Megalodons' spawns?!

[Nefentari]

A couple of days ago I stayed up til 4AM to finish taming a Megalodon and an Ichthy. Since I live on a beach and all I'd ever seen in the water there were a bunch of Carbos and the occasional Piranha (never any Megalodons,...), I decided to take my raft and have my newly tamed dinos follow it (both were set to Neutral). Bad, BAD idea! About 30m from my house a group of 5-6 Megalodons suddently spawned and with the AI constantly getting stuck on enemies instead of fighting back or following me, you can imagine how it ended. Sad, sad day!

Yesterday I decided to try it again. I managed to find two pretty high level Ichthys and stayed up til 3AM to tame them. Since I didn't want to lose them too, I let them wait in the very shallow part of the water and checked for any Megalodons - no other dinos anywhere in the water. So I turned around for maybe 5 seconds to set my Pteradon to follow to make him fly behing me while I was bringing the Ichthys back one by one. When I turned back, BAM, 4 Megalodons were already gnawing on my poor Ichthys. Yes, in the very, very shallow water and with at least half of their bodies sticking out of the water.
R.I.P. Itchy & Scratchy :(

Seriously, what the f*** is wrong with Megalodons in this game?! There are never any around - even if there's the occasional single one, it usually doesn't attack me or wild Ichthys around it - but as soon as one of your tamed dinos even touches the water, a big group spawns right next to you out of thin air and there's no way you can fend them off and have your dinos survive with the AI the way it is at the moment!

How do you guys do it?

[Agnar]

Megalodons have a huge aggro range, but generally hang out in medium depth water so I think what is more likely is that yuo have just never seen that many before, but your tamed water dinos pulled them all in. I'd suggest either settling in an area where you can build an enclosed bay or settle slightly up a river that you can wall off.

The sharks will ONLY spawn in ocean waters, NOT river waters, so if you wall the river off with a behomoth gate you can move your sharks and ichty's in and out, while keeping them safe while you're away.

[Nefentari]

I checked beforehand with my spyglass if there were any the second time and I didn't see any, not even siluettes, let alone 4 of them. I know how fast they can swim but it certainly isn't fast enough to get from somwhere else into the shallow water in 5 seconds, plus already starting to attack my Ichthys. They must have spawned while my back was to the water, which sounds neither right nor fun!
I live on a beach at the edge of the map, where a river opens up to the sea, so I can't be sure wether my dinos still got attacked in the sea or already in the river but from all the diving I've already done in the sea, the spawning situation has been like I wrote in the first post: A bunch of Carbos, a few Piranhas and a single one of the huge-ass weird looking things but not a single Megalodon.
My question is more: How do you even bring them back to your base without having them die on the way? An Ichthy can outswim a Megalodon but their stamina is only "meh" and I don't think you can carry them with a bird, can you?

[Agnar]

Creatures on follow use no stamina, and can sprint forever.

[Nefentari]

That's exactly the problem. I can't have them on follow because then they're going to die for sure thanks to the AI and if I ride one of them, the stamina depletes, which means that the Megalodons can catch up as soon as it's gone.

[Agnar]

Originally posted by Nefentari:

I can't have them on follow because then they're going to die for sure thanks to the AI

...The heck are you on about?

Even at "walking" speed I've never seen an icthy get caught by a shark. All wild creatures have the base move speed of their species, and Megalodon has a much lower base speed. If you're getting clipped in a turn or something, just keep the icthy on passive. You'll survive one hit

[Nefentari]

The problem is that whenever one of my dinos that is supposed to follow me gets attacked, they usually don't fight back (yes, even if they're on neutral), plus they always somehow get stuck (no matter if they're on neutral or passive), which means that they stop following me and unless I'm fast enough to kill the other dino, they usually die.
I've lost quite a lot of dinos because of that, including the Megalodon, the first Ichthy and a high level Pteradon that all of a sudden decided to attack a Bronto (it was set to neutral!), even though the Bronto was nowhere near me, my house or the dino pen. I whistled at the Pteradon a couple of times to follow me but it didn't. And yes, I was far enough away that it should have followed me but close enough to hear my whistle.

[Grey]

Build a secure bay with a double lock system and then tame your water dinos. Are you playing single player or on a server? If you're SP, without any changes, the defaults would agree with what others have stated. Otherwise, spawn radius may be different. This can be adjusted by editing the gameusersettings.ini file on your PC or the server.

Also, you make a point about how late you stayed up? Check out the taming calculator (ark.crumplecorn.com/taming/) so you can plan for how much time a specific animal will need before your start the process and ruin your sleep.

[Nefentari]

I'm playing on a server I don't own, so I can't just edit the config but afaik only the usual taming multipliers,... and the health got changed/reverted back to how it was in previous updates.
The taming and them being killed while they were unconscious surprisingly has never been a problem with the water dinos but bringing them back to my base is. Like I said, having them on follow pretty much is a death sentence and outrunning a pack of about 5 Megalodons while riding my dino... yeah...
Honestly, the problem isn't that I stayed up late but that I stayed up late and had all of the work go to nothing because of stupid, sneaky and maybe even buggy spawns behind my back. That really got me pissed and even more because it has already happened twice in a row now.

[ricardo]

My solution to this problem was to tame a pack of Megaladons. If a fight happens, I jump off and help with the crossbow. I thought I was pretty safe with a Megalodon, but I was wrong. 3 is better.

[Lilkinsly]

Bring a saddle with you. Tame pet. Put saddle on pet. Ride back to your base and run from any threats.

[Housatonic]

I tamed a level 80 mega, set it to follow my raft and never once did anything but wait for it to finish butchering things attacking it when driving my raft around.
Recently I found a higher level, tamed it with more prime, got the couple mate boosted, and now I've gone up against anything up to low level mosas without blinking.

My first dive on just the one shark did eventually get it bloodied, but this was after fighting off several waves of megas and plesio duos, on 5k HP and almost 1k melee I believe.

So my advice is, get a nice shark.
If you really have trouble keeping a nice shark alive long enough to get the HP up some, dive nearby, kill a fish, drag it to shore, and kill anything that shows up, as this should attract sharks in the area.
Or mount your shark, and try to pick off the sharks in the area one on one, clear the area and net some levels in the process.

[Azorua]

Originally posted by Housatonic:

I tamed a level 80 mega, set it to follow my raft and never once did anything but wait for it to finish butchering things attacking it when driving my raft around.
Recently I found a higher level, tamed it with more prime, got the couple mate boosted, and now I've gone up against anything up to low level mosas without blinking.

My first dive on just the one shark did eventually get it bloodied, but this was after fighting off several waves of megas and plesio duos, on 5k HP and almost 1k melee I believe.

So my advice is, get a nice shark.
If you really have trouble keeping a nice shark alive long enough to get the HP up some, dive nearby, kill a fish, drag it to shore, and kill anything that shows up, as this should attract sharks in the area.
Or mount your shark, and try to pick off the sharks in the area one on one, clear the area and net some levels in the process.

This is likely the best way to do it, while also building yourself a protected bay for your animals. You should also follow some of the other suggestions, like taking the saddle with you on your tame and ride your new tame back (even if it means giving up the raft). The idea about getting a pack of sharks, is what you want for your end game and make sure they are mate boosted, because then those 3-4 sharks will take out a pair of mate boosted plesio... Also it just sounds like you have really ♥♥♥♥ luck in the game.