Megatherium

The Megatherium (meg-ah-theer-ee-um), or Giant Sloth, is one of the creatures in ARK: Survival Evolved.

Behavior
Megatherium is a slow, gentle creature that will not attack a player unprovoked. However their temperament changes to apex aggression when they are around invertebrates. They will receive an attack boost upon encountering any insect and will attack any tame, human, or wild herbivore for a few minutes. Wild Megatheriums are capable of dealing and taking damage from herbivores and medium sized carnivores, but go ignored by all of them including apex predators unless attacked first.

Appearance
Among the largest mammals yet found on the island, the Megatherium is a slow-moving and formidable omnivore, roughly similar to a bear in appearance, but with a small head and heavy limbs that betray its sloth ancestry. While normally content to browse from tall trees or dig for roots and tubers, giant sloths are avid insectivores and will prey upon the island's giant arthropods when they can, cracking open exoskeletons with their hooked claws and extracting the meat with a long, muscular tongue. Smaller insects like the Titanomyrma are eaten whole.

KO Strategy
Build a small pen with stone pillars and metal fence foundations or a stone taming pen to safely knock it out, be careful of fighting Megatheriums near cliffs as they can knock you off the edge.

Combat
This section describes how to fight against the Megatherium.

General
The Megatherium is a large omnivore, eating both plants and animals. It is slightly larger than the Woolly Rhino, but smaller than the Mammoth. They are similar to a Chalicotherium, walking on their knuckles and they can even sit.

Strategy
The Megatherium can easily get stuck on rocks and trees. By then taming or killing is very simple.

Weaponry
Any gun or a crossbow can make short work of a Megatherium, but it is advised to have a mount nearby, as Megatherium can be quite fast.

Dangers
Becomes more powerful when it kills insects. It will get a glowing aura around it which means, like it says below, the Insect Killer buff is active. Because of this, they should be avoided at all costs when riding an insect mount. Especially if they are high level, even a melee damage oriented mantis with a good quality sword is in extreme danger in the vicinity of these creatures. If chased while riding a Mantis, use their leap attack to get away!

It is worth noting that when the Insect Killer buff is active, Megatherium appears to enter an enraged state. During this period, any creature (or player) close enough to them are at risk of being attacked.

Weakness
The Megatherium loses a lot of power when not buffed. If it is buffed then attack it with ranged weapons or wyverns. Don't come too close if it's buffed! For example, a level 12 buffed wild Megatherium is capable of doing around 150 damage per hit.

Roles
Tank: The Megatherium's moderately high base HP can make it a great tank. (Level Health)

Chitin Farmer: Once a tamed Megatherium kills an insect (,, , or ) or arthropod (, , , or ), it will get a buff called Insect Killer. Insect Killer causes the Megatherium's damage to multiply by 250% to any target for 120 seconds (which is multiplicative with the passive 150% multiplier against bugs.). When Insect Killer is active while fighting bugs, the Megatherium's damage will be multiplied by 375%. In addition, this buff reduces all damage by about 75% (35 damage from a tranq arrow fired from a primitive crossbow is reduced to 8 damage on a wild Megatherium.) This makes the Megatherium incredibly potent against bugs. Harvesting the bug's corpses will yield a massive amount of Chitin. At 200% Melee Damage, you can easily get 200+ chitin from a single scorpion. They are, however, too large to fit into many caves unless you take them in. On ARK: Survival Evolved Mobile, the Megatherium is also able to more efficiently harvest from.

DeathWorm Killer: A Megatherium under its Insect Killer buff can make killing Deathworms a much easier process.

Gatherer: The Megatherium is able to collect berries and fiber from bushes, thatch and wood from trees and meat, chitin and hide from corpses. (Level Melee Damage, Stamina, Weight, and Speed (optional))

Broodmother Killer: A Megatherium makes killing the Broodmother Lysrix much easier due to its Insect Killer buff and is also able to easily fend off the many Araneo spawned by the boss. (Level Health and Melee Damage)

Damage: The Megatherium can be used for dealing large amounts of damage in short amounts of time due to their unique ability to gain a huge stat boost that can be activated by killing bugs. (Level Health and Melee Damage)

Notes/Trivia

 * The dossier was revealed on July 29, 2015
 * The full-name of the Megatherium Formipavor means "Ant Feared Great beast ", a reference to its size and its increased damage against insects.
 * Although described as omnivorous, the real animal, sometimes called the giant ground sloth, was likely just a herbivore. This change in diet is based on the dietary habits of anteaters (which are related to sloths) and a controversial theory that Megatherium may have supplemented its diet with meat.
 * The Megatherium in-game is one of the most accurate models of any genera present. The only noticeable inaccuracy is that the ARK creature walks on its whole foot like most animals. It is known from trackways of other ground sloths, the design of the animal's feet, and modern relatives such as the giant anteater; that ground sloths actually walked on the sides of their feet.
 * On ARK: Survival Evolved Mobile, the can only be found in the Dungeons. For use on The Island, it must be killed and revived in order to tame it.
 * The Megatherium will get the Insect Killer buff, if used to kill an.
 * Despite its docile nature, wild Megatherium is treated as Large Carnivore, as wild and  will leave it alone, and it will attack almost anything in sight once it gains Insect Killer buff.