Taming is what separates a beach scrub from a real tribe. The right early tames give you mobility, gathering power, and a fighting chance against geared players. This guide covers the knockout basics, the starter roster in priority order, and how to tame on a PvP server without feeding someone else's kill count.
Knockout taming in sixty seconds
Most early tames are knockout tames: raise the creature's torpor until it sleeps, then feed it while unconscious.
- Build torpor with a wooden club or slingshot at the very start, then tranq arrows from a bow (and later a crossbow, which multiplies the effect) as soon as you have narcotics.
- Keep it down. Torpor drains constantly; feed narcoberries or narcotics to keep the bar up while taming.
- Feed the right food. Better food tames faster and preserves taming effectiveness — the multiplier that decides bonus levels. Every hit the creature takes during taming also hurts effectiveness, so stop shooting the moment it sleeps.
- Protect the body. A sleeping tame is a free meal for wild carnivores and a free kill for players. Wall it with spike walls or a taming pen (stone gateways in a box) before you start.
Food tiers for carnivores run raw meat → prime meat → mutton → kibble; herbivores run berries → mejoberries → advanced crops → kibble. Early on you won't have kibble — prime meat and mejoberries are your workhorses.
The starter roster
| Tame | Method | Why a PvP tribe needs it |
|---|---|---|
| Pteranodon | Bola + club/tranqs | Flight: scouting, escapes, ferrying — the single biggest early power spike |
| Trike | Knockout, berries | Berry/thatch farming and a surprisingly scary bodyguard |
| Raptor | Bola + tranqs | Early combat and travel before flyers |
| Parasaur | Knockout or passive | Free early mount; later, its alarm mode detects enemies near base |
| Doedicurus | Knockout, berries | Stone gathering — the raw material of every early wall |
| Ankylosaurus | Knockout, berries | Metal harvesting; the tame that unlocks the gun age |
| Castoroides | Knockout, meat | Wood at scale, mobile smithy saddle |
| Argentavis | Knockout (trap it) | Heavy transport with a crafting saddle — carries your Anky to the metal and your loot home |
The order that actually matters
- Bola + Pteranodon first. A bola (three fiber, three stone, one hide on the fly) freezes small creatures for long enough to club them down. A mid-level Ptera turns the map from a threat into a menu.
- Trike second for berry economy — narcoberries fund every future tame.
- Raptor pack or a Carno once you have a crossbow, for local muscle.
- Utility week: Doedic + Anky + Castoroides (or a beaver dam raid) to industrialize stone, metal, and wood.
- Argentavis closes the early game: build a stone gateway trap on a cliffside, kite the Argy in, and knock it out safely. Its weight capacity and smithy saddle make every later project faster.
Every one of these is cheap enough to lose. That's the point — early tames are tools, not family.
Taming on a PvP server without dying
- Tame during quiet hours. A 30-minute knockout in an open field during prime time is an invitation. Check your server's population chart and tame in the valleys; our population guide shows how to find them.
- Use a pen, not a prayer. Four stone gateways and a large bear trap make 90% of early tames safe and reusable.
- Don't tame next to home. Bodies attract scavengers of both species. Tame a valley away, then walk the new tame home.
- Whistle discipline. Set new tames to passive while hauling them home (aggressive tames chasing a wild dodo into a turret field is a rite of passage you can skip), and to neutral inside base so they fight back as a group.
- Level for the job. Gatherers pump weight; fighters pump health and melee; your Ptera pumps stamina and weight. Points are permanent — decide the dino's job before its first level.
Narcotic economy
Narcotics are early-game ammunition. The chain: narcoberries (harvest with your Trike) or spoiled meat (leave raw meat to rot, faster in a stack of one) + narcoberries in a mortar and pestle → narcotics → tranq arrows. A tribe that keeps 200 narcotics and a stack of tranq arrows in the smithy can tame opportunistically — the high-level Argy you stumble on at 2 a.m. won't wait for you to farm.
After the starter roster
Once the utility core exists, taming shifts toward war: Stegos for soaking (see the soaking guide), a breeding pair of your main combat line, and eventually the late-game roster. From there, raw tames stop being your army and become your breeding stock — the breeding guide is the next read.
FAQ
What's the best first flyer?
Pteranodon, and it isn't close. Cheap to tame with a bola, cheap to feed, and it unlocks scouting and vertical escapes. Upgrade to an Argentavis for hauling as soon as you can trap one.
What level should I tame?
The highest you can handle safely. Wild levels convert into stats and taming bonus levels; a level 130+ tame is worth triple a level 20 in output. But a low-level utility tame today beats a high-level one next week — tame the Anky in front of you.
How do I keep early tames alive?
Keep them inside walls, on neutral, with a feeding trough — and accept losses. Early tames are consumables. The moment a tame becomes hard to replace, it belongs in your breeding plans, not on guard duty.
We run the live ARK: Survival Ascended server tracker on this site and write these guides from our own tribe's PvP experience plus the population data we collect. Read more on the About page, or reach us via Contact.