Help with underwater dinos

[Keda]

So i have a lot of hours in ark ( i know a lot of people have more but i still consider it a decent amount) and i have done quite a bit. Me and my friends play on a private pve server and we usually do it every half a year or so. I have tamed almost everything on land but i always struggle with transitioning to water and starting to tame in water. I can't even imagine taming stuff before 81 when you get the tank. Any tips on what to tame or any other suggestions on how to transition to tame underwater dinos? Thanks in advance

[Dracul]

First get some amphibious dinos, frogs and sarcos are pretty good for this (frogs ascend/descend quickly and sarcos are fast swimmers) then work on establishing a underwater taming post in one of the underwater caves (if applicable to your map) though some caves are better than others (depending on if they have a 'small' or 'large' entrance) you may need to build a box around the entrance large enough to accommodate a behemoth gate or two.

Using the dry area of the cave you can put a foundation, bed, any other things you feel you might need such as a storage box or preservation bin that sort of thing. Use the frog/sarco to lure whatever you want to tame into the box (assuming a plesio or mosa for starters) and one of your friends shut the gate though this is doable solo with some risk. Tame at your leisure and enjoy.

------

Alternatively you can start with sharks and beach tame them, just lure them into a taming box near the shore, or open ocean taming which is pretty risky and stressful but allows you more freedom of what you tame sense you can travel to and tame anything that catches your eye - fire from the back of the frog or sarcos back while keeping out of reach of whatever your taming, notably plesio and mosas can only ascend so far so this works pretty good on them. Open ocean taming can be made much safer with a platform quetz hovering above the water (unridden so it dosnt lose stamina) though I am not terribly familiar with this method, I dont tame the honkers.

Things to watch out for: mostly eels, but alpha sharks are dangerous too with out solid sea mounts to take them out with, a baryonyx can wreck eels, while a spino can do in a pinch against alpha sharks but sharks like to steer around behind it and spinos turn like a bus in the ocean. Jellyfish are bad ju ju and sneaky, keep a range weapon on hand to do damage in case these creep up on you.

[🦊 Hermit]

Before you get a scuba tank, lazarus chowder is invaluable. It reduces your oxygen use massivley...have a couple on you and inhale one just before you dive, then you won't need to come up for ages, and can just eat another when you do. Also, bring a wooden chair with you when swimming, as they can be placed underwater and you can sit on them to regain your stamina if a dino saddle is not available for you to rest on.

Baryonyx is king for a starter water mount. Nice and fast, decent damage, and has a tail swipe attack which can stun most water creatures and render them immobile.

I'd suggest you and your friends get a few of them so they can be mate boosted, then go find a high level basilosaurus. Agro the mantas and sharks around it to draw them away, then stun them with the tail swipe and take them out. After that you can tame the basilosaur, which is a passive tame so no tranqs needed.

Once you have a basil, you really won't need anything else. They're very tanky, do decent damage, are immune to being grabbed by tusos and stunned by jellies, and if ever they get low on health swim up to the surface and they get a healing buff which regenerates them fast. Get a few high levels and breed them, imprint the babies to you and your friends, you'll be pretty much unstoppable in the water.

[KitsuneShiro]

Bary then baslio = win

Bary has stun spin attack

Baslio has immunity

[ZorTheCruel]

path of least effort:
dolphin -> Basilo (both dolphin and basilo are passive tames) -> Tuso

Dolphins are SO easy to tame that they can be considered throwaway mounts without even breeding them. Plus, unlike all of the other sea dinos, you can use weapons while mounted. Super fast with slow stamina drain. if you are on any mount (even a land mount like a turtle), and in the water, wild dolphins will literally swim up to you to check you out. makes passive feeding easy.

Basilo - Gives warmth bonus while mounted, has *massive* health, and is immune to electric shock (jellyfish and eels), and is immune to the Tuso's grab attack.
Killing the dolphin/manta escort on wild Basilo is trickier on a dolphin, as you have to do it with crossbow or just lure them far enough away that they lose pursuit and dont go back to the Basilo. (though if you have a teammate, it's easy if you both have a dolphin: one lures away the escort, the other zooms in and feeds the basilo)

Alternate route that is also super-easy:
Shark -> Basilo -> Tuso

Sharks (megalodon) are very easy to tame with no trap or even no mount. You can use tranq arrows with a crossbow at any beach. go into water far enough that you can see the shark. Shoot it with tranqs until right before it gets to you, then back up onto the beach where it cant get to you. It loses aggro and starts to swim away. Go back in water and do the same thing again. When it gets heavy torpor it will try to run, then you just swim after and shoot a few more times, then it goes unconscious. Easy, just watch out for mantas lingering around the shallow water and kill them before starting the tranqs on the shark. The sharks can effortlessly kill the escort of mantas and dolphins guarding the wild basilo. making it super-easy to tame the basilo.

For me, Tuso is the end goal of making a water presence, but mainly because they are so cool and fun. Once you get used to how they move and attack, they are the masters of the deep.

Technically you can just stop at the Basilo stage and be perfectly fine, go anywhere underwater and kill anything outside of an artifact cave. (and they are what you would generally run a water artifact cave with anyway, due to the electrical immunity.)

Plesio's are *terrible* they have a shockingly bad bite hitbox, which makes them far more difficult to use as an underwater dino killer.

Mosas take a lot of effort to tame, and they just don't seem worth it to me once you have them. I would much rather have a Tuso of the same level. I just don't see any point to underwater platform saddles on dinos. I've tried to get excited about having mosas and breeding them to make awesome ones, but i still leave them back at base and use my Tuso's and Basilo's for everything. Plus Basilo aand Tuso both make oil in their inventories passively over time. Can be used for any crafting recipe that requires oil, even for making gasoline.

[Samadhi]

Make a heap of lazarus chowder and flippers. Thats all you need to start.

Tame a dolphin if you like, but imo go straight for a Megalodon first then the Basilosaurus.

The Megas are everywhere and they are more capable of defending you in the early water game than the dolphin too.

Personally, i used a Plesio as my "daily driver", i think some people try to fit the plesio into the wrong role and misunderstand its a speed based dino, not a killer like the mosa.

[ZorTheCruel]

Honestly, you dont even need scuba or lazarus chowder at the start, just put 5 level-ups into oxygen so you are at 300, and that'e enough in the beginning. (the laz chowder makes a huge difference though)

[Xenulus]

Or if you like to take risks, tame a diplocaulus. Found a lvl 145, has over 4000 oxygen, can stay underwater for legit.... a long time, I didn't keep track. Was able to KO a 145 plesi on just over one resurfacing, and that was even missing probably close to 100 arrows making the KO longer... no thanks to server lag, on a friends private server. And they're exceptionally fast in the water.

[ZorTheCruel]

One of the perks of a dolphin is also that it makes picking up an anglerfish really easy, because you don't have to trap it or dismount to tranq it. And anglerfish = absurd amounts of silica pearls. And since anglers don't require a saddle to ride, they make a very disposable sea mount once you pickup two to breed the extras.

I would agree though that if you are already high enough level to make megaladon saddles, they are probably the optimal starting sea mount, over a dolphin. Though I just love using the dolphins as crazy-fast sea scouts. They are essentially the Pteranodon of the sea. Not very tough, and can't carry a lot, but fast.

[L3ros]

Go to Herbivore Island, wait until a basil is in the shallow waters in the center. Wall it in using gates. Tame it. Use Lazarus Chowder until you get the SCUBA gear. Enjoy, you can do everything sea related now, as nothing can dismount you. I'm sure you find similar spots on other maps.

[KitsuneShiro]

The Center also has baslios in shallow areas

[Sicksadpanda]

Even though everyone is saying Basilosaur. I still want to add that Plesios are still fantastic dinos. They are extremely fast in water and they hit just about as hard as rexes. They do eat a lot of tranq arrows, but there is a way to KO them without getting hit (and without traps), Plesios (and some few other water dinos) won't follow you to a certain point to the surface. In other words, find the right height and shoot from above, but stay close to the top of the threshold to make sure they don't hit you.

[Dracul]

Originally posted by Panda:

Even though everyone is saying Basilosaur. I still want to add that Plesios are still fantastic dinos. They are extremely fast in water and they hit just about as hard as rexes. They do eat a lot of tranq arrows, but there is a way to KO them without getting hit (and without traps), Plesios (and some few other water dinos) won't follow you to a certain point to the surface. In other words, find the right height and shoot from above, but stay close to the top of the threshold to make sure they don't hit you.

Plesios (and sharks) desperately need a TLC pass, they were my go-to water mount until tusos were put in, iv spent more time on a plesio than some people have spent on any dino in general. They suffer from a lot of flaws, but are still pretty fast and having a platform saddle is extremely handy for taming (especially taming tusos solo, have a plesio bed up at the surface and a train of sacrificial dinos along for the ride). However whoever gave them that obnoxious bubble sound effect when swimming need to be kicked in the nuts, repeatedly.

[Dradiin]

Originally posted by KitsuneShiro:

Bary then baslio = win

Bary has stun spin attack

Baslio has immunity

Pretty much this ^ most of the other underwater mounts are limited at best and the Bary can be bred into beasts. Bary's have a strange bug when on land, I have my "Q" bound to attack this target, and when on land the Bary's will pretty much ignore this, works great with them underwater.

--Megalodons suck, terrible turning radius.
--Pleisiosaur/Mesosaur, Suck, huge hit boxes and terrible turning radius.
--Teusoteuthus (sp?) is a PITA to tame and is not very rewarding.
--Dunkelsteus is a beast when it comes to tanking damage and even better at resource gathering, especially on Ragnarok.
--Angler's are fun and do not need a saddle, best way to get Silica Pearls.
--Sarco's are super fast but are terrible when you have several of them, they tend to stack inside themselves forcing you to constantly pull them apart.
--Carbo (Turtles) good tanks, but slow AF.
--Diplocaulus shares Air with you underwater, so great for early game when you do not have Scuba, but you have to go into the swamp for them so it kind of negates the purpose.
--Kaprosuchus are just too weak, i look at them as the amphibious Raptor, honestly have only tamed 3 or 4 in the 4 years i have played ARK.

On a said note, Managarmr are insanely fast under water as long as you watch your oxygen levels on them, In fact i dont know of a faster underwater mount, and i don't think they were intended for this purpose, but if you x-fer one to Ragnarok, The Center, or The Island, they are insanely fast.

I am sure i missed one or two underwater mounts, and i am sure others will disagree with my opinions, but thats my take on the water mounts.

Best of luck !

[Dracul]

Originally posted by Dradiin:

--Teusoteuthus (sp?) is a PITA to tame and is not very rewarding.

Tuso are surprisingly easy to tame people just make it more complicated than it needs to be , getting the black pearls is the hard part depending on what map(s) you have dinos on, and they are 'the' apex water dino - I wouldnt use any other dino for the Caverns of Lost Hope on theisland.

For science before I quit I pitted my 290 (150 wild) Cthulhu against a 145 alpha mosa in a straight up slug fest, no cheesing just nose to nose dps race.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=855986789

[🦊 Hermit]

Originally posted by Dradiin:

On a said note, Managarmr are insanely fast under water as long as you watch your oxygen levels on them, In fact i dont know of a faster underwater mount, and i don't think they were intended for this purpose, but if you x-fer one to Ragnarok, The Center, or The Island, they are insanely fast.

Rock Drake ain't too bad in water either actually...