Infected Barnacle

Augmenting tames with infection

Our records list the Infected Barnacle for ARK: Survival Ascended, and the wiki ties this consumable to the Aquatica expansion map. It applies an augment to a tamed creature. Its in-game text reads "A rapidly mutating abyssal infection infiltrates a barnacle and anything it attaches to, inheriting dominant traits from the infected hosts." Every barnacle gives its creature water breathing, some creatures also get a skull resembling a bone mask, and the infected parts used to craft it decide which extra effect it carries. The wiki stresses that it is a separate item from the plain Barnacle.

Crafting at the Infectarium

An Infectarium combines a Barnacle, 1 Water and between 1 and 3 infected body parts: Infected Tooth, Fin, Liver, Stomach or Blubber. Most barnacles get a stronger effect with 2 parts and the strongest with 3. On a single barnacle, most organs can be combined to get lower tiers of several effects at once.

Effects by body part

• Infected Fin: swim speed rises, up to double. The boost is smaller for aquatic and amphibious creatures.
• Infected Blubber: protection, given as percentages, against shocks from the Electrophorus, Chrysaoras and Cnidarias. It also shields the tame from the shocking lasers of the Fractalis boss fight, so you are not dismounted there. In the Corrupted Master Controller fight the tames cannot be electrocuted, though riders can still take shocks themselves and be knocked off.
• Infected Tooth: most attacks get a chance to cause Jaundice, a bleed-like effect that, over 3 seconds, deals damage equal to 3% of a creature's max damage. Ranged attacks such as Velonasaur spikes or Managarmr breath do not trigger it, and some creatures, the Carcharodontosaurus among them, do not get the effect.
• Infected Liver: a chance to poison a creature that attacks you, for 3% of its max damage over 10 seconds plus a strong slow; the wiki says this can let you land hits while backing away from the chasing creature.
• Infected Scale: protects against the effects of the tooth and liver barnacles.
• Infected Stomach: switches the diet to carnivore (healing from force-fed meat), piscivore (fish meat heals more than normal meat heals a carnivore) or herbivore, which allows healing with Sweet Veggie Cakes. The wiki calls this valuable when Rexes, Shadowmanes or other carnivores fight bosses.

Sinking, floating and removal

An unridden augmented creature behaves differently in water: most seem to sink slowly, even those that would float up to the surface without the barnacle, at a speed that depends on the creature. Barnacles are intended as permanent, yet the wiki warns that uploading and downloading the creature, or cloning it, removes the augment.

Which creatures accept it

The wiki keeps a list of tameable creatures that can use Infected Barnacles, for example the Dodo, Equus, Allosaurus, Basilosaurus, Gacha, Achatina, Fenrir, Andrewsarchus and Bulbdog. Each barnacle weighs 0 and a slot holds 1.