How to Tame a Carbonemys in ARK

 

    The Carbonemys — "car-BON-eh-miss," meaning "Coal Turtle," and usually just called "the Turtle" — is one of ARK's easiest early tames and one of its best turret soakers. The wiki describes it as "a small, herbivorous reptile known for its defensive shell making it a good soaker against turrets, as well as its relatively fast speed when in water," and notes it "was first added in ARK: Survival Evolved on its early release." This guide covers the knockout method the wiki documents, kibble amounts by level, base stats and breeding timers, and the damage multipliers that make its shell so tough. Where the source page doesn't give a clean number, this guide says so instead of guessing.

 

The Knockout (KO) Taming Method

 

    Carbonemys is a knockout tame, not a passive feeder. Per the wiki's own KO Strategy: "It is not recommended that you get into a punching match with this spiky and very well-armored beast, you'll probably lose that fight." The best tools listed are a Pulmonoscorpius and/or Tranquilizer Arrows; if you have neither, "a simple Slingshot will do the trick." Aim at the head — the shell "has very little effect" when hit — or, if desperate and low on health, jump on its shell and hit it with a Wooden Club. One quirk worth knowing: "Weapons register hits from very slightly farther away than the creature will 'react' to," so a shot can land before the Turtle visibly flinches.

 

    Once it's dazed, the wiki lists Crops and Fresh Tea Leaves as preferred food, alongside two separate preferred-kibble entries — Regular Kibble and "Kibble (Pteranodon Egg)" — without clarifying which takes priority; a 293.100 patch note does confirm "Carbonemys now prefers Regular Kibble," which this guide treats as the practical default.

 

Taming Food and Kibble by Level

 

 

    The wiki's taming-food table gives Regular Kibble amounts and torpidity-depletion windows at six benchmark levels: Level 1 needs 2 kibble (0:01:36 feeding time), torpidity depletes at 0.3/s, window 00:15:16. Level 30 needs 5 kibble (0:04:00), depletion 0.5/s, window 00:25:11. Level 60 needs 8 kibble (0:06:24), depletion 0.66/s, window 00:32:00. Level 90 needs 11 kibble (0:08:48), depletion 0.79/s, window 00:36:56. Level 120 needs 14 kibble (0:11:12), depletion 0.92/s, window 00:40:48. Level 150 needs 16 kibble (0:12:48), depletion 1.04/s, window 00:44:00.

 

    Doing the arithmetic: from Level 1 to Level 150, both the kibble count (2 → 16) and the feeding time (96s → 768s) scale by exactly 8× (16 ÷ 2 = 8; 768 ÷ 96 = 8). The torpidity window grows more slowly, from 916s to 2,640s — about 2.9× (2640 ÷ 916 ≈ 2.88) — so a higher-level Turtle needs proportionally more food per second of margin, not just more food. Regular Kibble is crafted from 1× Cooked Meat Jerky, 1× Medium Egg, 5× Fiber, 2× Longrass, 2× Savoroot, 1× Water, per the wiki's recipe list.

 

Base Stats, Breeding, and Incubation

 

 

    At Level 1 wild, the base-stats table lists: Health 700 (+140/level), Stamina 200 (+20/level), Oxygen 150 (+15/level), Food 3000 (+300/level), Weight 270 (+5.4/level), Melee Damage 13 (+0.65/level), and Torpidity 275 (+16.5/level). Only two taming-bonus figures are cleanly legible on the source table: Health's tamed increase of +5.4% per level, and Melee Damage's +1.7% per level — the rest of that column is left undocumented rather than guessed, since the table's formatting didn't preserve a clean per-stat mapping for every row.

 

    Reproduction runs through a Turtle Egg. Incubation needs 30–34°C / 86–93°F (an Egg Incubator holds a steady 32°C/90°F) and takes 1h 14m 59.64s. From there: Baby stage 2h 18m 53.333s, Juvenile 9h 15m 33.331s, Adolescent 11h 34m 26.664s. Adding those three raising stages — 8,333.333s + 33,333.331s + 41,666.664s — gives 83,333.328 seconds, which converts to 23h 8m 53.328s, matching the wiki's own stated Total Maturation Time exactly. Breeding Interval is listed as 18h – 2d.

 

    The wiki documents a walking base speed of 100 and a sprinting speed of 220 (wild and tamed identical), but marks the tamed walking speed and every swimming-speed figure with a bare "?" on its own table — those cells are undocumented on the source page itself, not just skipped here.

 

Combat, Damage Resistances, and Utility Roles

 

 

    The Abilities table lists damage multipliers of Fire ×0.375, Explosives ×0.6, and Tek Turret ×0.9, plus body-part multipliers of Tail ×0.5 and Shell ×0.2. That lines up with the plain-language Combat section, which states "the shell of the Carbonemys reduces incoming damage by 80%, the legs and tail by 50%, and the head only takes base damage (no headshot multiplier)" — 80% reduction is exactly what a ×0.2 multiplier means, and the 50% figure matches the ×0.5 tail multiplier. Its only active attack is Bite, dealing 13 damage, usable "every 0.75s by both a rider and the AI." One version-specific note: "On ARK: Survival Ascended body multipliers also apply for player's melee attacks" — a distinction the page makes nowhere else, so treat every other figure above as version-general.

 

    For fighting one rather than riding it, the wiki recommends a Pike, Spear, or Ranged Weapon kept at range, since anything shorter than a Metal Sword eats too much of that reduced-damage window. The Utility section lists five documented roles: Tank (level Health), Transport (level Weight, faster in water), Egg Farming (medium-sized eggs are big enough for Regular Kibble), PvP Turret Soaker (walking backward toward a turret cuts the damage it takes, burning enemy ammo while its high HP absorbs the rest), and Tame Assistant (its high health and cheap re-tame make it a durable distraction mount when taming a Tusoteuthis).

 

Don't melee a Carbonemys before it's knocked out — aim tranq shots or a Slingshot at the head, never the shell, and keep a Wooden Club in reserve if you're caught without ranged options. Once it's under, load Regular Kibble (or Crops/Fresh Tea Leaves as a fallback), and stage your full kibble count in advance, since higher-level tames give you a proportionally shorter torpidity window per kibble fed.

 

Running your own ARK server

 

    Farming Fiber, Longrass, and Savoroot for a stack of Regular Kibble, then holding a knockout window open long enough to feed a Level 150 Carbonemys, is a lot smoother on a server that's actually yours. A private ARK server keeps your kibble stockpile, your trap area, and your half-tamed Turtle exactly where you left them — no other tribe's turret fire wandering into your KO attempt, and no restart wiping the egg sitting in your incubator.

 

Conclusion

 

    Taming a Carbonemys comes down to what the wiki actually documents: knock it out at the head with Tranquilizer Arrows, a Pulmonoscorpius, or a Slingshot; feed it Regular Kibble (2 at Level 1, scaling to 16 at Level 150 — an exact 8× jump); and expect a shell that blocks 80% of incoming damage. Breeding runs a documented 23h 8m 53.328s from hatch to adult, verified here by adding the three raising stages by hand. Anything the source page itself marks unclear — most of the per-stat taming-bonus column, tamed walking speed, and every swimming-speed figure — is left undocumented rather than guessed at.

 

    Ready to start your own turtle farm without losing a knocked-out Carbonemys to someone else's turret? Spin up your own ARK server and get taming. Use promo code WELCOME for your first month free.