Gravetail: Death Recovery Companion
Dying in ARK: Survival Ascended is rarely gentle. One moment you are hauling a full inventory of polymer, blueprints, and your best flak armor across the map, and the next you are staring at a respawn screen while a pack of raptors guards everything you own. The Gravetail: Death Recovery Companion exists to soften that sting. This small, bad-tempered shoulder mount is fiercely loyal, and its entire purpose is to make sure your death cache does not become a permanent loss.
What the Gravetail Actually Does
Keep a Gravetail perched on your shoulder and its core ability arms itself automatically. When you die, the creature leaves your shoulder, locates your death cache, recovers the belongings stored inside, carries them safely in its own inventory, and returns to you after you respawn. This covers recoverable items from your main inventory, hotbar, equipped armor, and cosmetic slots. No button press, no whistle command, no manual input of any kind.
There is one hard requirement: the Gravetail must be alive and on your shoulder at the moment of death. While it runs its recovery mission, it is protected, allowing it to cross hostile territory without being killed before it reaches you. The Gravetail: Death Recovery Companion for ARK: Survival Ascended turns a full-loot disaster into a minor inconvenience, which is exactly why so many survivors refuse to leave base without one.
Deathrunner's Recovery and Deathrunner's Grace
Hauling an entire death cache is exhausting work. After returning your gear, the Gravetail enters Deathrunner's Recovery and falls asleep. During this window it cannot retrieve another cache, cannot be picked up, cannot be placed into a Cryopod, and must finish resting before it can be carried again. You will receive Deathrunner's Grace, a status effect confirming your belongings are back and your companion is recuperating. Plan your riskier expeditions around this cooldown, because a sleeping Gravetail will not save you twice in a row.
Rage: Small Body, Serious Threat
Do not mistake its size for weakness. When a Gravetail's health drops below 25 percent, it automatically enters Rage. It grows larger, shifts color, and becomes wreathed in fiery smoke. While enraged it gains increased melee damage, increased movement speed, 80 percent reduced incoming damage, an aggressive combat state, and temporary resistance to survivor commands. Rage has a cooldown and cannot trigger continuously, but it lets the creature survive fights that would flatten anything else its size.
Its attack kit is simple and vicious: a quick Bite and a heavier two-part Double Bite. Combined with a tiny hitbox and Rage mitigation, the Gravetail punches far above its weight class when cornered.
Taming and Spawn Locations
Wild Gravetails roam open grassland regions, typically the same areas inhabited by Dodos. Their spawns are additive, so they do not replace Dodos or remove any vanilla creatures from the map. Taming is a knockout tame, and food choice matters:
- Gravetail Kibble: fastest tame and the best Taming Effectiveness.
- Spoiled Meat: slower tame with considerably lower Taming Effectiveness.
Once tamed, the Gravetail lives on Spoiled Meat, making upkeep cheap. Be careful during taming attempts, because a wild Gravetail can enter Rage when injured. If you would rather skip the hunt entirely, the foxygame.net launcher lists the Gravetail: Death Recovery Companion in its add-on catalog and handles the one-click install for you, so you can be back on the grassland taming instead of digging through folders.
Version Support and Mod Compatibility
The add-on is built for current ARK: Survival Ascended builds on both Steam and console platforms, and it is designed to slot in cleanly alongside other mods without touching vanilla spawn tables. Because ASA mods occasionally need updates after major game patches, always check that your installed version matches your game build before loading a save. If you want to download Gravetail: Death Recovery Companion, use the in-game mod browser or your preferred launcher and confirm the version listed is compatible with your current patch.
How to Install
Learning how to install the mod takes only a minute. Subscribe or add it through your mod source, let it download, then enable it in your active mod list before launching your world. Load order rarely matters here since the Gravetail does not overwrite existing spawns, but keeping it near the top of your list avoids conflicts with overhaul mods.
Admin Spawn Commands
Server owners and solo players can spawn one directly:
- Cheat Summon Gravetail_Character_BP_C (wild)
- Cheat GMSummon Gravetail_Character_BP_C 150 (level 150 tamed)
Final Thoughts
The Gravetail: Death Recovery Companion solves one of ARK's oldest frustrations without breaking balance. It retrieves your loot, needs rest afterward, and turns into a fire-wreathed menace if something tries to stop it. Whether you want insurance against a bad death or simply an angry rat riding into battle on your shoulder, this companion follows you beyond death and brings your belongings back with it.