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Tartuosteus, Derp Fish Greetings, survivors! I introduce to you the TARTUOSTEUS DOSSIER Wild TARTUOSTEUS can be found in the shallower parts of the oceans of the ark. You can see them hanging out in groups from 1 to 4 individuals. They are noticed by their cute derpy smiles, armored plates, and bony tail. Like Ichtys they will actually sometimes come up to you. These creatures are friendly to anything that doesn’t want to eat them and sometimes you can see Ichthyosaur and Mantas hanging around cus they just love its positive aura! When attacked, Tartuosteus will try to swim away, but when it reaches half health, it will puff up in a defensive state with the sharp points of its plates sticking out deflecting damage back to opponents. When in this state, their defense will increase and sometimes they will swing their bony tail against its predator's skull to let them know who is the smiling king of the reefs! Even though their diet mainly consists of microorganisms that they filter out of the water they are happy to crush anything with a shell with their bony tails and slurp up their insides! Their favorite snack are ammonites, as they love ammonite bile and are also immune to the effects of it! The TARTUOSTEUS seems to have algae growing on its shell but instead of trying to get rid of them to snack on, Tartuo lets them stay as the algae lower the aggro range of creatures. When the algae is too much they will try to get rid of some as too much can slow it down! So when you do have one tamed try to trim its algae from time to time! Taming To tame a TARTUOSTEUS you need to make use of its dumb mind! First of all you need to take some C4 with you. Then, Tartuosteus will approach you and when close you can feed them some C4 as they are too dumb to realize it’s a bomb. Swim away and let the C4 detonate. Because of the strong interior of this bony fish it can survive the explosion, but it will go into a dizzy like state. When this happens, go up to it and feed it some ammonite bile! When you’ve done this, creatures will come after you and the Tartuo will puff up in its defensive state protecting itself. When you’ve cleared all the dangers it will deflate again and after some time its dumb mind will forget you’ve just blown its insides and it will be a rinse-and-repeat! Domesticated The TARTUOSTEUS might seem like a dumb and un-useful creature but don’t judge a book by its cover! This derpy fish will be your dumbest but best friend with their constant positivity and derpy smile! In water the Tartuo will passively provide you with oxygen when you are near or riding it. Their positive nature can give allies and tames a buff called the Positivity Buff that works slightly like a lesser Courage Roar. Their large bony tails are perfect for shattering the oceans rocks and ores and with its weight reduction it will be like your underwater Ankylosaur! With its strong insides it is able to turn solid rock into powder making their insides work like a mobile mortar and pestle but with some improvements, like making gunpowder inside. The TARTUOSTEUS has a quite cool ability where it can puff up. Its normal bloat that can be controlled will swell up its belly but the plates' sharp points won’t be sticking out like they do in its defense bloat. Tartuo can be puffed up by sucking in water and then going on to land! Because it’s sucked up water before, it can survive some time on land and bounce around on the beaches, crushing creatures that are unfortunate to end up under it. If you don’t puff it in water beforehand, the Tartuo will immediately deflate again, taking damage, so make sure that if this happens you get it back in the water as fast as you can! Their defense bloat will be activated when it reaches half health; this will result in the pointy sharp plates deflecting damage back to their opponents, and a stronger defense buff. After time it will deflate again and you can go on with your passive smiling fish navigating through the ocean. But the plates aren’t only used for defense. You can also use them to see if there are any alphas nearby as the plates will point out even when it’s deflated when alpha creatures are near. This isn’t the only thing as the Tartuo will leave a bubble trail when max level creatures are nearby as well! Probably the weirdest aspect of this creature are its… babies? Tartuosteus females don’t need a mate to lay eggs but this doesn’t mean you will get healthy babies. Even though the babies are underdeveloped and not actually alive/conscious you can still see their beautiful smiles in the eggs. But the most remarkable part of these underdeveloped babies is the fact they will still passively try to puff up. But because their bloat organs aren’t fully developed yet instead of puffing up they will blow up… This might sound really cruel but the babies don’t feel anything and don’t even know they exist. But these explosive eggs can be used as a deadly weapon when put in a cannon or simply thrown by hand; they will blow up doing damage to your foes. And because the saddle of the adults have built in baby cannons their cannons can be loaded with babies and mixed with gunpowder the babies can be shot right out of the cannons with an even deadlier impact. The babies actually have different explosive states, one being almost like land mines when creatures come close they will blow up, the other can be thrown or shot acting like bombs that explode on impact with creatures or enemies and lastly one kind has a really sticky egg shell making them work like sticky bombs! Yep this might seem really cruel and you might feel bad but remember their smiles say enough! Tartuos still can be bred normally with a male and infertile eggs can also be moved to the inventory of the males. Normal breeding will give you just one egg tho that will need to be hatched in water mate boost also will work normally on pairs and actually double the positivity buff! If you have a male around and still want infertile bomb eggs just make sure mating is off! ABILITIES Primary Attack (, , 😞 Tail attack, breaks stones and ores and the faces of creatures Secondary Attack (, , 😞 Bloat, can activate any time but without its stronger defense buff and spikes. Can activate it in defense bloat mode when reaching half health, this bloat will stay only a limited time. Jump (Press Space, , 😞 Bounce; only when bloated on land X Activate Cannons (Click C, , ) Shoot (, , ) Aim (, , ) Toggle Modes (Left Ctrl, , ) Modes: mine, bomb, and sticky The eggs wil have different colors based on wich ability they have! (Be sure to look out for the golden baby egg that will give a giant explosion) Passive Abilities bubble shooting when survivor is near or on it so the survivor doesn’t need oxygen for a limited time Defense bloat lil bro will bloat up but this time with defense buff and spikes that will knockback damage back like kentro/arthro/shadowmane Items JET SURFING BOARD For this you will need tartuo fins. This surfing board makes navigating through the ocean super easy with its high speed and mobility you can race on the waves. Because of the tartuo fins on the sides you can make sharp turns, you can also super boost making you even faster but this has a cool down and you’ll need to have enough gasoline on you! DERP ELIXIR Positivity buff 40% percent More than 5 percents derp fish passively does Agro range lowered Jellyfish won’t attack you 5 percent taming efficiency Boosts crafting skill for limited amount of time Recipe: Trimmed algae, Ammonite bile, Angler gel, Water, Basilo blubber Utility & Scenarios PvE: The TARTUOSTEUS is a good and reliable water mount.The Tartuo brings a way to harvest ores and rocks underwater, and with its strong insides being able to be your mounted improved mortar and pestle it can be useful in both gathering and crafting scenarios. One of its most useful scenarios is that it can kill any shelled creatures with ease and has a high harvesting rate, and an even larger one for ammonite bile and it also being immune to the effects of the bile! Its ability to bounce on land also makes it so you don’t need it to stay in the waters all the time, its positivity buff is highly useful for you allies and its derpy smile is enough to make everyone happy. And even though it might look very dumb it can definitely pack a punch!! Its items are supposed to be providing help with navigating on waters, helping with taming, helping with the dangers of the ark, crafting skill and lastly POSITIVITY. PvP: The Tartuosteus is the first proper water soaker, in its bloated state it is able to withstand a large amount of upcoming damage with no issues whatsoever, its undeveloped eggs can be highly explosive if disturbed and might cause some serious damage to any enemy unfortunate enough to get hit by one of them, apart from being able to take a beating if damaged enough it might return the favour by poking out its sharp plates and stabbing its attacker back everytime it hits it. Tartuosteus has both incredible defence and powerful offence and it is not something to be overlooked in water combat and raiding . CONCLUSION Atm the dossier is still in the works but stay tuned! I wanna do big credit to the team of friends I worked with and the amazing artists helping me. Credits to riskybiscuits, lapis, opal, miheal, jimmy and the rest of the team!