Playing Pteranodon

Tips and tricks for playing a Pteranodon to adulthood.

spawning in

Starting out as a Pteranodon, you may try searching for food to steal or trying to fish; Do NOT Try fishing yet. as a juvi you have terrible flying abilities and will be out of stamina before you catch anything.

Find a water source

First thing you will need is water, as it drains faster than your food. you will need to drink at least once to make it to adulthood, and drinking is also when you are most vulnerable. When you hit around 40% you should search for water and hide in the trees nearby. Waiting before you drink allows you to see if deinosuchus are active in the water by waiting to see if any surface. If none do, drink as much as you can and go back to the trees. you can now wait until adult.

Hide adult

A Pteranodon can hit 100% adult with zero food, and its not a bad idea to do so. when you hit subadult you can begin learning to fish.

Finding food

Scavenging may seem the easy way, just search and then chow down, but is very risky. Fishing is by far the best way to feed yourself as its safer than scavenging and allows you to land out of reach with your new snack.
The best area for fish I have found is a large fragmented mountain, surrounded by water. This location is called 'Center' on the spawn screen. You will find it by crossing over a large sprawling plains biome. The image below will help you identify the specific mountain. Be careful, dienosuchus are also attracted by the fish.

Fishing technique

Fishing is easy to learn, as theres only a few key parts.

1- find the fish

finding fish can be tedious, but are easily identified by ripples all along the surface. they are always found in schools.

SHOW CAUTION!
Dienosuchus can also create ripples by using water sense. The best way to identify if the ripples are a fish school or a dienosuchus is the movement. The ripples caused by fish move around erratically, and stay in a large general area. Dienosuchus ripples tend to be in a very tight circle, and appear in the same spot multiple times. They also have small bubbles beneath them that can be seen from above.


2- skimming
fly just above the surface and hold right click. this is skimming. be careful to not lose too much speed or you will fall in the water. line up, skim towards the ripples, and when prompted release right mouse button to catch a fish.

2.5- Staying afloat
Knowing that any sane ptera would want to stay out of the dienosuchus infested waters, you want to practice tapping space to keep above the waterline. If you hear your head go under you are slacking. tap space and try to keep the tip of your beak in the water, as you cant catch fish without touching the surface with the beak.

Alternative 2- water peck
fly low over ripples and spam your peck until you hit a fish. This technique is better if there is danger nearby or you aren't confident in your skimming skills.

3- eating
fish give good food, but eating them leaves you vulnerable. its a long animation you can only cancel by dropping the food (g) so try to land on a rock or in some foliage to eat safely and avoid having the fish stolen.

Landing

Currently airbrake does not work for some users, there is a fix for this. punch has written a short piece on how to fix airbrake not working.

From PunchPacket on the isle discord

Open File Explorer from the taskbar.
Select View > Options > Change folder and search options.
Select the View tab and, in Advanced settings, select Show hidden files, folders, and drives and OK.
Afterwards, at the bottom left of your taskbar there should be a white search bar. Type %APPDATA% in there and open your %APPDATA% folder.
At the top you'll see the filepath, click "Appdata" to go back to the actual Appdata folder, then to local > and delete TheIsle folder located there. It'll regenerate a fresh version when you relaunch the game.


Now that airbrake works...

landing is pretty straight forward, you lower yourself to the ground then begin to break, and then you can land. do not airbrake before you are almost at the ground or you will go too slow, fall, and take damage.

Combat

As a Pteranodon, you will be trying to avoid combat with most foes, however there is some creatures you can take. Know your limits, know your own skill, and engage only what you as a player can. Ptera is very much skill based, easy to use, but hard to really dominate with. This aims to show you your matchups so you can train in combat and become the best seagull you can.

HERBIVORES

Dryosaurus
Found most easily in the great plains near the center spawn, Dryo serves as an amazing practice target. Train your peck timing with fly-by attacks, then enjoy a hefty meal afterwards.
You will want to use these to train. they are medium targets, medium speed, and cant fight back well.

Hypsilophodon
Small and agile, these will give you a hard time. Hypsi isn't easy to catch, and the energy expended to catch one can easily bag you a dryo or half dozen fish. Their spit leaves you vulnerable to bigger animals. If a Hypsi moseys on over and sits infront of you, go for the kill. Otherwise, ignore them.

Tenontosaurus
Mostly found bullying Utahs and cocky Dienosuchus, they are dangerous. With a large number of attacks, just avoid them, you wont kill it.

Stegosaurus
Big and slow, its an easy target to peck. Don't fight it alone, but instead with a coordinated group. Make sure not to crash into each other or the stego, as it will 1 shot you. Best to ignore them, but if you are feeling bored you can try, just don't expect anything to die except you probably.

CARNIVORES

Utahraptor
Young utahs are fair game, as they can be divebombed for lots of damage, but anything sub or bigger is dangerous. Juvis already can do some damage, but a sub can almost 2 shot you. Avoid unless you are confident you will win.
WARNING: If a utah stands still, exert caution. Utah can jump into the air and knock you down, and this is an instant death, either getting pounced and pinned or bitten to death. Utahs are dumb, but not dumb enough to let a bald seagull bully them.

Carnotaurus
The best matchup you have with any land based carnivore, carnotaurus is not agile or able to ground you. If you are good with your pecks, an adult carno can be torn to shreds by you, just swoop above their hip and peck. They cant turn fast enough to bite back in time, so you can slowly whittle them down to nothing but a pile of meat.

Dienosuchus
Possibly the worst match up you have, Dienosuchus will 1 shot you. If its too small to 1 shot you, it will grab you and ground you for an easy 2nd bite. small Dienos can be killed, especially if they are away from land. Go for the tail, and never get close to the face. they turn slower than a wheelchair bound slug, so take advantage of that time. never drop your guard though, as they normally have friends around the corner...

Pteranodon
One of the easiest for you to kill, a few pecks leaves one dead. Killing a problematic or annoying ptera can be fun, but the best thing you can do is befriend them. If you have a flock of pteras, killing small dienos and carnos becomes a breeze. be sure to stay organized, 1 dives in at a time, pecks, flies up, and then a different ptera dives. this keeps you from crashing into each other and causing your own deaths.

Thats all!

if you have any suggestions on something to add, do comment below.

hopefully this helped you get adult on the seagull of isla spiro!

[codeveronica1324]

This worked so well its now the only dino I play as! THANK YOU SO MUCH!

[MOTO]

Can you pick up chickens, goats, or boars while play as pteranodon?

[Exit Light]

Burnt Toad. Right click on The Isle in your library (the part of it where all the games names are stacked on top of eachother). Select properties, then go to the Betas menu and click on None. from there you will see that you can change it to Evrima. Take that one and wait for it to download

[Druid]

Fandom Artist. keep holding forward and space while skimming water. this will keep you from slowing down to much. Also aim up or across the water when skimming don't face down. If you gain to much speed when swooping down to water use Z for air break.

[TheFandomArtist]

I still have trouble trying to fish at all, it seems anytime I try to skim the water I crash every time. Sucks even though I have still played pteranodon without fishing lol (I love the game I just wish certain things got fixed or started working for my controls. I follow instructions well)

[Frost Spectre]

And I forgot yet another important mechanic: Latching.
Done by holding Airbrake and SecondaryAttack, aiming at a surface like wall or tree. If you successfully latch, you can stay there without having any stamina drain or regen.
The most important about latching, is that you can eat held meat and fish while latched, if they're small enought to swallow.

[Frost Spectre]

Forgot to add this one:
To catch frogs in water, you can use the Fishing Glide (Hold SecondaryAttack) to slow your speed down, align your direction to the frog and press and hold PrimaryAttack to peck it to kill and grab it.
Sometimes tho, the frog is not grabbed, which can be infuriating if the frog is in middle of the water source. Might be some latency issue or that your Ptera is too high off the frog, dunno what it is exactly that prevents grab sometimes.

Or you can use Airbrake to slow your speed down and try land a held PrimaryAttack peck to kill and grab.

[Frost Spectre]

Does pecking water really catch fish? Aiming camera forward when fishing helps, showing how low you got by gauging it with your head going under the surface, usually you need to hold just the beak in water, any further can cause falling into water or being bodyblocked by hungry Deino.

About Airbrake, if you hold Forward (W button by Default), you can affect your directionality while holding Airbrake, look forward and you move abit faster forward, aim all the way down and you go straight down.
That helps when trying to land on small size platforms and other harder to land places, even on trees (Tho trying to land on trees gets you stuck, from which you have to crouch multiple times and move to get out, and then you fall requiring you to re-engage flight).

[Aether]

As a side note, this guide is no longer accurate. As a Ptera, you will starve to death before you hit young adult now, forcing you to eat far faster.

In fact, you'll starve to death before you EVER need to drink water, if that tells you how fast it happens.

[Gorilla]

Ryano, to play pteranadon you need to be on the EVRIMA branch. There is a guide that shows how to play on EVRIMA, so use that to help get yourself set up.