Base Stats (Wild Lv150)
| Stat | Base Value | Per Level (Wild) | Per Level (Tamed) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Health | 140 | +28 | +5.4% |
| Stamina | 120 | +12 | +10% |
| Weight | 100 | +2 | +4% |
| Melee Damage | 100% | +5% | +1.7% |
Taming Guide
| Food | Amount (Lv150, 1x) | Time | Effectiveness |
|---|---|---|---|
| Giganotosaurus Egg | 1 | ~4m 10s | 99.8% (+74 levels) |
| Extraordinary Dino Egg | 2 | ~8m 20s | 99.3% (+74 levels) |
| Exceptional Dino Egg | 4 | ~16m 40s | 97.0% (+72 levels) |
Special Abilities
The Oviraptor has one job and it does it extremely well — making your tames lay eggs faster. When you set an Oviraptor to wander (or just park it near your dinos — more on this later), it emits a pheromone buff that dramatically increases egg laying frequency for all nearby tamed females. By dramatically I mean it cuts the egg-laying interval by about half. Without an Oviraptor, a tamed female Rex lays an egg roughly every 30 to 40 minutes on official settings. With an Oviraptor nearby, that drops to 15-20 minutes. Multiply that across an entire egg farm with 20+ females and you're swimming in eggs.
The buff radius is about 16 foundations wide, which is pretty generous — you can cover a decent-sized breeding pen with one Oviraptor in the middle. The Oviraptor also has a secondary ability: it can autonomously steal wild eggs from nests without aggroing the parent dino. This is mostly useful for grabbing Wyvern or Rock Drake eggs without getting obliterated. Set the Oviraptor to "steal" and it'll waddle over and grab the egg without triggering the parents. Doesn't always work perfectly — sometimes the Oviraptor gets eaten anyway — but when it works it's beautiful.
Tamed Oviraptors eat regular meat by the way. They don't need eggs once they're yours, despite what the dossier says.
Taming Strategy
Oviraptors are knockout tames, which is ironic because they're so small and skittish. They have very low torpor — 125 base — so be careful not to kill the thing while you're trying to knock it out. A single tranq dart from a primitive longneck will drop most low-level Oviraptors. For a level 150 at 1x rates, you need about 3-4 tranq darts or 6-8 tranq arrows from a crossbow. DON'T use a high-damage weapon — I've accidentally killed more Oviraptors than I want to admit because I forgot to swap to my weaker crossbow. Use a magnifying glass or the Dododex app to check its health before you shoot. These things have 140 base health at level 1 and a level 150 wild might have 800-1200 HP depending on stat allocation — enough to survive a few darts but not enough to survive a 200% longneck headshot.
The real challenge with Oviraptors is what you feed them — they only eat EGGS for taming. Not kibble, not meat, not berries — actual dinosaur eggs. The best option by far is a Giganotosaurus egg. One Giga egg will tame a level 150 Oviraptor at 99.8% effectiveness in about 4 minutes. Insanely fast. If you don't have Giga eggs lying around (and tbh who does), Extraordinary eggs from Rexes, Spinos, or Therizinos are the next best — 2 eggs for a 150 at 99.3% in about 8 minutes. Exceptional eggs from Brontos or Carnos work too but you'll need more of them and the effectiveness drops. You CAN tame an Oviraptor with Dodo eggs but you'll need like 200 of them and the effectiveness is basically zero. Don't do this unless you're on a boosted server where it doesn't matter.
The Oviraptor wakes up fast once knocked out — torpor drain is about 0.21 per second — so you need maybe 2-3 narcotics max for the short tame time. If you're using a Giga egg you probably won't even need narcotics since the tame finishes in 4 minutes.
Best Uses
The Oviraptor's primary use is as an egg production booster for your kibble farm. Here's the setup that I run and it works great: build a central pen with your Oviraptor in the middle, then radiate different species pens around it. The range is about 16 foundations so measure it out. Fill the Oviraptor's inventory with stone so it's encumbered, then set it to "Enable Wandering." Because it's over-encumbered, it won't actually move — but the game still considers it "wandering" for the purpose of the egg buff. This is the single most important trick for Oviraptor users. If you don't encumber it, it'll wander off the edge of your base and get eaten by a Raptor, guaranteed. I learned this the hard way on my second week playing ARK when I logged in to find my Oviraptor had wandered into the swamp and died to a Kaprosuchus. Just fill its inventory with raw stone and leave it — the buff works even if it's standing perfectly still.
For dedicated kibble production, you'll want at least one male and multiple females of each egg-laying species, plus the Oviraptor buff. The buff stacks with mate boost, so a mate-boosted female with an Oviraptor nearby will pump out eggs at maximum rate. The ideal setup is: Oviraptor in the center (encumbered, wandering enabled), species pens around it with one male per group of females, and a system for collecting eggs. You can either collect manually (which is tedious) or set up an egg collector mod if you're on unofficial. On vanilla, I just do egg runs every 30 minutes during a kibble crafting session and I easily get 3-4 times more eggs than without the Oviraptor.
The egg stealing ability is niche but worth mentioning. If you're farming Wyvern eggs on Scorched Earth or Ragnarok, you can use an Oviraptor to grab the egg without aggroing the Wyverns. Move your Oviraptor to the edge of the trench, set it to "target egg nearby" or use the whistle command, and it'll waddle toward the nearest egg. The key is to have a fast flyer ready to grab the Oviraptor the moment it picks up the egg — because the Wyverns will still aggro after a few seconds delay. It's riskier than just grabbing the egg yourself with a high-stamina Pteranodon but it's fun and feels very "ARK." You can also use this for Rock Drake eggs on Aberration — same concept, the Oviraptor grabs the egg without immediately triggering the Rock Drakes.
Oviraptor vs Other Egg Boosters
There's really no competition here — the Oviraptor is the only consistent, permanent egg rate booster in the game. Some people think the Procoptodon does something similar but nope, Procoptodon only boosts imprinting speed for babies, not egg laying. The only thing that comes close is the Eggcellent Adventure event rates but that's temporary and doesn't stack with all events. A mate-boosted female with an Oviraptor nearby is the absolute maximum egg production rate you can achieve in vanilla ARK. If you're serious about kibble, you need an Oviraptor — full stop.
Breeding Tips
Oviraptors lay eggs (ironically) and breed like most other creatures. The incubation range is 26-30 degrees Celsius and the egg takes about 1 hour 8 minutes to hatch on 1x. The baby grows up in about 21 hours total. You don't really need to breed Oviraptors for stats since the egg buff doesn't scale with anything — a level 5 Oviraptor gives the exact same boost as a level 300 one. The only reason to breed them is to have spares. That said, they eat meat as babies, not eggs, which is a relief — you can just throw raw meat in a trough and they'll be fine. Breed one or two backups, cryopod them, and keep your main Oviraptor safe. The egg they lay is called an "Oviraptor Egg" and can be used to make Basic Kibble if you're desperate, but it's not a great use of resources — breed Dodos for Basic Kibble eggs instead.
Pro Tips
First tip: ENCUMBER YOUR OVIRAPTOR. I cannot stress this enough. Fill it with stone or wood until it can't move, THEN enable wandering. Skip this step and you WILL lose your Oviraptor. Not even kidding.
Second tip: level nothing but weight on the Oviraptor. More weight means you can encumber it with fewer slots, which reduces the chance of inventory bugs.
Third tip: the Oviraptor egg buff works through walls, so you can put it in a fully enclosed 1x1 stone box for maximum safety. It doesn't need line of sight — just needs to be within range.
Fourth tip: if you're stealing eggs with an Oviraptor, level its movement speed so it can sprint back to you faster. The egg stealing AI pathfinding gets confused sometimes, so be ready to whistle "follow" aggressively.
Fifth tip: some people swear by using multiple Oviraptors for overlapping buff coverage on large farms. The buff does NOT stack from multiple Oviraptors — one is all you need. Save the extra tames for something useful.