The Troodon is a small, unsettling passive tame that progresses by killing creatures near it — including your own tamed ones if you are careless. Tame it right and you get a stealthy pack creature; tame it wrong and it eats your lineup.
The numbers
| Stat | Value |
|---|---|
| Taming type | Passive — it earns affinity by killing your own creatures |
| Health | 200 |
| Food | 200 |
| Weight | 140 |
| Melee Damage | 7 |
| Torpor | 180 |
| Preferred food | None — it eats no kibble |
| Experience required | 343 + (32 x Troodon level) |
| Experience required at night | 137 + (13 x Troodon level) |
| Found on | most standard maps |
Those two experience lines are the real requirement. 343 + (32 × level) is the daytime figure and 137 + (13 × level) is the night figure, and night cuts the requirement to roughly 40% — it is a speed-up, not a gate. You can tame a Troodon in broad daylight; it just takes longer. The base stats above are from the same wiki entry.
The method, in one sentence
Let it kill creatures that belong to you or your tribe — it earns taming affinity from the combat experience and each kill counts — and keep disposable ones nearby until the bar fills.
That is the whole tame. Everything hard about it is in the execution.
Step by step
- Prepare fodder, not a trap. There is no knockout step. Bring creatures you are willing to lose — low-value dodos or a line of duplicates you were going to cull anyway.
- Put them within reach. A Troodon does not readily aggro onto creatures that would give it a lot of experience, so if it ignores your fodder, have the Troodon aggro onto you while you stand on top of the creature.
- Make the kills count for you. Taming affinity is only credited if the creature killed belonged to you or your tribe. A wild dino dying next to it earns nothing.
- Respect the setup rules. The creatures must not be set to passive, and they must be unmounted by a player. Unconscious or pre-damaged creatures at 1 health are fine, and babies give the same experience as adults.
- One fodder can feed several. A single creature can be worked on by multiple Troodons at once — each gains affinity from the same kill. This is unreliable, but it can be reproduced.
- Watch the feeding interval. There is a gap between kills during which no affinity is credited. How it is calculated is not known, but 90 seconds was enough for a level 1 Troodon.
- Claim it. Taming affinity does not reset and effectiveness is not reduced when a wild Troodon takes damage — in fact Troodons always tame at 100% effectiveness, which is the 50% bonus levels.
Why the method is what it is
The creatures that break the knockout rule are the ones players search for by name, because the standard trap does not apply to them. This one follows its own rule, and the guides that treat it like a Rex are the ones that waste the attempt.
The three ways this goes wrong
- Letting it eat your good tames. Use fodder, not your lineup.
- Leaving passive creatures nearby. A creature set to passive will not be attacked, and the tame stalls with no progress to show for it.
- Crediting kills you did not own. If the victim belongs to someone else, the affinity does not count.
A quick checklist
- Disposable creatures as fodder, set to aggressive and unmounted.
- Your real tames moved well away.
- A way to make the Troodon attack a chosen creature if it hesitates.
- Awareness that night cuts the requirement to 40%, but is not required.
For the stats of the other creatures, see the best tames guide. For the commands to place one in front of you, see the spawn commands guide.