ARK Burrowbuck Guide: How to Tame & Abilities

The Burrowbuck's dossier leans into the joke. Studio Wildcard openly describes it as a jackalope, the mythical horned rabbit from 20th-century North American folklore. Its in-game entity ID is literally "Jackalope". This is a deeply silly creature, and Wildcard knows it.

What is less silly is what it actually does. The Burrowbuck is built around tunnels. Wild ones dig escape holes when threatened. Tamed ones dig three completely different types of burrows for the player, and that is where the entire creature's value lives.

To tame one or craft its saddle, you need the Fantastic Tames Season 1 DLC. The pack is paid, and the Burrowbuck is just the first of three creatures inside it. Cerberax follows in Q3 2026 and Enigmasaur in Q4 2026. The full release calendar for everything coming this year is on our ARK: Survival Ascended 2026-2027 roadmap.

Without the DLC, you can still see wild Burrowbucks. You just cannot do anything with them. Which is a little cruel, but here we are.

Burrowbucks spawn on almost every map in the game. The Island, The Center, Scorched Earth, Aberration, Ragnarok, Extinction, Valguero, Astraeos. They like grasslands and forest edges, anywhere green and open. On The Island, head to the southern beaches or the outskirts of the Redwoods. On Ragnarok, the Highlands are full of them. They are not rare, and you do not need a perfect spawn location to find your first one.

There is one important warning before you start sneaking. Wild Burrowbucks place decoy burrows around themselves, and these things are traps. Step on one and you fall in, get stuck, and the Burrowbuck immediately turns hostile. Watch the ground.

The Burrowbuck is a passive tame, which usually means easy. The Burrowbuck is the exception. It is one of the most skittish creatures in the game, and a single mistake will send it leaping across the map in a way that genuinely tests your patience.

You will want a few things before you start. Full Ghillie Suit, every piece, no exceptions. Anything less and the Burrowbuck spots you before you get close. You will also need taming food. Superior Kibble is the fastest and best option. Rockarrot is the budget choice and still works well. Carrots, crops, and berries technically work too, but they are painfully slow. Bring more food than you think you need, because some of your feeds will get interrupted by wild predators, terrain, or your own clumsiness.

Once you are ready, the routine looks like this. Put your taming food in the last slot of your hotbar. Equip the full Ghillie. Crouch. Stay crouched the whole time. Approach from behind, because the Burrowbuck always tries to escape in the opposite direction from where you are standing. Use that. Position the creature with its back to a wall, a cliff, or your parked flyer, so it has nowhere clean to flee.

When the feed prompt appears, hit interact. The Burrowbuck eats, then leaps away. Sometimes that leap is short. Sometimes it travels hundreds of meters and ends in a tree. Follow it, find it, crouch again, repeat.

A level 150 tame finishes in roughly three minutes with Superior Kibble, with each feed giving around 45% progress. Most clean tames need only a few feeds total. The hard part is not the math, it is the chase.

One last warning, and this one is important. Never let a Burrowbuck flee toward water. They bob in place when they hit the ocean, which makes them perfect snacks for any Megalodon swimming by. If you see yours heading for the coast, reposition fast and push it inland. Many promising tames have ended with a survivor watching their dinner get eaten from the shore.

This is where the Burrowbuck starts feeling overpowered. The Burrowbuck Saddle unlocks at level 33, which is extraordinarily early for what this mount can do. Crafting cost is 80 Fiber, 150 Hide, 10 Cementing Paste or Achatina Paste, and 2 Metal Ingots. Made at any Smithy. That is roughly thirty minutes of farming on a fresh server.

For comparison, a Rex saddle unlocks at level 74. The Burrowbuck gives you fast travel, invisibility, and a base bunker, all by level 33.

The Burrowbuck has more active abilities than most mounts in the game. Some are flashy. Some are subtle. All of them work together.

Triple jump. Tap space mid-air for a double jump, then tap again for a third. It does not sound like much until you realize you can clear cliffs that normally need a flyer.

Long jump. Hold space while looking up and the Burrowbuck winds up a charged leap. The distance you get on this is genuinely silly. Over fences, across rivers, up cliff faces. It feels like cheating.

Dirt camo. Right-click and the Burrowbuck briefly digs underground, then surfaces invisible for about 7 seconds. Perfect for scouting an enemy base, slipping past a wild Giga, or just buying yourself a moment to think.

Dust kick. When threatened, the Burrowbuck kicks up a blinding cloud of dirt that disorients anything nearby. Mostly useful as an escape tool.

The three burrow modes. Press C to dig. Press X to cycle between types. This is the real reason you tame a Burrowbuck.

The Hideaway Burrow is a temporary underground bunker that lasts about two days before collapsing. You can put storage, beds, cryopods, and most small structures inside. Turrets and large industrial benches do not fit. Players can still rocket into it, but they cannot place C4 inside, and the entrance can be defended. Great for raid prep, stashing loot for a day, or building a forward operating base.

The Gateway Burrow is the headline feature. Place up to six of these anywhere on the map. Open the menu, pick a destination, and you teleport, with your full inventory and nearby tames coming with you. No item drops, no weight checks, no cooldown beyond the dig animation. It is functionally a six-point fast travel network that respects your weight stat, which is something the game has never offered before. For PvE players, this is a permanent quality-of-life upgrade. For PvP players, it is a repositioning tool that breaks the meta a little.

The Trap Burrow is the spiteful one. It looks identical to the other two from the outside, but anyone who steps on it falls in and gets stuck. Set a few of these around your base entrance and watch raiders disappear. Or use them to catch fleeing wild tames you actually want.

Crucially, all three burrow types look the same from the surface, so enemies cannot tell which one they are about to walk onto. The mind games write themselves.

The Burrowbuck is the best early-game utility mount in ARK right now. You get it at level 33, it costs almost nothing to saddle, and it does five things no other mount can do. If you are starting a new playthrough, taming one should be near the top of your priority list.

In PvP, the Burrowbuck is a tribe-trickery machine. Trap Burrows seed your base perimeter. Gateway Burrows give you repositioning options most tribes will not see coming. Dirt Camo gives you a small but meaningful escape window during a fight. It is not a raid creature, but it shapes the battlefield in a way few other mounts do.

In PvE, it is pure convenience. The Gateway network alone justifies the tame. Combine it with weight reduction on certain resources and you have a permanent solution to ARK's ancient "I am too heavy to walk home" problem.

What it cannot do is fight. The Burrowbuck has weak combat stats, takes 120% extra damage from certain predators, and falls apart against spike walls. Do not bring it to a boss arena. Do not try to solo a Rex with it. Use it for everything else.

A few practical notes that will save you frustration.

Never step on the decoy burrows around a wild Burrowbuck. They are traps, and falling in turns the creature hostile mid-tame.

Keep your back to land, never water. A fleeing Burrowbuck always heads opposite to your position, and you do not want to send one to the bottom of the ocean.

Bring more food than you think you need. Tames get interrupted constantly.

Your Hideaway Burrow decays after about 48 hours. Enter it at least once every two days or you lose anything stored inside.

Players can always enter your burrows, regardless of type. The disguise hides which one it is, but the inside is not safe from a determined raider. Defend the outside.

Yes. Easily. The Burrowbuck is the kind of creature that retroactively changes how you play. Once you have a Gateway network running and a Hideaway burrow for emergency stashes, you stop wanting to play without one. The Fantastic Tames Season 1 DLC is a paid pack, but the Burrowbuck alone delivers more day-to-day usefulness than most premium mounts in the game.

How do you tame a Burrowbuck in ARK?
Wear a full Ghillie Suit, crouch, approach from behind, and feed it Superior Kibble or Rockarrot. It is a passive tame, so no knockout is needed. It will leap away after each feed, so follow and repeat until tamed.

Do you need a DLC to tame the Burrowbuck?
Yes. The Burrowbuck is part of the paid Fantastic Tames Season 1 DLC. Without it you can see wild Burrowbucks but cannot tame them or craft the saddle.

What level is the Burrowbuck saddle?
The saddle unlocks at level 33 and costs 15 Engram Points. Crafted at a Smithy with 80 Fiber, 150 Hide, 10 Cementing Paste, and 2 Metal Ingots.

What does the Burrowbuck eat?
Superior Kibble for the fastest tame, Rockarrot as a strong budget alternative. It also accepts carrots, crops, and various berries, though those are much slower.

Where do Burrowbucks spawn?
On most ARK maps including The Island, The Center, Scorched Earth, Aberration, Ragnarok, Extinction, Valguero, and Astraeos. They prefer grasslands and forest biomes.

Can the Burrowbuck really fast-travel?
Yes. Its Gateway Burrow mode lets you place up to six linked teleport points on the map. You can travel between them with your full inventory and nearby tames, and no item drops.