Ark Eternal Mod Guide: Tiers, Taming and Evolutions

Ark Eternal is one of the largest overhaul mods for ARK: Survival Evolved (Steam mod ID 893735676). It adds hundreds of new creatures in a ladder of tiers, about thirty bosses, evolution chains, and a long list of quality-of-life structures. Our database holds 1,087 creature entries, 1,354 items and 86 crafting stations from the mod. It is built for PvE and balanced for wild creatures up to level 600.

Before you start

• Load order: put Ark Eternal first in the mod list. Loaded lower, some of its features, items and creatures do not appear.
• Difficulty: the mod is balanced for OverrideOfficialDifficulty=20 in GameUserSettings.ini, which means wild levels up to 600. With other values the balance changes.
• PvE first: it is designed for PvE. A PvP server needs careful tuning.
• Other overhauls: running it next to another overhaul such as Pugnacia or Annunaki can work, but some Eternal content may be blocked.

The creature tiers

Every tier is stronger than the one before it, and the higher tiers can only be knocked out by creatures or tranquilizers of a high enough tier. Plan each tame one step at a time.

Prime, Spectral and InDominus creatures have a 10% chance to come back as a Resurrected creature when they die. Elemental Reapers come from killing Elemental Dimorphodons, and Alpha Dragons from killing Elemental Dragons.

Taming

Taming food

• Alpha Meat: tames the Alpha and Eternal tiers.
• Eternal Prime Meat: the food for Prime-tier carnivores.
• Instatame Meat: crafted in the Eternal WorkBench, it gives a perfect tame on any tameable Eternal creature. If a knocked-out creature does not eat it from its inventory, use the Remote Use Item option.
• Eternal Kibble: despite the name, it is not a taming food. It is a crafting ingredient and the fuel of the Harbinger Beetle, and it drops from Eternal, Elemental and Mystical creatures.

Most tiers use their vanilla counterpart's food order, with taming effectiveness raised twenty times to suit level 600 creatures. Higher tiers also start with bonus affinity.

Knockout ladder

Normal tranquilizers stop working at the Alpha tier. From there on you need either a tamed elemental creature whose attacks add torpor, or the mod's Alpha and Prime tranquilizer ammunition. Poison and lightning elementals are the usual knockout tools: they add torpor with their attacks.

Evolutions

Many creatures can evolve into a stronger form. The steps are always the same:

1. Empty the creature's inventory and put in only the required items.
2. Ride it and press the evolution key.
3. Remove the saddle once the evolution starts. Anything left in the inventory is lost.

• Alpha to Prime: several Alphas evolve with a stack of Prime Blood.
• Elemental forms: Pteranodon, Rex, Toad (Beelzebufo) and Dire Bear become poison or lightning elementals with green or blue Aberration gems, 25 for an Alpha and 50 for a Prime.
• Ice and Cursed elementals: cannot be tamed wild. Evolve a fire, poison or lightning elemental with the matching potion.
• Infernal: evolve a Prime or InDominus creature with an Infernal potion.
• TLC forms: the TLC Evolution Potion turns Elemental Rexes and some Argentavis into their TLC models.
• DarkStar: craft a summoning reagent, raise the creature it gives you, and feed it until it produces Evolution Fuel (one every 600 seconds). Each of the eight stages lists its recipe in the creature's inventory.

Utility creatures

• Eternal Ankylosaurus: smelts Metal in its inventory once saddled.
• Eternal Doedicurus: crafts Cementing Paste, Sparkpowder and similar materials.
• Eternal Therizinosaurus: crafts tranquilizer ammo and taming consumables.
• Eternal Jerboa: set it to wander with ingredients in its inventory and it crafts every vanilla dye.
• Elite Oviraptor: saddled, it crafts kibble in its inventory.
• Behemoth creatures: platform saddles with a very high carry weight for mobile bases.
• RadioKinetic creatures: protect the rider from radiation, which helps on Aberration.

Bosses and summoning

The mod's bosses are summoned with items crafted from Essences: the Mystical Giganotosaurus, the Mystical Rhino Lord Rataxes, the Phantasmal Broodmother, Gorilla and Manticore, Ursa Major and Terra Nova, many of them with a harder mode. The Eternal Boss Summoner structure also summons the vanilla bosses at each difficulty.

• Essences: Mystical creatures drop them. Primordial Essence is the base of the summoning recipes, and Primordial Boss Essence feeds the Feathered DarkStar line.
• God Shrines: end bosses drop the Eternal God Shrine, which produces resources from fuel. Lesser God Shrines make one resource each, from Metal and Crystal to Element. Server owners can disable them in the ini file.

Base and quality of life

• Eternal Dedicated WorkBench: picks up resources, keeps food fresh and sends resources to dedicated storage.
• Eternal Structure Storage Box: a large cabinet that picks up resources automatically.
• Eternal Kibble Bench: crafts the mod's kibble, with Eternal Kibble Paste.
• Eternal Landing Pistol: forces a flyer to land, useful for taming flyers.

Server settings

The mod reads its options from an [Eternal] section in GameUserSettings.ini: spawn chances, crafting speeds, the God Shrines and more. Two worth knowing: KillArmageddon=false and KillBacon=false stop the clean-up code that removes tamed Bacon Armageddons and Bacon Overlord Daddies.

Tips

• Tame a poison or lightning elemental early: it is your key to every tier above Alpha.
• Farm Alphas for a chance at Primes, and Primes for a chance at Spectrals.
• Always empty the inventory before an evolution.
• Check the mod's own changelog when something here differs in game: Ark Eternal is still being developed.

Every creature, item and loot drop of the mod is listed on its mod page, with spawn commands.