Base Stats (Wild Lv150)
| Stat | Base Value | Per Level (Wild) | Per Level (Tamed) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Health | 400 | +80 | +5.4% |
| Stamina | 250 | +25 | +10% |
| Weight | 200 | +4 | +4% |
| Melee Damage | 100% (30 base) | +5% | +1.7% |
Taming Guide
| Food | Amount (Lv150, 1x) | Time | Effectiveness |
|---|---|---|---|
| Superior Kibble | 8 | ~20min | +99% |
| Raw Mutton | 15 | ~25min | +88% |
| Raw Meat | 45 | ~45min | +65% |
Key Features
Okay so the bleed roar is honestly what makes this thing special and I mean it's the whole reason you tame a Carno over literally anything else at this level, it roars and applies bleed to all nearby enemies on a 10 second cooldown which is excellent for PvE farming groups and tbh I've wiped entire packs of parasaurs and phiomia with one roar cycle you just watch their health bars melt and collect the loot and it's kind of satisfying in a way that's hard to describe. And the speed on this thing is kind of nuts ngl fastest medium-sized carnivore in the game and outruns most threats except pure speed mounts like gallis so you're basically never stuck in a fight you can't escape which is huge for mid-game roaming when literally everything wants to kill you
The torpor farming is another thing people seriously sleep on, the headbutt attack inflicts bonus torpor and pairs beautifully with narcoberry gathering so you can farm berries then use the carno for prime meat runs and it's a whole self-sufficient taming supply loop and stuff that honestly changed how I play the game
Also the charge attack
You hold sprint to build a charge meter and then release for a knockback that staggers medium creatures, I've knocked alpha raptors off cliffs with this thing and it never gets old, like never ever, I've done it hundreds of times and I still giggle every single time honestly it's probably my favorite thing about the Carno and why I keep coming back to it after all these years
Strategy Guide
For taming tips the carno has crazy high torpor drain like seriously high so bring 2x the narcotics you think you need and then bring some more because I'm not kidding about this, I've had a level 150 wake up on me with 80% taming done and it was genuinely devastating you know that feeling when you've invested an hour into something and it just vanishes. Tranq from high ground or use a flying mount and you'll be fine but don't get cocky, also for torpor farming just ride the carno into groups of parasaurs or phiomia and hit the bleed roar to soften everything up then headbutt for torpor and collect the prime meat and hide that drops, you'll walk away with stacks of supplies without breaking a sweat and honestly it's one of the most efficient early game farming loops I've found
For PvP the charge attack is actually really useful for knocking riders off their mounts which is kind of hilarious when it works and the bleed roar forces enemy teams to scatter or eat DOT damage and I've had some of my most fun PvP moments on a Carno honestly, it's not going to win you a 1v1 against a rex or anything but for early raiding and ambushing tames it punches way above its weight class and I've taken down so many unsuspecting PT riders with this thing you wouldn't believe it
Carno vs Other Mid-Game Carnivores
So you're level 40-ish and you need a combat mount, you've got options Carno Dire Bear Sabertooth and maybe a Raptor pack so how do you pick. The Carno's main advantage is raw versatility honestly it's not the best at anything but it does everything decently and that's kind of the point, the Dire Bear hits harder and gathers fiber and honey but it's slower and can't bleed groups and the Sabertooth is faster and smaller for caves but has way less HP and no AoE options at all
And honestly the Carno's bleed roar is what sets it apart, in a group setting that AoE bleed is huge and I've run Carno packs against Alpha Raptors where the stacked bleed damage just melts them, a Dire Bear can't touch that kind of group DPS. The Carno also has way more torpor than most people realize which makes it a surprisingly good knockout farmer if you're into that
For general mid-game roaming I'd take a Carno over a Sabertooth any day unless I specifically need to fit through a tight cave entrance, compared to the Baryonyx the Carno loses on water utility since Bary is amphibious and has the stun spin for better CC but on pure land combat Carno's charge attack and bleed roar give it a clear edge, different tools for different jobs basically and you get the idea
Breeding Tips
Carnos breed pretty fast for their size which makes mutation stacking viable without losing your mind, the gestation time is around 4 hours on official rates and the baby phase is about 9 hours so it's manageable even for solo players like me who don't want to spend a week raising one dino and honestly that's one of the best things about Carnos compared to bigger stuff like rexes or spinos that take forever. If you're breeding Carnos melee and health mutations are what you want, stamina mutations are a waste since Carno doesn't burn through stamina that fast and weight mutations are fine if you're using it as a general purpose mount but not worth chasing specifically, I'd recommend keeping any melee or health mutation you get and just building from there
A mutated Carno line with 20 points in both health and melee is a serious threat and will handle pretty much anything in PvE, like literally you'll be surprised what you can take down with a well-bred Carno
One thing that caught me off guard the first time: Carno babies eat a lot for their size. Have a fridge full of raw meat or cooked meat ready before you start breeding. Nothing worse than logging in to find your mutation stack starved because you ran out of food overnight and I've been there and honestly it still stings thinking about it, lost a full melee mutation stack that way and I'm still not over it
Pro Tips
The charge attack isn't just for damage it's also a mobility tool, you can use it to dodge attacks from bigger predators by starting the charge and then when the Rex or Spino winds up its attack just release the charge sideways to juke out of the way, saved my Carno more times than I can count and it's basically the only reason I survived some encounters where I should've definitely died. For torpor farming efficiency pair your Carno with a stego or Trike for narcoberry gathering, ride the Carno out to farm prime meat and torpor from wild dinos and use the herbivore to gather the berries you need for narcotics, it's a really efficient solo loop for stockpiling tranq supplies and I've done this exact setup on every playthrough because it just works every single time without fail
And here's a trick for taming high-level Carnos that I wish I knew earlier: build your trap near a Carno spawn point not the other way around
Carnos have a tendency to aggro on everything during the kite and if you're dragging one across the map it's gonna get distracted and fight random stuff, place the trap close and clear the area first then lure, saves so much frustration trust me
Common Mistakes
Biggest one and I see this constantly: people forget the Carno has high torpor drain during taming like really high, if you're using raw meat instead of kibble you need to babysit the torpor very carefully and I've seen so many people knock out a 150 Carno dump some meat and narcotics and wander off only to come back and find it woke up and honestly it's heartbreaking every time I see it happen in chat
Bring double the narcotics you think you need, better to have leftovers than lose the tame and tbh leftover narcotics are never a bad thing anyway you'll use them eventually
Another mistake is treating the Carno like a Rex, it's not a tank and its base HP is only 400 and even with levels it'll never reach Rex levels of durability, use it as a hit-and-run fighter and bleed the enemy group then back off and let the bleed do its work because standing there trading hits with a high-level Theri or Spino is just gonna get your Carno killed and that's a terrible way to lose a good tame that you spent hours raising. And don't ignore the Carno's speed it's one of the fastest mid-sized carnivores in the game, if you're putting all your levels into melee and health but ignoring movement speed you're missing half the point
A Carno with 130% movement speed can outrun pretty much anything that's a real threat and that mobility is worth more than an extra 500 HP in most situations, I learned this the hard way after losing a fully mutated Carno because it was too slow to escape a giga and I literally just sat there staring at the death screen for like five minutes
Taming Strategy
Honestly taming a Carno is pretty straightforward but you can still mess it up if you're not prepared, I've found that a simple 2x2 stone trap with doorframes works like a charm just aggro the carno and run through the trap and slip out the other side and you're golden you know nothing fancy and that's kind of the beauty of mid-game taming compared to the nightmare that is taming a giga or a quetz. For weapons a crossbow with tranq arrows is basically all you need at this level but here's the thing people always forget Carnos have crazy high torpor drain like seriously high I've had them wake up on me more times than I'd like to admit so bring double the narcotics you think you'll need and keep a close eye on that torpor bar, don't wander off, don't check your phone, just sit there and watch it because I'm telling you these things wake up fast
I usually starve tame them too just dump the kibble or mutton in once they're down and the hunger is low, saves you from wasting food if something goes sideways and in ARK something ALWAYS goes sideways so better safe than sorry
One trap design I've been using lately is the ramp trap, build a 3x3 stone foundation put doorframes on three sides and a ramp on the fourth and lure the Carno up the ramp and it falls in and can't get out because Carnos are too tall to fit through doorframes, way easier than kiting it into a box and honestly bring a buddy if you can one person flies above dropping tranqs while the other kites it, makes the whole thing take like five minutes tops and I've tamed probably 30 Carnos this way and it hasn't failed me once
Best Uses
So what's this thing actually good for, In PvE the Carno is pretty much your go-to torpor farming machine and I can't stress this enough, ride it into a group of parasaurs or phiomia and hit the bleed roar then start headbutting everything and you'll walk away with stacks of narcoberries and prime meat without breaking a sweat, IMO it's one of the best early-to-mid game meat runners in ARK hands down and I've literally stopped using raptors and sabers entirely once I got my first Carno because nothing else covers this many roles at once
For PvP it fills a different role entirely, the charge attack can knock riders right off their mounts which is kind of hilarious when it works and the bleed roar forces enemy teams to scatter or eat DOT damage
It's not going to win you a 1v1 against a rex or anything but for early raiding and ambushing tames it punches way above its weight class I've had some of my most fun PvP moments on a Carno honestly
Something people seriously sleep on is using the Carno for alpha hunting, a decent Carno with a good saddle can solo Alpha Raptors if you manage the bleed stacks properly just hit the roar and charge in and back off while the bleed ticks and repeat, takes patience but it's totally doable and the XP and loot from alphas at mid-game is honestly game-changing. Basically if you need something fast that can farm torpor and hold its own in a fight the Carno is your guy and you get the idea
Comparison with Similar Creatures
People always ask me should I tame a Carno or a Raptor or maybe a Sabertooth here's the deal, Raptors are faster and can pounce sure but they're made of paper and one wrong move and your raptor pack is a pile of meat and then there's the Sabertooth which is great for hide and chitin farming but can't touch the Carno's torpor output and then there's the Direwolf which is honestly a solid all-rounder but wolves don't get saddles so no armor and that hurts in PvP, the Carno sits in this sweet spot where it's tanky enough to take hits and fast enough to run from real threats, has that bleed roar that literally none of the others get, I've found that for pure utility in the mid-game the Carno beats all of them honestly
If you want a dedicated hide farmer go saber, if you want a pack hunter go wolf, but if you want one mount that does a bit of everything and excels at torpor farming Carno is the answer
Compared to the Baryonyx the Carno loses on water utility but on pure land combat the Carno's charge and bleed give it a clear edge, different tools for different jobs I guess
Breeding and Mutations
Breeding Carnos isn't too complicated but there are a few things worth knowing, first off the egg takes about 2 hours to hatch at standard rates and you don't need anything crazy just a few air conditioners or a bunch of standing torches will do the trick and the baby phase is kind of long though like 4 and a half hours so plan accordingly and don't start hatching at midnight like I did once because you'll be up all night. For mutations I'd focus on melee damage first, a mutated Carno with stacked melee can clear entire groups of herbivores in one bleed roar cycle and it's honestly pretty nuts, after melee go for health, stamina mutations are nice to have but not essential since the Carno already has decent stamina and anyway you can always pump stamina through levels
One thing I've learned the hard way: don't bother mutating weight. The base weight is fine for what you'll be doing with this creature, just put a few level-up points into it and call it a day
If you're really serious about breeding try to get a pair with identical stats first before you start the mutation grind, it makes tracking new mutations so much easier when every baby pops out at the same level. And use a breeding pen with the females on one side and the male in the middle, you can pump out eggs way faster that way and etc
Advanced Pro Tips
After spending way too many hours with these things here are a few things I wish someone told me, first the bleed roar stacks with itself if you time it right, hit the roar and wait for the cooldown and hit it again before the first bleed expires and you can keep enemies taking damage nonstop which is great for alpha hunting and stuff. Second always carry a spare crossbow and tranqs when you're out on your Carno, the torpor headbutt is strong but if you find a high-level creature you want to tame you'll want to switch to ranged tranqs for safety
Third the charge attack has some weird momentum to it
You kind of have to commit to the direction once you release it so don't try to turn mid-charge or you'll whiff completely, I've missed so many knockbacks learning this it's not even funny and honestly it took me like 20 hours of playtime before I stopped whiffing half my charges. Fourth if you're using the Carno for meat runs pair it with an Argentavis following you on neutral, the Argent can carry the extra meat while the Carno does the killing and basically doubles your efficiency
And finally don't sleep on the Carno for cave runs, it fits in most caves and the bleed roar works on everything inside, just watch your step near lava and you'll be fine