Scout

The Scout is one of the Creatures in ARK: Survival Evolved. This creature has been added in the DLC Extinction.

The Scout is a flying drone which can be found throughout the map, predominantly in the derelict city area. It acts as part of the automated defense, alerting enforcers to hostile targets.

Behavior
The Scout and the serve as an automated security force that patrols the futuristic city of Extinction.

Appearance
Scouts appear as small mechanical drones that fly around the skies of Sanctuary, leaving a trail in their wake.

Combat
This section describes how to fight against the Scout.

General
Scouts are difficult to fight on foot, as they have erratic movement and the tendency to dodge as one takes aim with ranged weaponry. Upon hitting the scout the scout will put up a shield and proceed to circle around you. The shield will make projectiles do one damage.

Strategy
It is recommended to use a ranged weapon or large tame as scouts often move out of melee range. Several hits will eventually down the scout, causing it to explode and drop a blueprint.

Weaponry
A bow, crossbow or longneck rifle work best if attempting to destroy a scout on foot, otherwise any large or ranged tame can easily destroy a scout.

Dangers
While not posing itself as a threat, it can mark anyone and anything that is not part of the machine workforce within the city, causing both nearby and  to engage the marked target.

Weakness
Scouts are completely unable to directly harm creatures when wild, relying on enforcers to eliminate those enemies that the scout marks.

Taming
Scout cannot be tamed by default. To be able to own one of such creature, one must craft them from the following:

To be able to craft anything better than a level 1, roaming Scouts have to be destroyed. On death, it leaves behind a blueprint as a dropped package at where it died. All Blueprints above Journeyman can only be made in the replicator with various level (scaled to the wild that was killed), stat and grade.

Upon deployment with at least 20 Element Dust, the survivor who deployed it will take control of the mechanical drone and fly around. The Scout will consume element dust from the player's inventory, with the energy gained from doing so varying depending on the quality of the blueprint.

Utility
A built scout can be deployed by throwing a pod resembling a grenade. Upon deployment, the player will look through a pair of Tek binoculars, seeing from the perspective of the scout. The scout can be used to perform short-medium range reconaissance and mark friendly and hostile targets. The environment will appear black and white, while creatures are highlighted in blue, green, yellow, red and teal. Blue represents creatures that are not currently hostile, green represents friendly tames, yellow represents creatures that are currently fleeing, red represents creatures that are currently hostile, and teal represents creatures that have died.

You can mark targets with a laser beam. To remove the mark hold the action button down and drag the laser beam indicator off of the target you had marked.

Roles
Danger Seeker - The Scout can scan for nearby hidden allies and enemies and mark them.

Mek Healer - When hovering near a, the Scout will rapidly heal it.

Aggro Master - Scouts are notably cheap, capable of flight - even inside caves - and able to be controlled with atomic precision, all while still being able to get the attention of nearby aggressive creatures without making any kind of "mention" to the player that deployed them. Together, those attributes make them perfect for moving wild creatures to were you want them, be it just away from you, a trap, or a smoldering pit of lava. A practical example of this function is using them to take the Wild found in the Tek Cave out of the way.

Scouting - The moment a player gets close to an Element Vein, it is triggered and have to be completed or abandoned(will disappear). However, Scout will not trigger the Element Vein, so one can observe the difficulty of an Element Vein via a Scout without having to do it.

Notes/Trivia

 * Scouts are one of the only 3 creatures that aren't capable of inflicting damage with their attack with the others being and.
 * You will not be able to mount when the scout is deployed since it acts like a mount mechanism itself.
 * You can whistle to bring it back by right clicking when it is deployed.
 * The marked tags seems to only be visible when equipping the scout(un-deployed or not). unclear if intended or not
 * "TEK Binoculars" was referenced by Santiago in Scout's Manual, which was one of the planned standalone update for Tek.