The Bloodstalker is one of the best creatures you can take in ARK Survival Ascended. It lets you swing through the trees, travel across the map quickly and help you fight enemies while travelling. Taming a Bloodstalker is difficult at first, as it will try to kill you. Once you know the right method, you can easily tame it. In this guide, we will tell you how to tame a Bloodstalker in ARK Survival Ascended.

How To Tame a Bloodstalker

Bloodstalkers usually hang from the giant trees high above the ground. If you get too close, they will shoot a web to pull you into the air and start feeding on you. If you don’t escape quickly, they will drain your health. You can find Bloodstalkers in:

• Genesis: Part 1 Ascended – Bog Biome
• Genesis: Part 2 – Rockwell’s Garden

Sometimes multiple Bloodstalkers are close together, making the situation dangerous. While they usually stay in the trees, they can be seen walking on the ground. Before heading out, make sure you bring:

• Plenty of Blood Packs (required for taming)
• Good armor
• A Longneck Rifle to clear unwanted Bloodstalkers
• Grappling Hooks
• Parachutes or a Glider Suit
• Bug Repellent
• A Ghillie Suit (only for part of the taming process)
• Optional wooden building pieces if the Bloodstalker is too high up

The most important item is Blood Packs. Place them in your inventory before trying to tame it, as the Bloodstalker will consume them once it grabs you.

How to Get Blood Packs

Before taming a Bloodstalker, you will require several Blood Packs. The approximate requirement is around 70, but it could be more depending on the level of the Bloodstalker. You can collect Blood Packs by:

• Using a Blood Extraction Syringe on yourself.
• Using a Medical Station on your tames.
• Harvesting them with a Desmodus.

Bring more Blood Packs than you think you’ll need since Bloodstalkers consume quite a few during taming. Checking Dododex beforehand can help estimate the amount based on your server settings.

Summoning a Bloodstalker

If you want to spawn a wild Bloodstalker in a single-player session, first enable cheats in your game settings. After that, open the console command window and paste the following command. This will spawn a wild Bloodstalker with the specified level, allowing you to test its abilities or practice taming it without having to search for one in the Bog Biome. 

cheat SpawnDino “Blueprint’/Game/Genesis/Dinos/BogSpider/BogSpider_Character_BP.BogSpider_Character_BP'” 500 0 0 150

Taming a Bloodstalker

Once you find a Bloodstalker, stand underneath it and wait for it to notice you. It will shoot a web, grab you, and pull you into the air. As long as you have Bloodpacks in your inventory, the Bloodstalker will start eating them, and the taming process will start automatically. 

Sometimes two of them are close together while you are being grabbed by one; another may attack or interfere with the tame, making the process much more dangerous, so clear the surrounding area first or choose a Bloodstalker that’s away from others.

Use the Sanguine Elixir

Using a Sanguine Elixir before taming helps increase effectiveness and gives you a better quality tame. You can also improve taming by allowing the Bloodstalker to feed on your tamed creatures. While the Bloodstalker is holding you, you can press ‘H’ to display information on its current taming progress and effectiveness. 

Use Your Tamed Creature

The more health your tame creature has, the more taming effectiveness you will get. Once effectiveness increases, it will never decrease; depending on your creature’s health, you may need several tamed creatures. After escaping the first grab, switch into your Ghillie Suit. This makes the Bloodstalker target your tamed creatures instead of grabbing you again.

Taming Time Duration

The taming time depends on your server settings. On boosted servers, it can finish very quickly and on official or lower read servers, it may take around 3-4 minutes. When the Bloodstalker is tamed, you will automatically mount it. If your Bloodstalker’s health drops below 40%, it will start feeding on its rider while you are mounted. To prevent this, always carry Bloodpacks in your inventory. 

Breeding a Bloodstalker

After successfully breeding, the female Bloodstalker will lay a fertilised egg. For you to hatch the egg, you will need to incubate the egg using temperatures ranging between 27 and 30 degrees centigrade. To achieve this, you need to place air conditioners, standing torches or dimetrodons near the egg for incubation. 

If temperatures are kept within this range, the egg will hatch within 2 hours and 56 minutes on 1x settings. It will take 2 days and 6 hours for the baby to grow into an adult on 1x rates. In the initial period, the creature needs to be fed manually until it attains 10% maturity. Afterwards, the baby can be fed using a feeding trough, which makes the remainder of the training process easier.

Bloodstalker Brood Explained

Similar to other animals in ARK, a baby Bloodstalker inherits stats from both its parents. However, there is a possibility of a mutation, which will provide your creature with 2 more wild levels on any random stat and a new colour of a baby. 

A baby Bloodstalker will develop through 3 stages before growing into an adult animal. The first stage, Baby (from 0 to 10% maturation), will take approximately 5 and a half hours at 1x speed. During this period, you will have to feed your baby manually as it cannot eat from the Feeding Trough. When it matures to 10%, it becomes a Juvenile animal (from 10 to 50%). 

At this point, it starts eating from the Feeding Trough, making it easy for you to feed your Bloodstalker. It takes about 22 hours for a baby to become a juvenile. Then there will come an Adolescent stage (from 50 to 100%), which will require 27 hours.

Training the Bloodstalker

Imprinting plays an important role when training your Bloodstalker well. Successful imprinting will give the Bloodstalker more stats, and achieving 100% imprinting gives the Bloodstalker an extra 30% fighting boost if the Bloodstalker is ridden by the owner who did the imprinting. Imprinting requests range from cuddling to going for a walk to carrying certain kinds of kibble, so prepare the needed kibble before training your baby Bloodstalker.

Bloodstalker Abilities

Here is a list of all the abilities a Bloodstalker will have after taming them.

Web Swing

The Bloodstalker fires a web at nearby surfaces, so hold the button to swing towards the attacked point. It is great for fast movement through the forest. It also shoots two webs instead of one, which provides stronger swings and higher speed. 

Swing and Jump Attacks

The Bloodstalker also performs a melee swing attack against nearby enemies. You can press the jump button once to jump, press it twice for a double jump, and hold it for a higher jump. 

Gliding

The Bloodstalker enters a parachute-like glide, allowing you to fall down safely; it also detaches all active webs, letting you drop straight down. You can hunt small creatures by aiming at them and fooling them into killing. Doing this restores the Bloodstalker’s health and is useful for framing creatures. 

Swimming

The Bloodstalker is an excellent swimmer underwater and can even walk across the surface of water. One of its biggest advantages is that it takes no fall damage.

Enhanced Vision

While riding a Bloodstalker, you will gain a special vision mode where nearby creatures are highlighted with a wide outline and potential targets appear with a red outline. You can use your weapons while riding a Bloodstalker, making it useful in combat and exploration. Using the Yes or Taunt emotes causes your Bloodstalker to mimic the same animation.