An Idiot's Guide To Mutations! ARK Survival Evolved

I finally did it. I got back on Fjordur and made this - An Idiot's Guide To Mutations. The first and potentially not the last Idiot's Guide to ARK video. If you enjoy this video, hit that like button, subscribe, turn on notifications, and be sure to share with your friends.

I don't claim to be an expert in mutation breeding and stacking. I just want to make that clear. I have my own experience with 3,000 hours in the game, at least enough to say I know what I'm talking about. It starts with taming the creature you want, then taming more. From there, you breed them until you get the perfect stats creature. You will need a male and several females, all of which must be the same level and have the same stat allocations. Once you have that, you can get started breeding.

Keep going until you get the first mutation on a stat you want with a male baby, then stop. Raise the baby, preferably without imprinting him, then replace your clean male with him. Rinse and repeat. Mutations give the creature 2 extra levels in a given stat, so they will always be 2 levels higher than the previous iteration. That's how you know you've got a mutation immediately even without mods telling you the point allotted into each stat. Keep doing this until you've got as many mutations as you want in a given stat. Then, put your maxed out mutated creature to the side, grab your clean male, and rinse and repeat on a different stat. THEN, you can breed the creatures to combine their mutations.

Keep in mind the matrilineal and patrilineal mutations. Each side has X/20 on it, showing the soft cap of twenty mutations from each side of the family. There is a way around this, so long as you can get all the mutations onto one side. If you hatch a male with a matrilineal mutation, that's perfectly okay. Raise him up as normal, and breed him. Because he is the father, any mutated offspring will inherit his mutation on the patrilineal side. As long as you have every mutation on one side of the family, you can go above the 20/20 limit, and you can do that on both sides. Just know that when you combine the mutated stats of two creatures, you will have to breed again to get one with all the mutations on one side or it will limit them, even if they have more mutations than 20 on one or both sides. Correct me if I'm wrong on that, it was the one thing that confused me. The TLDR is: you can get around that limit.

Be careful though, as depending on your settings there are max level caps.

It was also an excuse to showcase the power of my mutated rexes, carcharodontosauruses, gigas, and acrocanthosauruses. Most of these didn't get to see action during the final boss fight of Fjordur.