Dragon

The Dragon is one of the bosses in ARK: Survival Evolved.

On The Island the Dragon can only be found in the Dragon Arena. To reach this location, players must go to either a Supply Crate or Obelisk and place the required tribute items inside, then click on the item. A portal will be opened to teleport nearby players and dinos into the arena. If playing in Single Player mode, the portal can only be generated from the Red Obelisk.

The Dragon can also be found in both the Ragnarok Arena on Ragnarok and the Forsaken Oasis on Valguero, and can be spawned from any obelisk on both maps.

In Survival of the Fittest, the Dragon will appear on the central platform about halfway through the match and will be available for taming. The Dragon will only be rideable for a short time before it will turn on its master.

Appearance
The Dragon is massive, easily dwarfing both the and  in size,  it stands and walks in a bipedal stance. However it will become quadrupedal when sprinting. It is purple in color with orange wings and some orange patterning running along the side of the body with the two most notable being large orange strips running with the first running from the back of its head to the base of its neck and the second running along the sides of the body. Its head has a crown of horns.

Colors
The Dragon has different colors depending on its difficulty level:

Tribute Requirements
The following items are needed to summon the Dragon:

Tribute Spawn Commands
Use these commands to give yourself all the items needed for tribute:

Drops

 * Inventory

Unlocks
Gamma=
 * Tekgrams
 * -|Beta=
 * -|Alpha=
 * -|Gamma (Ragnarok, Valguero)=
 * -|Beta (Ragnarok, Valguero)=
 * -|Alpha (Ragnarok, Valguero)=

Completing the harder difficulties will unlock all of the lower difficulty Tekgrams as well.


 * Achievements

Base Stats and Growth
Gamma= Beta= Alpha=

Note: The Dragon in the Ragnarok Arena has the same stat values, but takes 3x damage (or consider it suffers a 2/3 Health Nerf).

The Firebreath-attack yields up to 2000 damage (probably depending on the amount of flames the target is covered with) and is applied over a time of 10s. The flame-damage is not affected by the Melee Damage-Stat and thus cannot be increased by level-ups.

Taming (Survival of the Fittest)
The Dragon can only be tamed in Survival of the Fittest - in which, after 20 – 40 minutes, it'll disappear.

Combat
This section describes how to fight against the Dragon.

General
Please keep in mind that the Dragon is considered by many players to be the third toughest boss to defeat (preceded by the and )

The Dragon is the strongest of the three The Island Guardians and should be saved for last due to how tough it is. On top of that, taking down the and  will help give the players an advantage due to having new, better equipment to take on the Dragon with.

Strategy
The Dragon is far stronger than the two previous Guardians on The Island, thanks to the ability to do percent-based fire breath damage. This fire will drain 20% of anything's max health as well as doing some direct impact damage, so brute forcing with your dino armies won't work out quite as well as in the and  fights.

You'll need to pay attention to the Dragon's fireballs and minion summoning attacks, as well as making sure you bring Mastercraft or Ascendant quality firearms that do good damage. Primitive weapons are a waste of time and will do little damage. As for the previously mentioned attacks, the fireballs do a fair amount of damage (less to herbivores) and have a large explosion radius, as well as having the ability to directly damage riders.

The minions that the Dragon summons are hostile and.

The Dragon should be saved for last due to the difficulty and saving it for last gives you more time to get better equipment and ideal tames plus by then you'll have access to some tek equipment.

You'll want to bring very high level weapons, armor, saddles, and dishes like Medical Brews and Calien Soup.

If you have access to Scorched Earth, Ragnarok, or Valguero DLCs, then Wyvern Milk can drastically help as it makes the player/dino invulnerable to the flame breath.

Recommended Tames

 * While difficult to raise on The Island due to needing ambergris, the Magmasaur is a game-changer as they do not take ANY damage from the Dragon's fire breath, nor do they take damage from the lava. If given metal ingots, they can also launch ranged attacks from a safe distance away.  Their sheer size makes it difficult to take a large amount into the arena, but with high-quality saddles they can very quickly kill the Dragon with few losses.
 * An army of are a players best chance at beating the Dragon since they have stats to rival the Rex's and because they are herbivores they take less damage from the Dragons attacks (does NOT reduce damage from Fire Breath). Ideally a Yutyrannus could improve the odds of winning so long as the player is careful with them. Note that Dragon's fire breath ignores herbivores' fire resistance and saddle armor, and will deal more damage than the Daeodon can effectively heal unless on passive healing (which makes healing erratic and unreliable, so the best option is to not use one at all, and replace it with a ridden rhino or other dps dealer.) It also helps if you give them veggie cakes which heals them.
 * The Dragons Fire Breath damage debuff shows 20% damage of the maximum health of the affected dino, but the percentage actually scales with the difficulty. 20% is only reached on Alpha difficulty.
 * A can still be useful as long as it's mounted (so it's easier to keep safe and can be used to full potential) and kept away from the Dragon instead acting as support buffing the Therizinos or any other damage tames.
 * A very tanky could be useful to help kite the Dragon and get its attention and in the process allowing tribemates to open fire on it without fear of the Dragon killing them.
 * could still work. However, if attempted over the Therizino Strategy they would definitely need the help of a Daeodon and Yutyrannus due to Therizinos having resistance against FireBall and Rexes being unable to heal with vegetable cakes.
 * A can be useful due to the passive healing ability they have.
 * It is highly recommended to bring a pack of either or  as both of them have a bleeding damage and gain an Alpha boost.
 * Bringing packs of both dinosaurs is ideal as the dps of the Allosaurus and the massive bleed damage from the Deinonychus can have huge damage potential that can complement the use of Rexes.
 * If you are planning on defeating the dragon with several other people, using high damage ridden Woolly Rhinos with good saddles and vegetable cake can make for an easy victory. It is possible to charge underneath the dragon's feet indefinitely like a sort of treadmill with the help of other rhino riders by colliding with each other and the dragon's feet.If done correctly you can stack damage quickly and can avoid the fire breath attack.

Dangers

 * The firebreath tears through health and no resistance or armor will reduce it, so be careful when facing it.
 * The fireballs it shoots are AoE, dealing a lot of damage to not only the tame but the rider as well, so be very careful.
 * The Dimorphs that spawn in the arena will kill you, even on your mount.
 * Try to avoid the lava streams while fighting it as the Dragon is immune to them, only causing them to be hazards for your own tames.
 * Its breath attacks deal more damage to carnivores so normal tactics such as Rex Rushing - while possible - aren't advised as it's very risky.
 * The arena itself is very hot, so putting points into fortitude and bringing some Calien Soup and Ghillie armor to protect yourself is advised.
 * Due to the Dragons' Fireball attack and Dimorphs damaging riders, the player will definitely need high level Ghillie armor to help withstand the damage.
 * The Dragon can instakill a player with its bite attack, so be sure to remain mounted as much as possible, especially if playing single player.
 * A rare bug can cause you to fall through the lava and out of the world.

Weakness
While the biggest of all the Island bosses, its backside has the largest hitbox. The Dragon can get stuck on the ruins around the arena, allowing shots to be taken afar (but do not rely on this lasting for the entire fight, as it will eventually fly away).

Sometimes the Dragon will only go to the player, giving your army a chance to safely damage to it.

Wyvern Milk guards against the Dragon's Fire Breath, making it incredibly valuable for a fight like this.

If players spread their creatures around and completely surround and pin the Dragon, it would be distracted and focus its fire attack on one side, helping your unaffected creatures live a little longer during the fight.

Notes/Trivia

 * If one uses the summon command to spawn a large amount of Dragons and kills them all instantly with the creative mode rifle, the corpses will stretch and get flung all over the place, making it hard to see. This also happens with the Ankylosaurus.
 * The Dragon is the eleventh largest creature in the game (the largest being, second being , the third being followed by the / as 4th,  as 5th,  as 6th,  as 7th, the  being 8th, the  at 9th and finally the  as 10th largest), its even larger than most of the large creatures such as ,  or  and it ties with the  for 11th place.
 * The Dragon is the 1st boss to specifically be based on a real mythological creature, the 2nd being the and the 3rd being the.
 * Interestingly all 3 can fly.
 * Admin-spawned Dragons despawn 20 minutes after taming.
 * Its purple and orange color scheme may be a reference to the Spyro franchise.
 * In the Creature's dossier it looks bigger than the Titanosaur, though this is inaccurate. This can be explained by the fact that the Dragon boss in early access was about 15% bigger than now. Moreover, the initial Dragon in the first EA trailer was about 1.5 times bigger than the Titanosaur. Since mid-2016, the Dragon in-game is still slightly larger than the Bronto and about 20% smaller than the Titanosaur.
 * If tamed or spawned through the use of Console Commands, the Dragon will be unable to move, use some of its attacks, be ridden or respect player's whistles due to its AI being dependent on the presence of the arena.
 * In SotF, the Dragon is permanently passive, and will not attack anything unless ridden.
 * The Dragon cannot swim, but can walk or even fly in water.
 * You can not use any kind of Tek Gear inside the Arena.
 * The Dragon was brought into Ark Park via the Pterosaur Hill DLC as the Final Boss.
 * The Dragon is the only Guardian in Genesis: Part 1 that got an X variant, and the only Guardian that doesn't appear in Gauntlet.
 * In Ragnarok Arena, the Dragon takes 3x damage, having an effective health one third of normal. This is perhaps to balance the difficulty of bosses in Ragnarok, as fighting 2 bosses both at their original stats on default server settings could be extremely difficult.
 * When facing the Dragon, herbivorous creatures have a resistance to its devastating fire breath. In lore, Helena noted of how the herbivorous creatures that Mei Yin had and in general thick hides that can help them to resist explosions and fire. However, in game, only the FireBall's damage is reduced by herbivore fire resistance.
 * Possibly a bug: Dragons summoned underwater can be tamed passively by putting meat in their inventory and will fully function as a mount. However they only last a few minutes and cannot harvest nor obey whistles.
 * Dragon's Dermis could transfer in different server and function normally, but not Ragnarok/Valguero variants.
 * There is a code "Volcanic_Dragon_Character_BP_C" which spawns a Dragon, that glows red and orange in darkness.
 * This Dragon was a exclusive to Genesis but then was replaced by a Brute Fire Wyvern.
 * The same happened with Tek Giganotosaurus (BionicGigant_Character_BP_C) which is now replaced with Reaper Boss.

Lore

 * In the story, Gaius Marcellus Nerva and his tribe, the New Legion, managed to kill the Dragon. He refers to it as a Dragon belonging to the Roman goddess Ceres, then corrects himself, stating it was too colossal and wild for even a god's chariot.
 * He notes that the combined strength of the Dragon, Mei Yin's tames, and Mei Yin's Giganotosaurus were enough to weaken the New Legion to a point where lesser tribes began to take over the territory they had conquered.