R-QUETZAL

KO Strategies

A wild Quetzal never stops flying, so knocking one unconscious solo is very difficult if you do not already have access to a tamed Quetzal. Naturally, if you already have a first Quetzal, the second is quite easy - see the "Quetzal Cage Strategy" below.

If you don't already have access to a tamed Quetzal, the following strategies may be of use. Be sure not to knock out the Quetzal above water or it could drown.

It should also be noted that Rare Flowers do not work on a Quetzal.

Use the Argy Grappling strategy but instead grapple the Quetzal so you'll hold on to it. DON"T FORGET TO WHISTLE THE MOUNT TO FOLLOW YOU.Bring your taming method and food, parachute(for when you fall). Find a Quetzal, get close to it, dismount and grapple the Quetzal, reel in, and shoot it. Un-grapple and use the parachute. Tame as usually. This method also works for crystal wyverns but the passive way.

50/50 Glitch

The 50/50 glitch is a well-known and highly impactful bug that effects the Quetzal. This particular bug makes any startled Quetzal (meaning, one you were about to tame) travel to coordinates 50, 50 on any map. While this path is interrupted by the erratic circling and looping of the Quetzal's typical escape routine, the Quetzal eventually arrives at 50, 50 and will wander around from that area until brought down to tame or scared back again. It will likely not leave the 50, 50 area simply due to its slow, idle flying and tendency to not fly very far in any one direction for a surprising amount of time. This can pose problems for taming: the Island's 50, 50 is especially dangerous with a host of large carnivores (Rexes, Spinos, Terror Birds, and Purlovias, to name a few) crawling around that general area and Ragnarok's 50, 50 is surrounded by a mountainous, frigid area with high, rocky slopes where the Quetzal can get stuck while escaping, thus not reaching the 50, 50 at all. While a slope-stuck Quetzal makes taming a lot easier, when knocked out, it drops significantly down the slope and there might be predators below waiting for an easy meal.

Take careful note of this as you work with the taming strategies for a first Quetzal mentioned below.

Hit and Run

Using a Longneck Rifle, Shocking Tranquilizer Darts and a fast flying mount. Wait until a Quetzal flies close to a mountain or to the ground, land and then quickly shoot it with the darts. When it takes off in panic jump back on your mount and follow it, and repeat this process until its gets knocked unconscious. While this is a fairly basic strategy, it can be very time consuming, expensive (Tranquilizer Darts require Simple Rifle Ammo to make, which are the second most expensive ammo in the game to make themselves) and potentially dangerous as you must land nearly immediately in order to keep up with the Quetzal's torpor. In addition to this, you will have little control over where it lands, possibly putting it in the way of predators. Be careful that nothing attacks the Quetzal while it's unconscious.

2-Player Tapejara Strategy

All you need is a tribemate, a Tapejara, and a method of tranquilizing. Put many points into Stamina to maximize the time available before you're forced to land. Make sure you have some Raw Meat on the Tapejara as well. Get your tribemate to mount onto the back part of a Tapejara Saddle and equip your method of tranquilizing (e.g. Longneck Rifle with Tranquilizer Darts or a Crossbow with Tranquilizer Arrows). When you find the Quetzal, fly ahead but still in range and get your tribemate to open fire on it. Once the Quetzal is unconscious, you and your tribemate can protect it, or one of you can bring another dino to protect it, since Quetzals generally spawn in dangerous, rough areas.

Argentavis Solo Tame

This method is excellent to tame a low level Quetzal. To solo tame a Quetzal with an Argentavis, you need an Argentavis with a saddle, a Grappling Hook, a Longneck Rifle with Tranquilizer Darts, a Parachute and the taming food. When you find a Quetzal, jump off the Argentavis with the Parachute and quickly grapple at the Argentavis. Pull yourself closer to the Argent. Use the "Attack This Target" whistle (Bound to ) on the Quetzal. The Argentavis will start chasing the Quetzal. Now you can shoot it with your Rifle. When the Argentavis is too close to the Quetzal (so it damages it), use the "Move To" whistle (Bound to ) on the Quetzal. When it moves further away, use the "Attack This Target" whistle again.

Griffin Solo Tame

You can fire a weapon while flying a Griffin and simultaneously move the griffin. This, along with the fact that the Griffin can easily keep up with a sprinting quetzal, has simplified solo taming a Quetzal tremendously as you just have to follow behind it and use a longneck/crossbow. Even when not solo, the Griffin is a good creature to use due to its ability to carry two additional passengers, one on its back and one in its claws, and allowing all three riders to use weapons.

Wyvern Solo Tame

Set the Wyvern to follow you and mount it. With the wyvern set to follow, you can stand on its upper back and neck while dismounting in the air, and it will not seek for a spot to land if it is following the player riding it. This allows you to follow a quetzal in the air and fire a longneck/crossbow at your leisure. While the riding area and its neck (even the head, but be careful) can be stood on safely while the wyvern is in flight, death by falling is still a possible danger, so bringing a parachute is recommended.

While other mounts like the tapejara are able to keep up with fleeing quetzals during taming, the wyvern is very easily capable of outpacing the quetzal; combine this with the wyvern's wide turn radius and it can make lining up your shots rather difficult without practice: flying past your target while dismounting to shoot or having to double back because the quetzal itself made a sharp turn is more than likely to happen. While the speed and wide turns can make tranquilizing difficult, that very speed however makes wyverns especially useful in searching for quetzals, as they can cover a large area of the map in a short amount of time; vastly cutting down how long you spend on the hunt.

Once the quetzal is unconscious, the wyvern has another use in being a capable defender: able to hold its own with other large predators that may attempt to kill your tame, but be careful, as the wyvern's attacks can easily hit the quetzal you are trying to protect.

Parachuting

Take a stack of Parachutes, a Longneck Rifle with Tranquilizer Darts, and a flying mount set to follow. When you find a Quetzal, fly above it and jump off your mount, activating your parachute on the way down. Hit it with as many shots as you can until it is out of range, then get back on your mount and follow it. If you activate the parachute immediately after jumping, you will fall slowly enough to remount in the air. Repeat the process until the Quetzal is knocked out.

You can make this process easier by bringing a large pack of Dimorphodons. Load up the mount with materials to craft extra parachutes, and load up the Dimorphodons with Narcotics. Set the mount to follow you, set the Dimorphodons to follow the mount, and set all the pets to passive. Once the Quetzal is unconscious, you can use the Dimorphodons to protect it from predators and to hunt for meat to tame it.

Argentavis & Scorpion/Pachy/Titanoboa Strategy

• Using a Scorpion (chance of quetzal death is very high)

:Another solo tactic is to use an Argentavis and a very high damage Scorpion for high Torpor. Make sure your Scorpion is set to 'Attack my Target', then using the Argentavis, pick it up and go find a Quetzal. Using a Spyglass, whistle the attack command on the Quetzal and then fly near it, on its right side, making sure your Scorpion gets near its neck; it should attack the Quetzal, stop and wait 10 seconds for the poison to take effect then repeat. Quetzals are faster than Argentavises by default, so sometimes it's easier to wait for it to calm down, which can be around 10 seconds. This method can be very time consuming, especially with higher level Quetzals (a level 16 has ~3400 Torpor) and because of stamina limits.

• Using a Pachy

:The Pachys basic attack is weak with only 10 base damage, but its Torpor scales 1:1, so a Pachy with 200% melee would deal ~20 Damage and ~20 Torpor. A level 16 Quetzal has roughly ~3400 Torpor, so you'd have to hit it 170-200 times and that's also 3400 to 4000 damage. Even though Quetzals have very high HP, it's a lot more dangerous method of taming since HP varies, although a lot faster if the Quetzal is tanky enough and your Argentavis can keep up with it.

Quetzal Cage Strategy

Since Patch 256, the Quetzal does not regen stamina in the air anymore. If you're the admin of your server (or you're playing in solo) the way to allow the Quetzal to regen when you are on his back is the command (must be used in game) ?AllowFlyingStaminaRecovery=true. Note that the developers have indicated this could be a temporary command. Without this command, you will have more difficulty taming in the air. Force feeding a Quetzal stimberries or custom recipes while in the air can allow it to regen stamina it would have gotten passively in the past, but stimberries aren't very effective individually and so this will require hundreds or thousands of stimberries to keep the Quetzal in the air long enough. It is best to use a custom recipe of stimberries or rare mushrooms made with a high crafting skill.

However, despite the developer's past nerfs to some elements of this method, it's still doable.

A Quetzal can be used to capture and tame a second Quetzal very easily. Build a 3x3x3 box made of doorways and your ceiling of any material on a Quetzal platform. Because is it not actually possible to build a complete cube on top of a Quetzal platform saddle with default configs as they limit how many structures can be on platform saddles, you will need to build a relatively minimal cage shape. Be sure there are no open slots more than one space both wide and tall (that is to say, holes that are three spaces high and one wide still keep wild Quetzals imprisoned within the cage, for example, but 2x2 holes may not). Fly to the wild Quetzal and position it inside the box. Dismount quickly and your tamed Quetzal will immediately stop moving. The wild Quetzal can no longer clip through the walls so it will be trapped. You can now easily position yourself around the wild Quetzal to fire through the slots or doorways at its head (which will most likely be outside the cage) as needed for a few well-placed headshots as the captured Quetzal tries to escape in vain.

Once knocked out, the wild Quetzal will fall onto the platform saddle. Do not move your tamed bird or the wild one will fall through the platform to the ground, which is usually much less safe than taming in the air.

This strategy can be seen in a video. The rest of the tame proceeds as normal, with the added bonus of having less to worry about than the usual tame except for potentially creating a more visible target for enemy players to see than a collapsed Quetzal on the ground would provide.

Grappling Hook Strategy

• This solo method requires an Argentavis and a Grappling Hook (a Parachute is also recommended, but not necessary). Pull out your Grappling Hook and shoot your Argentavis in the chest. Whistle Attack this Target on the Quetz and open up the parachute when in the air. Shoot the Quetzal while the Argentavis chases it. Be sure to use whistle passive when the Argent is near the Quetzal and whistle attack this target on the Quetzal when shot. Once the Quetzal is down, switch to the Grappling Hook and pull yourself towards your Argentavis so you can get down safely. Do not shoot your Argentavis too much by accident! If it falls asleep, you will lose your tame and will most likely fall to your death.

• As a team, one player can pilot an Argentavis or Quetzal with multiple players dangling by grappling hooks, allowing for more players to shoot at once. Works best with 3+ players and Argy with 600+ carry weight. Note that this can cause the server to lag (due to grappling hook physics), so it is not recommended with more than 7 players.