Base Stats (Wild Lv150)
| Stat | Base Value | Per Level (Wild) | Per Level (Tamed) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Health | 850 | +170 | +5.4% |
| Stamina | 300 | +30 | +10% |
| Weight | 500 | +10 | +4% |
| Melee Damage | 100% (48 base) | +5% | +1.7% |
Taming Guide
| Food | Amount (Lv150, 1x) | Time | Effectiveness |
|---|---|---|---|
| Regular Kibble | 17 | ~30min | +99% |
| Fresh Barley | 70 | ~50min | +85% |
| Mejoberry | 225 | ~1h 30min | +65% |
Resource Harvesting
Okay so wood is what the Mammoth does and honestly it's ridiculous how good it is at this like you walk up to a tree and one swing gives you 5 to 6 times more wood than a player axe which is just nuts and the best part is the 75 percent weight reduction on wood so you can carry basically an entire forest's worth before you need to head back to base and I've literally filled an industrial forge in under ten minutes with a mid level Mammoth if you find a good dense spot and you also get massive thatch as a byproduct from all that wood farming which also has 75 percent reduction and honestly thatch is always in demand for bullets and building and stuff like that so you're basically running two farming ops at once and on top of all that the Mammoth can grab berries too I mean it's not as efficient as a dedicated berry gatherer like the Bronto but it's decent enough if you need some narcoberries while you're out and on certain maps it can even harvest rare mushrooms from swamp trees which is kind of a weird bonus but hey free mushrooms you know
War Drum Saddle
The war drum saddle is honestly one of the most underrated things in the game and I see so many Mammoth owners never touching the drum which drives me crazy because when you activate it you get plus 25 percent damage and plus 20 percent damage resistance to all nearby allied creatures for 30 seconds and there's only a 2 minute cooldown so you can pop it pretty much whenever you need it and here's the thing you pair this with a Yuty's courage roar and suddenly your whole rex army has a 50 percent damage boost before any mate boost or imprint bonuses and for boss fights like Dragon and Megapithecus this combo literally cuts the fight time in half and the buff applies to everything within 30 foundations of the Mammoth so you don't even need to be that close and honestly if you're bringing a rex army to a boss fight and not bringing a Mammoth with a war drum saddle you're just leaving free damage on the table like why would you do that
Farming Strategy
So the dream team for wood farming is Mammoth plus Quetzal and I know that sounds like a lot of setup but once you try it you'll never go back because you put a platform saddle on the Quetz and carry the Mammoth to the densest forest you know about and just go to town harvesting and then fly back to base with a load that would take any other creature four trips and the key to making this work is pumping melee damage on your Mammoth because melee directly scales wood gathering so more melee means more wood per swing which means fewer swings to fill up and that's just math and also the stomp attack has a surprisingly big AoE and if you position the Mammoth at the intersection of two or three trees one stomp hits all of them and in redwood forests where the trees are packed tight this is crazy efficient so don't bother attacking individual trees just stomp as you walk through clusters and the Mammoth also has natural cold resistance which makes it perfect for snow biome wood farming where the trees are thick and nobody else wants to go because they'd freeze to death and honestly that's kind of a competitive advantage if you think about it
Mammoth vs Other Wood Gatherers
So there are basically three serious wood gatherers in ARK the Mammoth the Castoroides and the Therizino and let me be real about how they compare because I've used all three way more than I'd like to admit the Castoroides is a solid early option honestly it gathers wood well and has weight reduction and the saddle acts as a smithy which is neat but the Mammoth gathers about 40 percent more wood per tree and has way more HP and the war drum buff puts it in a completely different league for tribe utility and if you're solo the Castoroides might be enough but for any tribe with more than two people you want a Mammoth and then there's the Therizino which is kind of the wildcard because a power leveled Theri with points in delicate harvesting can gather wood faster than a Mammoth on a per swing basis but here's the thing the Theri has zero weight reduction on wood ngl so you harvest fast sure but you're running back to base every two minutes and the Mammoth with 75 percent weight reduction and much higher base weight will net you way more wood per trip and for bulk harvesting Mammoth is still king and honestly the ideal setup is Mammoth plus Quetzal because you platform saddle the Quetz carry the Mammoth to the forest harvest and fly back and this combo can fill an industrial forge with wood in under ten minutes and the Castoroides can't even be carried by a Quetz and a loaded Theri is too heavy so Mammoth just wins the logistics game hands down
Breeding Tips
Breeding Mammoths is a long game and I'm not gonna sugarcoat it because the gestation is about 8 hours and the baby phase is nearly 16 hours on official rates and that's not something you do casually but if you're serious about wood farming or war drum support a bred Mammoth line is absolutely worth it and here's what I've found matters most for mutations weight is the premium stat for a farming Mammoth because a weight mutation on top of the already massive base weight means you can basically clear a whole forest in one trip and that's not even an exaggeration and melee mutations are nice too since melee directly scales wood gathering and honestly you want both if you can get them and health mutations matter if you're using the Mammoth for war drum boss support but for a pure farming mammoth weight first melee second and that's pretty much the priority order and one tip don't bother breeding for stamina mutations because the Mammoth has good base stamina and its attacks don't drain it that fast and honestly when you're farming wood you're doing more stopping and swinging than running around so stamina is rarely the bottleneck you know
Pro Tips
So the war drum buff stacks with the Yutyrannus courage roar and this is huge for boss fights honestly bring one Mammoth with a war drum saddle and one Yuty and your rex army gets both the 25 percent damage buff from the drum and the 25 percent from the Yuty roar and that's a 50 percent damage boost before any mate boost or imprint bonuses and for the Dragon and Megapithecus fights this combo can literally cut the fight time in half and another trick the AoE stomp hits trees in a surprisingly large radius and if you position your Mammoth at the intersection of two or three trees one stomp hits all of them and in dense forests like the redwoods this is crazy efficient so don't bother attacking individual trees just stomp as you walk through clusters and for taming the Mammoth's head hitbox is huge from the front and if you're using tranq darts with a longneck aim for the head and you basically can't miss but the torpor drain is moderate so you don't need to go crazy with narcotics and a stack of 100 for a 150 is plenty tbh
Common Mistakes
The number one Mammoth mistake and I've made this myself is taming a low level one and expecting it to be good at wood farming and a level 20 Mammoth gathers maybe half what a 150 does and melee damage scales wood gathering directly so wild levels in melee make a massive difference and if you're gonna spend 30 minutes taming a Mammoth do yourself a favor and find at least a 130 plus because the time investment difference between taming a 20 and a 150 is maybe 15 extra minutes but the output difference is night and day and another mistake is taking the Mammoth to the wrong biome for wood and the snow biome has the densest trees and the Mammoth has natural cold resistance so it seems like the obvious choice but the redwood forest actually has way more trees per square meter and the redwood trees give more wood per hit and I've tested this myself and the redwood forest yields about 30 percent more wood per trip just watch out for Thylacoleos seriously those things will ruin your whole day and don't forget the war drum exists because I see so many Mammoth owners who never touch the drum thinking it's just for PvP but the drum buff affects your Mammoth too and if you're clearing a dense forest or fighting off a wild predator pop the drum and you get the damage boost yourself and it's a free buff on a two minute cooldown so there's no reason not to use it
Taming Strategy
So you want to knock out a Mammoth huh first thing you need to know is they spawn in the snow biome and up in the northern highlands which means you're gonna be dealing with cold temps and the occasional pack of direwolves sniffing around while you're setting up and honestly the easiest trap design is just a 3x3 stone gateframe box with a ramp on one side nothing fancy just the classic dino trap you know and you lure the Mammoth up the ramp with a ptera or just by running on foot if you're feeling brave and it drops in and now it can't walk out because those big tusks get stuck on the gateframes and I've found that stone is fine for this because Mammoths don't deal enough damage to break stone before it goes down but if you're feeling extra cautious metal gateframes are obviously better but honestly you're probably wasting resources unless you're on a boosted server with crazy high level wilds
For weapons you basically want a longneck rifle with tranquilizer darts if you have the resources and if you're early game and stuck with a crossbow that works too it just takes longer and you'll lose some taming effectiveness and aim for the head because torpor multiplies there and pretty much every experienced player knows this but I'm gonna say it anyway don't use tranq arrows on a crossbow if you can help it because the damage per torpor ratio is kinda terrible on a Mammoth and they have a decent torpor pool so you're looking at maybe 15 to 20 darts with a decent longneck depending on the level and a journeyman or better longneck makes this a breeze by the way
Torpor management is not too stressful with Mammoths imo because they drop slower than a lot of other knockout tames so bring some narcoberries or narcotics obviously and a stack of 100 narcotics will cover even a high level tame with room to spare but the one thing that trips people up is the Mammoth's natural cold resistance because you standing there in the snow waiting for it to tame means you need fur armor or a few campfires nearby or you'll freeze to death before the tame finishes and that has happened to me more times than I'd like to admit and watch out for random Yuty spawns in the snow biome because those fear roars will scatter your unconscious Mammoth and ruin your whole day so bring a couple of bodyguards or at least clear the area before you start the tame
Best Uses
Okay so what do you actually do with a Mammoth once you have one and in PvE is where this thing absolutely shines because wood farming plain and simple is what it's built for and the 75 percent weight reduction on wood is ridiculous like you can carry four times what any other creature can manage so if you're building a massive base or running an industrial forge setup the Mammoth is your best friend and I've found that even a mid level Mammoth can fill an industrial forge in under ten minutes if you know a good forest spot and the war drum saddle is seriously underrated for boss fights because that 25 percent damage buff to your whole army is no joke when paired with a Yuty's courage roar and for the Broodmother and Megapithecus fights specifically the drum plus roar combo basically turns your rex army into a delete button
In PvP it's a bit more niche honestly because you're not gonna raid someone's turret tower with a Mammoth but it does have some utility and the war drum buff works on allied creatures during ground pushes and the Mammoth's knockback from its stomp can push enemy players around which is kinda funny and it's also a decent soak dino in a pinch since it has a big health pool for a herbivore and imo its real PvP value is base logistics because wood and thatch are always in demand for bullets and building and a Mammoth gets that done way faster than a beaver or therizino so even the sweatiest PvP tribes keep a farming Mammoth around you just don't see them on the front lines
Honestly there's one more use case people sleep on and that's cave runs on certain maps because the Mammoth is big enough that small cave creatures ignore it or get knocked back and the stomp clears bats and spiders surprisingly fast and it's not a meta cave mount by any stretch but if you happen to have a Mammoth leveled up and you need to clear an easy cave it works better than you'd think just don't try this in the hard snow cave because you'll get stuck on the geometry and that's just embarrassing