Featherlight

The Featherlight is one of the Creatures in ARK: Survival Evolved's Aberration expansion.

Behavior
A passive creature. Flies away when attacked.

Appearance
The Featherlight bears resembalance to a falcon or a pheasant and is a small bird-like creature with dragonfly-like, glowing flight feathers on its head, wings, and tail as well as smaller insulatory feathers. There is a prominent v-shaped head crest diverging at the upper jaw and extending behind the head, adorned with glowing feathers as well as having a crest on the forehead. (Note: Region 3 IS actually used for forehead light)

General
Not a threat by itself. Like all passive creatures, lack of awareness is your biggest threat.

Strategy
Any hunting strategy is effective, especially long ranged weapons.

Weaponry
If you want the safest of safe, use ranged weapons as to not attract anything to your location, however this is almost always a waste of resources. You really shouldn't be killing these unless you are desperate for a quick meal or exp.

Dangers
Like other Charge light-giving dino, Featherlight does not fight back when hurt, and only flies off. However, its charge light might attract other predators such as  and  towards itself and thus possibly creating a situation of dangerous predators to be drawn closer than optimal.

Weakness
It is passive, and won't attack you.

Taming
The Featherlight is unable to be tamed through the standard tranquilize-and-feed methods, and must be tamed non-violently.

To feed it, place preferred food on the last slot of your hotbar, then when approached press use (default ) to feed it. You cannot feed them all the food required for taming at one time, you must wait every couple of minutes until it is hungry again to feed it more until its taming meter is filled.

Taming Strategy: Since they spawn in dangerous areas, where either you or the Featherlight could be killed, and because they have a tendency to fly away, it is best to box them in. When the Featherlight lands, place a stone foundation on it and quickly surround it with walls and a ceiling. Then replace one of the walls with a door and tame it in the stone hut. This will protect you and the tame from the creatures outside and will prevent it from flying away during the tame. If you're having trouble securing the Featherlight inside your box you can use a grapple hook on it while it is landed (you cannot grapple a flying Featherlight). This will not damage the creature and will allow you to "reel it in". This allows you to either simply tame it while attached to the grapple, or allows you extra time to build your box before it flies away again.

An even easier method would be to bring a wooden cage and honey. Wait till the featherlight lands, then drop the honey about 10 feet away from it. As it walks towards the honey, put the cage over the honey and open the door. Close the door when the featherlight enters. There's no need to open the door to feed it-it can be fed through the bars of the cage. Don't try to put the cage directly over the featherlight, it will not work (without disabled collision).

Another alternative is to wait for the Featherlight to land, then put the wooden cage on top of it to easily trap it.

Not listed but a taming method that works as well is to place a tent on top of the Featherlight as it lands, and feed it will it and you are in the tent together.

Charge Lantern: Another Method would be to use a to forcefully ground the featherlight. The stun from the Charge Lantern forces fliers to land, allowing you to get close. As it does no damage, this method won't hurt Taming Efficiency and it wont chase the featherlight away. Be wary of other Dangers however. You cannot shoot a grounded Featherlight, so only fire when it takes flight.

Preferred Food
The Featherlight's preferred food is followed by.

Utility
It carries a mediocre charge capacity, but yields the second best charge recharge rate and the best discharge range.

Since it can fly, it is also the most survivable charge pet.

Roles

 * Anti-Nameless/Reaper Ambush: Since the Featherlight can be shoulder mounted like every other Charge Light, it provides a charge to prevent Nameless pack from emerging and can weaken Reapers. This however, will attract . To quickly toggle the shoulder-mounted Charge Light on/off in emergency situations, open up the emote wheel (hold either bracket key by default) and select "Light!". For faster use, emotes can also be bound directly to either of the two emote keys by mousing over them in the emote wheel and pressing the desired key.
 * Rock Drake Egg Collecting Assistant: Many survivors discard the possibility of using Featherlights as charge light sources due to their poor charge capacity, however, aside from having a base emission range high enough to effectively keep Nameless from spawning near the survivor (if tamed at high levels), the Featherlight is capable of flight, and on top of that, a tamed Featherlight moves at a base speed unmatched by any creature except Rock Drake, Wyverns, Griffins, most aquatic mounts and bosses. If returning after collecting the bounty is calculated as an impossibility, a survivor may choose to quickly transfer the egg to its inventory before either sending its Featherlight away from itself or having a tribe mate ordering the bird to follow its character.
 * Pack Hunter: While not as strong as, Featherlights have the unique ability among flyers to use helmets, providing a crushing - albeit expensive and temporary in case of prolonged fights - increase in resistance. Together with their neckbreaking speeds, a large flock of Featherlights can pursue and destroy any player as well as any but the toughest and strongest (or fastest) of the mounts. Moreover, their highly detailed models can prove to be extremely hardware-costly, giving their user, if equipped with high-end machinery, a clear (but dirty) advantage over enemies with poor graphic capabilities.
 * Radar: When mounted on your shoulder, a Featherlight will chatter and give a buff to notify when a max-level dino or when there is an enemy player/creature nearby.
 * Pet: Like all other shoulder mounts and other small creatures, the Featherlight can make a suitable companion on your endeavors.
 * Backpack: Like all shoulder pets, anything held in its inventory will weigh 50% less on a player's shoulder.
 * Light Source: As the caverns in Aberration are often dark and dreary, having a easy to toggle, far reaching light source whether walking or on a mount is very useful.

Notes/Trivia

 * A tamed Featherlight has the same movement behaviour as a Dimorphodon, However, the Flying Animation is same as a.
 * Featherlight's scientific name "Microluminis alectryon" means small light rooster.
 * The Featherlight does not take damage.
 * Compared to the rest of the light pets, it is thought that the Featherlight is the most refined. Though it often has slightly lower than average Charge Capacity and moderate Charge Regeneration, it usually has by far the highest Charge Emission Range out of any light pet, making it ideal for preventing and weakening  at a far distance. The Featherlight also has the added bonus of making a survivor kind of look like a pirate, as mentioned in the Dossier.
 * Featherlights are one of the only native creatures of the Red Zone to be attacked by other creatures of the same zone, as most of them are simply carnivores, perhaps put in place for the purpose of detering survivors. Though Featherlights can usually escape these threats by flying, they usually aren't so lucky when confronted with the, the Featherlight's main predator.
 * Despite being mentioned as a herbivore in the dossier, the Featherlight is also able to consume meat to satisfy its hunger.
 * Furthermore, they seem to possess raptorial beaks (much like a hawk's or owl's beak) which are used in nature to pluck out and shred meat. However, their beak shape can also be interpreted as possessing a curved, gallinaceous beak (like that of the guinea fowl or chicken) which are used in nature for plucking and pulling out small invertabrates and seeds.
 * Oddly, unlike other birds, the Featherlight possesses a single clawed finger on each wing (which shares the same color region as its legs). This trait is much more akin to feathered theropods, such as and.
 * Along with the, the Featherlight is the only bird to have survived the events that led to the degradation of the ARK that is now known as Aberration. All other birds that may once have existed on this ARK, like the , , or the , have long since gone extinct. The Featherlight and Dodo both have likely survived due to their small size and fecundity.
 * On Valguero, the Featherlight is quite rare in The Emerald Forest but is more commonly found in The Unknown, both biomes of which are found underground.