Saddles allow you to ride various creatures in ARK: Survival Evolved. Riding a creature requires crafting the correct saddle and equipping it from the creature's inventory. some saddles have 'special abilities'.
Saddle Stats[]
Most Saddles made withEngrams have 25Armor.
Carbonemys,
Trike,
Pachyrhinosaurus,
Diplodocus,
Paracer,
Paracer Platform and
Bronto(not platform) have 20 Armor. The
Titanosaur Platform Saddle has 1.0 Armor. All Tek Saddles made from Tekgrams have 45Armor. Saddles made withBlueprints can have better stats. With the exception of the
Roll Rat Saddle 
, saddles don't lose durability, and it is not visible on tooltips.
Crafting Information[]
Titan Platform Saddles are not included here as they are not crafted, but automatically equipped on tamed Titans.
Saddle Armor[]
By gathered in-game data, the following formulas were derived for calculating damage reduction to dinos from armor.
The general formulas are as follows:
- DamageMultiplier = 100 / (100 +Armor Coefficient *Armor)
- TotalDamage =Damage *DamageMultiplier
- DamageReduction = 1 -DamageMultiplier
Armor Coefficient is the unique value that each source of damage has, representing how much each attack affected by an armor. There are two different type of Armor Coefficient value in each damage source, the first one is a value against survivor's armor and the second one is a value against saddles on creatures.
For example, bite attack of the Rex has the Armor coefficient value 4 against creature's saddle and Armor coefficient value 1 against survivor's armor.
The value of the Armor Coefficient varies based on the source of the damage and are shown in the following sections. In most cases, Armor Coefficient value 4 is applied against saddle and 1 is applied against survivor's armor.
This graph demonstrates the diminishing returns of damage reduction from saddle armor. (request verification of vs Turret calculation)
Explosives[]
For explosive damage against saddles, the Armor Coefficient has a value of 1.
- DamageMultiplier = 100 / (100 + 1 *Armor)
Example using 750 explosive damage (Grenades and rockets from a primitiveRocket Launcher) against a creature:
| Armor | Damage Multiplier | Total Damage | Damage Reduction |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 1 | 750 | 0% |
| 25 | 0.8 | 600 | 20% |
| 30 | 0.769230 (repeating) | 576.92 | 23.08% |
| 40 | 0.714285 (repeating) | 535.71 | 28.57% |
| 50 | 0.666666 (repeating) | 500 | 33.33% |
Firearms and Melee Weapons[]
For bullet damage and player melee weapon against saddles, the Armor Coefficient has a value of 4.
- DamageMultiplier = 100 / (100 + 4 *Armor)
Example using 60 bullet damage (bullet from aSimple Pistol) against a creature:
| Armor | Damage Multiplier | Total Damage | Damage Reduction |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 1 | 60 | 0% |
| 25 | 0.5 | 30 | 50% |
| 30 | 0.454545 (repeating) | 27.27 | 55% |
| 40 | 0.384615 (repeating) | 23.08 | 61.54% |
| 50 | 0.333333 (repeating) | 20 | 66.66% |
- As of patch231.4 turrets do 2.2x damage vs. all dinos.
Dino Attacks[]
For dino damage, the Armor Coefficient against saddle varies on the attacker. It is usually 4, but there are some exception. It can vary widely with some examples are shown below:
- Melee attacks from most of regular dinos (Rexes, Giga, Trike, Brontos and etc):4 (50% damage reduction from a 25 armor saddle)
- Attacks from Alpha Raptors:1 (20% damage reduction from a 25 armor saddle)
- Attacks from Mantas and Therizinosaur:0.4 (9.09% damage reduction from a 25 armor saddle)
- Attacks from Lighting Wyvern's breath:0.1 (2.5% damage reduction from a 25 armor saddle)
- Attacks from the poison breath of Poison Wyvern and Basilisk:0 (Completely ignore saddle armor)
Element Cannon[]
Tek Saddles have the ability to shoot bullets with Element when activated with Ctrl and pressed with right click. However, to utilize such ability, the saddle has to be learnt from beating
Bosses containing such tekgram. Riding on creatures with Tek Saddle does not require the Tekgram, however.
Astrocetus Tek Saddle 
requires Tekgram to utilize its other turret seat, but not when riding in the rider seat.
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