How to tame a Rock Elemental in ARK: Survival Ascended with a cannon funnel

Why the funnel works (and what it is not)

The Rock Elemental is awkward for one reason: it barely reacts to normal knockout tools. The ARK wiki states that it will not take torpor damage from the regular methods, so tranq darts and arrows are not the way. You need a large projectile, which means a Cannon, and you have to hit the head. A body shot does plenty of ordinary damage instead of torpor, and the wiki warns that it can kill the creature.

So the whole problem is positioning. A Rock Elemental that wanders, circles and throws boulders is hard to hit in the head with a cannon you cannot aim in real time. In his video, Raconin solves that with a small metal funnel made of triangle and regular foundations. It does not trap or hold the creature. It simply steers it into the same patch of ground in front of your cannon every time, so the cannon only needs to be aimed once.

What you need

The video lists the following build materials. Counts are as Raconin gives them; the exact pieces are easy to follow on screen if you watch the build once.

Why metal? The wiki notes that the Rock Elemental's thrown rock deals 300 damage and can damage even stone structures. Metal is the sensible minimum for anything that stands in its line of fire.

About the Cannon itself

• Per the wiki, the Cannon is unlocked at level 34 for 25 Engram Points and needs the Catapult Turret engram first. It is crafted in a Smithy (or a platform saddle, Tek Replicator or Exo-Mek) and needs a Refining Forge.
• Its angle changes in steps of 5, it cannot be aimed and fired at the same time, and it fires once before you must reload by hand. Plan to stand next to it with your ammo ready.
• The wiki specifically lists the Cannon as a great tool for taming the Rock Elemental, and gives a headshot figure of roughly 1,800 torpor per Cannon Ball in its trivia. Treat that as a rough guide: a low-level Rock Elemental needs only a handful of head hits, a high-level one proportionally more.

Build the funnel step by step

Follow this order; it is the order used in the video.

1. Lay the base row. Place three regular metal foundations side by side.
2. Add the first triangles. Put one metal triangle foundation on the left end and one on the right end of that row.
3. Narrow it toward the back. Snap three more triangle foundations onto those, extending backward, so the section tapers. This taper is what lines the creature up later.
4. Remove the outer foundations. Pick up the two outer regular foundations and leave only the middle one in place.
5. Extend backward from the middle. From that middle foundation build regular foundations straight back. Raconin recommends six. You can use fewer, but then the Rock Elemental's thrown rocks are more likely to reach and destroy the cannon. Six gives you distance.
6. Keep only the last one. Pick up every extra regular foundation behind the funnel and leave just the very last one at the back. That is the cannon's platform.
7. Add the double doorways. At the back of the triangle section stack two double doorways on the left, one above the other, and repeat on the right. Then place two more on the rear foundation where the cannon will stand.
8. Place the cannon. Set it in the centre of the rear foundation, facing forward, so a straight shot reaches the spot the Rock Elemental will stand in front of the doorways.

The no-extra-foundations alternative

Raconin also shows a shortcut: skip building the long run of foundations and instead walk behind the finished funnel and place the cannon freely on the ground, as long as it sits in the centre behind the structure and can hit the creature's head when it stops in front of the double doorways. It saves materials and time; the trade-off is that you must judge the distance and aim yourself.

The tame, in order

1. Lure it. Walk up until the Rock Elemental notices you and aggros.
2. Run the middle. Sprint straight through the centre of the triangle foundations to the cannon and stay beside it. The creature follows through the narrowing section and ends up in the aimed position.
3. Aim for the head. Adjust the cannon so the shot lands on the head, load a Cannon Ball and fire. Reload and repeat while it stays focused on you.
4. Read the torpor. Raconin uses binoculars to check how much torpor has built up and to estimate how many more shots he needs, which avoids wasting Cannon Balls.
5. Feed it. Once it drops, open its inventory and add Extraordinary Kibble or Sulfur.
6. Guard it. Wait for the taming bar to fill and keep other creatures away from the unconscious Rock Elemental while it does.

Food, torpor and how long it takes

The wiki lists Extraordinary Kibble as the preferred kibble and Sulfur as the preferred food. Torpor on a Rock Elemental starts from a base of 5,000 and its depletion rate grows with level, from about 0.33 per second at level 1 to about 1.13 per second at level 150. In plain terms: the higher the level, the faster it wakes, so the more food you want ready and the more important it is to start feeding the moment it falls.

Kibble is by far the efficient choice. The wiki's optimal-case example for a level 150 Rock Elemental is 35 Extraordinary Kibble against 553 Sulfur, 921 Clay or 1,974 Stone. Those are "optimal case" numbers, so bring more than the table says, and treat Sulfur as the fallback when you have no kibble.

Common mistakes and fixes

• Body shots. Hitting the body gives damage, not torpor. If the creature slides sideways, stop firing and re-lure it rather than shooting at the torso.
• Cannon too close. A Rock Elemental that stands near the cannon will throw rocks at it. Use the six-foundation spacing from the video, or place the cannon farther back in the alternative method.
• Chasing the wrong spot. The funnel only works if you run through its exact centre. Practise the run once without the creature behind you.
• Running out of ammo. Cannon Balls do not stack, so a full hotbar is only a few shots. Keep a storage box beside the platform.
• Letting it wake. Have the kibble in your hand before the final shot, not after.
• Taming a very high level with no safety net. Wild Rock Elementals take only a fraction of normal damage (the wiki lists a 0.1 multiplier while wild), so do not plan to kill and re-roll with weapons. Plan to knock it out properly.

Where to find it and what it gives you

The wiki lists Rock Elemental spawns on Scorched Earth, Ragnarok, Extinction, Crystal Isles, Genesis: Part 2 and Lost Island. That list spans ARK generations, so check the creature list of the ASA map you play. Once tamed it is a strong gatherer: it drops crystal, metal, obsidian, oil, stone and sulfur. Its saddle (the Rock Golem Saddle) is a level 70 engram. For a related low-gear approach to another large creature see our Spino stone-pit guide, and for the other cannon-based tame on this site read the Karkinos trap guide.

If you want to compare this funnel with the other taming structures covered by Raconin, our taming traps compared page puts the materials side by side.

Frequently asked questions