The Giganotosaurus in ARK: Survival Ascended can no longer be tamed by knocking it out, Studio Wildcard said on November 6 in the v97 patch notes, the same update that moves the game to Unreal Engine 5.8. The studio laid out the update in Community Crunch 531 on Steam that night, alongside the Enigmasaur, which closes out Fantastic Tames Season 1.
The Details
The Giga’s new tame is an Apex Challenge. A wild Giganotosaurus “is no longer tamed through a standard knockout encounter,” the patch notes say. Instead:
- Craft an Apex Offering from Alpha trophies and carry it near a wild Giga to start the challenge.
- Every attack the Giga lands raises its own Torpidity.
- Torpidity stops at 50% at first. Enrage the Giga and survive until the Enrage ends to remove that cap.
- At 100% Torpidity it falls unconscious and can be fed.
The TLC also brings a new model, a Heavy Stomp and Tail Slam, and a passive called Wounded Fury: up to 50% more damage and 30% more damage resistance below 75% health, with nearby allied creatures getting half. At full Rage, riders now get a short window to regain control by landing attacks before they are thrown off.
Unreal Engine 5.8. Studio Wildcard says the upgrade optimizes rendering “to reduce GPU workload and improve performance,” with better foliage and distant vistas on every platform. Lumen Lite is switched on only with select PC graphics settings for now, with “broader support planned soon.” PC also gets the in-game Mod Browser.
New limits for big tribes. Official servers now cap a tribe at 10 Tek Cloning Chambers within 1,000 meters and 50 in total. A tribe with more than 100 deployed Gachas sees them eat every 60 to 90 seconds instead of every 20 to 30 until it is back to 100. Unofficial servers can change both limits in Game.ini. The patch also tones down the Aureliax, Dreadnoughtus and several other creatures.
What This Means for Players
A Giga now starts with Alpha hunting. The Apex Offering needs Alpha trophies, and the Giga hits harder as it gets hurt, so bring tames that can take a beating. Our earlier ARK story explains how the Enigmasaur is tamed; it now spawns on eight maps, from The Center to Astraeos.
Recheck your graphics settings. On PC, Lumen Lite depends on which settings you pick. With a Mod Browser now built in, the PC version is the kind of game our best moddable games list rounds up.
More creature taming. Our 20 best monster taming games and our Palworld guides cover other games built around catching creatures.
When and Where
v97 is a major version for servers and clients on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. Bonus rates on the official network run until Wednesday, November 11, and a set of inactive Island servers is sunset on November 29.
Source: Studio Wildcard, “Community Crunch 531,” Steam, November 6, 2026 (Eastern), and the official ARK: Survival Ascended v97 patch notes.