I wish these stupid birds were removed from the game..

[Alucard †]

Yea you know which ones i am talking about.

The steal all your food under a milisecond before you can even land a hit kind of bird..

They are one of reasons why i crafted a shotgun yet they still sometimes appear and rob me when i least expect it.

Or rob my tames of their food which pisses me off even more.

[skyguard]

You can remove them by replacing them with another dino via ini if you want.

[Alucard †]

Originally posted by skyguard:

You can remove them by replacing them with another dino via ini if you want.

I can?!
Won't that mess up anything?

[skyguard]

Originally posted by ⎛ Alucard ⎞ ✟:

Originally posted by skyguard:

You can remove them by replacing them with another dino via ini if you want.

I can?!
Won't that mess up anything?

No Sir, many people do that.

A quick search here will lend you quite a few threads with how/where to and the command lines themselves.

[Alucard †]

That's amazing i didn't know i could manipulate creature spawns.

With just an ini tweak nontheless.

[Sicksadpanda]

Ark is extremely flexible in this game. There's also mods that prevents stealing if you rather go down that path. Regardless, Gulls and Pegos are definitely the most hated dinos in the game, so no one would blame you for removing those.

You just simply need to go to your game.ini file first... The file path is usually this

C:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\ARK\ShooterGame\Saved\Config\WindowsNoEditor

just change the first letter depending on which computer drive you stored Ark in. Then open the file as notepad, the first thing you should see is [/script/shootergame.shootergamemode], put the following lines below it.

NPCReplacements=(FromClassName="Ichthyornis_Character_BP_C",ToClassName="")

You can also include this too if you hate Pegomastax too...

NPCReplacements=(FromClassName="Pegomastax_Character_BP_C",ToClassName="")

You don't need to include a dino in the replacement section, the nearby spawns will fill it in for it, it's just saying that Ichthyornis will never spawn.

Once you put that line in the config. Save the game.ini and then when you start up your game. Make sure you open up commands (press tab) and type the following

Destroywilddinos

This will delete all active wild dinos, including any already spawned gulls. And you should be set (side note, it's a good idea to run destroywilddinos once in a while to refresh spawns).

[william_es]

Or get a sinomacrops, and it will frighten them away. Does the same for pegomastix, the ants, and other "pest" dinos.

Those same annoying birds make great tames by the way. If you have the right server settings, they are basically hunting falcons.

You launch them, they will kill small animals or fish, and will bring the corpse back to you and drop it at your feet. Any corpses will get a special buff which changes what you get when you loot the corpse. You'll get prime meat or fish when you harvest. Allows early game players to make special kibble. Prime fish is kinda of hard for early game players to get too (good for moschops taming).

Also counts for much MUCH higher taming effectiveness boost for taming things like otters. The prime buff will increase taming by a lot more.

I carry a tamed ichtyornis in a cryopod everywhere I go. I still named the thing "mother #$%#ing bird!".

[Green Odin]

I personally think the mechanic is great and want them to stick around but I do think half the frustration with them would be solved by improving their hitbox so that you can actually reliably ping them with damage when you hit them.

[ThatZenoGuy]

There is a popular mod which replaces 'thief' creatures with identical creatures without the thieving mechanic.

[Teratus]

Tbh the main problems with these birds is that unlike Pegos, when they steal anything consumable they instantly eat it making it impossible to recover the stolen items, and there is no stack limit on this ability either and to top it off they are immune to the effects of anything they eat as well.

So these damn birds will gladly steal and consume a modified stack of 10,000 narcotics from you, and they won't even knock themselves out for it.
Wild ones should not be able to steal more than 10-20 items in a stack at any time if you ask me and whenever they steal and consume something that inflicts torpor they should take torpor damage for it.

But the most infuriating thing about them is their hitbox and movement pattern.. they fly around so erratically and just fast enough that if you're playing online you can barely hit the blasted things with projectile weapons.. especially with slower projectiles like arrows.

I've lost count of how many times i've put about 30 arrows into one of these insufferable things without it taking a single hit of damage.
This one, is by far, the biggest BS thing about this creature and I seriously wish they would get a TLC or something to fix both these issues.

They would be a significantly better creature overall with those changes.

[ThatZenoGuy]

Originally posted by Teratus:

Tbh the main problems with these birds is that unlike Pegos, when they steal anything consumable they instantly eat it making it impossible to recover the stolen items, and there is no stack limit on this ability either and to top it off they are immune to the effects of anything they eat as well.

So these damn birds will gladly steal and consume a modified stack of 10,000 narcotics from you, and they won't even knock themselves out for it.
Wild ones should not be able to steal more than 10-20 items in a stack at any time if you ask me and whenever they steal and consume something that inflicts torpor they should take torpor damage for it.

But the most infuriating thing about them is their hitbox and movement pattern.. they fly around so erratically and just fast enough that if you're playing online you can barely hit the blasted things with projectile weapons.. especially with slower projectiles like arrows.

I've lost count of how many times i've put about 30 arrows into one of these insufferable things without it taking a single hit of damage.
This one, is by far, the biggest BS thing about this creature and I seriously wish they would get a TLC or something to fix both these issues.

They would be a significantly better creature overall with those changes.

When they steal anything consumable? Mate the birds eat inedible things like crossbows and armor lmao.

[Sukotto82]

I definitely hate these things. I had a really good high end longneck rifle great for taming things with shocking trank darts and they just swoop down and destroy it.

I originally thought they dropped things that were not edible but I would search for ever and not find anything dropped.

I don't know if getting rid of them is the answer though I despise them greatly.

but a fix to the hit box like mentioned before and a limit on how much they can steal at a time would be a great start.

I didn't know there was a tame you could have that would scare these thieves away though. that's good to know.

sinomacrops was it?

I'll have to look this one up because I don't recognize this dino.
probably because I thought it was worthless and no point taming but if it gets rid of these thieving !@ then I may have to find and tame 1 or a few depending on how their mechanic works.

if I put them around my base will it stop these things from wondering in?

even my turrets have trouble shooting these accursed things down sometimes.

[🦊 Hermit]

They're supposed to drop things they can't eat on the floor, but ever since their introduction I have seen them do that only ONE, possibly TWO times. Pretty much all other times they've just destroyed my stuff completely. And yes, their hitbox is utterly borked. I've just straight up removed them from my solo games until they are fixed, which it seems will not be happening so I won't have them ever.

Originally posted by Sukotto82:

I didn't know there was a tame you could have that would scare these thieves away though. that's good to know.

sinomacrops was it?

I'll have to look this one up because I don't recognize this dino.

https://ark.wiki.gg/wiki/Sinomacrops

The shoulder pet on Lost Island. You have it on your shoulder and whenever something small gets near, it screeches to do damage and scare them away. Does have a cooldown though so if you run past several in quick succession only the ones in range at first will be affected, and you'll be at the mercy of the others.

[Teratus]

Originally posted by ThatZenoGuy:

When they steal anything consumable? Mate the birds eat inedible things like crossbows and armor lmao.

Nah they don't they just disarm you.

Weapons and non consumable items they steal from you get dropped on the ground and you can recover them most of the time.

Terrain bugs and mesh issues can make them easy to loose though, as well as lots of foliage or water.
Running about whipping is one way you maybe able to increase the odds of recovering a stolen item.
But I agree it can be annoying at times if you don't see where the weapon went, easy to loose them because of that.

[🦊 Hermit]

I've often fought them on flat, open beaches without any major foliage around to block vision of dropped items. They have pretty much never dropped any equipment for me, and nothing has been on the ground for me to pick up afterwards.

It's true that in most cases, what they wrestle from you will be deleted rather than dropped to pick up again.

[ThatZenoGuy]

Originally posted by Teratus:

Originally posted by ThatZenoGuy:

When they steal anything consumable? Mate the birds eat inedible things like crossbows and armor lmao.

Nah they don't they just disarm you.

Weapons and non consumable items they steal from you get dropped on the ground and you can recover them most of the time.

Terrain bugs and mesh issues can make them easy to loose though, as well as lots of foliage or water.
Running about whipping is one way you maybe able to increase the odds of recovering a stolen item.
But I agree it can be annoying at times if you don't see where the weapon went, easy to loose them because of that.

I can tell you this, I have seen them pick up a damned crossbow, and then dissolve the bag beneath them by eating it.