Atk my Target/Neutral/Passive

[⛧ Morslyte ⛧]

When should I use each? And let me even explain better my situation:

I've built a wooden house in the beach in a relatively safe place, I placed most of my dinos in passive since I don't want them to leave formation, leaving only the strongest carnivores in Attack My Target when I'm away. I don't remember why I thought it was a good idea to leave the Sharks and the Spinos in the water on "Neutral", why did I leave them as such? All I know they are often going after some other Megalodon or Manta that comes near them.

For this situation, what should I do? Do they protect my other dinos in Atk my Target or only Neutral?

By the way, I'm taking recommendations for SINGLEPLAYER only. I know the deal with building in beaches and living them on passive in MP games is a bad thing, but here is not the case. On land the only thing that comes is the occasional Dodo. The water is a bit more scary though.

[Mi]

Attack my target will make them attack whatever you attack. Neutral will make them attack anything that attacks your dinos (or you).

So I would suggest to put most on passive, with some neutral guards.

[🦊 Hermit]

Lots of people say that dinos on neutral will defend other friendly dinos nearby when those are attacked, but in my experience this has never been the case. So far as I can tell neutral will only ever trigger the dino to fight if it is hit by something directly - I've had dinos on neutral sit and stare at me as I and some of my other dinos are slaughtered by a passing rex, without doing anything to help.

Attack My Target is what I always use - this will set the dino to attack anything which you attack, or which attacks a friendly dino close by. Dinos set to this will indeed defend other nearby passives, so long as their targetting range is set high enough to see the attacker and the friendly that is being attacked.

Passive dinos will not fight no matter what, even if they're being chewed to death. A strategy many use is to have one dino on passive as a sort of 'rally point', then other dinos set to follow that passive dino. This way the fighters will protect the passive dino and other nearby friendlies, but will always return to the passive anchor when the area is safe, and will not wander off into the forest after a threat and leave your passive dinos vunerable.

[Mi]

Originally posted by Hermit:

Lots of people say that dinos on neutral will defend other friendly dinos nearby when those are attacked, but in my experience this has never been the case. So far as I can tell neutral will only ever trigger the dino to fight if it is hit by something directly - I've had dinos on neutral sit and stare at me as I and some of my other dinos are slaughtered by a passing rex, without doing anything to help.

This has never happened to me and I always put my guards on neutral.

I get the occasional dilo in my base and whenever they attack a passive dino, my neutrals rush to the rescue.

[bugman]

Originally posted by Mi:

Originally posted by Hermit:

Lots of people say that dinos on neutral will defend other friendly dinos nearby when those are attacked, but in my experience this has never been the case. So far as I can tell neutral will only ever trigger the dino to fight if it is hit by something directly - I've had dinos on neutral sit and stare at me as I and some of my other dinos are slaughtered by a passing rex, without doing anything to help.

This has never happened to me and I always put my guards on neutral.

I get the occasional dilo in my base and whenever they attack a passive dino, my neutrals rush to the rescue.

[⛧ Morslyte ⛧]

Originally posted by Hermit:

Lots of people say that dinos on neutral will defend other friendly dinos nearby when those are attacked, but in my experience this has never been the case. So far as I can tell neutral will only ever trigger the dino to fight if it is hit by something directly - I've had dinos on neutral sit and stare at me as I and some of my other dinos are slaughtered by a passing rex, without doing anything to help.

Attack My Target is what I always use - this will set the dino to attack anything which you attack, or which attacks a friendly dino close by. Dinos set to this will indeed defend other nearby passives, so long as their targetting range is set high enough to see the attacker and the friendly that is being attacked.

Passive dinos will not fight no matter what, even if they're being chewed to death. A strategy many use is to have one dino on passive as a sort of 'rally point', then other dinos set to follow that passive dino. This way the fighters will protect the passive dino and other nearby friendlies, but will always return to the passive anchor when the area is safe, and will not wander off into the forest after a threat and leave your passive dinos vunerable.

Great strategy. By the way, isn't there a mode "Run for the Hills" that we can put on our fragile and vegetarian dinos? So that whenever they are attacked they run away as wild dinos do?

[Housatonic]

Nope, they won't flee on their own.
A whistle combo you want to master ASAP when taking more than one animal out though: ; and J, or "all passive" and "all follow" it's your getaway combo. Stops all neutrals from attacking the enemy and instead flee with you, otherwise they will fight to the death.

For safely storing animals when you're not around you want to build them a pen, and leave some guards around, as mentioned before. Where you decide to build can also have a big impact on safety. Once you get settled in, there's also species X, turrets, ... to help fortify your base.

[margalus]

Originally posted by Hermit:

Lots of people say that dinos on neutral will defend other friendly dinos nearby when those are attacked, but in my experience this has never been the case. So far as I can tell neutral will only ever trigger the dino to fight if it is hit by something directly

Dinos on neutral will always go after anything that attacks you or dinos. If yours were just sitting there while another dino of yours was being attacked they had to be on passive or you have a major bug in your game that nobody else has.

[🦊 Hermit]

Originally posted by margalus:

Originally posted by Hermit:

Lots of people say that dinos on neutral will defend other friendly dinos nearby when those are attacked, but in my experience this has never been the case. So far as I can tell neutral will only ever trigger the dino to fight if it is hit by something directly

Dinos on neutral will always go after anything that attacks you or dinos. If yours were just sitting there while another dino of yours was being attacked they had to be on passive or you have a major bug in your game that nobody else has.

I dunno whether it's bugged or not man, I can only speak from experience. And I can say they definitely were not on passive, because this has happened multiple times, every time I have tried the neutral setting. For me, a dino on neutral will never move to attack unless it's directly attacked itself - it's the 'attack my target' setting that makes them guard other dinos around them too.

[Housatonic]

Only thing I can think of is to try and increase the aggro range maybe?
I also remember my rex giving me the blank stare while being murdered by piranhas, but that's a fairly specific situation.

[drazan]

if only there was a guard function

example, i set my raptor on a spot on neutral. somethimes attacks, the raptor responds and attacks, then he stays where he killed the victim

i want said raptor to return to his spot, and continue his guard task

instead, i have to manually put back all my guards since some people like putting wild dinos inside my base over and over

[Housatonic]

Originally posted by drazan:

if only there was a guard function

example, i set my raptor on a spot on neutral. somethimes attacks, the raptor responds and attacks, then he stays where he killed the victim

i want said raptor to return to his spot, and continue his guard task

instead, i have to manually put back all my guards since some people like putting wild dinos inside my base over and over

Tame a turtle or something similar tanky, hop on, set raptor to follow, then hop off, and double check the anchor animal is on passive.

[drazan]

Originally posted by Housatonic:

Originally posted by drazan:

if only there was a guard function

example, i set my raptor on a spot on neutral. somethimes attacks, the raptor responds and attacks, then he stays where he killed the victim

i want said raptor to return to his spot, and continue his guard task

instead, i have to manually put back all my guards since some people like putting wild dinos inside my base over and over

Tame a turtle or something similar tanky, hop on, set raptor to follow, then hop off, and double check the anchor animal is on passive.

tried that, didn't work
as soon as i log out, all "follow" are gone

i tried that with a bigfot escorted by a 116 prime tamed carno
the bigfoot was good on wandering, but the carno was at the exact spot it was when i logged out

[Housatonic]

When did you try this? A patch in recent months made sure the follow status persists through server restarts (or game restarts, for single player, or so it should.) Before, yes, it would reset upon each restart.

[drazan]

Originally posted by Housatonic:

When did you try this? A patch in recent months made sure the follow status persists through server retsrats (or game restarts, for single player, or so it should.) Before, yes, it would reset upon each restart.

yup i admit, this was done around februari, i took a long break from ark and now started again on a new pve/pvp server.
glad it is working now then

[Housatonic]

Yup, should be worth another try then. It certainly was one of my favorite updates, to be honest. QoL stuffies like that can make a world of difference.