Lamprey

The Lamprey is one of the Creatures in the Aberration-DLC of ARK: Survival Evolved.

Behavior
Lamprey lurk wriggling in the water, waiting for survivors or tames to pass by, whereupon they leap gleefully and attach themselves to their victim. They pursue their victims onto land. Once attached they apply the Charged Light buff, the Mega Rabies debuff, which slowly damages the player, and the Lamprey Poison debuff, which very slowly reduces health. The duration of the debuffs is dependant on the Lamprey's level.

When attached, the Lamprey can be seen sucking away at the bottom right of the screen; it doesn't drastically obscure the player's vision like a. It can be removed by standing in a campfire, just like a Leech.

Appearance
Lamprey look similar to eels, with a scaleless, elongated grey body. However the tip of their tail glows with Charged Light, a thin glowing purple stripe runs down side of the front part of the body, and they have small glowing orange fins down the rear of the bodies.

Combat
This section describes how to fight against the Lamprey.

General
Mildly annoying water-based parasite. Any strategies used against leeches should help here

Strategy
Use a pike or ranged weapon, if it gets close enough for regular melee, it attaches itself to you and can only be removed by another survivor or by standing in a campfire.

Weaponry
Anything can kill it, but if you want to play it safe try to stay at a distance.

Dangers
They are a bit faster than Leeches but are difficult to overlook, given their glowing markings. If they successfully attach, unless you are already very low on health, then there is no real need to worry, as their health drain is quite minimal, they don't really obscure your vision, and their presence may actually be of benefit to you. A character with 100 HP had HP reduced to 37 HP suffering the health drain over the duration of the debuff.

Weakness
Low health, low damage. They also glow, making them easier to spot than regular leeches.

Taming
Lampreys can be 'tamed' using a. However, as they lack the required intelligence, they will not return once they have latched onto someone or something.

Due to their Aggressive Nature they tend to break the Fish Basket or latch onto the Survivor wasting them. using a Tame such as an can make capturing them far easier.

One possible reason for taming them is to keep them around for later use for charge light or radiation protection. While a "tamed" Lamprey is not able to attach to you to provide its benefits you can unclaim them at a later time rendering them wild so they will attack and attach to you providing you their benefits for 600 seconds before falling off and despawning. You can also whistle to command a "tamed" Lamprey to attack another survivor and it will attach to that survivor.

Utility
Most of the utility to be gained comes from wild Lamprey. When a wild Lamprey attaches to you it will stay attached for around 600 seconds, draining your health at a very slow rate as well as providing the following benefits:

Roles

 * Temporary Lantern Pet: While attached to you its glowing tail will provide charge light in a radius around you. Be advised that you can't turn it off unlike having a shoulder charge light pets, making fighting harder along with rendering it useless as a alternative for getting impregnated by a.
 * Temporary Radiation Protection: You will be immune from the effects of radiation as long as the Lamprey is attached to you. This is useful if you do not have or want to use more stealthy and durable armor such as  and, provided you can handle its light health-draining debuff effect and its appearance on the first-person view screen.

Notes/Trivia

 * The Lamprey was first found in the DevKit in December 2016. However, there was no official statement on the Lamprey at the time, leaving room for speculation.
 * The Lamprey functions as the Aberration counterpart for the Leech.
 * The Lamprey is one of the few creatures in that is still alive today.
 * Lamprey superficially resemble eels in that they have scaleless, elongated bodies, but they belong to a distinct family of jawless fish. Although well known for boring into the flesh of other fish to consume their blood, few are parasitic.
 * Lamprey do not produce.
 * Unlike in the real world, Lampreys in can indefinitely move and survive on land.
 * The environment of Aberration has forced the Lamprey to adapt, developing an ability to produce charge light.
 * This is also the only creature that exists in the real world and has been giving the capability of giving off charge light in ARK.
 * Lampreys will not attach to tames.
 * Lampreys will attack twice, with only the second attack actually hitting.
 * Gender of a Lamprey is not assigned in the game, making players unable to breed them.
 * Tamed lamprey do not have an inventory or any way for the player to feed them.
 * Despite providing immunity to radiation the Lamprey is not immune to radiation itself making it nearly impossible to attach another while in a rad zone