To take out a dinosaur in ARK: Survival Evolved, you need to hit it with a weapon that stuns you, such as stun darts, stun arrows, aPulmonoscorpiusor even your fists.
Each dinosaur has a fixed amount of stun that must be filled before it is knocked out. UsingDododex's Knock Out Calculator allows you to calculate how many hits are needed from each weapon.
Be careful not to kill the creature
Note that because weapons also deal damage, it is sometimes possible to kill the creature instead of incapacitating it.
A wild creature's health is randomly assigned, so it's not always 100% possible to determine whether to kill a creature or not.Dododex's "probability of death" featurecalculates the probability that your specific weapon will kill a creature of a certain level.
Better weapons generally reduce the risk of death
More advanced weapons will have a higher onetorpor: injury condition, which will reduce the risk of death.
However, in some rare cases, stronger weapons can sometimes even be too powerful for low-level dinos with very low health (especially if you include a headshot multiplier). For example, imagine that a dinosaur's required torpor is 100 and your weapon has 80 torpor. Because the weapon is so powerful, firing twice causes an additional 80 torpor (and some corresponding damage), while with a weaker weapon (such as 20 torpor) you can get exactly 100 torpor - and no excess damage.
How Torpor Infliction works in ARK
One of the most common misconceptions about ARK is how stun is created when KOing a dino.
1. It is best to hit every 5 seconds.
Most weapons (bow, crossbow, rifle) cause stunfor a period of 5 seconds. Then the anesthetic supply stops for 1 second before tapering off. This means the creature is stunnedstarts to empty after 6 seconds, so it's best to shoot every 5 seconds.
2. Torpor speed varies per dinosaur (and increases with level)
The torpor speed varies per dinosaur. Stronger dinos usually (but not always) have higher torpor speeds, and even a few seconds past the 6 second mark can compensate for multiple shots. Dododex displays the speed during the torpor section and marks it as high or low. A higher level also means a higher torpor speed.
Real example:If you shoot a level 30Gigawith a Tranq Dart, and then shoot it again within 7 seconds, the 1 second gap (last 6 seconds) almost compensating for ALL the stun you inflicted from the first shot. But the Giga has an unusually high torpor speed.)
Dinos with the highest Torport percentage:
- Giganotosaurus(120 torpor/s at level 1, increasing with each level)
- Wyvern(includedKristal Wyvern) (25/s)
- Mosasaurus(12,8/s)
- Dimetrodon(5/s)
- The most important(4,18/s)
- Megalania(3,6/s)
- Pachyrhinosaurus(3,5/s)
- Quetzal(3,4/s)
- Therizinosaurus(2,83/s)
- Visser(2,8/s)
3. Torpor piles. Don't shoot too fast.
The stun from each hit accumulates. Shooting too quickly doesn't "waste" the stun (a common misconception), but it does withdraw the stun, which can make it difficult to decide whether to continue shooting.
Example:A dino needs 10 arrows, but you shot all 10 so quickly that it isn't KOed because it's only hit ~7 arrows worth of stun so far. Some players keep shooting because it's not KOing, but all you have to do is wait for the delay to pass.
However, it can be useful to shoot a little faster than 5 seconds (which allows the stun to build up) if you know you might miss some shots (especially for faster dinos). This way if you miss a shot the stun doesn't start to wear off because it's still running through the backlog.
4. Dododex is responsible for the depletion of anesthesia
Dododexis the only app that includes stun exhaustion in KO calculations. You can use the 'seconds between hits' setting (available on the website and in the app) to accurately determine how many resources you need based on your expected hit rate.
TL;DR:
Always try to shoot at a ~5 second pace, but you can shoot a little faster if you expect to miss. Check the dino's torpor speed on the Dododex to determine the importance of hitting at the correct speed.
- High rate + high level= Timing is crucial. Don't miss any time gaps and don't leave any time gaps
- Low rate + low level= Time differences are not that big