Essential Dinos You Need to Tame in Ark: Survival Evolved

With over 80 dinosaurs to find and tame in Ark: Survival Evolved, it can be a bit overwhelming, especially to new players. While we suggest trying out each of the dinos that you can find on The Island, if you’re looking to have an effective team, then there are several dinos that you’ll want to work towards taming.

As one of our favorite flying animals in the game and one of the best carrying birds, the Argentavis, or Argy, is one of our primary focuses when we start on a new character in Ark: Survival Evolved. This bird is great for capturing other creatures, which you can then easily drop into taming traps that you’ve made near your base. They’re also pretty solid for attacking smaller creatures and offer a good range of flight around The Island.

If you’re looking to maximize the amount of resources you can gather—and you should be—then the Anklyosaurus is absolutely an essential creature to add to your party. Not only is it great for gathering metal, but these creatures also have a special stat that reduces the weight of metal on them, allowing you to carry far more of it than you normally could without the Ankylosaurus. The biggest downfall here, though, is that the Anklysaurus can be a bit slow when fully loaded, which is where one of the dinos further down our list comes into play.

Similar to the Anklyosaurus, the Doedicurus is a great creature to tame and is excellent for gathering stone. On top of being a great pack mule for your stone gathering needs, the Doedicurus is also exceptionally good at breaking down walls of compounds if you find yourself needing to attack an enemy’s base at any point.

Wood is a vital resource in Ark: Survival Evolved and having plenty of this essential resource is going to be important. Of course, while you can spend a lot of time working on gathering it yourself, getting your hands on plenty of wood quickly isn’t completely out of the question. In fact, the Castoroides or Giant Beaver is by far one of the most useful creatures in Ark as it allows you to quickly gather wood and other resources very quickly and easily.

While most of the dinosaurs on this list have focused heavily on material gathering, the Equus is so useful because of its quick speed and ease of taming. Unlike most dinos in Ark, which require you to knock them out and then tame them using special foods or berries, the Equus is great because all you need to do is feed it some berries or carrots and then ride around on it until you tame it. This can take a bit of time on default taming settings, but for a creature that you can easily tame and get around on, the Equus is a must-have for ground travel early on.

If you’re going to make efficient use of dinosaurs like the Anklyosaurus or the Doedicurus, then having the Quetzal is absolutely essential. Not only can this large bird carry a ton of weight, but a platform can be placed upon it that you can then use to transport your resource-gathering dinos to and from your base or around the map to whatever places you need to gather from. The only downside here is they can be a bit difficult to tame, but they are more than worth the trouble involved.

If you’re looking for a good war dino, then the Yutyrannus is a great carnivorous dinosaur to get your hands on. This highly aggressive creature can be tamed and then used to scare enemy dinos and is one of the only dinosaurs that can run alongside Carnos in packs, making them exceptionally great for controlling wild Carnos and using them against your enemies. If you plan on going against other players or are just looking for a great alternative dinosaur to the typical carnivores like the Rex, then the Yutyrannus is a great dino to add to your war party.

Of course, with more than 80 dinosaurs to find and tame on The Island, this list is by no means the definite list. These are just some of the essential dinosaurs that we recommend taming and making use of to make your fight for survival on The Island much easier. Ark: Survival Evolved is available now on Nintendo Switch, so grab your trusty console and head out on a new adventure today.