ARK Survival Ascended Doedicurus taming guide

Ark Survival Ascended is the much-awaited Unreal Engine 5 remake of Ark Survival Evolved, one of the pioneering titles in the MMO survival-craft genre. Its core game mechanics and crafting ecosystem are quite identical to other MMO survival titles like Rust. The originality of this release lies in its unique prehistoric bestiary and robust dino-taming system.

As a remake, Ark Survival Ascended retains the entire library of existing creatures from the original title, including those added throughout its update cycles. Many of these hail from the late Cretaceous era or before, but some of them, like the Doedicurus, are extinct animals from a much more recent epoch.

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How to find and tame Doedicurus in Ark Survival Ascended

Doedicurus is the prime example of how useful relatively docile and passive-looking creatures can be as an ally in Ark Survival Ascended. There are several reasons you would want to tame one, irrespective of what level of progression you are at:

• The armadillo-like shell makes it a tanky mount fit for expeditions and high-level hunts.
• They have surprisingly high mobility in water as fast swimmers.
• On land, their mobility can be attributed to their ability to start curling up and rolling down terrains at a rapid pace. This ability can be used to catch up to creatures or kite larger game if you primarily level up speed.
• Doedicurus are natural gatherers, especially for stones and stone-related materials. They gain 75% weight reduction for stones in their inventory, letting them carry far more of this resource than other similarly sized tames.

These herbivores can primarily be found in rocky regions, so get ready to scale some mountains if you want to spot one. If you do not find one to your liking or one that is not high-level enough, note that you can use console commands to reset spawns and try looking again in the same perimeter.

Once you get to the creatures, there are several strategies you can use to secure a clean knock-out. The biggest factor is their level.

For levels as low as 50, you do not need a lot of setup to tame them in Ark Survival Ascended:

• As they are slow-moving creatures, throwing bolas is not necessary.
• Doedicurus can attack smaller creatures with a spiky tail, but they seldom use it against the player.
• Combat with Doedricurus with the intent to tame poses only one tricky aspect. If you damage them too much, they may curl up into a ball. Instead, simply using tranquilizer ammunition is the best course of action, as only a couple can knock them out.

You can use structures in Ark Survival Ascended to lock down high-level Doedicurus as they have larger hitboxes (Image via Studio Wildcard)

If they are very high level (200+), their torpor meter takes a long time to go down, which makes it a more tricky affair. You can use structures to trap them in to get in free potshots, which seems to be the meta method for easy taming.

Once caught, you can use several herbivore food items such as Barley, Wheat, Soybean, or Mojoberries to gradually tame the Doedicurus. As usual, the fastest tame timings can be achieved with Kibble.