How to Tame a Rex in ARK

 

    The Tyrannosaurus Rex is one of ARK's signature apex tames, and taming one is a knockout (KO) job, not a passive feed. This guide walks through the method ark.wiki.gg documents: how torpidity taming works, which foods speed it up, how many Level 1 tranq shots it actually takes, where to trap the dino, and what the Rex looks like once it's yours — saddle level and base stats included. Every number below comes straight from the wiki's Rex page; anywhere that page doesn't give a figure, this guide says so instead of guessing.

 

The Knockout (KO) Taming Method

 

    ARK's Rex is a knockout tame: you don't feed it directly like a herbivore grazer, you shoot it with tranquilizers to raise its Torpidity stat until it goes unconscious, then feed it its preferred food while it's out. The wiki's own guidance is explicit on the approach — "the wiki advises bringing friends and shooting Tranq Arrows." While it's unconscious, you open its inventory and load food so it starts eating automatically as it comes to. Exactly how Torpidity decays once the Rex is knocked out, and how long that unconscious window actually lasts, isn't spelled out on the source page — this guide doesn't guess at that mechanic, so plan your feeding around whatever margin your trap and food stockpile give you.

 

Best Foods for Taming a Rex

 

 

    The page ranks Rex taming food from best to worst as: Exceptional Kibble, Raw Mutton, Cooked Lamb Chop, Raw Prime Meat, Cooked Prime Meat, Raw Prime Fish Meat, Cooked Meat, and Raw Meat. Exceptional Kibble is named as the best / preferred kibble for the Rex specifically, and Raw Mutton is called out as the best non-kibble option if you haven't crafted kibble yet. The ordering of the lower meat tiers (Cooked Lamb Chop down through Raw Meat) is exactly as it appears in the page's own taming/food-effectiveness table — not re-ranked or guessed. The source page doesn't spell out exactly how much taming effectiveness or feeding time you lose by using a lower-tier food instead of kibble, so this guide doesn't put a number on that gap — just load the highest-ranked food on the list that you can access.

 

Level 1 Tranq Counts (Bow, Crossbow, Darts)

 

 

    For a Level 1 Rex specifically, the wiki's taming table lists: Tranq Arrows fired from a Bow — 18 shots; Tranq Arrows fired from a Crossbow — 10 shots; Tranquilizer Dart shots — 8; Shocking Tranquilizer Dart shots — 4. Doing the arithmetic on the two arrow weapons: the Crossbow needs 8 fewer shots than the Bow to knock out the same Level 1 Rex (18 − 10 = 8), which is most of why tamers upgrade to a Crossbow before attempting a Rex at all. The Shocking Tranquilizer Dart's 4-shot figure is the lowest of the four, consistent with it being the most torpidity-efficient tool the page lists for this specific level.

 

    Important scope note, stated explicitly rather than implied: the wiki page presents separate tables for Level 1, 30, 60, 90, 120, and 150 Rexes, and only the Level 1 figures were captured for this article. Shot counts for anything above Level 1 are undocumented here — expect them to be substantially higher, but this guide doesn't have exact numbers to give you. Narcotic dosage figures to keep a knocked-out Rex under while you feed it were also not reliably captured from the source and are left undocumented rather than estimated.

 

Where to Find a Rex, Saddle Level, and Base Stats

 

 

    Rex spawns are documented as map-dependent and spread across multiple ARK maps; on The Island specifically, the wiki notes that "quite a lot of Rexes spawn in the cove on the southeastern shores." No exact coordinates are given on the page, so this guide doesn't invent any — treat the SE cove as a general search area, not a pin. The Rex Saddle unlocks at Level 74.

 

    Base stats at Level 1, per the wiki's stat table: Health 1100 (+220 per level), Stamina 420 (+42 per level), Torpidity 1550 (+93 per level), Weight 500 (+10 per level), Melee Damage 62 (+3.1 per level). Torpidity's growth rate is worth doing the math on, since it's what taming actually hinges on: a wild Level 20 Rex would have roughly 1550 + 93 × 19 = 1550 + 1767 = 3317 Torpidity, which is why higher-level Rexes need dramatically more tranq shots than the Level 1 counts above.

 

    The source page covers both ARK: Survival Ascended (ASA) and ARK: Survival Evolved (ASE) under one entry, with separate ASA/ASE headers only in its Color Scheme and Regions section; it does note that on ASA, body-region damage multipliers also apply to the player's own melee attacks. Outside that one note, the page does not distinguish ASA-specific from ASE-specific figures for the taming counts, food ranking, saddle level, or base stats above — so treat everything in this guide as version-general unless stated otherwise.

 

Trap it before you tranq it. The wiki lists several containment options for a Rex: a stone tower roughly 10 stone pillars high with a ceiling; four 2x2 stone foundations closed off with stone doorways; three Stone Gateways with a Large Bear Trap in the middle; a Behemoth Gate cage; or about 10 Large Bear Traps arranged in a triangle. Pick whichever matches the materials you've got, and get the Rex fully boxed in before you open fire — losing line of sight mid-tame can let it wander out of range or drag the attempt out longer than it needs to be.

 

Running your own ARK server

 

    Taming a Rex from scratch — building a trap, stockpiling tranq ammo, farming Exceptional Kibble — is a lot easier with a dedicated, always-on world instead of racing a host's play session. A private ARK server keeps your trap standing, your tribe's stockpiled meat in the fridge, and your tame right where you left it, with no random-server griefing risk while you're mid-tranq on a Level 150. It also means you can coordinate a multi-person Rex hunt (the wiki's own advice to "bring friends") on your own schedule instead of whoever else happens to be online.

 

Conclusion

 

    Taming a Rex in ARK comes down to four things the wiki actually documents: knock it out with Tranq Arrows or Darts, feed it Exceptional Kibble or Raw Mutton once it's under, expect roughly 18 Bow shots (or 10 from a Crossbow) at Level 1, and have a saddle ready by Level 74. Everything past Level 1 — exact higher-level shot counts, narcotic dosages, and the fine detail of how Torpidity decay works while a Rex is unconscious — isn't in the source and isn't guessed here.

 

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