The Acrocanthosaurus breaks every rule you learned taming other carnivores.
It is immune to ranged tranquilizers. Darts do nothing. Arrows do nothing. The only way to put it down is to run inside its mouth and hand-feed it narcotics while it is mid-roar, which is exactly as dangerous as it sounds.
Get it right and you have one of the best tanks in Ark: a creature that stands in front of alpha attacks on purpose and comes out ahead.
Why you want it
The tank role. In shield stance the Acro absorbs damage instead of dodging it, and damage taken in that stance builds adrenaline.
The adrenaline payoff. When the adrenaline bar fills, the Acro gets a 35-second buff: 0.2% health regenerated per second, plus boosts to melee damage, damage resistance and movement speed. That is a window where it fights like something twice its size.
The alpha hunter. A shield-stance Acro can take hits from alpha creatures and comfortably kill lower-level ones. This is the tame that changes which fights you are willing to start.
The numbers
| Stat | Value |
|---|---|
| Group | Dinosaurs |
| Diet | Carnivore |
| Temperament | Aggressive |
| Preferred Kibble | Exceptional Kibble |
| Fallback Foods | Raw Mutton, Cooked Lamb Chop, Raw Prime Meat |
| Equipment | Acro Saddle |
| Egg | Acrocanthosaurus Egg |
| Incubation | 43 to 44 °C |
| Feces Size | Large |
The taming loop
The Acro’s torpor only rises when you feed it narcoberry-tier items by hand, and the moment to do that is when it roars in frustration.
The setup. Put Narcotic in the last slot of your hotbar. Have Narcoberries or Bio Toxin as cheaper backup.
The approach. When the Acro roars, run up into its mouth, aim for the top jaw, and press use to feed it. Every successful feed during the roar window adds torpor. Miss the window and you have just walked into the mouth of an aggressive carnivore for nothing.
The weapon. Bring a Fabricated Sniper Rifle. It lets you count the shots needed to push the Acro into its shield stance and the shots needed to trigger its adrenaline, so you know exactly where you are in the cycle.
The shotgun option. A Pump-Action Shotgun also works — it hits hard and fast, though excess damage is still a risk, so bring enough narcotics to cover a mistake. This tends to be the better choice against higher-level Acros.
The last resort. A high-health mount that hits hard and fast can enrage the Acro, but this is not the recommended way to do it.
One important note: players report that a walled-in wild Acro can settle down instead of entering its adrenaline roar, so if your tame is not progressing, move the fight out into the open and try again.
Reading the fight
The Acro’s behaviour during the tame is predictable once you know the cycle:
It attacks, and when it takes enough damage it drops into shield stance, where it tanks while building adrenaline. When the adrenaline bar fills, it roars in frustration and enters adrenaline mode, attacking faster and harder.
The roar is your feeding window. Sniper-rifle counting tells you when it is coming, so be in position before it opens its mouth.
After it is down
Once unconscious, feed it Exceptional Kibble, with raw mutton, cooked lamb chop and raw prime meat as fallbacks. Keep narcoberries coming for the long window, and keep your distance — an Acro that wakes early is worse than one that never slept.
Where to find one
The Acrocanthosaurus is a massive carnivorous theropod, sized between the smaller predators and the large theropods, with a distinctive low-to-high spinal ridge down its neck and back and thick defensive hide flaps along its sides.
It spawns on The Island, specifically in the Redwood Forests and on Dead Island, and appears on other maps as well. The ridge on its back and the flaps on its sides make it easy to identify at a distance, and it is aggressive on sight.