If you’ve spent any time exploring the snow biomes of ARK, you’ve probably run into a slow-moving, rock-throwing Gacha and wondered if it’s worth the hassle to tame. I messed up three separate Gacha tames my first month playing, wasting hundreds of organic polymer and hours of time before I figured out the right process. Once you know how 2 tame a gacha ark, though, it’s easily one of the most valuable tames you can add to your roster, capable of producing almost every resource in the game with minimal effort on your part. This guide breaks down every step of the process, from pre-tame prep to post-tame care, so you don’t make the same mistakes I did.
Pre-Tame Prep: What You Need Before You Learn How 2 Tame a Gacha Ark
You don’t need any fancy high-end gear to tame a Gacha, but skipping the right prep will almost always lead to a failed tame. First, clear a 100-meter radius around the area you plan to use for taming. Wild predators like Rexes and Dire Wolves frequent snow biomes, and nothing ruins a 40-minute tame faster than a random Therizinosaurus attacking mid-process. You’ll also need a small set of supplies to make the process go smoothly:
- Preferred bait: Stone or metal structures, rare flowers, or organic polymer (Gacha prefer these over standard meat or berries by a wide margin, cutting taming time by up to 40%)
- Taming enclosure: A 2x2 stone or metal pen with a ramp, to keep the Gacha contained and safe from other predators during taming
- Heavy shield or ranged weapon: Gacha will throw boulders at you when agitated, so a metal shield or longneck rifle to calm them down if they get spooked is a must
- Spyglass: To check the Gacha's level and preferred resource before you start taming, so you don't waste high-value bait on a low-level specimen
- Taming calculator (optional but recommended): To track taming progress and adjust bait amounts based on the Gacha's level
You don’t need to bring tranq arrows or darts, for the record. Gacha are passive tames, and knocking them out will either kill them or make them refuse to eat entirely. Never use berries for high-level Gacha, either—taming a level 150 Gacha with berries can take over 4 hours, and you’ll almost certainly get interrupted before it finishes.
Step-by-Step Taming Process for Gacha Ark
Once you have all your supplies ready, the actual taming process is pretty straightforward, as long as you follow a few simple rules. First, wander the snow biome until you find a Gacha with the level and preferred resource you want. Higher level Gacha produce better quality crystals after taming, so I usually skip any Gacha below level 100 unless I’m just looking for a temporary resource farmer.
Lead the Gacha back to your pre-built enclosure by running near it, then close the gate once it’s inside. Don’t hit it or get too close, or it will start throwing boulders at you and might break out of the pen. Once it’s contained, move to the opposite side of the pen wall so you’re out of its line of sight for a minute, until it calms down.
Gacha only eat items that are dropped on the ground near them, not items you place in their inventory manually during taming. I made this mistake on my first ever Gacha tame, standing around for 20 minutes wondering why it wasn’t eating the stack of polymer I put in its inventory. Drop 5-10 pieces of your chosen bait near its feet, then back away to a safe distance. It will walk over and eat the bait after a minute or two, and you’ll see the taming bar go up. Repeat this process until the taming bar is full.
Never use tranquilizer darts or arrows on Gacha, as I mentioned earlier. Their torpor drops extremely fast, and they will often die before you can even get them unconscious. Even if you do manage to knock one out, it won’t eat any food while unconscious, so you’re just wasting supplies and risking killing the Gacha for no reason.
Common Taming Mistakes to Avoid
Even if you follow the basic steps, there are a few common mistakes that can ruin your tame before you finish. The first one is bringing other tamed dinos near the taming area. Gacha get spooked by aggressive tames even if they’re set to passive, so keep all your other dinos at least 50 meters away from the enclosure while you’re taming. If you have a dino that follows you around, make sure to set it to stay put far away before you start.
Another common mistake is dropping too much bait at once. Gacha only eat one piece of bait every few minutes, so if you drop a full stack of 1000 organic polymer at once, most of it will despawn before the Gacha gets a chance to eat it. Drop 5-10 pieces of bait at a time, wait for them to eat it, then drop more to avoid wasting high-value resources.
You also want to avoid taming in the middle of a snowstorm. Visibility drops to almost zero during heavy snowstorms, so you won’t see wild predators approaching until they’re already attacking the pen. The cold will also drain your health fast if you don’t have full fur armor, and you might end up dying mid-tame and leaving the Gacha unattended. Wait for a clear day to start your tame, or have a heated shelter nearby to wait out storms if they pop up unexpectedly.
Post-Tame Care & Getting the Most Value From Your Gacha
Once your Gacha is fully tamed, you can move it to your base and start using it to produce resources. First, open its inventory and select the resource you want it to focus on producing. You can choose from almost any resource in the game, from basic stone and wood to rare black pearls and element dust, depending on the Gacha’s individual loot table.
Gacha produce crystal pods over time, which you can open to get the resources you selected. The quality of the crystals depends on what you feed the Gacha after taming. If you feed it rare resources like element shards or rare flowers, the crystals will have a higher chance of containing rare drops and higher quantities of resources.
Pair your tamed Gacha with an Oviraptor nearby to boost crystal production by 30%, that’s a trick a lot of new players don’t know about. You can also breed Gacha to get offspring with higher production stats, which will produce more crystals faster than wild-tamed Gacha. I have four high-level bred Gacha on my server that produce all the metal, crystal, and polymer I need for building, so I don’t have to spend hours mining every weekend anymore.
Make sure to keep your Gacha in a covered, temperature-controlled pen. They get stressed if they’re exposed to extreme heat or cold, which slows down their crystal production by up to 50%. You don’t need anything fancy, just a small stone building with a few torches or air conditioners to keep the temperature stable.
Taming a Gacha might seem intimidating at first, especially if you’ve had bad experiences with passive tames in the past, but it’s way simpler once you know the right process. Now that you know how 2 tame a gacha ark, you can add one of the most useful resource farmers in the game to your roster, and cut down on hours of grinding for basic materials every week. My first successfully tamed Gacha produced so many black pearls I didn’t have to farm the dangerous ocean biomes for almost three months, and I still use its offspring on my server today. Take your time with the prep, avoid the common mistakes we covered, and you’ll have your own Gacha producing resources for you in no time.