Raising a newly hatched Oviraptor in Ark: Survival Evolved is a highly rewarding endeavor that provides massive utility for your base operations. While wild adult variants require specialized items for taming, understanding the nutritional needs of a growing infant is crucial to ensuring their survival. Properly managing their growth phase ensures they mature smoothly into valuable team assets.
Initial Dietary Requirements for Hatchlings
As soon as a baby Oviraptor hatches from its egg, its immediate dietary requirements shift dramatically compared to its wild counterparts. Unlike the wild adults that exclusively consume dinosaur eggs during the taming process, newborn hatchlings require standard nourishment to survive. You must immediately fill their inventory with raw meat or basic berries to prevent them from starving during the initial phase.
Because newborns have incredibly low weight capacities, they cannot hold large quantities of food at once. Players must closely monitor the infant and manually replenish their inventory until they reach the juvenile milestone. Neglecting this crucial early window can quickly result in the loss of your newly bred creature.
Transitioning to Trough Feeding
Once your baby reaches roughly ten percent maturity, it transitions into the juvenile phase and gains the ability to feed independently. At this point, you can utilize a standard food trough to automate their daily nutrition rather than feeding them manually. The growing dinosaur will happily consume raw meat and berries directly from the shared container alongside your other creatures.
It is important to ensure your troughs remain well-stocked, as an empty trough might cause them to look for alternative food sources. Keeping a reliable supply of standard carnivore or herbivore food available protects your more valuable resources. This automated setup allows you to focus on other pressing tasks around your base while the creature matures safely.
Maximizing Growth and Care Utility
To optimize the growth cycle of your Oviraptor, maintaining steady nourishment should always be paired with basic imprinting tasks. Success in these interactions increases the creature's final stats, making it sturdier and more resilient against potential base raids. A fully grown individual provides an indispensable passive speed boost to egg-laying intervals for all surrounding dinosaurs.
Once fully mature, adults continue to subsist on basic raw meat, making them incredibly cheap to maintain over long periods. Keeping them weighed down with stone inside a cage allows their passive breeding buff to remain perfectly static. Implementing these growth tips ensures your tribe enjoys a constant stream of fertilized and unfertilized resources.
