ARK: Survival Ascended Boss Guide: Broodmother, Megapithecus, and Dragon
How to summon and beat the three Island bosses in ARK: Survival Ascended, with tribute lists, cave locations, and arena tactics.
The Island runs on three guardians. Broodmother Lysrix, the Megapithecus, and the Dragon each sit under their own obelisk, each need a pile of cave artifacts and dino parts before you can even summon them, and each pay out Element and tekgrams when they go down. The gap between them is bigger than most tribes expect. A Rex line that farms gamma Broodmother half asleep can still get cooked by beta Dragon, because the Dragon's fire doesn't care how much health your tames have. This runs through the tribute grind, the loadouts that actually survive, and the positioning tricks that decide whether your dinos walk back out.
Artifact and Resource Requirements for Each Boss
You summon these bosses at the tribute terminal inside any obelisk, or at a supply crate beacon if you're on a server. In single player each boss is tied to their own obelisk: green for the Broodmother, blue for the Megapithecus, red for the Dragon. Drop the tribute in the terminal, hit generate portal, and everything inside the ring gets pulled up. The items are consumed the second the portal fires, so double check which difficulty you picked before clicking.
Every arena has the same entry limits. Ten survivors, twenty tames, and a drag weight cutoff around 560 per creature, which is what keeps Gigas out. Flyers are blocked on The Island too, so no lazy Argentavis hovering over the fight. Survivors and tames that live through it get returned at the end, and anything you loot has to ride back in a creature inventory.
Here's what each boss eats:
Broodmother Lysrix (opens at level 30)
| Item | Gamma | Beta | Alpha | |---|---|---|---| | Artifact of the Clever | 1 | 1 | 1 | | Artifact of the Hunter | 1 | 1 | 1 | | Artifact of the Massive | 1 | 1 | 1 | | Argentavis Talon | - | 5 | 10 | | Sarcosuchus Skin | - | 5 | 10 | | Sauropod Vertebra | - | 5 | 10 | | Titanoboa Venom | - | 5 | 10 |
Megapithecus (opens at level 45)
| Item | Gamma | Beta | Alpha | |---|---|---|---| | Artifact of the Brute | 1 | 1 | 1 | | Artifact of the Devourer | 1 | 1 | 1 | | Artifact of the Pack | 1 | 1 | 1 | | Megalania Toxin | - | 5 | 10 | | Megalodon Tooth | - | 5 | 10 | | Spinosaurus Sail | - | 5 | 10 | | Therizinosaurus Claws | - | 5 | 10 | | Thylacoleo Hook-Claws | - | 5 | 10 |
Dragon (opens at level 55)
| Item | Gamma | Beta | Alpha | |---|---|---|---| | Artifact of the Cunning | 1 | 1 | 1 | | Artifact of the Immune | 1 | 1 | 1 | | Artifact of the Skylord | 1 | 1 | 1 | | Artifact of the Strong | 1 | 1 | 1 | | Allosaurus Brain | - | 5 | 10 | | Basilosaurus Blubber | - | 5 | 10 | | Giganotosaurus Heart | - | 1 | 2 | | Tusoteuthis Tentacle | - | 5 | 10 | | Tyrannosaurus Arm | - | 5 | 15 | | Yutyrannus Lungs | - | 5 | 10 |
Where each artifact comes from
Ten caves hold the ten artifacts. Coordinates below are the entrance spots, roughly.
| Artifact | Cave | Coords (Lat, Lon) | Notes | |---|---|---|---| | Hunter | Lower South Cave | 85.3, 54.2 | Easy, any ground mount | | Clever | Central Cave | 40.2, 46.6 | Easy, Baryonyx or Thylacoleo | | Massive | Lava Cave | 74.1, 92.2 | Medium, watch the drops | | Devourer | North East Cave | 8.9, 91.3 | Easy, Thylacoleo fits best | | Pack | Upper South Cave | 71.3, 57.2 | Medium | | Brute | Caverns of Lost Faith | 54.4, 3.9 | Underwater, take a Basilosaurus | | Immune | Swamp Cave | 64.8, 35.1 | Toxic gas, gas mask required | | Skylord | North West Cave | 14.1, 13.9 | No mounts fit, crawl only, freezing | | Cunning | Caverns of Lost Hope | 45.4, 95.0 | Underwater, nastiest cave on the map | | Strong | Snow Cave | 26.0, 29.0 | Extreme cold, Yuty plus Direwolves |
Notice the split. The Broodmother's three artifacts come from the three easiest caves on the list. The Dragon wants four, including the two most miserable runs on The Island. That's why people fight her last, and why she should be fought last.
Farming the trophy drops
The body parts all come off the creature they're named for. Argentavis Talons need dead Argents, Titanoboa Venom needs dead boas, and so on. Most of the Broodmother list is a swamp afternoon with a shotgun. The Megapithecus list is the annoying one, since Megalania only spawn in a few caves and Therizinos hit like trucks. For the Dragon, start saving Giganotosaurus Hearts early, because one heart per giga on beta and two on alpha adds up fast.
While you're at it, know what you're walking into:
| Boss | Gamma HP | Beta HP | Alpha HP | Element (G / B / A) | |---|---|---|---|---| | Broodmother | 324,000 | 648,000 | 972,000 | 20 / 56 / 148 | | Megapithecus | 180,000 | 396,000 | 540,000 | 40 / 110 / 220 | | Dragon | 432,000 | 864,000 | 972,000 | 80 / 220 / 440 |
The Megapithecus has the smallest health pool of the three by a wide margin. Keep that in mind for later, because it makes him the best Element farm on the map once your line is built.
Best Tribute Terminal Loadouts
The base army for all three fights is the same skeleton: heavy biters, one roarer, one or two healers. What changes is which biter you pick and how much stat you need behind it.
The core stats
For Rexes, aim at 30k health and 600% melee minimum with solid saddles. That clears gamma comfortably and handles beta if your saddles are good. Alpha wants more, usually 35k plus health, 1000% plus melee, imprint bonus, and saddles at 100 armor or better. A saddle with real armor is worth more than a few thousand extra health, since armor applies to every single hit and health only applies once.
The support pair matters just as much as the DPS. A Yutyrannus courage roar adds about 25% melee and cuts incoming damage by around 20% for everything in range, and that buff should never drop during the fight. Level the Yuty's stamina so you can roar forever, and give it 20k health so a stray hit doesn't delete it. Daeodons pump out area healing that straight up out-races boss damage in bursts. Bring one for gamma and beta, two for alpha. They eat an absurd amount while healing, so stuff their own inventories full of food before you go in.
Per boss swaps
- Broodmother: Megatherium beat Rexes here, and it isn't close. More on why in her section.
- Megapithecus: Straight Rexes. Nothing fancy needed.
- Dragon: Therizinosaurus with Sweet Vegetable Cakes. Rexes work on gamma and beta, but the fire punishes them on alpha.
What the humans carry
The Broodmother and Dragon arenas are both hot, 37°C and 45°C, so drink a Calien Soup before the portal fires and wear gear that breathes. The Megapithecus arena is the opposite problem at -21°C, so fur armor plus Fria Curry, which is worth about 50 hypothermal insulation for 15 minutes. Beyond temperature, pack medical brews, a shotgun with plenty of shells for minions, stimulants for the Broodmother's torpor spit, and a cryopod or two with backup tames in case something dies mid-fight.
A clean 20-slot roster looks like this: 17 damage tames, 1 Yutyrannus, 2 Daeodons. Swap the 17 between Rexes, Megatheriums, or Theris depending on the boss. Leave the Giga home since it can't fit through the drag weight check, leave flyers since they're blocked, and leave anything unimprinted you'd genuinely cry over, because alpha runs eat a tame now and then no matter how well they go.
Broodmother Web and Minion Strategy
Her arena is Cobweb Cave under the green obelisk, and it's hot enough that you'll want that Calien Soup going in. Level 30 to open gamma, 324k health on gamma, 972k on alpha. Most tribes treat her as the entry boss, and that's the right call since her whole tribute list is easy kills.
Her kit has three parts. She sprays webs that slow whatever they touch, including your mounts. She spits acid that does torpor damage, which means a rider who eats a few globs can get knocked out cold mid-fight. And she constantly spawns Araneo spiders that pour in and harass your line.
The Megatherium trick
This is the whole fight. Megatheriums have an innate bug-killing bonus, and when one kills an insect or arachnid it gets a big melee buff for a while. The arena is wall to wall spiders. The first Araneo that dies flips your entire sloth line into overdrive, and from there they shred her faster than an equal Rex pack by a good margin. Somewhere around 15 to 17 Megatheriums at 30k health and strong melee, plus the usual Yuty and pig, handles every difficulty including alpha if the saddles are real.
If you don't have Megatheriums bred, Rexes still get it done. Ball them up tight on her, keep the roar rolling, let the Daeodons work, and don't chase her around the arena. A tight ball means the web spray catches fewer legs and your whole stack stays in buff and heal range. The spiders mostly die to incidental bites, and honestly that's fine, ignore them unless they pile onto a pig.
Two small things save runs here. Keep stimulants hot-keyed for anyone the acid tags, because a unconscious rider is a dead rider in this arena. And if you're mounted when the adds swarm, resist the urge to back out. Backing up drags your tame out of heal range, and the webs make retreating slow anyway.
Megapithecus Boulder Throw Counters
Opposite climate, same idea. His arena sits under the blue obelisk and runs about -21°C, so fur plus Fria Curry, and your tames won't care about the cold but you will. He's got the lowest health of the three guardians at 180k gamma, 396k beta, 540k alpha, and that low pool is why people call him the easiest fight on the map.
His attacks are a direct smash, a jump that shakes the ground, and the one that matters: a ranged boulder throw. The boulder can one-shot a rider or knock them clean off their mount. Reports are genuinely mixed on whether it still targets riders reliably in Ascended, so plan for the version where it does.
Counter one: fight riderless
The safest setup is to hop off, park yourself somewhere boring, whistle attack-this-target on the big ape, and let your tames fight without you. A saddled Rex at 100 plus armor shrugs off boulders that would delete a human body. This costs you a bit of control and nothing else, since the fight is simple enough to run on whistles. Plenty of tribes do the whole thing this way on alpha.
Counter two: if you ride, keep moving
Staying mounted is fine on gamma and beta. The trick is never standing still inside the stack, because the throw picks targets and a stationary cluster is an easy read. Cut laterally after he winds up. Also spread your riders out rather than parking three of you in the same six meters.
The arena itself
Two positioning notes that have nothing to do with the boulder. There's a hole in the middle of the arena floor, and anything knocked into it is gone, so keep your line bunched on solid ground away from the edges. And Gigantopithecus minions spawn in through the fight. They're not a real threat to a Rex line, so ignore them unless they mob a pig, at which point the Yuty fear roar scatters them cheaply.
Since his health pool is small, this is a race rather than a war of attrition. Rush him at the whistle, keep the roar up, let the Daeodons cancel out the chip damage, and he falls over. The actual pain of alpha Megapithecus is collecting the tribute, not the fight. Megalania toxin and Spino sails take longer to gather than the kill takes.
Dragon Fire Breath Positioning Tips
The Dragon is the wall of The Island, and the fire breath is why. Her arena, Nerva Volcano under the red obelisk, runs 45°C so Calien Soup again, plus there's lava on the floor edges that will absolutely kill a stray tame.
The breath deals damage as a percentage of the target's max health, roughly 20% per application, burning over about ten seconds. Read that again, because it breaks the normal rules. A 60k health Rex eats around 12k per breath. A 21k health Therizinosaurus eats about 4.2k. Your tankiest tame takes the most damage per hit, which means the usual strategy of stacking health is actively bad here. Community rule of thumb is that a tame that eats five breaths is dead, saddle or not. This fight is a race, not a stat check.
The cake math
Sweet Vegetable Cake heals a herbivore for 10% of its max health over 30 seconds, with the heal capped at 2100. At 21k health, a Theri hits that cap exactly, so people level Theris to about 21k and stop. More health than that just means bigger fire damage for the same healing. Pack ten to twenty cakes in each Theri's own inventory, since herbivores auto-eat them when badly hurt, and the 30 second cooldown between cakes lines up neatly with the burn ticking out.
That's the meta comp: 17 Theris at 21k health and heavy melee, cakes stuffed in every inventory, plus a Yuty and two pigs. Deinonychus also work off their bleed, which scales off the Dragon's huge health pool, and Magmasaurs are flat out immune to the fire breath if you have access to them on your server or map rotation.
Where to stand
The breath comes out as a frontal cone from her head. So:
- Split your line. Two groups on opposite flanks instead of one pile of twenty. One sweep can't clip the whole army if the army isn't standing in the same cone.
- Get under her on the opener. When she lands and starts walking, let her come to your side, eat the first swipe from range if you have to, then sprint in tight to her feet. Under and behind the head, the cone misses.
- Never let her reset the angle facing your whole stack. If she turns and the cone lines up with your main group, whistle through or reposition. A single well-placed breath against a bunched line on alpha is often the run.
She also throws Dimorphodon swarms at you. They're more annoying than lethal. A shotgun clears them fast, and your Daeodons will tank the strays that get through.
One honest note on Rexes here. They clear gamma fine and beta is doable with strong heals, but on alpha the percentage fire plus Rexes' slow self-healing usually ends in red text once she chains breaths. If you're going for the alpha tekgrams, breed the Theris. If you just want the gamma unlock and the element, your existing Rex line will carry you.
So, run order. Gamma Broodmother first to prove the army, gamma and beta Megapithecus to fatten the Element bank, then take your Theri line at the Dragon. And when you're farming element to fund all those cakes and saddles, remember an alpha Broodmother kill pays 148 Element off a tribute list you can gather with a shotgun in an afternoon.