Seeker

The Seeker, sometimes nicknamed the Pteroteuthis is one of the Creatures in ARK: Survival Evolved's Aberration expansion.

Behavior
The Seeker thrives in the most hostile of environments, the radiation soaked depths of Aberration and Valgeuro, the flaming heat of the Aberration surface and even the vacuum of space itself, while seemly avoiding more hospitable areas. It seems to accomplish this by surviving off charge light, and is very actively aggressive in seeking out charge light victims, both humans and creatures. In the absence of charge light however unless one approaches too close, they will remain passive and ignore you. They can be found on the surface of Aberration, on the edge of the Wilderness, The Spine, and on Genesis 2.

Appearance
The Seeker is a small winged creature that has small, bird-like legs that hang off the ground underneath the creature's body while using its bat-like wings to walk. It also had a squid-like face with tentacles hanging from its mouth and six, small, beady, blue eyes (three on either side), as well openings on the side of the body and extendable 'fins' on its back. In other words, a bizarre bird-squid-bat hybrid with a 6–10 foot wingspan.

Combat
This section describes how to fight against this creature.

General
The Seeker can be a formidable foe by itself or in a group. The Seeker is not a tamable creature, so it is recommended to kill Seekers upon sight. Seekers spawn on The Surface of Aberration and beyond The Spine, they are capable of surviving the harsh environment, heat, and radiation.

Strategy
Turn off all or any light sources near the Seeker and do not fight near Plant Z or, because charge from animals such as the Bulbdog and other light pets cause the creature to gain a buff that doubles its damage, thus making it quite formidable, especially when there are multiple Seekers in a group.

When clearing Seekers in caves such as the Hidden Grotto, use long-range, high-damage weapons such as the Longneck Rifle or Fabricated Sniper Rifle to quickly drop them before they enter your charge-light bubble. This allows your group to maintain charge-light protection.

Alternatively, Charge Lanterns can be used to weaken Nameless while facing away from the Seeker being engaged, but this is difficult due to Nameless popping up from many directions.

Weaponry
Try to use anything that can kill it from a range. Crossbows, guns, and other things of the sort will help. If it gets into melee range and you can't get away, use swords or pikes. If you wish to kill it faster, use swords. If you wish to kill it without sustaining too much damage, use pikes

Dangers
The Seekers are given a buff of 2x melee damage and regeneration boost when they are near a charge source. If one is nearby, such as a Bulbdog, then the Seeker will gain said buff, and this is especially dangerous if there is a large swarm of them attacking the player or a tamed creature.

It can hit multiple times to a creature if allowed to get too close to them especially Rock Drakes and Reaper Kings, acting almost similarly to when a player is standing too close to a

Weakness
The Seeker becomes very weak and often flee when there are no charge sources nearby. If you are fighting one and you turn off any charge sources, such as a tamed Bulbdog or a little glowstick, then the Seeker will become weaker, but Nameless can still be a problem.

Roles

 * Swarming Tactics: Although the Seeker cannot be tamed, this doesn't mean they can't be exploited as a force to be reckoned with. If a survivor can manage to pull it off, they can attract a large enough swarm of Seekers and thanks to their relatively slow flying speed can be coaxed to follow at a comfortable distance so long as one has a Charge Pet. From there, the Seekers may be used as a potential threat, annoyance, or distraction to other survivors and tames as long as a source of Charge is present to stimulate their aggression, but usually this is only useful for trolling purposes.

Notes/Trivia

 * The creature was first announced in Community Crunch 104 on September 23, 2017.
 * The Seeker is very clearly inspired by HP Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos.
 * It also shares similarities with the Seekers in Skyrim of which are Cthulhu inspired monsters with squid like appearances and share the same name.
 * As Oil is notoriously difficult to acquire on Aberration, Seekers can be an adequate source of it, especially if one can travel to the Surface, though gathering oil from oil nodes on the Surface is a more viable way of obtaining it.
 * The tentacles around the creature's mouth bare a resemblance to the feelers of a star-nosed mole, which may be intentional due to the subterranean nature of the map.
 * When received the buff from a charge light source, its mouth opens.
 * This creature resembles the winged beast from the movie 9.
 * The species name, Chimaeram odiosus, roughly translates to "annoying chimera".
 * The species file name, Pteroteuthis, is a portmanteau of Pteranodon and Tusoteuthis.
 * It's also the fourth hybrid in the game, others being trike, morellatops, griffin, shadowmane, and maewing.
 * The Seeker's dependence on Charge is a rather curious one as no known organisms other than autotrophs(plants, cyanobacteria, algae) can use the radiance emitted by light for sustenance. Perhaps this is why Seekers can be commonly seen on the Surface as well as where the charge pets, Glowtail and Featherlight are located.
 * Seekers are supposed to spawn only on the Surface and in underground areas with Radiation or in Artifact caves, but they can also rarely spawn near the Northwest entrance to the surface in the Green Zone. This is likely a bug.
 * The Dossier for the Seeker says in the text that there is no known way to tame them, however there is a check for taming and a survivor with what looks like a group of tamed Seekers as shown. The method of taming was thought be part of an unimplemented/hidden mechanic until the announced v278 patch, showing the fact that Seekers are indeed untamable.
 * This shares with, whose dossier states it is not tamable as well, but its taming method proves otherwise. Unlike the dossier for the Seeker however, it shows as a cross on the collar.
 * If tamed using admin commands, the game asks you to equip it with a saddle, even though one does not exist for the creature. It can still be ridden, however, doing so will result in the player disappearing altogether and putting the seeker under control of the player, making it so that if Seekers were meant to be tamed, they were not meant to be rideable.
 * This is not true if spawned in and forcetamed. The player will disappear when mounted, but will be in control of the Seeker. (Tested in v292.103) This seems to be an unintended feature as when a player dismounts the Seeker, they will be in ghost mode.
 * The dossier lists Seekers as carnivores, but this may not be strictly true; they chase after and seem to somehow eat charge light (or whatever (possibly a chemical reaction) that creates the charge in the first place), and any creature that happens to produce that light happens to get eaten along with it in the process. They do not seem to hunt for meat though, making “carnivore” somewhat inaccurate.