Ark Survival Ascended breeding and mutations, explained

As its name implies, Ark Survival Ascended has a lot of survival-craft elements that you have to juggle. Surviving the early game while tending to your needs is no cakewalk, but the progression curve eventually turns this dynamic on its head. Once you have your bases covered, you can essentially play god with the scope for creativity this game allows.

One of the mechanics that give Ark Survival Ascended its 'god-sim' flavor is dinosaur-breeding. Not only can you domesticate most of the game's prehistoric bestiary, but the creatures can be bred to perfect your ever-expanding dinosaur army.

Many games in its broader genre, such as Minecraft, have breeding as a feature. In Ark Survival Ascended, however, it is an indispensable avenue to scale into the late game.

---

How to breed dinosaurs in Ark Survival Ascended

You have to enable mating on both the dinosaurs you want to breed (Image via Studio Wildcard)

Any two dinosaurs can be bred in Ark Survival Ascended as long as they are of the same species and the opposite gender.

As per Ark Survival Evolved's rules, only the same variant (e.g. Tek, Aberrant) of the species can be bred together. After the expansions are ported over, as per ARK Survival Ascended's full roadmap, the same restrictions may apply in future.

Once you have the two dinosaurs in question tamed, you have to:

• Enable Mating on both dinosaurs (male and female) through the wheel menu.
• Keep them near each other.
• Make sure there are no hostile creatures nearby.
• Make sure Following is disabled on both dinosaurs.

Once these conditions are satisfied, a red heart icon will let you know that they are mating. Note that some creatures, such as Beelzebufo, need to be in water in order to mate.

---

Breeding in Ark Survival Ascended: Combining and min-maxing stats

Just like player stats in Ark Survival Ascended, dinosaurs also have a stat spread determined by their base level, i.e. their level when you tamed or claimed them as a baby dinosaur. The base level value itself is a sum of their six stats +1.

Once a newborn dinosaur appears as a result of breeding, it can inherit values for each individual stat from either of its parents. The goal with breeding is to have both their parents pass on their best stats to the newborn.

For parent dinosaurs that have uneven and dissimilar stat spread, the best-case result will therefore be a newborn that outlevels both parents.

---

What are mutations in Ark Survival Ascended?

You can check how many mutations you have from the patrilineal and matrilineal sides (Image via Studio Wildcard)

Breeding in this game can sometimes result in mutations. These always result in a color change, and a +2 value added to any one stat, such as health or melee damage.

You can check a creature's mutations and its source by checking its ancestral stats. Both visual mutations and the increased stat values can potentially be passed on to a future generation by breeding a mutated creature with another.

You can only have a maximum of 20 mutations on one creature, and the chances for more diminishes in every generation with a new mutation.

As a result, the process of breeding in this game can be extremely grindy and time-consuming. To reduce the wait times, you can set up one high-stat male parent with numerous female parents, and select only the best offspring for further breeding.