty unique. Prompts and info about what Hallucigenia wants during feeding intervals, as well as the feeding interval timer will be displayed above the player when in 3rd person camera. Running around with Hallucigenia when it want's to go for a walk will trigger the walk requirement successful. When Hallucigenia desires a specific food item, the player themselves must consume that specific item to trigger the feeding requirement successful. (Occasionally Hallucigenia may want you to eat something pretty gross though like raw or spoiled meat so keep that in mind) As for the cuddle requirement, Hallucigenia will just simply want some attention from you and you can provide this by having your player use any Emote while the prompt is active, doing this will trigger the requirement successful. (Important) Food stat misuse. Since Hallucigenia doesn't use it's food stat nor does it's food stat drain like normal creatures it's important that baby Hallucigenia unlike the adults, have a natural health drain while unattached to a player, even when they are in water. This will ensure that negligent players do not end up causing issues with server performance by having tons of Hallucigenia babies piling up at their bases. Baby Hallucigenia must have human player interaction to survive, or they will die fairly quickly after birth due to their low health stats. Living Armour, the pro's. 1. Equipping a tamed Hallucigenia provides the player with living armour, granting the player some additional armour to their total and giving the player the ability to inflict recoil damage on hostile creatures and players that attack you with a melee attack, similarly to a Kentrosaurus. I think the additional armour Hallucigenia provides should probably be based on it's health stat but with a hard cap of somewhere around 200-300 maybe. 2. Due to the protection it's spiked body provides, a player equipped with Hallucigenia also cannot be picked up or grabbed by almost any tamed or wild creatures. This means that players using Hallucigenia, cannot be dismounted either by almost any attack that is considered a "grab" giving them significant protection from enemy fliers and squids, though their mount may still be able to be grabbed. I want to give an exception for armour protected creatures like the Karkinos as well, so Karkinos should still able to "grab" a player wearing a Hallucigenia. Players with Hallucigenia can also still be dismounted by Microraptors as they do not technically "grab" you either, making them a more viable counter to mounted Hallucigenia players in pvp settings. 3. While a tamed Hallucigenia is equipped the player will loose oxygen while swimming at half it's usual rate, the Hallucigenia acting like a sort of Scuba chest piece substitute to some degree allowing players to stay underwater longer than normal but nowhere near as long as they would be able to with actual Scuba. Hallucigenia will also provide some camouflage properties similarly to what a Ghillie chest piece provides although not as much. (These abilities are to make up for the inability to wear chest armour with Hallucigenia, however Hallucigenia will not provide any protection against hot and cold) 4. Hallucigenia may be a tameable deep sea creature but it's utility is universal, Hallucigenia can be transferred to any map, even ones where water is extremely limited like Scorched Earth and still be usable as it's intended to be in those more hostile environments. 5. Uses the player as a food source while equipped thus has no need for typical food items like meat or berries and will not drain feeding trough supplies. While unequipped underwater Hallucigenia uses extremely little energy thus it can survive for extremely long periods of time without feeding. (It doesn't need nor actively use it's own food stat, much like some creatures do not need or use their oxygen stats) 6. Decently short maturation time and fairly easy to imprint by players. Additional benefits could be: Hallucigenia has a small chance of it's recoil damage inflicting a short bleeding effect on tamed and wild creatures, and a greater chance of inflicting a bleeding effect on tamed/wild creatures that attempt to grab it's host player. Likewise Hallucigenia has a small chance of inflicting a Dizzy Spore like effect on human players who try to attack a Hallucigenia equipped player with a melee weapon. The con's of Hallucigenia. Well every creature needs weaknesses and Hallucigenia is no different. 1. First of all I think Hallucigenia should have extremely weak health and oxygen stats, even when bred up in order to ensure there is always a big risk of loosing it should the player die on land while traveling with it.. a fitting punishment that helps promotes the symbiotic relationship you share with this tame. 2. I also think a good trade off for using a tamed Hallucigenia is that while it is equipped, players cannot also equip any chest armour.. you must choose one. This would mostly impact your max armour rating but I think that's a fair trade for the recoil damage Hallucigenia provides. This also means that you will not be able to use Scuba tanks while a Hallucigenia is equipped, thus providing a good reason for Hallucigenia giving it's player reduced oxygen drain while underwater. This inability to use Scuba will also make the Diplocaulus a more appealing and useful tame for those who wish to use Hallucigenia underwater, and will be essential to taming them in the early game while remaining a useful creature for taming them later on as well since they are the only creature a player can still ride while a wild Hallucigenia is attached to them. 3. While Hallucigenia provides some compromise bonuses for the inability to use Ghillie and Scuba chest pieces, as well as the natural armour. It will not provide any protection from the elements, so no hypothermal or hyperthermal protection. 4. Taming Hallucigenia won't be easy due to multiple factors: It can only be found in dangerous deep ocean territory. Wild Hallucigenia will instantly break a player's chest armour when it attaches to them. It must be carried to the surface by a dismounted player while it is draining them, leaving them open to other dangerous ocean threats like Meg's, Squids and Mosa's. Players will be unable to be grabbed by any tamed/wild creatures while a wild Hallucigenia is attached to them, with one exception being Karkinos. Players will be unable to mount any tames while a wild Hallucigenia is attached to them, with one exception being Diplocaulus. Taming efficiency must be raised by actively taking melee damage. Taming progress must be raised by killing wild creature with melee weapons. Wild Hallucigenia attached to players will not provide any armour benefits, leaving you effectively without any chest armour until Hallucigenia is tamed or you are killed. Taming Hallucigenia could potentially drain significant amounts of food and healing items, so be prepared. While taming Hallucigenia other annoying threats like Ichthyornis and Pegomastax stealing your weapons, food or healing items would be significantly higher and could be the deciding factor in your failure. 5. A single player can only raise one Hallucigenia baby at a time due to unique maturation mechanics. 6. Popular mod benefits like the S+/SS Nanny can only auto imprint Hallucigenia babies if the player stays within range of them. Additional cons could be: Hallucigenia dislikes hot environments like deserts and thus will also drain the players water stat to hydrate itself while in those biomes. Hallucigenia is terrified of fire and if the player is set on fire while below a certain HP threshold, Hallucigenia will be forcibly dismounted from the player. This will make Fire Wyverns, the Dragon boss and flame based weaponry more dangerous to players using Hallucigenia. Thank you for your consideration. Well, that's my more fleshed out idea for this creature submission anyway. I really want some kind of water based creature to win one of these competitions and this was probably the most unknown and unusual creature I could think of to submit. Thanks to anyone and everyone who votes for it and if you've never heard of Hallucigenia before, say Hello to this strange little guy in the picture attached. (Credit to the artist who made this image) We didn't make it last time but new submission contest means we get another shot to put this unique and funky little worm into ARK. Thanks to everyone who voted for this creature in the last contest, hopefully we'll get more votes this time

I agree. More Herbivores, less Carnivores makes far more sense in a natural environment. That doesn't mean in terms of species, I'll take as many carnivore species as I can get for ARK 2. Population density is where it counts here. And I do hope we see a lot more aggressive herbivores this time around as well, to ensure a constant level of danger.

If im not mistaken the Genesis Ship is wrecked on the new world we'll be on in ARK 2 so at the very least I expect to see fictional creatures or evolved forms of them from that ship like R-Reapers very much alive in ARK 2 somewhere. Though honestly im far more curious to know how creatures that we never did see officially in ARK 1 have come into existence in ARK 2 like the confirmed Brachy.

I am interested in this subject as well though my technical knowledge is.. well borderline non existent XD What I do know of UE5 though from various videos etc is that rendering things is significantly better with the nanite technology the engine has that the current UE4 engine ARK runs on does not possess. UE5 also got improvements to Nanite if I recall to expand beyond just terrain geometry and include foliage and trees as well allowing so much more to be rendered in detail without the heavy performance loss we often get when using LOD models for distant objects. Basically as I understand it things look better even in the distance and it's easier for the game to handle so long as it's not excessive. I also heard somewhere that ARK1 needlessly uses excessive polygons for various models in the game which can probably be trimmed down on UE5, possibly through nanite and that could lead to a smaller game size without any loss of overall model quality. But i'm speculating a lot.. as I said I really don't know much about this stuff, even though I find it pretty interesting.

It wasn't my first choice either (Of the winners I really wanted the crocodile complete with living bear trap ability as I thought that was something awesome the game could have benefitted from) But a bug winning satisfies me reasonably well considering i'm probably in the minority of players who actually like the idea of taming big bugs in ARK. That said much of the original concept for the creature doesn't appeal to me, a great amount of it seems extremely overpowered and the idea of a "sky giga" isn't as appealing to me as it is to some people, a Sky Rex maybe.. sure that could be ok but not Giga. I don't want this creature to be something grossly oversized and overpowered that gets nerfed when you tame it.. and something that ends up being so annoyingly hard to find that it makes the idea of a sky threat pretty much obsolete anyway. I don't agree with OP that we have "too many" bugs in the game, by my count there are only 8 that are actually tamable and only 5 of them are even ridable. I do however agree that many of them have very limited use, especially as mounts.. and I also want to bring up the fact that for a very long time we couldn't even breed these creatures to increase their usefulness which we could do with countless other ridable dinosaurs etc. Bugs have long been pretty neglected in ARK, not a single one of them has gotten the privilege of a TLC upgrade either. In fact the only thing I can recall at all over the entire lifespan of ARK that bugs have gotten as any kind of "upgrade" is the ability to breed them.. something most creatures have had since day 1. And while I am grateful for the time the devs give to them to implement that when they certainly didn't have to.. bugs in ARK are still lacking compared to so many other creatures in the game. For one to win this creature contest is truly a good thing for the game if you ask me, we do need more bugs in ARK, especially strong ridable ones and bugs do deserve to be better represented in the game. I say let them have their small moment in the spotlight, it's not often they get to ^^

If you are willing and able to use mods then I would recommend the Awesome Spyglass mod as it is an invaluable tool for keeping track of what stats your creatures have as well as mutations they get. Dino Storage V2 is another great and popular mod that helps you track your dino's stats as well as mutations, it will also help you automate to some extent your breeding programs via the terminals it adds which can auto trap baby creatures when their born so they won't starve and die as well change all your dinos to mating or not mating with a single command, negating the need to do every creature manually.

400+GB is definitely the norm for most people with all the official maps (including sponsored DLC) installed and a few mods. I myself am at 433GB for ARK and also someone who had to buy a new 1TB SSD for the game pre Genesis 2 because of it. Hopefully WC will trim the fat down quite a lot with the UE5 upgrade and we can expect a much smaller game size. From everything i've heard about that engine it would not surprise me if ARK1 running on it not only has significant improvements to performance, especially online but is also a smaller and better looking game as well.

Hahaha Now that we can certainly agree on XD