Dododex
ARK: Survival Evolved & Ascended Companion
Tips & Strategies
If you do not have a Longneck Rifle, then use the Ascendant Bow from the “Hunt: Dilophosaurus” quest and pair it with tranq arrows, provided you haven’t thrown it away or lost it. Lemme give you a rundown:
You see, tranq arrows work in a similar way to the bite of a Titanoboa’s bite; that is, in both examples, torpor is distributed based on the amount of damage that is dealt.
Using my own Quetzal as a test subject, due to a bug in which I can deal damage to him when unclaimed, I tested the precise torpor distribution between a regular bow and my Ascendant Bow. Testing the Ascendant for a general range of damage, in the inventory it claims to be capable of dealing 244 damage on a single hit.
Testing with a regular bow can yield slightly above this however. Sometimes even enough to one-hit a low-level Titanoboa, which has saved my life numerous times in the South Cave. I then test for torpor distribution on a regular bow, with a body shot. The torpor rounded off at about 92 before sinking back down.
Considering a Quetzals typical torpor tolerance supply, not to mention how quickly it drains torpor, your gonna need a ton of arrows and maybe a few spare bows to knock that one out, especially at high levels, and in general just won’t be a fun experience unless you have the patience of a saint and go undisturbed by some carnivore.
So, after the torpor returned to 0, testing the Ascendant bow with tranq arrows, (with a Headshot, just to be generous) yielded roughly 1448 torpor, and with a somewhat blunted amount of damage too, a round of headshots with an Ascendant Bow an easy way to knock out a Quetzal without running the risk of killing it due to the inherently high damage that Ascendant Bows are capable of outputting.
However, in all likelihood, the majority of the hits the Quetzal recieves are going to be bodyshots and wingshots. So, to get a sample of the amount of torpor a Quetzal will generally recieve from an Ascendant bow, we need to direct our hits at the body. This results in approximately 169 torpor.
However, this sample was taken from the side, and most bodyshots are generally going to hit the Quetzals back. So I climb onto my Quetzal to perform a test of the amount of torpor you can generally expect to see from a hit recieved by the Quetzals back, with a test on the center of the back distributing 191 torpor, while a shot to the neck-and-shoulder area interestingly resulted in a total of 456 torpor.
These samples, in general, prove one thing here; Ascendant Bows are usually pure rivals to the Longneck Rifle when it comes to torpor distribution, and with Quetzals you should generally direct your shots at the area where the neck and shoulders meet, and, as typical with most other creatures, the head.
Land a few lucky shots with an Ascendant bow thats been loaded with some Tranq arrows, and a Quetzal soon-to-be yours wont be flying for long!
Just make sure you do it on a Tapejara set to follow, so that you can make the “target” whistle to have your Tapejara follow the Quetzal, and then the “passive” whistle to tell it to stop when you get too close. (If the Quetzal is really far away or is scared and fleeing because you shot it, the Spyglass can really help with the “target” whistle here)
Hopefully this helps those of you who want to tame a Quetzal but have no access to a Longneck Rifle of any sort on your journeys.
More Quetzal Taming & KO Tips
The fun way is to jump off and grapple to your argie and whistle it to attack and since argies are slow it won’t catch up in time so tranq till it goes out also bring parachutes and consider liking so more people will know
57% tamed right now. I don’t know why people make this difficult. I fly on my argy under the quetzal, shoot it, and chase after it again. I have tamed many quetzals like this. Once you tame a low level, make a trap on it to tame higher levels.
Idk why everyone makes this so complicated with all the grappling stuff all you have to do is,
1. Get or use a tapejara that’s a low level with a couple levels into movement speed
2. Get a rifle or crossbow with either darts or tranqs
3. Find a quetzal and then go to the back of your tapejara and set to attack the quetzal
(Since quetzals have high health and ur using a low level tapejara you can actually leave the tapejara to attack the quetzal, it’ll be fine)
4. Knock It out, not over water, and put whatever you want into it and ban you have a quetzal
Btw, you don’t need to worry about the tapejara’s stamina, it doesn’t decrease while you sit in the back seat
Guys this is the ersieht was to tame a quetzal. All you need is a tapejara.
1) Whisle your Tapejara to follow you
2) Ride you Tapejara and surch for a quetzal
3) When you found a quetzal, go an the back of the Tapejara (dont forget that you have to make the follow whisle on Tapejara, otherwise the will Flyer to the ground)
4) Make the attack whisle while you are on the Tapejata's back, so your tapejara will follow the quetzal.
5) Just shoot the quetzal with tranq darts/arrow and make the passive whisle on the Tapejara when he is too close to the Quetzal.
6) Repeat that till the quetzal gets knocked out and enjoy your quetzal taming.
TIPP: They spawn near the Obelisk and fly trought the whole map after spawning. GOOD LUCK!
If you manage to knock a quetzal out, try starve taming. If you never tried starve taming it’s just leaving a Dino’s hunger go to half way or lower and then you start feeding. I’ve done this many times and it’s very useful taming trick.
Use a tapejara, sit on the passager seat and set it on my target. Then make it fly to the quetz. Shoot the quetz with any sort of tranq ammo. Do this reapetly and you Have knocked quetz👌
Important note !!
Quetz will not follow you if you eat a rare flower!
If you have any dodo arrows, make a trap (tutorials on YouTube) the shoot the quetzal with the dodo arrows. The quetzal will get triggered at you and lead it to the trap.
MAKE SURE TO PAY CLOSE ATTENTION TO THE AREA THAT YOUR QUETZ IS FLYING DIRECTLY ABOVE BEFORE YOU KNOCK IT OUT! I had two quetzals drop into rivers near red ob and drown, and had another quetzal drop into the middle of the swamp, where it got killed by 2 sarcos and a kapro. Also, defend your quetz's body when it gets knocked out, since even dilos can attack this thing, meaning that it isn't safe from any aggressive carnivore (and also brontos cuz i once saw a rex fighting 2 brontos in my area and it caused my quetzal to be caught in the crossfire and lose 50 taming effectiveness)
Last point to bring up: if they spawn in any areas where rhynios can also spawn, and a rhynio goes after the quetzal, you can cross off taming that quetzal cause unless you can fly fast enough to make it prioritize you over the quetzal wild rhynios are faster than wild quetzals, and the quetzal will eventually die to resin attacks.
To solo tame, grapple to an argentavis, and be ready to set your argentavis to passive and attack my target on command. Just maintain a process of having your argentavis chase the quetzal, when you get close enough set it passive, then fire a tranq dart/arrow. This is a long process, but it is by far the easiest way to solo tame, unless you already have a quetzal.