Phiomia

The Phiomia (Fee-o-me-ah) is one of the Creatures in ARK: Survival Evolved.

Behavior
Phiomia will run away from the player when attacked. Without any increases in the player's movement speed stat, he/she will be easily outpaced until the creature thinks it's safe and stops running. When chasing a Phiomia, it is best to be near rocks or below cliffs, as Phiomia will run into these barriers and be cornered.

These creature have an extremely fast metabolism; any food in their inventory will disappear very quickly, and combined with their inability to gather berries, feeding them can pose a challenge to low level players who ordinarily collect food by hand. It is recommended not to tame a Phiomia until a player has first tamed a berry gathering animal such as a Moschops.

Appearance
A pig-like elephant relative. It mainly comes in black, greys, and muddy brown or red colors with spots along parts of its upper body, and it has tusks with a trunk that looks stunted. It can be best described as a very bulky tapir with tusks.

KO Strategy
Once a Phiomia is attacked, it'll flee with haste, but it will often run into rocks, cornering itself for you. Phiomia are relatively easy to tame, you can easily knock them out with your fists or by using a slingshot to the head. However, they are easily killed so be wary of how fast you are hitting it.

Combat
This section describes how to fight against the Phiomia.

General
Phiomias are incapable of fighting back, so any confrontation is strictly one-sided. The Phiomia employs great speed in the battle, able to get away from most players that have a mount. If trapped, ambushed or bitten by powerful mounts, their demise is all but certain.

Strategy
If the player stands facing diagonally into their shoulder, they should move forward and keep hitting. Moving into their shoulder seems to lock them in place moving opposite you. Use a pick, axe or sword as the pike or spears knock it back, which loses the advantage. Otherwise, try to kill it before it puts distance in between you and it. Another option is using the terrain: Urge it that way so that it will run right to a wall which can`t be climbed. That will work with any skittish dino that can`t fly.

Weaponry
It is recommended to start with a violent flurry of stabs with either a sword, pike or spear. If it persists to survive, kill it from afar with ranged weaponry.

Dangers
The Phiomia itself cannot harm the players, but beware of other animals. A running Phiomia can sometimes be the only signal that a large animal is running in your direction. Take note of these occurrences especially around areas known to harbor deadly animals. Severely bloodied Phiomias likely suffered run-ins with big animals like a Rex.

Weakness
The Phiomia cannot fight back or harm the player in any way. As long as it is the only animal around, killing it is extremely easy.

Roles

 * ATV: While it takes a while to level up enough to be viable, during the early game it can be a method of transport. If all points are put into movement speed, it does become decently quick. As a bonus it has a decent swim speed, equal to that of a player with no points in speed. Get a high level and it'll be able to maintain this speed for a while, with decent weight as well.(Level Speed exclusively)
 * Cargo: While they can't carry as much as some later-game mounts, they make good pack animals for early players (Level Health and Weight).
 * Fertilizer: A Phiomia produces more  than other domesticated creatures. This makes them ideal animals to have when trying to maximize fertilizer production. Feed them  and they will produce a very high amount of feces (Level up food)
 * Torpor Tank: Having a high torpor for something their size, they can serve as a tank in the early-game for taking on either the tranquilizing dinos of the swamp, or for distracting a scorpion or spider while the owner takes care of the threat. (Level up Health).

In Primitive Plus

 * Fresh bacon and fat: Killing one drops, ideal for consumption once cooked, and , ideal for producing once cooked.

Notes/Trivia

 * Phiomias are unable to gather.
 * Phiomia are an early member of the group Proboscidae, which contains modern elephants. The exact purpose of their tusk arrangement is uncertain, but they possibly used them to scoop up food or scrape bark from trees.
 * Although the dossier indicates the Phiomia of being used as a farm animal for meat, though this use was never really implemented (excluding Primitive Plus) other than its use of . Alternatively, the actually works mechanically as a farm animal much better, giving  and.
 * Despite being a type of Proboscidean (a group that includes elephants, mammoths, and relatives), the Phiomia is often refered by players as a "Pig".
 * Despite being an early-game weak creature, the phiomia has an incredibly long maturation time when raised from a baby, taking longer than even the majority of late-game creatures.
 * As of v312.65 however, the Phiomia maturation time has been dramatically lowered.
 * Real Phiomia were a social animal that lived in herds, Ark's Phiomia can be found alone most of the time but on occasion they can be seen together.
 * The Phiomia is one of the original creatures that existed in ARK when it was first released to the public in alpha.