Electrophorus

The Electrophorus (eh-lek-trof-er-uhs) or Eel is an aquatic creature in ARK: Survival Evolved.

Behavior
Electrophorus will attack if within view of the creature. Once within its aggro distance, Electrophorus will follow the player, even upon swimming to the surface of the water. It can be found at middle deep-sea and is faster than the Cnidaria. Due to their disabling shock attacks and fast swimming speeds it is best to steer well clear of these creatures without proper preparation. Electrophorus will ignore wild dinos if there is a player or tamed dino in the area. They will chase their prey at very fast speeds and only let go if the prey is very far away, or the prey moves out of the water. If the electrophorus reaches its target, it will zap them. This will slow and reduce the damage output of any creature except for Basilosaurus and Tusoteuthis for 8–10 seconds, rendering them less effective at fighting and possibly ensuring they will not be able to run away. After the prey is zapped, the Electrophorus and any nearby wild dinos such as Megalodons will start to feast on the helpless meal.

Appearance
Electrophorus is a long eel like fish with a fin running from the back of its head to its abdomen. Its mouth is packed with sharp teeth to attack the small fish and shellfish that make up its diet.

Strategy

 * Passive tame, it is very aggressive with a wide aggro radius. Stay clear if not prepared.
 * Riot Armor / high fortitude for Torpor reduction recommended.
 * High oxygen to chase them down and feed them bait/taming feed.
 * Mount Basilosaurus and allow the Electrophorus to shock your creature, while mounted. The Basilo will not take any damage and its movement will not be impaired. While the Electrophorus is recharging its electrical attack, quickly dismount your Basilo and passively feed your attempted tame. Remount, rinse and repeat.
 * It is possible, but difficult to tame Electrophorus one-on-one without using a trap. Clear out any threats nearby; Have at least bio toxin ready, and lure one out into shallow water. From there, it is a matter of time and caution. Make sure to bring either health tonics or blood packs along with stimulants for a quick recovery between feeding attempts.
 * Electrophorus are found at the very bottom of the South East Trench on The Center.
 * You can easily tame Electrophorus while it's inside one of the bubbles in the Eldritch Isle of Crystal Isles just by luring them to the edge of the bubbles and passively taming them from outside the bubble. Make sure you have a Cryopod ready to freeze it after taming or else it will fight the Cnidaria and the wild Piranha inside.

Combat
This section describes how to fight against the Electrophorus.

General
Eels can be seen in deep sea or underwater caverns, wandering in pack, and attack players and their mounts on sight. A chained-shock is not only more than enough to eliminate a player, but also deadly to their mounts.

Like most abyssal terror, wild eels refuse to surface, so don't swim deep if you are not prepared.

Strategy

 * Basil or bust
 * Use a -- it is immune to the movement and damage debuffs, and Eels do very little damage with their regular bite. Their shock does nothing to the, even when multiple Eels chain a huge shock. You, the rider, will be completely unharmed as well, with no  gain. Any other mount will need a good amount of  and damage to overcome both the burst damage of their shock and to fight through the damage debuff.

Weaponry
Scuba flippers or a fast swimming mount are required. Distance weapons are the best choice (spears, crossbow, Harpoon gun, ). Note that Eels are faster than a player with flippers, but flippers will still provide you extra time to kill the Eels before they contact you.

Dangers

 * Swims very fast (Note: Due to the clarity of the ocean, dinos may appear farther than they actually are.)
 * Shock attack will slow movement and reduce damage output of victim. (except for Basilosaurus)
 * They can chain their electric shock to other eels to unleash even more powerful attacks.
 * One shock is often enough to kill you outright even in flak armor if there are enough grouped up.
 * Average aggro radius.
 * Tend to be in packs of 2 or more.
 * Often are inside of rocks or behind walls, and can swim through them to surprise you when you least expect it, and not only in the sea caves but even large rocks at the bottom of the ocean.
 * Harder to see at daytime because the glow they have is less obvious.
 * In a pack they have high burst damage as their shock chains together. Make sure your mount has enough health to not be immediately killed.
 * The range of the shock is much larger than any other creature, and they are over 5 times faster than Cnidaria.

Weakness
High damage burst but lower sustained damage. If you can survive the initial shock, you will have an opening to retaliate. Basilosaurus doesn't get shocked, so use that.

Low damage individually. Picking a few of them off with ranged weaponry first will greatly weaken the attacks of the remaining Electrophorus.

Is extremely easy to spot and identify from a distance.

Roles

 * Stun: For underwater PvP or when fighting against underwater Alpha Creatures, their stun attack in large groups is insanely dangerous as the enemy doesn't do as much damage, and cannot escape. Only the Basilosaurus is immune to this, and the only downside is that they have low Health. Upgrade health and Melee Damage for this role.
 * River Access: Despite their large size the Electrophorus is smaller than many of the other creatures found in the ocean. It's smaller size allows Electrophorus to move through rivers and shallow water that the large sea animals can't access. Although it can move through rivers and shallow water it's size does limit what shallow areas it can and can't enter.

Notes/Trivia

 * This dossier was revealed on 07/27/2015 on Steam.
 * Electrophorus is one of the only creatures in ARK with a genus that still exists today, such as the Coelacanth, Lamprey or Achatina. The real electric eel, as its name implies, is also capable of producing electric discharges to kill prey and deter predators.
 * Unlike in the real world, Electrophorus does not look like a knifefish, an order of fish that Electrophorus belongs to; but like the unrelated moray eels.
 * The Electrophorus is a simple capacitive generator. A first version of it was invented in 1762 by Swedish professor Johan Carl Wilcke. It's name, meaning Electricity Bearer, was coined more than ten years after that by Alessandro Volta.
 * Prior to patch v262.16, eels were much more powerful. In addition to being more common and having a larger aggro radius, their shock would stun their prey for the duration, preventing any action and dismounting riders. As the shock has a shorter recharge than the debuff duration, this meant a single level 1 eel could potentially stunlock and kill a level 300 tamed Mosasaurus given enough time. This rendered almost every mount except the Basilosaurus nonviable for deep sea exploration as a single encounter would often spell doom for any other mount. And due to the Basil's inability to go too deep in the water, many tribes considered the ocean floor to be completely inaccessible.
 * Oddly enough, Electrophorus's electricity shock does not inducing torpor, its bite does.
 * Electrophorus don't produce.
 * After releasing an electric shock, the power lines (highlighted parts) on their body will become dim, revealing they cannot shock again immediately.
 * Accordingly, The electrophorus is one of the most aggressive creatures in the game. They will aggro from extremely far ranges, and will continue to follow you for a good while.