ARK: Survival
Maturation & Breeding
Most of ARK breeding is timetabling. The maturation clock keeps running while you are offline, and an imprint prompt will not hold on until you get back.
Rex Breeding
Maturation time and imprint outcome from your server's rates.
Total Maturation Time
Cuddle Interval
Possible Cuddles
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How the numbers are worked out
Your server’s BabyMatureSpeedMultiplier divides the maturation time, BabyCuddleIntervalMultiplier stretches or shrinks the eight hours between care requests, and BabyImprintAmountMultiplier scales what each care is worth. From those and the species’ maturation time on the ARK wiki, the calculator shows how long the baby takes to grow up, how often it asks for care, how many cares fit and what each one is worth.
The formula
- maturation hours = wiki maturation time ÷ BabyMatureSpeedMultiplier
- care interval = 8 h × BabyCuddleIntervalMultiplier · cares = floor(maturation ÷ interval)
- imprint per care = BabyImprintAmountMultiplier ÷ cares (ark.wiki.gg)
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Common mistakes
Each care is worth 100% divided by the number of cares that fit, so a faster-growing baby asks fewer times and each care counts for more. Two things still cost you: missing a care, which loses that whole share, and maturation so fast that it ends before the first care is due, which makes imprinting impossible. Change the maturation speed and the care interval together when tuning a server.
A worked example
A Rex takes 92.6 hours to grow up at 1×. With a care request every 8 hours, 11 cares fit, each worth about 9.1%, and catching all of them gives 100%. On a server with BabyMatureSpeedMultiplier 3, BabyCuddleIntervalMultiplier 0.6 and BabyImprintAmountMultiplier 3, the same Rex grows up in about 31 hours with a request every 4.8, and two cares at 50% each are enough.
When imprinting becomes impossible
Push the maturation speed high enough and a baby grows up before its first care request. A Rex at 20× maturation is an adult in under five hours, before the first eight-hour request, so it cannot be imprinted at all. Servers that run very fast maturation usually shorten the care interval for that reason.
Species not listed
Giganotosaurus and Carcharodontosaurus are deliberately missing: the ARK wiki notes they cap each imprint at 4% rather than the normal amount, so the general formula would mislead for them. Every time here is the wiki's maturation time at 1×; the calculator does the rest.
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