Alternative dinos for The Island's bosses

[Chaser the Tiny Hippo]

The normal dinos used for the bosses are 19 rexes, 1 yuty, and maybe a daeodon in place of a rex. I'm wondering what other people have been able to make work against the bosses because taking a herd of rexes to a boss location gets kind of old, especially considering their size and turn radius. It also gets kind of lame to just use the same things over and over again.
A yutyrannus is obviously a given for any set. If you have full courage on all 19 other dinos, you have a damage output increase of 6.3 times the amount of just bringing one more dino to the fight since each couraged dino gains 30% more damage and resistance.
I've seen people say that therizinos work well against the bosses because they have the benefit of cakes and have a similar damage output to the rex.
Has anyone tried taking a rhino and spamming the charge attack against a boss? Was it any good?
I'm also wondering if chalicos might be good considering their boulder throw, but I've never really used them so I'm not sure if they actually do much damage with that.
It seems like the megatherium is a good choice vs the broodmother considering the insect killer buff.
With the addition of tek stegos, giving them an extra possible 20% levels, I'm now wondering if they might be viable for a boss at all. I don't think their damage is high enough though.

I'll be on later and will try testing some of these in singleplayer, but I'd like to know what you guys have tried and what has and hasn't worked.

[Elliebird]

I can't comment on anything else, but the Therizino used to be a flat out better Rex, they dropped the nerf hammer on it pretty hard though. It used to hit twice with its claw attack, but that's no longer a thing. They also reduced their damage by 30%, so the only real pros to the Theris are that they take reduced fire damage and they can eat veggie cakes.

I'm not sure how viable they are for bosses after the nerf, as all the comments/boss kills I've seen with them were from pre-nerf, but it is something to consider. It's a shame, as I'm also not that big of a fan of the Rex being the go-to for bosses and the Theris being the herbivore equivalent was amazing.

[Lordbufu]

I saw theri's going at the Alpha Dragon .... it dint end well, for the other bosses i think there still viable, but dint get around testing that theory yet (want a legit full rex run done first).

Tek Stego's are the same as Stego's for as far as i know, i dont consider them viable for boss fights at all, they seem to be more usefull for PvP then PvE purposes in general. A Tek Stego would be the easier way to get skewed stats, but thats about it same kinda thing as the Tek Rex.

[Chaser the Tiny Hippo]

Originally posted by Lordbufu:

I saw theri's going at the dragon .... it dint end well, for the other bosses i think there still viable, but dint get around testing that theory yet (want a legit full rex run done first).

Tek Stego's are the same as Stego's for as far as i know, i dont consider them viable for boss fights at all, they seem to be more usefull for PvP then PvE purposes in general. A Tek Stego would be the easier way to get skewed stats, but thats about it same kinda thing as the Tek Rex.

Yea, I know that tek stegos are just stegos with a higher max level. I was wondering if maybe that higher level let them become useful.
Herbivores are supposed to have a fire damage resistance, so I was thinking those might actually be better than rexes vs the dragon, but I'm not really sure on that.
I've never really used mammoths for fighting before, but I think I'll test them out later today in singleplayer too.

Originally posted by Elenwei:

I can't comment on anything else, but the Therizino used to be a flat out better Rex, they dropped the nerf hammer on it pretty hard though. It used to hit twice with its claw attack, but that's no longer a thing. They also reduced their damage by 30%, so the only real pros to the Theris are that they take reduced fire damage and they can eat veggie cakes.

I'm not sure how viable they are for bosses after the nerf, as all the comments/boss kills I've seen with them were from pre-nerf, but it is something to consider. It's a shame, as I'm also not that big of a fan of the Rex being the go-to for bosses and the Theris being the herbivore equivalent was amazing.

Theris were my first guess for non-rex dinos to bring in. Not really sure how they'll do, but they'll probably be my first test too.

I think I'll try allos too. I know their bleed doesn't work on the boss, but they might still be ok regardless.

[Lordbufu]

Originally posted by Tiny Hippo:

Yea, I know that tek stegos are just stegos with a higher max level. I was wondering if maybe that higher level let them become useful.

I would love to dive into the why not, but discussions about stats and max possible stats on steam tend to end in endless discussions filled with false information due to bad calculations.
So im sticking with the easier to get decent stats on part of my reply :)

[Chaser the Tiny Hippo]

My tests will be vs the beta monkey and will consist of 19 of the tested dino and 1 yuty. If 19 allos can kill a monkey, and 19 rexes can kill a monkey, than any combination of 19 allos/rexes should be able to kill the monkey.
I spawned in allos at level 150 through gmsummon, this gives me a perfect tame of 225, I then gave them 39 extra levels for me to spend into hp and damage, and gave them all 100% imprint and 80 armor saddles.
The allos' stats were pumped to 12k hp, and then the rest of the points were put into damage, giving me a range of 380% - 530%, with most of them being close to 450%
8 of the allos are listed as pack leaders, this seems screwy to me since I thought their packs had to be at least 3, but if there are 8 pack leaders, that means 2-3 allos per pack... 8 of them definitely have the pack leader glow though.

As a side note, does anyone know of a command to copy dinos? It takes a while to set them all up like this and it would be much faster if I could just copy one.

Anyway, here's how the fight was:

Allosaurus

At the start... there was a half-hp beta megapithicus right at the spawn for some reason. Singleplayer is buggy.
The allos dealt with that pretty well, then the correct beta monkey was waiting for us up where it should be. The allos were couraged the entire fight, and not one of them died. Their hp range was from 2k - 8k remaining and they actually killed 1.5 beta monkeys there without healing in between.
Also, upon teleporting to the boss, their pack leader status corrected and went down to 2 instead of 8.

I'll see how it goes against the alpha monkey after they heal up.

The Alpha fight didn't go very well. No monkey at the start this time, but, 18 allos plus the yuty died, and I was left on foot to shoot at it. The monkey did die, but the last remaining allo had 66 hp left.

I'll try therizinos next.
And to clarify, I am on singleplayer, but I am not using the singleplayer settings, so the stats they have are all attainable in official settings. You could actually probably get better stats through breeding.

[Chaser the Tiny Hippo]

Therizino

The therizinos were done similarly to the allos, gmsummoned at lvl 150, perfect tame up to 225, given the imprint, and then given 37 levels(still the 4k exp the allos got) Their hp was pumped up to 15k, and the rest of their points was put into damage, averaging 450-500%. They all have 80 armor saddles. Each theri also has 10 cakes.
They old yuty died, but I did the same thing for the new one, giving him 20k hp and ~400% damage. I'm waiting on them to heal to full before sending them against the beta monkey.

The beta fight went super well. Not a single theri died, and they only went through a couple cakes. The gorilla seems to have been targeting my yuty with its boulders though, so it lost 10k hp and only had 10k left at the end of the fight. The beta fight went really well overall.

The alpha fight went well too. The theris made it through only using 5 of their 10 cakes. I avoided the fight on my yuty this time because of how much damage it too, but he still ended up taking 7k damage. All in all it was pretty good.
I figure that since they did so well here, I should put them up against the other 2 bosses aswell and see how they do.

They all died vs the alpha broodmother. Some of them still had cakes, some didn't. The broodmother was left with about half hp.

[Serangel]

I think you would have the best luck with abberant megalo's slightly less hp, slightly more damage than a rex, smaller and faster so they wont be knocking each other out of attack range as hard as the larger rexes which means more dps on targets.

[Elliebird]

Originally posted by Serangel:

I think you would have the best luck with abberant megalo's slightly less hp, slightly more damage than a rex, smaller and faster so they wont be knocking each other out of attack range as hard as the larger rexes which means more dps on targets.

Aberrant megalos suffer the same issues as normal megalos when they are transferred to other Arks. They have the usual night/day shtick.

[Serangel]

Originally posted by Elenwei:

Originally posted by Serangel:

I think you would have the best luck with abberant megalo's slightly less hp, slightly more damage than a rex, smaller and faster so they wont be knocking each other out of attack range as hard as the larger rexes which means more dps on targets.

Aberrant megalos suffer the same issues as normal megalos when they are transferred to other Arks. They have the usual night/day shtick.

Thats disapointing.

[Chaser the Tiny Hippo]

I was going to try chalicos in turret mode in the back, but their ai seems to throw boulders far too slow, and the ai controlled yuty on auto-courage takes too long inbetween roars, so it seems like this can't work out well unless you have more than 1 person in the fight, which I do not. They seem like they may work well as long as there are players riding them that can aim their boulders correctly, but I can't test that.

Next up will be megatheriums, starting with the broodmother this time. I'll get them the same 80 armor saddles the others had and will post there stats when I make them all.
After megatheriums, I'll try out the megalocerous(is there a large difference between aberrant and normal?) The megalo fight will be at night ofcourse.

Megatheriums

These guys are the same deal as before: gmsummon at 150, perfect tame bonus to 225, and then an extra 4000 exp. I pumped their hp to 13k and their dmg average is around 500%. They all have 80 armor saddles and unfortunatelys don't benefit from cakes. Their first fight will be beta broodmother.
I obviously replaced any dead megatheris before the group had another fight.

The beta broodmother fight didn't go so well actually. 2 Megatheris died, the rest were ranging anywhere from 2k to 10k hp. My guess is that they're not all able to kill some spiders and get their bug killer buff, so the ones that did were able to make it out with plenty of hp to spare, while the ones that didn't got near death or died.

The Alpha broodmother fight went better than I expected, and was actually a success. 10/19 megatheris died. Of the surviving ones, most had around 1k hp while a couple had 4k.

The beta gorilla fight actually went better than the beta broodmother fight, even though megatheriums are supposed to be good vs the broodmother. The monkey killed 0 megatheris. Most of the remaining ones were at 4k/13k hp, with the highest being 7k. Considering their remaining hp, they'll probably die vs the alpha monkey.

The Alpha gorilla fight was surprisingly a success. 6 Megatheris died in the fight, and most of the others were left with just a sliver(<1000) of hp left. Oddly, one of them had 7k hp at the end.

I'd say that if you want to use them vs the broodmother, they should not be your main force, it should just be a few player-controlled megatheris so that you can make sure they kill a spider every now and then, because without the insect killer buff, they die pretty quickly. If the get the buff, they do just fine though.

[Serangel]

The differnce is abberant on AB dont suffer from the daytime debuff, they can remain active day and night. I was under the impression this carried over to other maps aswell but that isnt the case unfortunatly, megalos would be a nice alternative to useing rexes, but the day time debuff just makes any benifit they have not worth it.

[Chaser the Tiny Hippo]

I'm gonna take a break for now since I've been at this for a few hours.
The others that I still currently plan to test are:

• Megalosaurus
  
• Stegos(Not confident about this one at all, but still want to try because we have shiny ones now)
  
• Mammoth
  
• Carno
  
• Yuty(all 20, not just 1 as usual)

After this, I'll try out and see what works vs the dragon.

[Lordbufu]

Quite intresting results tbh, considering these "test" dino are most likely far from how good my Tek Rexes currently are, and those just face rolled all 3 broodmothers loosing only 2 pigs because im an idiot and need to learn how to manage my groups xD

But the effort needed to get them all lined up on the obi teleport pad, and the cluster bomb that returns after the fight, that is the challenge in my opinion so anything slightly smaller but nearly as good is very much welcome tbh.

Wonder how the rest of the tests turn out, so far i think megath are a good addition to my army for farming element, but im also intrested to see how the Mammoth fairs.

PS: for healing you can use the command "RefillStats" if i recall correctly that works on dinos if your riding them, might help a little bit with all the waiting for healing etc ;)

[Chaser the Tiny Hippo]

Originally posted by Lordbufu:

Quite intresting results tbh, considering these "test" dino are most likely far from how good my Tek Rexes currently are, and those just face rolled all 3 broodmothers loosing only 2 pigs because im an idiot and need to learn how to manage my groups xD

But the effort needed to get them all lined up on the obi teleport pad, and the cluster bomb that returns after the fight, that is the challenge in my opinion so anything slightly smaller but nearly as good is very much welcome tbh.

Wonder how the rest of the tests turn out, so far i think megath are a good addition to my army for farming element, but im also intrested to see how the Mammoths fair.

PS: for healing you can use the command "RefillStats" if i recall correctly that works on dinos if your riding them, might help a little bit with all the waiting for healing etc ;)

I just had dinner and was about to get back to my testing actually.
But yea I thought it'd be hell trying to get all my dinos piled up at the boss portal, but I've been pleasantly surprised so far that the groups I've tried all fit in nicely with lots of space left to spare :D
I thought about just using "infinitestats" twice to insta-fill their hp after fights, but I don't want to risk accidently missing one and muddying the results(the allo survived alone with 66 hp, if I were to have missed one there all allos would have died)
The daeodon conviniently has a big green sign whenever dinos are healing, so I just wait for that to go away just to be certain. I am glad to know that 'refillstats' exists though... I thought the closest thing to that was 'infinitestats' twice.
I'm also adding spinos to my list, although I'm not sure how easy it'll be to fit 19 of those... The reason being I saw some water in the broodmother fight and was reminded of the spino's buff. I get the feeling it'll be hard to keep all spinos buffed though.

Anyway, to the meglos!

[Porr]

Great thread, thanks for sharing and please keep posting results as you do tests. Mostly interested in Theriz vs Dragon.