Transponder Node

Tracking creatures and players

A Transponder Node is a tracking tag in ARK: Survival Evolved and ARK: Survival Ascended. In the game's words: "Can be attached to living creatures to track their location." It sticks to players as well as to tamed or untamed creatures, and you follow every placed node with a Transponder Tracker. Each node can be attached only once.

Placing nodes and setting frequencies

• Equip a Transponder Tracker, keep one or more nodes in your inventory and press the Fire key at the target.
• The node is thrown a short distance and sticks the same way a C4 Charge does.
• To tag yourself, press the Place Map Marker key.
• A new node takes the frequency the equipped tracker is set to, and it cannot be changed after placing. To change the tracker's frequency, equip it, press the weapon attachment key and type in the new value.
• Right-click with the tracker to get a green on-screen message showing the target's heading and distance.

The wiki suggests running several frequencies, for example one just for Quetzals, so the tracker does not report every tagged creature at once.

How nodes get lost

To track a different target, you need a new node. Removing a node through the creature's radial menu, under Options, destroys it, and so does uploading the creature with Cross-ARK transfer or freezing it in a Cryopod. The ARK Wiki also warns that nodes may disappear from creatures on PC, Xbox and PS4, leaving the tracker without a signal, and that using one can crash the game.

Crafting the Transponder Node

The engram unlocks at level 66 for 20 engram points. Nodes are made in a Fabricator or a Tek Replicator; a craft takes 3 seconds and gives 13.32 XP:

• 14 Electronics
• 12 Crystal or Primal Crystal
• 12 Cementing Paste or Achatina Paste
• 10 Polymer, Organic Polymer, or Corrupted Nodule
• 3 Metal Ingot or Scrap Metal Ingot

Each node weighs 0.1 and stacks to 100, so a full stack weighs 10. In loot, 36 crate types can contain it, for example the Bulbdog Fetch and Circuit Chase mission crates on Genesis Part 2. For ASA, the ARK Wiki notes that the node cannot be obtained through the usual methods.