JesDyr’s Ark Mutation Guide

Intro
Wildcard made the mutation system work in a weird and confusing way. It is a mess but
there are rules to it and once you understand them, you will be breeding like a Pro.
Please note this guide is not intended to tell you exactly what to do. My goal for this
guide is to explain mutations and some of the different ways to go about breeding for
them.

I have read or watched many guides out there over the years and I have to mention the
one I learned the most from was ​Daymeehuhn’s guide on reddit​. He also has a ​video on
Youtube​ with the same information. While the information is overall correct, I feel there
are some minor problems with it which is the reason for this guide. As far as I know the
information in this guide is accurate at the time it was written. I will include a section at
the end to disclose why I believe what I do and where some of the numbers come from.

Key Concepts
Understanding the following items is key to understanding mutation breeding and
determining how you want to go about breeding your dinos. Many “guides” I have seen
get some of these wrong in one way or another.

1. Dinos are basically a collection of variables. The ones we care about for this
guide are the stats (hp,stamina,..), color regions (always 6 even if they are not all
shown on the dino), and the ancestry information (parents’ mutation counters).
2. The mutation counter is not how many mutations a dino has. ​This point
needs to be stressed because it is poorly designed. The next two concepts go
into it more.
3. You cannot see the mutation counter of a dino directly​**​, You can only
calculate it from the Creature’s Ancestry screen or view it on one of its children’s
Ancestry screens(unless it caused a mutation). A dino’s mutation counter is the
SUM of its Parent’s counters. So if you look at a dino’s Creature Ancestry screen
and it shows Matrilineal Random Mutations 2/20 and Patrilineal Random
Mutations 5/20, the dinos mutation counter is 7. This is something I have not
seen directly stated in any of the mutation guides i have read and tends to
confuse people. Also the xx/20 notation is worthless. It is not 7 out of 20, it is just
7. I believe the only reason it is on the screen is to show that a dino cannot cause
a mutation if its mutation counter is 20 or greater.
 4. Mutations are events​.This is the biggest thing all the guides I have seen never
seem to state. You can see the results of the event on a dino, but the event itself
is not part of the dino. (more on this later).
5. There are two possible chances for a mutation​ to happen each time dinos
breed. Each parent can trigger a mutation as long as that parent’s mutation
counter is under 20. Each is independent of the other and it is possible for two
mutation events to happen during the creation of one egg/baby. Some guides
claim there are three chances, but all my experience suggest this is wrong (See
disclosure​ section)
6. Mutations happen after stat and color inheritance is determined​. This is
important and basically means one parent can mutate the other parent’s stat.
7. (Official Servers only) There is a clamp on the total levels a tamed dino can have
before it is deleted by the server. Any dino that is over level 450 will Poof
(eventually) so you need to consider this if you plan on getting crazy with your
breeding. If this is the case, you want to breed in low “useless” stats in favor of
high useful stats like HP and DMG.

Understanding Dino Stats

All dino stats shown in the game are calculated from the base stat of the dino type (if it
was lvl 1), its natural levels in the stat (breeding level/stat), Imprinting %, and how many
level-ups have been applied to that stat (clicking the plus on the stat screen). It is
beyond the scope of this guide to fully explain all that. What we care about is the
Breeding levels or the stat BEFORE Imprint and level-ups. There are many other
sources of information about this topic but you need to understand the basics to
understand mutations. I don’t care if you use Ark Smart Breeder, Dododex, or an
ingame mod to see what the levels are. The important thing is that you understand what
is passed on from parents to children is a number indicating the breeding levels in a
particular stat. I am a big fan of ​Ark Smart Breeder​ but it is beyond the scope of this
guide to explain how to use it.

You should also understand that most dinos have unseen levels in the speed stat. You
will need to use one of the stat calculators mentioned above to figure out how many
levels are in speed. There are also dinos with hidden oxygen and speed stats, the only
good way to tell how many levels are in speed and/or oxygen in this case is to use
something that can read ark’s Exported dino info (Ark smart breeder).
Breeding Basics
This is a simplified answer to the question “How is Babby formed”... ok really you need to
understand breeding on at least a basic level, so here it is. And Yes, I know some info is
already part of the Key Concepts.

Before getting into how this works, I want to talk about what determines if a parent can
cause a mutation. Everyone agrees that ​something n ​ eeds to be less than 20, but what
that is is often not well defined. I have seen many guides state that what matters is the
Random Mutations counter on the side of the Ancestry screen that matched up with that
dino’s gender. So a Female dino would use the Matrilineal Random Mutations counter
and a Male would use the Patrilineal. I have not found this to be correct and in fact the
source for the information used by many guides out there say this is not the case. It
would make little sense for this to be how it works since you can very easily get a 0 on
either side by breeding a high mutation counter dino with a dino that has 0 (not that this
entire process makes much sense). Instead what actually matters is the dino’s mutation
counter which, as I stated in the Key Concepts, is the SUM of the parents’ Random
Mutations counters displayed on the Ancestry screen.

The first thing that happens during breeding is stat inheritance. For each stat and color
region the game will randomly select one of the parents and use that value for the baby.
So if we were breeding Rexes and Mom had an HP breeding level of 40 (9,900 hp
before imprint and level-ups) and Dad had an HP breeding level of 30 (7,700 hp before
imprint and level-ups), if the game randomly picks Dad the baby will have 30 levels of
HP (7,700HP). This choice is done independently for each stat and color region. A baby
could inherit it’s mother’s HP , Stamina,and Speed but get it’s father’s O2, Food, weight
and damage. I should note that the stat inheritance chance is not 50/50 between the
parents. The baby will have a 55% chance of inheriting the higher of the two values for
the stat. (this matters later). At some point the game randomly picks a gender for the
baby, when it happens does not really matter so I am going to say it happens now.

After the inheritance rolls are completed each parent will individually check to see if they
can cause a mutation (mutation counter under 20). If that parent can, the game will
randomly decide if a mutation happens. There is a 2.5% chance of a successful roll. If
the roll is successful, a mutation occurs and the game will pick a stat at random, and
increase the inherited value of that stat by 2 levels for the baby. After both parents have
rolled for a mutation, If at least one mutation event occurred the game will then pick a
random color region and assign it a random color for all possible colorIDs (not just
natural ones). It is possible that the game will select a color region that is not displayed
by that dino type. For example, on a rex, regions 2 and 3 are not displayed. If either of
those regions is selected, you will not see the mutated color ingame. As a side note,
some mods let you see this data and the export under Options on the dino’s context
wheel will contain this information in the file which can be imported into Ark Smart
Breeder. The final thing that happens during a mutation event is the Mutation Counter
registered for the parent that caused the mutation is incremented by +1 on the Baby’s
Creature Ancestors screen. So if Mom had a 2 mutation counter and caused the
mutation, the baby would show 3/20 on the Matrilineal side.

It is important to stress that each parent does the mutation check and both parents can
roll a success independent of the other. This means that even if one parent has a
mutation counter 20 or greater, the other parent could still cause a mutation, and since
the stat Inheritance is established before the mutation event, you can have a parent with
low stats cause a mutation on the other parent’s higher stats. This also means a double
mutation is possible but this is very rare (about 0.0625% chance). In the event of a
double mutation, each mutation event selects a stat independent of the other. You could
end up with a double mutation on a single stat, or say a mutation to HP and Stam.

Combining stats

To breed for mutations you need to understand how to combine stats into one dino. The
short answer is to breed dinos with stats that you want together until you get a baby with
the best of both parents and just keep doing this till all you the best stats are on one
baby.

Most of the time you are going to have several dinos each with a single stat you want to
breed into one dino. Because there are a lot of possible scenarios it is hard to give a
step by step guide for this so I will just suggest prioritizing the useful stats like HP and
DMG first then breeding in your stam and weight followed by food oxygen and speed.
Take your best male, and breed it with all your females that have stats you want to pass
on. Kill any male babies that are not better than their father but keep any females that
could mate with your best male and produce a better baby than that male. Breeding in
ark generally comes down to just giving yourself the most tries you can, which means
breeding A LOT. Since only females get breeding cooldowns, they tend to be the limiting
factor so you want lots of them.

You don't have to wait until you have tamed dinos with all the 6-7 stats, Once you have
two decent stats, start working on combining those while you continue to tame wilds
looking for the rest or better than what you currently have.
Breeding for Mutations
First off I would like to state that t​here is no “right way” to breed for mutations. There are
only things that work and things that don’t work​. Don’t be afraid of high mutation
counters, they are not the end of the line, in fact they can be highly beneficial for long
term projects (more on that in the advanced section). The only reason to keep them low
is to increase the chances of a mutation in the short term. There are two common
mutation breeding methods used, and a third with is a weird mix of the two. Which
method you use is really up to you and should be based on your goals for the dino line.

One line Per Stat

This is one of the more commonly described methods I see. It is mainly based on the
incorrect idea that you can only have 20 “mutations”, but that does not mean it is not a
useful method. If you only care about mutating one or two stats, this method can be a
good choice to start with.

With this method you breed a line for each stat you
want to mutate and combine the lines after each hits
20 mutation counter. So if you want to mutate HP,
you would first take dinos with the same HP stat,
then breed them until you get a mutation on HP.
Since the goal of this method is to keep the
mutation counter as low as possible, you will only
breed a dino with mutation counters with a dino that
has 0 like the image to the left. However, since that
would mean if you got an hp mutation on a female,
you would only be able to breed it with a 0 counter
male, it would take a long time to get another
mutation. Instead you will want to keep your females
at 0 and have them breed with mutated males. If
you get an hp mutation and the baby is female,
breed this female with one of the 0 mutation counter
males only until you get a male with the high
stat.Then you take this male and breed it with your 0
count females. You continue this process until you
hit a mutation counter of 20 on the males which
should mean you added 40 stat levels. At this point
most guides tell you to now combine all the mutation
stat lines together and you are done. This is both right and wrong. You can continue
hunting for mutations either using this same method (horribly inefficient if mutating more
than 1 stat). or you can switch to the ​Alpha Male to Clean Females​ method.
The Protip for this method is to start with all your best stats combined before breeding
This will make it easier to start each line and combine the stats at the end (unless
mutating all stats).

Alpha Male to Clean females

This is the method the “more accurate” guides will tell you to use often claiming the ​One
Line Per Stat​ method is wrong, but like I said before, that isn’t entirely correct since it
does work. If you want to add more than 40 levels (20 mutations) to a single stat, you are
going to end up here anyway since this is basically what the ​One Line Per Stat​ method
turns into if you continued on breeding that line once the male’s mutation counter hits 20.
The only difference is that you are doing a lot of combining stats stats so that you can
make more efficient use of your clean females.

With this method you create Alpha dinos that have all your best stats. You will want to
always have at least 1 Alpha Male and Female, but a few Alpha Females is best since it
helps you breed new Alphas much faster. I would like to note that the Alpha Females are
generally not used to breed for more mutations, they are mainly to help breed new Alpha
Males.

You start off by breeding an Alpha Male with

many females that have under 20 mutation
counters (it is best to use 0 counter, but 19 or
less will do). When you get a mutation that
you want to keep, it is likely it will have
inherited some lower stats from its mother. In
this case you want to combine its mutated
stat with your current Alphas to make a new
generation of Alphas. While you are doing
this, I would suggest you continue breeding
your clean females with the current Alpha
male since you could get a different stat to
mutate as well. As before, there are many
different scenarios that can happen, and
describe them is not my goal. The image to
the left shows a scenario where you ended
up with a mutation on a female, you then
breed that with the Alpha male until you get
that stat on a male that did not have all your
best stats, therefore you breed it with your
Alpha Females until you get a New Alpha
Male which you then start the cycle over with.
When breeding the Alpha Male to clean females, if you get a baby that is female and
ends up with the same stats as the Alpha Male (no new mutations), keep this baby and
add it to your Alpha females. This will not only let you breed more dinos of the current
generation for use, it will also give you more tries when combining new mutations into
your Alphas.

This method basically ends up as two breeding projects locked in an endless cycle
where you have a group hunting for mutations while another group is combining new
mutations into new generations of Alphas to replace the Alpha Male of the group hunting
for mutations. It can be a lot to keep track of, but at least you never have to replace the
clean females.

If you are not interested in mutations on all 7 stats, you do not have to keep breeding all
the stats into the new Alphas. You could just focus on only the stats you want to mutate
to reduce the amount of stat combining going on..

Note that since you are likely recombining stats after each new mutation, the counters on
your Alphas are going to grow to some very large numbers fairly quickly. At some point
you might even get negative counters (more on that later).

One Line One Pair

Syntac does a good job describing this Method in his “​The ultimate guide to mutations​”
video (​about 9:45 in​). This is kind of like the One Line Per Stat method but you are
breeding for multiple stats using only one pair of dinos which is VERY slow. It is an
inefficient way to hunt for mutations unless you are only looking for two stats. Once you
have two stats with mutated levels, you go from a 55% chance just to inherit the higher
stat to about 30% to inherit both and it gets much worse the more stats you are looking
to mutate. If you expand this out to use multiple females it ends up basically being the
Alpha Male to Clean Females​ method only you are throwing out babies that don’t inherit
all the higher stats and in the event you get a keeper mutation that is on a female, you
are breeding it with your 0 count male until you get a male copy of it to breed with your 0
count females. This works ok up to the point you hit 20 mutations, then you might as well
use the actual Alpha Male to Clean Females method.
 Which is better?

Like I said before, The above methods have merit but here is some quick math about
your chances of a successful mutation roll with each.

With the One line Per Stat method, your chance of getting a mutation is 5%, however
there is only a 14% chance it will affect the stat you are breeding for and of that there is
a 55% chance the baby inherited the higher stat. This means the chances of getting a
new mutation you need for that specific line is 0.385%. This method is also a bit more
straightforward with less stuff to keep track of but you are almost halting seeking
mutations for each line when you get a keeper mutation on a female until you can breed
the stat on a male. After the counter hits 20, you could continue mutations with this
method, but unless you are only seeking a single stat, you are better off moving to the
Alpha Male method.

With the Alpha Male to Clean Females method, your

chance of getting a mutation is 2.5% and if you are looking
to mutate 4 stats, there is a 57% chance you will keep the
mutated baby. Factor in the 55% stat inheritance and this
leaves you with a 0.79% chance of getting a new mutation.
If you were only mutating 2 stats, there would be a 0.39%
chance. The image to the left shows the chances based on
the number of stats you intend to mutate. This is assuming
a dino type that has 7 stats (not all do).

I am not even going to do all the math for One Line One Pair method. Limiting yourself to
only breeding one female at a time is just not going to work well unless you have some
extremely low breeding cooldowns. If you use this method while seeking 2 stats, your
chance at a keeper mutation is about 0.43% up until you hit a mutation counter of 20. If
you expand this out to using multiple females, it is ok. This also has the same issue as
One Line Per Stat where you almost stop seeking new mutations every time you get a
keeper mutation that is on a female, but with this method it is like pausing two lines.

Advanced Concepts

1. Mutation counters can roll to negative. ​The variables are stored as signed 32
bit integers. This means they have a value range of ​−2,147,483,648 to 
2,147,483,647​. Ark does not have code to prevent the value from rolling back to
negative once you go over ​2,147,483,647. This means it is possible to create 
a dino with -1 mutations. 
 2. Computer games use Pseudo Random Number Generators​. Ok this isn’t all
that important but it is something to be aware of. Just know that random isn’t truly
random. RNGs used in computer games need to be efficient and this sacrifices
randomness. This can throw off the math a bit when you start talking about
efficiency of different breeding methods. Not being a statistician this goes well
beyond my abilities to consider in my calculations of chances in this guide.

Rolling the Counter

So yah, negative mutation counters are possible. And since -1,213,521,893 is less than
20, that dino can cause mutations. How do you roll the mutation counter? Just keep
breeding dinos with high counters together until it happens. You can do this in about 32
generations if you breed siblings together each time. If you start off with dinos that have
1 mutation counter and breed them together, their children will have 2, breed those
together and their children will have 4, next gen will have 8 .. and so on until the counter
goes over ​2,147,483,647 and becomes negative. Remember you cannot see a 
dino’s counter directly. You will have to add up the parent’s counter on the 
Ancestry screen.If you are ever unsure of a counter, you can breed that dino and 
check its side of the baby’s Ancestry screen. 
 
If you follow the pattern of breeding two dinos with the same mutation counter 
together each generation, you will always end up at 0 mutations in 32 
generations or less. Using this method and starting with dinos that had 20 
mutations, it would take 30 generations to hit 0 again. This dino would show 
−2,147,483,648 on both parents sides of the Ancestry Screen and if you breed it 
with a 0 count dino, the baby would show 0/20 on both sides. So yes, with 
enough breeding you can “reset” your mutation counter, but if you are going to do 
all that, you might want to breed a dino with -1.  
  
Negative One “Insanity” Breeding method
Ok I just didn’t know what to call this but getting this setup takes a lot of breeding and
you would surely have to be somewhat crazy to put
this much effort into it. (I have done this)

Breeding a dino with -1 mutation counter

First problem is getting a -1 counter dino. There is no easy to define path to get here and
this is much easier if you have kept a large selection of dinos with diverse mutation
counters (stats don’t really matter).

Using the breeding pattern from ​Rolling the Counter​,

you will always end up at 0 unless you deviate from the
pattern at some point. What you are looking for is a
dino with a negative number that’s inverse is close to a
positive counter you have but not less than it. For
example if you had started that pattern with a mutation
counter of 19, after 27 generations you would have a
dino with a mutation counter of -1,744,830,464 (image
to the left). Now your goal is to breed a dino with a
mutation counter of 1,744,830,463. You would then
want to find a dino that is as close to that number as
possible without going over. If you had kept all the
dinos used to get here, the 26th generation would have
1,275,068,416. To make up the difference you will
need a dino with 469,762,048, but the closest you
have might be the dino from the 24th generation with
318,767,106. That would mean you still need
150,994,942. You just keep tracing this back until you
find a combination that adds up to 1,744,830,463.
Then once you breed that dino, you can breed it with
the -1,744,830,464, to get a -1 mutation counter. Now
the reason to breed up to that 1,744,830,463 is that in
reality you are likely going to have to use older dinos
with lower stats to get to that number and your Negative dino will likely have your best
stats already. By breeding up this way you can keep breeding these dinos together until
you get one with all the best stats. You will want to breed some 0 counters in order to
speed this process up and to use for the next step.
The Beauty of negative 1

The setup for this is similar to the ​Alpha Male to Clean Females​ method. Only this time
your Alphas are actually 0 mutation counter dinos and your breeder females are -1
mutation counter dinos. If you want, you can slowly replace your -1 females with your
babies that don’t get mutations instead of just culling them. Breeding a 0 counter male
with -1 counter females means that when you do get a new mutation, the baby will have
a 0 mutation counter and if you are keeping up on swapping out the breeder females, it
will likely have all your best stats already. If you happen to get a double mutation, you
can breed this with your -1 females until you get a 0 count baby with the new stats.

The image to the left shows breeding an Alpha

male with a mutation count of 0 with a group of
females that have a mutation count of -1. For
the purpose of this, those females would have
the same stats as the Alpha male. You would
breed them together until you got a mutation
you wanted. In this case the baby was male
with a mutated Hp stat. This Baby would have
a mutation counter of 0. You would then breed
this new male with the -1 count females. Any
female you get that has the Higher Hp stat you
would raise and replace one of the original
females with it until they all had the new stat. At
some point we also ended up with a mutated
female baby that not only inherited the higher
Hp stat, but also has a Mutated Dm stat. We
would breed this female with her father to
produce a Male with the higher Hp and Dm
Stats. This male would then breed with the -1
females and we would continue the cycle of
replacing outdated -1 females with new ones that have both the higher HP and Dm stats.
This is a very simplified scenario and you will likely have a lot of side breeding
happening to combine new stats. If you happen to get a dino with +1 mutations that you
want to breed in, breed this with -1 counter dinos until you get a copy of it and then
continue on.
Disclosures

The methods I describe in this guide all work, but I will admit the exact details could be
wrong. I have personally done a lot of breeding in ark and I chose to use the data that
fits based on my experience both in controlled tests and just playing Ark as well as
information I have gathered from what others have posted on various forms and videos.

About two years ago there was a flurry of data gathering done to understand mutations.
One of the lasting sources of information was some posts on reddit by mgxts:
Mutation_probabilities_explored​ and ​breeding_and_mutation_probabilities

The first link contains some very good information and is one big reason why I trust a
baby will have a 55% chance of inheriting the higher of the two values for the stat even
after a developer stated it was 70%. The community as a whole tends to agree 55% is
correct, so I see no reason to doubt it.

This brings me to a part I do not agree with and that is the chance of a mutation. Mgxts’
initial testing showed a chance of 7.2% while devkit data mining suggested it was 2.5%.
This led mgxts to believe there were three chances of a mutation and tailor the pseudo
code in the 2nd link to fit this assumption. I have found nothing to suggest there are
three possible checks. Everything I have observed has suggested the 2.5% chance is
correct and each parent does its own independent check. The reality is, this point does
not change how you hunt for mutations, the only thing that would change is the chances.

 ** I have also seen a lot of guides (like the ​official wiki​) state something like ​“T
​ he only
important thing is that new mutations will not occur if the Parent Dino has 20+/20 inheritance
from their respective gender's lineage.”.​ I have never found this to be correct. Even Mgxts’
pseudo code agrees with me here (which the wiki references). In Any case I have an
experiment I have been running that so far has not produced a mutation after enough eggs
that I should have seen a few. The problem is, the test could only prove me wrong, since
being right would mean I never see a mutation and I am not going to hatch infinite eggs. Still
after a few hundred eggs of no mutations, I think it is safe to say that I am correct here.
Again if I am wrong it does not invalidate any of the methods described in this guide. It would
just open up some other methods that would not be very efficient anyway.