Velonasaur

The Velonasaur is one of the Creatures in ARK: Survival Evolved's Extinction expansion.

Behavior
The Velonasaur will wander around the desert dome attacking any herbivores in sight. At mid range it will fold out its frills and shoot spines for an impressive DPS.

Appearance
A medium sized, bipedal carnivorous theropod that has a similar shape to a Raptor or Dilophosaur. The Velonasaur can be identified by its large cacti-like frills or fins that surround its head, similar frill-like growths on the sides of its body and tail, osteoderms scattered across it's back and limbs, long forearms, and it's quilled tail. The quilled areas are also covered in wrinkly dark skin with glowing blue spots. They most often appear in warm colors: such as red, orange, yellow, brown, black and grey; however they are sometimes seen in blues, greens, and turquoise. It somewhat resembles what looks like a cross between a poison wyvern and a reaper covered in thorns.

Combat
This section describes how to fight against the Velonasaur.

General
The Velonasaur is a strong well rounded creature. If a player is a good distance away, it will shoot quills at the player. If in close range, the Velonasaur will do a swipe attack, dealing moderate damage. Sometimes it will swing its body around and throw quills similar to a.

Strategy
Use rocks, trees, and buildings nearby to duck behind if the Velonasaur starts firing quills.It should be noted that if you are too far away from the Velonosaur, it cannot fire quills at you. Try to fight these dinosaurs with other survivors so if you are targeted, your tribe member can cover you. A, , or can absorb a barrage if needed. If cover isn't an option, get up very close to them and kite them but don't leave close range; they will only fire their quills when a certain range threshold is reached. Another strategy is to find an low cliff or mountain next to the Velonasaur. Then you want to aggro it, if you are the right angle the Velonasaur will shoot at the cliff; It will force them to shoot at your mid torso, and you will be able to shoot the Velonasaur without it hitting you. Once it starts running simply follow it and keep tranqing it until it’s knocked out.

Weaponry
A or a  is suggested to take one of these down. Decent or higher is almost a necessity to take a higher level down. If you feel confident, you can go in with an apprentice+ and metal or riot shield.

Dangers
The Velonasaur can be a menace if one is unwary of their behavior. Staying at range will allow them to fire a constant barrage at you, shredding basic flak armor in only a couple of seconds and bringing a swift death. They also have a close-range AoE attack that can cause serious damage but this seems to be rarely used or used just once or twice during an encounter.

Weakness
The Velonasaur is not incredibly fast, so you should be able to outrun them on most tamed dinosaurs. This also means you can quickly rush them while riding an equally tough or tougher creature like a and they will have no time to react with their ranged attacks. They also have low torpor so you can knock them out or get them to flee quickly. The Velonasaur typically travels alone or with a mate, so you usually won't have to worry about packs.

Taming
For general information about domesticating a wild creature see Taming.

KO Strategy
The Velonasaur tames through the knockout method. It has an attack where it shoots quills rapidly at a target. These can greatly damage both the player and the player's armor. Once you have a way to defend yourself against the quills, taming is easy. The Velonasaur has generally low torpor, and will tame fairly quickly.

It is best to use two or more survivors and have someone hold a shield out to grab aggro of the Dino. Have each survivor place a wooden or stone wall/windowed wall on opposite sides of the Velonasaur. Then, have one survivor bola the creature then duck behind the wall. The Velonasaur will target that survivor. The other survivor(s) will then have a clear shot either through the window of the wall or the side. If the Velonasaur targets you, duck behind the wall for cover.

A more basic strategy is to have one player use a Wooden Shield / Metal Shield to tank the turret attack while another player knocks out the Velonasaur from a distance

If another survivor is not available, a really simple method of taming the Velonasaur is to tank it with another dino. A Carno leveled in some health or using a quality saddle can be used to confront the Velonasaur before it can react. Typically it will just try to swipe at the dino at this point. Dismount with your mount on passive, stand back some, and fire away with your tranquilizing weapon of choice. Once they reach the torpor limit to run, they are easy to keep up with and then down.

Another tactic, if a health-boosting dino is not present, and there are no structures nearby, is to utilize the natural surroundings. Velonasaur quills cannot reach past objects, and so it will not hit survivors hiding behind it.

Easier than all of the above strategies is to simply run up to one in even primitive flak and to stay within melee distance while knocking it out. Its melee damage is comparable to a small flock of dodos, and taking into consideration how low its torpor limit is, one can easily knock out even a max level Velonasaur with no problems. The only downside to this strategy is that you have to find one that isn't near any other potential threats which could tamper with the knockout process, especially other Velonasaurs that cannot be rendered harmless by running into their melee distance.

If none of those suit your fancy, build one wood foundation three wood walls a wooden doorway, and a wood ramp. Place the wooden foundation down, place the wooden walls in a U then the door in the last spot and place the ramp going up away from the door. this will take advantage of the coding of it shooting at your torso allowing you to solo tranq it with taking little to no damage.

Roles

 * Scout: Its base speed is not all too impressive, being slower than a . On top of that, the Velonasaur cannot go straight into a sprint but rather has to build up speed gradually and though it does so quickly in less than 3 seconds, this can become an issue if it bumps into trees and rocks, slowing you down. However, due to its smaller size, combined with decent enough speed, good jumping, and its ability to keep enemies off at a distance with its quill-shooting facial fins, it makes for a good starter scout. Level, and other stats if desired.
 * War Mount: A good level Velonasaur with high melee damage can shred enemy survivors, tames, and wild creatures with ease; while its minigun attack discourage enemies from closing distance( though most ARK AI lack this self preservation). Coupled with an ability to temporarily ground flyers similarly to the ; its good melee attack, decent longevity, and speed make this a cactus-lizard to be reckoned with. Level, , and.
 * Primitive Turret: The Velonasaur has a turret mode that can be enabled. When parked up on a higher elevation and on aggressive, the Velonasaur can defend your base from threats like an actual, though its range of affect is not quite as far as a conventional turret. Leveling up melee damage only increases the damage of a ridden Velonasaurs' attacks but does not effect the damage of its spines in turret mode, as it is capped at a certain damage. (It's not for certain if this interaction is a bug or intended.)Those designated for base defense should be leveled in health instead to provide better survival rate. It should also be noted that because of patch 304.22, the Velonasaur now consumes when in turret mode, so leveling stamina will now be crucial to making it an effective turret, lest it will shoot at a limited rate, at a high cost of food.
 * Keep in mind that velonas quills on turret mode benefits from melee damage, though melee damage is eventually capped.
 * Guardian and Defender: Whether a single Velonasaur or a pack of them, they can be easily used to protect an area and any other allied players and tames in that area from incoming attackers. The spines that can be shot by the Velonasaur at a distance allows for a unique strategy of defense, as they can act like defensive, movable turrets without requiring bullet ammo. Thus they can be great for defending a survivor's base or a certain area. The Velonasaur's spines can also ground flyers for a short period of time. This can be useful for defending an Orbital Supply Drop to prevent and  from causing too much damage to the shield and even stop them from attacking the drop as there walk speed is exceedingly slow. It also makes it good for countering any base attackers on any form of flying mount. Once the effect activates it can be maintained by continuing to shoot spines at said target. In addition to all of these factors, the Velonasaur also has great DPS, making them invaluable for any kind of defense. Level, , and
 * Tank Destroyer/Shredder: Since its spines deal damage that is considered as creature melee, the Velonasaur not only never deals damage to allies but also ignores all body parts multipliers. While this means no extra damage on creatures with high multipliers to specific body parts like head shots, it also means that this death lizard can easily shred any tanks that rely on low damage multipliers to soak damage, such as the, , , and . Its small size also means that it can fit in almost any place where one of those creatures would be employed in a raid, like in a cave. Note that it cannot ignore multipliers that are intended to work with (most) melee attacks, like the ones present on the . Odd as it sounds, they still do full damage against , making the Velonasaur an excellent counter to it.  The only exception is the Reapers.
 * Raw Damage: Thanks to the naturally high DPS and ranged nature of the Velonasaur's quills, it can be reliably used in situations where damage output is needed in huge quantities in a short amount of time. Whatever the need, whether it be defending an Element Node or base, slaughtering enemy dinos, or even assisting in taming a Titan, the Velonasaur makes can do it all when damage is needed.
 * Anti-Air Tame: Because the Velonasaur's spines can ground flyers for a short time, Velonasaurs can be paired with Reapers since Reapers can also slow down any creature's movement with their acid on top of grounding flyers. In short, Velonsaurs stop the flyer's speed and the Reapers make sure they are unable to quickly get back in the air, giving enough time for ground tames such as Gigas to finish up the flyers.
 * Travel: Due to the Velonasaur's small size, it can go undetected when travelling through brush. If a foe is encountered, they can be dispatched from afar with its spines or if it comes quickly it can be taken out via the spin attack. (Level Speed and Stamina)
 * Transport: The Velonasaur can transport items easily without having to worry about flyers due to its ranged attack. On top of that the frills can serve to intimidate would-be attackers. (Level Weight, Stamina, and Speed)

Disclaimer: It should be noted that these ideal power/counter situations do not occur in official PvP past a particular plateau of development; and that most tames with a good tribe are kept in Cryogenic Stasis behind Vault walls, Heavy Turrets, chutzpah, and man-hours.

Notes/Trivia

 * The scientific name of the Velonasaur, Velonasaurus spinavultus, translates to "Thorny-Faced Needle Lizard".
 * Rather amusingly, the temperament of the Velonasaur as stated in the dossier is "Omnivore".
 * The Velonasaur is a fictional Creature, though it most resembles most other theropod dinosaurs.
 * The Velonasaur deals full damage to and  with their spines, making them effective countermeasures to these threats. It is not known if this interaction is intended or whether the devs never bothered to account this.
 * Swimming with a Velonasaur's and using its Gatling gun ability will cause the creature to lose excessive amounts of, rather than shooting out quills. It also is unable to preform its head whip attack underwater at all. This makes a Velonasaur much more vulnerable when in water, as all of its high DPS quill attacks become useless, lest the survivor want to be killed or drown with his/her Velonasaur.
 * in the inventory of a tamed Velonasaur can supplement the stamina drain of them using their thorn attacks, though be cautious; they will ONLY eat the berries so long as they stay in the inventory. Once they run out of food, they will still consume the berries, risking their lives to continue to fire. Removing the berries will return them to eating their usual diet. They do not eat stimberries from a feeding trough, however.
 * The dossier image of the Velonasaur is notably different from the current animal in the game, with much fewer prickly pieces on the body and tail, smaller head, and a more uniform distribution of its facial fins that form a ring at the back of the head
 * The Velonasaur is one of the few creatures that have all 6 body regions available, so color mutations can show up more commonly from breeding.
 * It is uncertain as to whether the projectiles flown out of the Velonasaur's face should be classified as a spine or quill, or even terms like prickle and thorn.