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The Dreadmare is a paid Fantastic Tames creature in ARK: Survival Ascended that cannot be knocked out or fed during a normal wild tame. Kill a wild Dreadmare at night, loot its Dark Altar, then complete a timed tribute ritual: provide the requested creature trophy, kill the summoned Dreadmare, and repeat until the altar summons your tame.
This guide covers the current taming ritual, failed tributes, spawn locations and times, combat tactics, abilities, controls, and the changes that make older Dreadmare guides unreliable.
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Availability and requirements
The Dreadmare is included in the paid ARK Fantastic Tames – Dreadmare DLC, which requires the base game ARK: Survival Ascended. The Steam listing gives the DLC a $4.99 price and an October 30, 2024 release date; regional pricing and availability can vary.
Players who do not own the DLC can still encounter and kill wild Dreadmares and obtain a Dark Altar, but the altar cannot be used to tame one without the DLC.
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- ARK: Survival Ascended has completely recreated and redesigned the artwork and worlds of ARK to take advantage of the latest in videogame technology, Unreal Engine 5, using high-end graphics features such as fully dynamic Global Illumination (“Lumen”), so that light bounces realistically of off surfaces and provides realistic reflections, and advanced mesh streaming (“Nanite”) of hundreds of millions of triangles for extreme detail.
- Advanced new physics systems such as dynamic water so that every creature creates waves, ripples, splashes, and bubbles as they move through fluids, and fully interactive physical foliage where every blade of grass, bush, and tree reacts to characters, explosions, projectiles, and physics objects.
- ARK: Survival Ascended includes access to all of ARK’s worlds, including Scorched Earth, Aberration, Extinction, ARK Genesis Part 1, ARK Genesis Part 2, and more. The Island is released now, with the subsequent expansion worlds to be added at no additional cost on a regular basis.
- Thorough Quality of Life revamps in every area: redesigned User Interfaces, dynamic navigation for intelligent creature pathfinding, Wild Babies, Photo Mode, new Camera systems, new Map system, Tracking System, new Structures and Items, new Creatures, and much more.
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The Dreadmare was added in ASA version 55.6. The current ARK Official Community Wiki Dreadmare page lists it on The Center, Scorched Earth, Extinction, Ragnarok, Valguero, Astraeos, and Lost Colony.
Where and when to find a Dreadmare
Wild Dreadmares appear during the in-game nighttime window, approximately 20:30 to 05:30. During the day they enter invisible stasis and reappear at night. This schedule also applies on Extinction, even though the map visually appears locked to daytime.
Dreadmares are generally passive until provoked. Damaging one makes it aggressive, and they can also react aggressively around dead carcasses. Prepare a safe fighting area before engaging: the creature fights from the air, moves quickly from side to side, and may flee when its health is low.
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How to tame the Dreadmare
The Dreadmare is an altar-based tribute tame. It is not a knockout tame, and normal food—including spoiled meat—does not start the wild-taming process.
1. Kill a wild Dreadmare and loot the Dark Altar
Find and defeat a wild Dreadmare at night. Its corpse provides the Dark Altar, the item required to begin the ritual. An unplaced altar eventually spoils, and altars cannot be transferred between servers.
2. Place the altar in a controlled area
Place the altar in an open area with enough room for aerial combat and summoned creatures. It only activates at night. If you place it during the day, it will indicate that the Dreadmare can only be tamed at night.
Do not place it inside or immediately beside an important base unless you are ready for a failed tribute. A missed request can summon a hostile creature as well as a Dreadmare. Only one altar can be placed in the local area at a time.
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Interact with the altar to see the requested tribute. Possible requests include:
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- Survive Above All: Hunger, thirst, basic safety, and protecting yourself from the weather are all part of the game
- Harvest, Hunt and Build: Cut down trees and turn them into a basic home, which you can quickly expand into a Jurassic estate. Hunt for meat, scavenge for plants (or start your own garden!)
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- Explore the Island: Solve the mystery of The ARK as you explore this massive island, discovering Explorer's Notebooks (filled with clues!) throughout
- Sarcosuchus Skin
- Spinosaurus Sail
- Giganotosaurus Heart
- Alpha Raptor Claw and other alpha-creature tribute items
The altar can request essentially any applicable land-creature tribute. Aquatic tributes such as Megalodon Tooth are excluded from the ritual according to the current official wiki description.
You have five minutes to supply the requested item. Keep a broad selection of trophies nearby, but do not assume that every requested item will be safe or practical to obtain during the ritual.
4. Kill the summoned Dreadmare
Providing the correct tribute immediately summons only the Dreadmare. Kill it before it despawns. Every successful tribute-and-kill cycle advances the tame.
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5. Repeat until the altar completes the tame
Continue supplying the requested tribute and defeating the summoned Dreadmare. When the ritual is complete, interact with the altar. The altar is destroyed and a tamed Dreadmare is summoned. Its bonus levels depend on taming effectiveness.
What happens when you miss a tribute?
A missed request is not merely a lost timer. If five minutes pass without the correct tribute:
- The altar takes damage.
- The Dreadmare still spawns.
- The creature associated with the missing tribute also spawns.
- You must defeat the required creatures before the encounter despawns to progress.
The additional creature spawns at the Dreadmare’s level. For example, a request associated with a dangerous creature can turn a routine aerial fight into a much harder encounter.
The altar breaks after four failed tribute attempts. You can survive three misses, but the fourth failure ends the ritual and destroys the altar. If the altar requests something too dangerous—such as a Giganotosaurus Heart—the safest verified option is to terminate the ritual by interacting with and destroying the altar. That ends the tame, but avoids an uncontrolled fight near your base.
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Best ways to fight a wild or summoned Dreadmare
Fabricated ranged weapons are the most reliable general counterplay:
- Assault Rifle
- Fabricated Sniper Rifle
- Pump-Action Shotgun
Track its lateral movement and lead your shots. Projectile hit registration can be inconsistent while the Dreadmare is strafing. A Crossbow can work against a low-level target, but it is considerably less reliable against a fast or fleeing Dreadmare.
Several tools can reduce its aerial advantage:
- Ice Wyvern: slow the Dreadmare so ranged attacks are easier to land.
- Chain Bola: ground the creature when the effect connects.
- Reaper cocoon projectile: restrict its movement.
- Velonasaurs: multiple creatures firing from different angles can occasionally ground it, although their hit reliability is poor.
Build your arena away from cliffs, dense foliage, and valuable structures. A low-health Dreadmare may flee, so keep pressure on it and avoid allowing it to disappear behind terrain.
Dreadmare abilities
Bite
Bite is the basic melee attack. It deals 23 base damage and can be used approximately every 1.16 seconds by the rider or AI.
Wind Blade
Wind Blade fires a wave of wind that deals 23 base damage and applies Health Drinker for five seconds. While affected, healing received by the target is stolen and used to heal the Dreadmare instead. The timer resets when another Wind Blade hits.
The projectile can pierce its primary target and hit creatures behind it. Its approximate cooldown is 1.5 seconds.
Dark Wind
Dark Wind fires a dark-energy wave for 39 base damage and applies the Dark Wind debuff for 30 seconds. The debuff disables Mate Boost and prevents the affected creature from using other special abilities. Its cooldown is approximately 60 seconds.
Terror Shield
Terror Shield creates a shield around the Dreadmare. A valid target in range can receive the Terror effect. The next damage instance received by the Dreadmare is ignored, and the attacker takes 35% of the blocked damage.
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The shield and Terror durations scale with the Dreadmare’s Oxygen stat, but the shield blocks only one incoming damage instance. Its cooldown is approximately 25 seconds.
The official PC notation currently lists Ctrl + 5. Remapped keyboard controls and controller layouts may differ.
Aura of Hate
Aura of Hate damages nearby valid targets for 20 damage per second and heals the Dreadmare for the damage dealt. Targets also receive Health Drinker. When the aura ends, it detonates for additional area damage.
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1Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems2Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches3Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsIts duration scales with Oxygen and its cooldown is approximately 120 seconds. The official wiki currently shows Ctrl + 5 for this ability as well as Terror Shield, so the displayed control is ambiguous. Use the in-game ability prompts and your current keybind configuration rather than assuming both abilities can always be triggered identically.
Black Hole
Black Hole is a land-only utility ability that stores an allied creature in a pocket-dimension effect and releases it when activated again. It works similarly to a Cryopod and can apply Cryo Sickness.
The stored creature’s inventory remains with it, and that inventory does not add weight to the Dreadmare. Whether a creature can be stored depends on the target’s Drag Weight and the Dreadmare’s total Weight stat. The cooldown is approximately four seconds, and the official PC notation is C.
A later patch included a speculative fix for stored creatures sometimes falling through the mesh when released. That indicates mesh-related release problems have occurred, but it does not guarantee that every release issue is eliminated on every server configuration. Release creatures in a safe, open area rather than over hazardous terrain.
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Flight controls
The Dreadmare has free directional aerial movement: forward, backward, left, right, upward, and downward. It can glide while descending and retains some acceleration after changing direction.
The official PC notation lists X for ascending and C for descending. Because C is also listed for Black Hole, this is a context-dependent control conflict in the wiki’s notation. Check the in-game prompts and your bindings if a flight or utility input does not behave as expected.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Base stats and breeding
The official wiki lists the Dreadmare as tameable, rideable, and breedable. Its level-one wild base values before mutations or level-ups are:
| Stat | Wild base value |
|---|---|
| Health | 1,000 |
| Stamina | 600 |
| Oxygen | 150 |
| Food | 1,750 |
| Weight | 450 |
| Melee damage | 23 |
| Torpidity | 600 |
Oxygen is particularly relevant to Terror Shield and Aura of Hate because their durations scale with it. Weight also affects Black Hole eligibility, so a utility-focused breeding project should not treat weight as an irrelevant stat.
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- 59.4: On Extinction, the altar’s Alpha Raptor and Alpha Carno requirements were removed, and the Alpha Rex trophy entry was replaced with Enraged Rex.
- 61.15: A speculative fix addressed released creatures sometimes falling through the mesh after Black Hole use.
- 68.5, June 19, 2025: Dreadmare damage scaling increased by 30%.
- 79.5, February 8, 2026: A fix addressed Dreadmare trophies not dropping correctly for taming.
- 85.28, April 7, 2026: A server fix prevented players from taming multiple Dreadmares with one altar.
These changes are why older guides may describe different Extinction requirements or claim that one altar can produce multiple Dreadmares.
Spawn commands
Use these commands only where you have the required server or single-player permissions. Spawning a creature does not complete the altar-based taming ritual.
cheat summon DarkPegasus_Character_BP_CTo spawn a level-controlled Dreadmare, the official wiki lists:
cheat SpawnDino "Blueprint'/Game/ASA/Dinos/DarkPegasus/DarkPegasus_Character_BP.DarkPegasus_Character_BP'" 500 0 0 35The final value, 35, is the level parameter in that command. Replace it if you need a different level.
Quick Recap
Common Dreadmare taming mistakes
- Trying to knock it out: the Dreadmare is not a knockout tame.
- Using spoiled meat: wild taming uses the Dark Altar and creature tributes, not food.
- Ignoring the five-minute timer: a miss damages the altar and summons an additional creature.
- Assuming four misses are allowed: the fourth failed tribute destroys the altar.
- Placing the altar in your base: failed requests can create a hostile encounter in an unsafe location.
- Using old Extinction requirements: version 59.4 changed the relevant entries.
- Expecting one altar to tame several Dreadmares: version 85.28 fixed that behavior.
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