Companions
A Companion is a tamed creature you assign to work for you. Companions are the payoff of Taming: each one grants a passive bonus to the skill it is suited to.
How companions work
[edit | edit source]- You can assign one active companion per skill — the creature applies its bonus only to that skill while assigned.
- Companion bonuses come in types such as faster action speed or a chance for extra yield, depending on the species. See the roster on the Creatures page for each creature's bonus.
- Companions must be kept fed; a hungry companion stops providing its bonus until fed. Diet foods come from Cooking and Farming (see Diets).
- Equipping Dino Gear (a saddle or barding) can further boost a companion.
Getting companions
[edit | edit source]- Level Taming and tame a creature (it joins your Stable).
- Assign it to the skill it benefits.
- Feed it to keep the bonus active.
Stronger companions come from deeper Biomes and from Breeding and Imprinting for improved stats.
Fighting alongside you (your pack)
[edit | edit source]A creature can either work a skill or fight in your pack — not both at once (putting a worker into the pack pulls it off its job, and vice versa). Your pack unlocks at Taming 10 and grows to 5 slots; assign members on the Player page, where your roster is sorted into Pack, Working, Idle, and Away.
Pack members carry their own Health: in a fight their pool soaks part of every hit for you, and a member drained to 0 is injured (adding no strength and unable to work) until it heals — health only refills while a dino is resting (neither working nor fighting). Every fight also earns the pack veteran levels, which raise these contributions over time.
Pack Power is the strip that spells out exactly how much your pack adds:
- Hunting — bonus attack and how much faster you bring quarry down.
- Expeditions and Delving — bonus strength on every run; dinos suited to caves add a ×1.25 edge underground.
On Expeditions you can also give each pack member a role — Attack, Guard, or Scout — to shape how runs resolve (see Party roles).
Hired hands (background gathering)
[edit | edit source]From Taming 25, a working companion can be given a task: one gathering action it keeps running in the background, even while you personally do something else — or are offline.
- Which skills — only Foraging, Logging, Mining, and Fishing can be tasked. Processing, combat, Farming, and Delving cannot.
- Only what you could gather yourself — a dino can be tasked to gather a resource only from a biome or tier you have already unlocked. Locked options stay listed in the picker, greyed out with what's needed (e.g. " Harvest Sulfur — clear the Scorched Badlands"); clear that biome and the task lights up.
- What you get — the action's guaranteed drops only, at roughly a third of hands-on speed (a stronger companion buff works a little faster). Background work earns no XP, no rare drops, no pets or mastery — playing the skill yourself is always better; hired hands just keep the basket full.
- Task slots — one slot at Taming 25; the Foreman's Whistle Shop upgrade adds up to two more (three total).
- Upkeep — a hungry worker's task pauses until you restock its diet food, and the "while you were away" summary reports what your hired hands hauled in.
- Recent gathers — a working dino shows a recent-gathers line on its skill page (and its latest hauls appear in the Stable's hired-hands strip), so you can see at a glance what each worker is bringing in.
Reaching high lifetime background gathers unlocks the Delegator achievement track.
Best companion for each skill
[edit | edit source]Every species buffs exactly one skill, so there's a clear "best" companion for each. Double buffs give extra output (more materials); speed buffs finish actions faster (more XP per hour). Pick double when you want the resource, speed when you're chasing levels. The "earlier pick" column is a solid stand-in you can tame long before the top choice.
| Skill | Best companion | Buff | Earlier pick |
|---|---|---|---|
| Foraging | Therizinosaurus (Taming 86) | 20% double | Iguanodon (12) — 15% double |
| Logging | Stegosaurus (46) | 25% double | Triceratops (40) — 20% double |
| Mining | Doedicurus (64) | 25% double | Glyptodon (1) — 15% double |
| Fishing | Plesiosaurus (71) | 20% double | Fisher Bird (20) — 15% double |
| Cooking | Gastornis (35) | 15% double | Oviraptor (53) — 15% speed |
| Crafting | Argentavis (84) | 20% double | Woolly Mammoth (78) — 15% double |
| Smithing | Dunkleosteus (72) | 15% double | Elasmotherium (76) — 12% speed |
| Alchemy | Ceratosaurus (79) | 20% speed | Dimetrodon (56) — 15% double |
| Hunting | Tyrannosaurus (81) | 25% double | Allosaurus (52) — 20% double |
| Taming | Yutyrannus (99) | 25% speed | Hatzegopteryx (85) — 20% speed |
| Expeditions | Giganotosaurus (95) | 15% double | Sarcosuchus (59) — 12% speed |
| Delving | Basilosaurus (93) | 15% double | Yi (48) — 15% speed |
| Farming | Megatherium (74) | 25% speed | Diplodocus (38) — 18% speed |
A saddle (Dino Gear) can raise a companion's buff further, and a companion only works while it's assigned to its skill's slot and fed — a hungry companion stops buffing until you restock its food.
