What is a Gigantosaurus?
If you haven’t seen a Gigantosaurus face-to-face yet, you’re in for a treat. This large, predatory beast is a sight to behold. You might hear it before you see it, too. It has a thundering roar that sends other creatures fleeing. The Gigantosaurus isn’t only hoping to attack wandering survivors. They want meat and will eat almost anything to get it. Other creatures in its vicinity, your tames, other survivors, and you are all on the menu. If you haven’t yet made friends with a Gigantosaurus and spot on, you’re probably best advised to run away unless you’ve made specific preparations to fight it. You can tell whether this Rex-resembling theropod is a Gigantosaur at a glance because of its sheer size. It’s multiple times larger than a Rex and one of the most enormous creatures on any map. Only the King Titan, Rockwell, Ice Titan, Forest Titan, and Titanosaur are larger.
What is the Gigantosaurus suitable for?
There are a lot of roles the Gigantosaur can play. We’ll go into more detail later, but if you’re trying to decide whether it’s worth the risk to tame one, it is for most PVP playstyles, at least. Though, there are a lot of benefits for PVE players too.
You can use them to farm specific items. The Gigantosaurus is excellent at base defense.Many tribes use Gigantosaurus as a major threat during attack raids.There are few better protectors than a Giga when you’re taking on massive threats.Riders couldn’t ask for a more ferocious mount.The Giga is a good choice for moving large amounts of items when what matters is getting there safely. He isn’t the fastest, but he won’t let you down regarding threats in the wild.
The Gigantosaurus is worth the time and effort it takes to tame one. But is it worth hunting outside of looking for a new tame? That’s up to you. The Gigantosaurus doesn’t have many drops you cannot get in abundance elsewhere. You can expect to get the usual drops from high-damage predators, including hide, raw meat, and raw prime meat. However, it also drops a Gigantosarus Heart, which can be very useful for specific endeavors.
What is a Gigantosaurus Heart?
The tooltip for the Gigantosaurus heart says that it proves your worth as a hunter, which means it’s a trophy. However, that’s not all it is. There are endgame bosses in ARK that you have to summon with specific items. For two of those bosses, you need the Gigantosaurus Heart.
Dragon
The beta and alpha version of the dragon is one boss you need the Gigantosaurus Heart to summon. You can find it on The Island, Ragnarok, Valguero, and Genesis: Part 2. If you want to spawn the alpha version of the dragon, you need two Gigantosaurus Hearts.
King Titan
King Titan is a boss that only appears on Extinction. You need 20 Gigantosaurus hearts to summon his alpha version, but none for the beta and gamma versions. You will get a Gigantosaurus Heart from each one you defeat. To take on the bosses that require Gigantosaurus Hearts in tribute, you’ll have to be able to kill high-level predators anyway. So gathering the items and practicing hunting and killing Gigantosaurs is an excellent way to prepare for battle.
Taming a Gigantosaurus
If you want to tame a Gigantosaurus, you’ll need lots of firepower, high-level armor, and potentially a team of dinosaurs and tribe members working together to take on the giant foe. Taming a Gigantosaurus is a lot like taming most other dinosaurs that require tranquilizers and the right food. However, it takes a lot of tranqs and a lot of food to succeed.
Finding the Giga
You should also consider the difficulty of finding the Giga. Though you can use the heatmaps on the ARK fandom page to locate it, they are wanderers who often go far outside the zones where they spawn. Putting your trap near the convergence point of several spawning zones should help you lead a wandering Giga to it. If you have a quick aerial dinosaur, hop on and fly around the Giga’s spawning grounds. You can circle out from there until you find one and lead it to the trap you made.
Trapping the Giga
You can use your ingenuity to trap the Giga, but it really all comes down to resources. If you have nothing but metal and time, you can build a large metal building that will contain almost any beast on the island. However, that is very resource intensive. If you go that route, use multiple Behemoth Metal Walls and Gates to create a room. Place stairs on the outside of the walls that go up to a shooting platform that is high over the Giga’s head. From here, you can quickly strike it with your tranqs. Some players suggest using three Metal Dinosaur Gateways near each other to create a space, leaving the fourth side unplaced until after you get the Giga into place. A Large Bear Trap should be in the middle of the room so that it snares the Giga. Once it’s in, place the last Metal Dinosaur Gateway in place to trap it. Then you can shoot from the outside with tranqs.
Knocking out the Giga
There are two options you can use to knock out a Giga efficiently. The fastest way is with a Longneck Rifle and Shocking Tranquilizer Darts. They will knock him out much faster than the other option but are also more expensive. Consider using this if you’re using a dangerous strategy, like trying to tame him from a flier or without a trap. The cheaper and slower way is with Crossbow and Tranquilizer Darts. At level 150, it would take approximately 450 Tranquilizer Darts or 225 Shocking Tranquilizer Darts to knock out a Gigantosaurus. Don’t forget to have at least 500 Narcotic ready to stick in its inventory once it’s down. Force feed as needed to keep its torpor up as the taming timer clicks down.
Feeding the Giga
If you’re going to the trouble to tame a Gigantosaurus, you should have the best food available. It will also help it reach the maximum possible stats and tame more quickly. Gigas prefer Exceptional Kibble, which requires an extra large egg, five fibers, one Focal Chili, 10 Mejoberries, a rare flower, and water. You need about 19 Exceptional Kibble to tame a level 150 Gigantosaurus. Put the food and the Narcotic in the Giga’s inventory and then wait for it to eat. You can force feed it when necessary by right-clicking on the food item and providing it to the Giga. The important thing is that both items are in their inventory. It should eat the food by itself. Don’t leave the Giga alone when it’s unconscious without protection. Other animals may dine on it while it can’t defend itself. If you’re close enough, you should get a notification when the Gigantosaurus awakes. Once it does, be sure to set it to the preferred options for your tribe. For example, you want to change it off of Passive, so it doesn’t let itself be attacked and killed. Every other setting completely depends on what you want to do with it. Read through all of them and choose which is best for your tribe. When the Giga is tame, you only need to keep it supplied with meat.
Hunting the Gigantosaurus
Hunting a Gigantosaurus is a challenging and exciting task for any survivor. Only high-level survivors with lots of great gear, building materials, ammo, or tames will be able to take it down.
Preparing for the Hunt
If you’re going to hunt with a trap, the only actual preparation you need is weaponry and lots of it. The more damage the weapon does, the less ammo you’ll need to take the Giga down.
Building a Trap
Building a trap for the Gigantosaurus is a lot like building a trap to tame a Gigantosaurus. In fact, it’s exactly the same. The only difference is that you may not need things like a place to wait or other storage to prepare your tame for the journey home. Traps made for hunts can be basic – even four walls with a door and no ceiling can suffice, as long as you can put stairs on the outside walls and scale them to shoot your enemy. Make sure the Giga can’t reach you, or you might be the one who doesn’t survive. Place your trap down before you start searching for the Giga.
Luring the Giga
The Giga is faster than almost anything. Luring it into your trap works best if you’re on an aerial tame. Stay high enough that it can’t reach you but low enough so that it maintains aggro on you. Once you have it fixed on you, start moving toward the trap. It needs to be high enough for the Giga to enter, and if you have a tribe member to help, ask them to stand nearby to slam the door once the Giga enters. It helps if they have a Ghillie Suit to avoid detection.
Making the kill
When the Giga is in the trap, walk up the stairs outside the walls and shoot to kill. It may take a lot of ammo, but it should be trapped if you’ve built it correctly. If you want to use tames to kill the Giga, here are a few strategies to consider:
Two tame Allosaurus can kill the dinosaur as long as they attack and then stay on its tail. It has a huge radius and doesn’t turn quickly. Keep attacking and keep the Allosaurus bleed effect up on the Giga until it’s dead. Multiple high-level Rexes working together can take out a Giga.You can use mounts that work in water and on land to lead a Giga deep into the water. If you go out of range, it will go immobile and drown. Then you can go back to harvest the meat.Lead the Giga to a Titanosaur and wait for it to attack the Titan. It will be killed relatively quickly if the Titanosaur is of a similar level.
Once you’re done, you’ll have the meat, hide, and pelt the corpse yields in addition to the Giga heart. Whether you’re hunting for sport or seeking a very useful tame, the Gigantosaurus is an excellent choice for any survivor who wants to set their sights on one of ARK’s most difficult encounters.