Dododex
ARK: Survival Evolved & Ascended Companion
Tips & Strategies
How to farm golden hesperornis eggs efficiently:
1. Get a tamed female hesperornis and set it to neutral
2. Put it on your shoulder
3. Go to a river or a place with a lot of fish
4. Go to either a coelacanth or sabertooth salmon nd kill it (piranhas don't work)
5. Release the hesperornis and let it harvest the corpse
6. Put the hesperornis back onto your shoulder
7. Do steps 4-6 four more times, essentially letting it harvest 5 fish corpses.
8. Release the hesperornis on land
9. Wait for it to lay a normal egg, if it's not ready to lay an egg, it will say "enable wandering or mating to mate", if it is ready, it will say "ready to mate" (basically wandering will be automatically turned on if it is ready to lay an egg)
10. Pick up the normal egg
11. Repeat steps 3-7 three more times
12. Release the hesperornis on land
13. Wait for it to lay a golden egg, if it's not ready to lay an egg, it will say "enable wandering or mating to mate", if it is ready, it will say "ready to mate" (basically wandering will be automatically turned on if it is ready to lay an egg)
14. Pick up the golden egg
15. Repeat the entire process to farm golden eggs. You can also put the golden egg in somewhere that preserves food or cook it into extraordinary kibble right away, they have a noticably short spoil time but it's not that bad.
Summary:
Basically you have to have the hesperornis harvest 20 coelacanth or sabertooth salmon corpses, which can be divided into 3 intervals of 5 for it to lay a normal egg, and finally another 5 for the golden egg.
Explanations:
Turning the hesperornis to neutral will have it be able to harvest coel and salmon corpses, while preventing your other tames (if you have them nearby) to also target whatever your hesperornis is targeting if it is set to aggressive.
It will also save time if you don't want to wait for the hesperornis to do the dive attack again after it kills a fish.
Having the hesperornis harvest the coel/salmon corpse is enough for it to be stacked to the hesperornis to be able to lay eggs, you don't have to have the hesperornis kill the coel/salmon.
After it harvests 5 coel or salmon corpses, wandering will automatically be turned on to prevent it from doing any other action, (and probably for it to wander to land) this can be indicated if it says "ready to mate", in the creature window.
It will always have to harvest 5 fish corpses every time you want it to lay an egg, no more, no less, that's a fact.
It will always lay 3 regular eggs before it wants to lay a golden egg, that's a fact.
And finally:
No, piranhas don't work for hesperornises if you want them to lay eggs. That's a fact, and probably the source of some of y'all's error.
For going against the norm, i'll gladly accept your downvotes, but please consider everything in this tip as 100% accurate.
More Hesperornis Utility Tips
Figured out a very streamlined way to get golden goose eggs!
First, tame yourself a female goose friend. You do this by dragging fish to feed, so I'd recommend taking an icthyornis (seagull) before attempting to tame even a minimum level, since their golden fish buff is absolutely needed.
Once she's tamed, find a pond with a lot of fish in it; try to make sure it's safe for your goose! Throw her into the water and set her to wander and aggressive. Then stand back and let her do her work.
Once your hesperornis starts to appear passive, even in the presence of coel, she's ready! Pick her up on your shoulder and throw her on shore, and she'll lay an egg and return to the water on her own. This is usually a regular egg, but don't worry, since these can be refined into oil in your cooking pot!
Once you do get a golden egg, make sure you're ready to use it (have Laz Chowder premade, if you're making kibble!) cause these things spoil and they spoil FAST.
A breeding pair can be *very* useful, especially when playing alone with adapted settings. Eggs can be used to turn into oil, the offspring can be used to get organic polymer. Breed, keep the females to produce even more eggs, turn eggs into oil and the boys into polymer. They are also a shoulder mount, can one-hit any fish (100.000.000 damage), and they *only* eat fish. I recommend a pelagornis for getting all the fish meat needed. They might also produce golden eggs when eating freshly killed fish. Overall, pretty useful.
The taming process can be a bit tedious though. But, they are easily trapped, if there is a dead fish laying around, they will run towards it and just stare at it.
Hope this helps!
Tamed Hesperornis WILL lay golden eggs, just takes a bit of time. I had mine on follow in the Redwoods river, and whistle attack targeted it on a fish. It must kill and harvest SEVERAL fish before going on land to lay an egg. It will either lay a normal duck egg, or it will lay the golden egg. It seems to be random, however mine laid about five normal eggs for every golden egg. If the type and size of fish matters, I have not figured that out yet. It will usually kill all types in one shot, and it will not agro every single sabertooth Salmon in the vicinity when it kills one so don't worry about them ganging up on your duck. I was using a lvl 80, probably tamed around level 50 or so and all I put points in was health. Have it kill every single fish in the river before you give up trying for that golden egg. It will happen, give it time. Hope this helps :)