How to Increase Egg Laying in Ark Survival Evolved

There are two things you can do to increase the number of eggs your dinos lay in Ark Survival Evolved.  On my kibble farms, I use both of these. 

First, have at least one male.  This gives the female a mate boost and will not only help her in a fight, but will make her drop more eggs.  The male will have an effect on multiple females, but only within a certain range.  You can tell if your creature is mate boosted by the little heart floating above their name.  If you have a ton of any one species, you may need more than one male.   If all you are using the male for is the egg laying boost there is no need to worry about what level it is.  Some people say that have two males is more effective on a larger number of females, but I haven’t tested it.

A solid heart above a tame's name shows that it is mate boosted.

Oviraptors can help increase egg laying of tame dinos.

The second involves more steps but isn’t that tricky.  Use an oviraptor to get an egg laying boost.  Tame an oviraptor by knocking it out and feeding it eggs, Rex eggs are supposed to be the best. Oviraptors take a long time to tame, so search for a low-level one.  After you have the little bugger tamed bring it to where you have your dinos.  Pack its inventory with rocks or wood until it becomes overburdened and cannot move.  Then set it to wander.  You will notice that all creatures will have an egg floating over their name and stats, this means they are now egg boosted and will lay more eggs.  Creatures that don’t lay eggs will still have the little egg symbol.  Like the mate boost, the egg boost from the oviraptor only works within a certain range, so you may need more than one oviraptor, if your kibble farm is large. 

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Ovis Taming - Stupid Sheep in Ark Survival Evovled

The Ovis is a type of sheep in Ark Survival Evolved.  These beasts are very rare, probably for two reasons.  The first is they don’t spawn very often, I have only seen one so far.  The second is that they are useless in a fight.  Pretty much any predator can kill an Ovis, and I’m guessing the stupid creatures are killed by wild dinos within a couple of minutes of spawning.  The first one I tamed, tamed out at 92 and was terribly wounded by a compy or two and then finished off by some stupid titian bugs, more on that later.

The Ovis is really only good for two things.  The first is probably the only thing that it should be used for and that is for growing wool.  Wool can be used to craft a number of things, and I am assuming the developers will be adding more.   Wool is harvested with scissors you craft in the smithy.  Like a real sheep the ovis will grow more wool to harvest later. 

The second thing you can use an ovis for is climbing cliffs, and this virtual creature can climb them as well as any mountain goat.   The main problem with that is you might get your Ovis killed, like I did, on your way to a cliff.  I think it would be best to leave the Ovis back at base.  If you are one of those that like having the challenge of not using fliers, this sheep might be a good way to get at resources high up in the mountains, as long as there is nothing dangerous nearby.

The Ovis is a passive tame and requires sweet vegetable cakes, which you can make in a cooking pot, or industrial cooker.     

Ovis can be harvested for mutton!

 My Tame Ovis my Dead Ovis

Me and my tame Ovis - Ark Survival Evolved

As I said I tamed the first Ovis I saw. I was able to rescue one from the harsh reality of Ark Survival Evolved.  I dropped her off in my T-rex taming pen and passively tamed her in no time.    Shortly after I decided to take her to a nearby cliff to test out those climbing skills.  She was at 100% health, but that didn’t last long.  We were attacked by a couple of compies and they did mad damage to her.  I tried to fight back, but the Ovis is so slow, has a terrible turn radius, and barely any stamina, so I couldn’t get any hits on the damn compies with her.  I jumped off and started to stab at my feet with my pike to avoid hitting the Ovis.  When I saw that she was extremely bloody I whistled for her to follow and I thought we’d make a mad dash back to base, but in my panic, I didn’t whistle passive so the dumb sheep was killed by some bugs seconds later while her dumb tamer watched in horror and then began harvesting mutton. 

The Ovis is super cute, and as soon as I can I am going to tame another one, but when I do it is not leaving the barnyard!

Simple Bed, Bunk Bed and Sleeping Bag in Ark Survival Evovled

One thing you can't live without in Ark Survival Evolved is a fixed spawn point.  For one of those you need a hide sleeping bag, simple bed, or bunk bed.  Without they you will have to spawn in a random location of a region, which could be far from you resources and very close to danger, which is something you definitely don't want when you have weapons and armor.  All of these items can be named so they are easy to identify on the respawn screen.

In addition to using beds as spawn points you can use them to fast travel to any point on the map where you have another bed.  The main drawback of this is that you have to take off all your armor and deposit your entire inventory before you travel, so you had better have a spare set of weapons and armor waiting for you by the other bed.   

Hide Sleeping Bag

This is simple to craft and the engram is available to learn at level 5.  The main problem with them is they only work once.  However you can put them down anywhere there are no obstructions.  They are great on an adventure to a dangerous cave or near an enemy base when your tribe is going on a raid.  

25 - hide

15 - fiber

Simple Bed

This is the best of the three for general use.  It must be placed on a foundation and has a cool down time so if you die shortly after respawning you won't be able to use it for awhile.  That problem is easily solved by putting down multiple beds.  The nice thing is you can place them right on top of one another. 

15 - wood

80 - thatch

30 - fiber

40 - hide

Simple Bed

Bunk Bed

Bunk Beds look really cool, but they are super expensive to craft for what you get out of them.  Their only advantage over the simple bed is they have half the cool down time.  It is much cheaper to craft multiple simple beds and place them all in the same spot, save your 320 metal ingots for something important.   

80 - polymer

200 - pelt, wool, or hair

320 - metal ingot

280 - fiber

120 - hide

Bunk Bed

Note: since publishing this post the devs have introduced the Ark Canoe, which can also be used as a spawn point/

Instant Tame Cheat Code - Console Command for Ark Survival Evovled

Sometimes you just want to tame something to test it out in Ark Survival Evolved, or perhaps to help control wild dino spawn, whatever the reason there are a couple of console commands that you can use to make it happen.

forcetame

The first is forcetame you type this in while you are looking at the wild creature and boom you have a tame dino.   The new tame will wander around a few seconds and then stop.  The dino will gain extra levels via 100% taming effectiveness.  There will be no sound or naming screen when the tame works.  It can be hard to move from console to game screen on a moving target, so be careful of using this command with dangerous creatures.  

dotame

If you want the regular taming experience where you get the naming option extra then you can use the dotame command.

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Ark Survival Evolved Single Player Settings

When you are first starting out in Ark Survival Evolved single player you have a number of options with sliders in which to choose from. The first thing you need to do when looking at all these options is to ask yourself how much time you are going to put into this game.  Ark, like most survival games, can be very grindy.  It can take forever to gather resources and level up your character.  You can put hundreds of hours into the game and not reach max level on single player on standard settings.  If you are going to be a casual player you are going to want to be liberal with the settings.  For most settings you the slider or type in a higher number.

My preferred Ark Single Player Settings

Under General Tab

Difficulty:  1

XP multiplier: 2

Taming Speed: 5

Harvest Amount: 3

Water Drain: 0.5

Show Player Map Location (check box)

Under Advanced Tab

Allow Cave Building  (check box)

Allow Cave Flyer  (check box)

Non-permanent Diseases  (check box)

Egg Laying Interval:  0.25

Egg Hatching Speed: 3 to 6

Resource Respawn Interval: 0.25

Night Time Speed: 3.0

Crop Growth Speed: 4 to 6

Tamed Dino Stats

- Stamina: 3

- Weight: 3

Player Stats Per Level

- Stamina: 3

- Weight: 3

Show Floating Text Damage (check box)

The trick is to not be too liberal, or you will end up making the game boring.  Luckily all these settings can be changed each time you load the game!  The only things that will really last is the XP multiplier and the difficulty level you set.  The difficultly level determines what max level the dions spawn in as, so if you had a low setting when you first launch and later change it to a higher difficulty all the original low-level dinos will still be there, but over time higher level dinos will spawn in.  You can kill off all the wild creatures using the destroywilddinos command to make the change to lower or high-level dinos in a matter of minutes. 

In the accompanying video, I explain my favorite settings on the first page on PC, which is very similar to console.  At a later date, I think I’ll do a video on the other tabs. 

What are your favorite Ark Survival Evolved single player settings?  Leave a comment!

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Baryonyx Taming in Ark Survival Evolved

In my quest to add to my egg production at the farm I went out looking for some of the newer dinos to add to my collection and the first one I found was the Baryonyx.  The Baryonyx are mostly aquatic creatures like the Sarco and the Kaprosuchus in Ark Survival Evolved.  I found about five Baryonyx spread out along the northern river of the Center Map.

I wasn’t looking for a high level one to start out with, I just wanted them for the eggs, but I eventually found a respectable level 90 and decided to try it out. I found them to me much like carnos, which are my favorite land dinos.  They aren’t extremely powerful, but they are easy to maneuver, and better in the water.  However I wouldn’t use them specifically for the water because they are very slow.  Unlike carnos they can also jump, which can come in handy when you need to escape in a hurry.  I recommend you give them a try.

How to tame a Baryonyx?

 You can tame a Baryonyx from thee the ground.  Try to get to a cliff or tall rock where the creature can’t leap up and get you.  Then simply rain tranq arrows or darts down on it.   Unfortunately, it will eventually try and run away, so you’ll likely have to pursue it on foot.  In the video I grabbed mine and dropped them in a taming pen. 

To tame the  Baryonyx you will need to feed it Pachyrhinosaurus kibble, raw prime fish meat, or fish meat.  Tame or wild they will not eat regular raw meats. 

Spawn Dino Cheat Codes/Console Command for Ark Survival Evovled

Say that in your Ark Survival Evolved single player game you want to play around with the new dinos, but you can’t find them, or you want to see just want to have an island populated with 300 T-Rexes, there is a console command you can use to make that happen. 

To bring up the console on PC use the tab key.  On Xbox and PS4 you get the option for admin commands in the pause menu. 

The first command spawns in a random dino based on your difficulty setting, so if it is set to 3 on the center map, the highest a dino will spawn in is 150, and on the island map it would be 120.  With the following command you will get completely random stats and sex of the dino. We’ll use Carbonemys as an example look in the Ark Wiki for individual creature spawn codes:

summon Turtle_Character_BP_C

If you want to get more specific about the level of the creature and the location of a spawn you can use a much longer console command:

SpawnDino "Blueprint'/Game/PrimalEarth/Dinos/Turtle/Turtle_Character_BP.Turtle_Character_BP'" 500 0 0 35

The last numbers are the important part of the code.  In the above example the 500 refers to the distance that the creature will spawn from you.  500 is only a couple of foundations distant from you, so this is a very dangerous thing to be doing if you are spawning in a highly aggressive dino like a Giga. 

The next two numbers 0 0 are not as important have to do with the location of the spawn.  When using this cheat code the creature will spawn in the direction you are looking, so if you are looking straight up they will spawn in the air and if you’re looking down they will be glitched into the ground, and maybe fall through the map.

The last number is the one you really want to know (35), and that is the level it is going to spawn in as.  I don’t know what the level cap is, I have used up to level 100000 to test it out in a cave where too many dinos were spawning and causing fps issues.  In order to tame a wild animal with an extremely high level you will need some mods, or another cheat code forcetame.  When you enter the forcetame code anything you are looking at will instantly become tamed.  They won’t stop instantly like a normal tame, but they will wander for 5-10 seconds before coming to a stop. 

These codes will allow you to spawn in any dino you want, even those that aren't available for a specific map like mantis on the Island Map, or Dire Bears in Ark Scorched Earth.  I haven't tested it by the forcetame cheat is said to only work for a limited time on some of the high-end creatures like the titianasaur.  These cheats and the give item cheat are probably the most useful console commands for the game.