The Mantis is a passive tame wearing the costume of a hostile one.
It attacks any medium-sized or smaller creature that enters its range, it looks like an enormous, deadlier praying mantis, and it tames by hand-feeding horns one at a time with minutes between each feed. The trick is not the feeding — it is surviving long enough to do it.
Why you want it
The tool user. A tamed Mantis is one of the few creatures that can hold and use tools, which gives it a role no other mount fills.
Combat. Highly aggressive in the wild, it attacks anything medium-sized or smaller that enters its range. Tamed, that aggression is pointed outward.
The look. An average mantis, but much larger and deadlier, ranging from light green to brown or yellowish.
The numbers
| Stat | Value |
|---|---|
| Group | Invertebrates |
| Diet | Carnivore |
| Temperament | Aggressive |
| Preferred Food | Deathworm Horn |
| Equipment | Mantis Saddle |
The feeding method
The Mantis is a passive tame, so knockout methods are pointless. There are no darts and no torpor bar.
The food. Put a Deathworm Horn or Woolly Rhino Horn in the last slot of your hotbar.
The feed. When you are close enough, press use (default key E) to feed it.
The wait. You cannot feed all the horns required for taming at once. You must wait a few minutes after each feeding before giving it the next one, then repeat until the taming meter fills.
That waiting period is where tames fail. Every minute you stand next to an aggressive invertebrate is a minute something can go wrong, which brings us to the repellent and the trap.
Getting close: repellent or trap
The repellent route
The Mantis is normally aggressive, so Bug Repellent is needed to get close enough to feed it. A set of Ghillie Armor is also useful, though not required.
Two warnings about this route. The Mantis becomes aggressive if you are too close, and taming progress halts until it loses interest in whatever it was fighting — or actively decreases if it stays aggressive for too long.
In other words: the repellent route works, but it punishes impatience.
The trap route (recommended)
A good trap removes the aggression problem entirely, and this is the design the community settled on:
- One foundation — stone, adobe or metal
- Four walls on the first level
- Three walls on the second level
- Two ramps leading to the last opening on the second level
Part of the Mantis sticks outside of the trap, and you can feed it through the gap. With this method you do not need Bug Repellent or Ghillie Armor at all.
Build the trap near a Mantis spawn, lure it in, and feed on your own schedule.
Where to find horns
Deathworm Horns come from Deathworms, which are aggressive burrowing predators in desert biomes.
Woolly Rhino Horns come from Woolly Rhinos in the snow.
The map you are on changes which is practical:
- Ragnarok: get horns from Deathworms in the desert, or from Iceworm Males in the Frozen Dungeon where the supply is plentiful. The dungeon is high-level, so the desert is usually the safer farm.
- Aquatica (mod map): community reports on the Aquatica mod map say Monodon Horns work as a substitute for Woolly Rhino Horns, though the wiki does not confirm it.
Bring more horns than you think you need, because each feeding is one horn and the tame takes several.
After it is tamed
A tamed Mantis is a standard carnivore — raw meat and cooked meat keep it fed — and the saddle unlocks its riding and tool-using capabilities.