Dragon

The Dragon is one of the Bosses in ARK: Survival Evolved. In Survival of the Fittest, the Dragon will appear on the center platform about halfway through the match and will be available for taming. The Dragon will only be rideable for a short time before it will turn on its master.

Appearance
The Dragon is massive, easily dwarfing both the and  in size,  it stands and walks in a bipedal stance. However it will become quadrupedal when sprinting. It is purple in color with orange wings and some orange patterning running along the side of the body with the 2 most notable being large orange strips running with the first running from the back of its head to the base of its neck and the second running along the sides of the body, Its head has a crown of horns.

Colors
The Dragon has different colors depending on its difficulty level:

Locations
On The Island The Dragon can only be found in the Dragon Arena. To reach this location, players must go to either a Supply Crate or Obelisk and place the required tribute items inside, then click on the Generate Dragon Portal item. At this point a portal will be opened to teleport nearby players and dinos into the arena. Note that If playing in Single Player mode, the portal can only be generated from the Red Obelisk.

The Dragon can also be found in both the Ragnarok Arena on Ragnarok and the Forsaken Oasis on Valguero and can be spawned from any obelisks on both maps.

Note: The Dragon Boss has less health and damage resistance compared with Official Servers

Tribute Requirements
The following items are needed to summon the Dragon:

Tribute Spawn Commands
Uses these commands to give yourself all the items needed for tribute:

Drops

 * Inventory

Unlocks
Gamma=
 * Tekgrams
 * -|Beta=
 * -|Alpha=

Completing the harder difficulties will unlock all of the lower difficulty Tekgrams as well.


 * Achievements

Gamma

Beta

Alpha

Base Stats and Growth
Note: The Dragon in the Ragnarok Arena has the same stat values, but takes 3x damage (or consider it suffers a 2/3 Health Nerf). Gamma= Beta= Alpha= The Firebreath-attack yields up to 2000 damage (probably depending on the amount of flames the target is covered with) and is applied over a time of 10s. The flame-damage is not affected by the Melee Damage-Stat and thus cannot be increased by level-ups.

Taming
The Dragon can not be tamed except in Survival of the Fittest. After tamed, Dragon will disappear after 20 - 40 Minutes, use it wisely.

Resources
Preferred Food

Combat
This section describes how to fight against the Dragon.

General
Please keep in mind that the Dragon is considered by many players to be the third toughest boss to defeat (Previously the hardest, but that title was overtaken by the, but due to the release of Genesis: Part 1, it was overtaken again by the )

The Dragon is the strongest of the 3 island Guardians and should be saved for last due to how tough it is, on top of that, taking down the and  will help give the players a advantage due to having new better equipment to take on the Dragon with.

Strategy
The Dragon is far stronger than the two previous Guardians on the Island, thanks to the ability to do percent-based fire breath damage. This fire will drain 20% of anything's max health as well as doing some direct impact damage, so brute forcing with your dino armies won't exactly work out like it did in the and  fights.

You'll need to pay attention to the Dragon's fireball and minion summoning attacks, as well as making sure you bring mastercraft to ascendant quality firearms that do good damage. Primitive weapons are a waste of time and will do little damage. As for the previously mentioned attacks, the fireballs do a fair amount of damage (less to herbivores) and have a large explosion radius, as well as having the ability to directly damage riders.

The minions that the Dragon summons are hostile and.

The dragon should be saved for last due to the difficulty and saving it for last gives you more time to get better equipment and ideal tames plus by then you'll have access to some tek equipment.

You'll want to bring very high level weapons, armor, saddles, and dishes like Medical Brews and Calien Soup.

If you have access to Scorched Earth, Ragnarok, or Valguero DLCs, then Wyvern Milk can drastically help as it makes the player/dino invulnerable to the flame breath.

Recommended Tames

 * An army of are a players best chance at beating the dragon since they have stats to rival the Rex's and because they are herbivores they take less damage from the Dragons attacks(Does NOT reduce damage from Fire Breath), ideally a Yutyrannus could definitely improve the odds of winning so long as the player is careful with them. Note that Dragon's fire breath ignores herbivores fire resistance and saddle armor, and will deal more damage than the Daeodon can effectively heal unless on passive healing (which makes healing erratic and unreliable, so the best option is to not use one at all, and replace it with a ridden rhino or other dps dealer.) It also helps if you give them veggie cakes which heals them.
 * The Dragons Fire Breath damage debuff shows 20% damage of the maximum health of the affected dino, but the percentage actually scales with the difficulty. 20% only are reached on Alpha difficulty.
 * A can still be useful as long as it's mounted (so it's easier to keep safe and can be used to full potential) and kept away from the Dragon instead acting as support buffing the Therizinos or any other damage tames.
 * A very tanky could be useful to help kite the dragon and get its attention and in the process allowing tribemates to open fire on it without fear of the dragon killing them.
 * could still work however if attempted over the Therizino Strategy they would definitely need the help of a Daeodon and Yutyrannus due Therizinos having fire resistance against fireball and Rexes unable to heal with vegetable cakes.
 * A can be useful due to the passive healing ability it has.
 * It is highly recommended to bring a pack of either or  as both of them have a bleeding damage and gain an Alpha boost.
 * Bringing both packs of dinosaurs is ideal as the dps of the allosaurus and the massive bleed damage from the deinonychus can have huge damage potential that can complement the use of Rexes.

Dangers

 * The Firebreath tears through health and no resistance or armor will reduce it, so be careful when facing it.
 * The fireballs it shoots are AOE dealing alot of damage to not only the tame but the rider as well so be very careful.
 * The dimorphs that spawn in the arena will kill you even on your mount.
 * Try to avoid the lava streams while fighting it as the dragon is immune to them only causing them to be hazards for your own tames.
 * Its breath attacks deal more damage to carnivores so normal tactics such as Rex Rushing while possible aren't advised as it's very risky.
 * The arena itself is very hot so putting points into fortitude, bringing some Callien Soup (aka Calliens), and Ghillie armor to protect yourself is advised.
 * Due to the Dimorphs and the Dragons fireball attack damaging riders the player will definitely need high level armor to help withstand the damage.
 * The Dragon can instakill a player with it's bite attack so be very careful of that especially if playing single player.
 * A rare bug can cause you to fall through the lava and out of the world.

Weakness
While the biggest of all the Island bosses, its backside has the largest hitbox. The ruins around the arena can cause the dragon to be stuck on, allowing shots to be taken afar (but do not rely on this happening during the fight as it will eventually fly away).

Sometimes the dragon will only go to the player, giving your army a chance to cause damage to it.

Wyvern Milk disables the dragon's fire breath making it incredibly valuable for a fight like this.

If players spread their creatures around and completely surround and pin the dragon, it would be distracted and focus its fire attack on one side, helping your unaffected creatures live a little longer during the fight.

Notes/Trivia

 * If one uses The summon command to spawn a large amount of dragons and than kills them all instantly with The creative mode rifle, the corpses will stretch and get flung all over the place, causing all sorts of chaos, due to this making it hard to see. It is albeit hilarious to watch, though. This also happens with The ankylosaurus.
 * The Dragon is the eleventh largest creature in the game (the largest being, second being , the third being followed by the / as 4th,  as 5th,  as 6th,  as 7th, the  being 8th, the  at 9th and finally the  as 10th largest), its even larger than most of the large creatures such as ,  or  and it ties with the  for 11th place.
 * The Dragon is the 1st boss to specifically be based on a real mythological creature, the 2nd being the and the 3rd being the.
 * Interestingly all 3 can fly.
 * Admin spawned dragons despawn 20 minutes after taming.
 * Its purple and orange color scheme may be a reference to the Spyro franchise.
 * In the Creature's dossier it looks bigger than the Titanosaur, though this is inaccurate. This can be explained by the fact that dragon boss in early access was about 15% bigger, than now. Moreover, initial dragon in the first EA trailer was about 1.5 times bigger than titanosaur. Since mid-2016, dragon boss in-game is still slightly larger than bronto and about 20% smaller than titanosaur.
 * If tamed or spawned through the use of Console Commands, the Dragon will be unable to move, use some of its attacks, be ridden or respect player's whistles due to its AI being dependent on the presence of the arena.
 * In SotF, the Dragon is permanently passive, and will not attack anything unless ridden.
 * The Dragon cannot swim, but can walk or even fly in water.
 * You can not use any kind of Tek Gear inside the Arena.
 * The Dragon was brought into Ark Park via the Pterosaur Hill DLC as the Final Boss.
 * The Dragon is the only Guardian in Genesis: Part 1 that got a X variant, and also the only Guardian that doesn't appear in Gauntlet either.
 * In Ragnarok Arena, the dragon takes 3x damage, making its actual health divided by 3. This is perhaps to balance the difficulty of bosses in Ragnarok as fighting 2 bosses both at their original stats on default server settings could be somewhat impossible.
 * When facing the Dragon, herbivorous creatures have a resistance to its devastating fire breath. In lore, Helena noted of how the herbivorous creatures that Mei Yin had and in general thick hides that can help them to resist explosions and fire. However, in game the fire breath damage is not reduced by herbivore fire resistance.
 * Despite having even thicker armor, the reaper doesn't have a resistance for some odd reason.
 * Possibly a bug, Dragons summoned underwater can be tamed passively by putting meat in their inventory and will fully function as a mount. However they only last a few minutes and cannot harvest nor obey whistles.
 * Dragon's Dermis could transfer in different server and function normally, but not Ragnarok/Valguero variants.
 * There is a code "Volcanic_Dragon_Character_BP_C" which spawns a dragon, that glows red and orange in darkness.
 * This Dragon was a exclusive to genesis but then was replaced by a Brute Fire Wyvern.
 * The same happened wit tek giganotosaurus (BionicGigant_Character_BP_C) whick is now replaced with Reaper Boss.

Lore

 * In the story, Gaius Marcellus Nerva and his tribe, the New Legion, managed to kill the Dragon. He refers to it as a Dragon belonging to the roman goddess Ceres, then corrects himself, stating it was too colossal and wild for even a god's chariot.
 * He notes that the combined strength of the dragon, Mei Yin's tames, and Mei Yin's giganotosaurus were enough to weaken the New Legion to a point where lesser tribes began to take over the territory they conquered.