This section is intended to be an exact copy of what the survivor Helena Walker, the author of the dossiers, has written. There may be some discrepancies between this text and the in-game creature.
“
Species
Macrodryadis crystallinus
Time
Post-Holocene
Diet
Omnivore
Temperament
Docile
Wild
A gentle giant, Macrodryadis crystallinus spends its days foraging for food in the dense forest it calls home, though it rarely has to look very far. Thanks to its extraordinary digestive system, not only can Macrodryadis eat just about anything, but it can also turn a diet of scraps into a mountain of precious resources.
Instead of producing excrement, Macrodryadis grows glittering crystals upon its back, which fall off when they reach their full size. Shattering these crystals can yield precious resources, as Macrodryadis is somehow able to transmute the materials it eats into something entirely different.
One of our pilots likened the process to the gachapon machines from his memories of growing up in Japan, and I guess the name stuck.
Domesticated
Though its crystals prevent Macrodryadis from wearing a traditional saddle, if its rider is willing to sit in a basket that hangs from Macrodryadis' neck, then they'll find its long claws are well suited for mining resources. Personally though, I'd keep one around just for the crystals. The free presents, the way they glow at night...totally worth the potential nausea from the basket saddle.
The Gacha roams around in The UnderForest, the deepest area of the Crater Forest, swiping occasionally at rocks, trees and bushes; which they follow with sitting down and eating. They're big and bulky, with relatively good stamina, but, unfortunately, are fairly slow both when walking and running.
Appearance
The Gacha appears to be a large sloth with crystalline formations on its back.
Color Scheme and Regions
This section displays the Gacha's natural colors and regions. For demonstration, the regions below are colored red over an albino Gacha. The colored squares shown underneath each region's description are the colors that the Gacha will randomly spawn with to provide an overall range of its natural color scheme. Hover your cursor over a color to display its name and ID.
This information can be used to alter the Gacha's regions by entering cheat SetTargetDinoColor <ColorRegion> <ColorID> in the cheat console. For instance, cheat SetTargetDinoColor 0 6 would color the Gacha's "skin" magenta.
In the wild, the Gacha will occasionally drop Gacha Crystals which contain various items when consumed in the Inventory. These items include many basic resources such as Thatch, Stone, and Wood to more advanced materials such as Silica Pearls, Silk and Congealed Gas Balls. In addition to the basic crafting materials that can be obtained from the Crystals, occasionally the Gacha will produce a different colored, glowing crystal of a certain quality that when opened, produces fully crafted items such as Wooden Tree Platforms or even something with quality such as an Assault Rifle.
Type in values of a wild creature to see on which stats it's emphasized. Green values on a high-level creature are very good for breeding. If you have already tamed your creature you can try to recover the breeding stats with an external tool.[1]
Gacha
The stat-calculator does not work in the mobile-view, see here for alternatives: Apps
Note that after the creature is tamed it gets bonuses on some stats depending on the taming effectiveness. This makes it hard to retrieve the levels on a tamed creature, so this tool is only for wild ones, but gives a first impression, how well the stats are distributed.
Combat
This section describes how to fight against the Gacha.
General
Gacha have a neutral Temperament and will only attack when provoked. The best method you can use to kill a Gacha is either with a flying creature that shoots a damaging beam/projectile, like Wyverns, or on a creature that deals significant damage and/or has high health. When attempting to kill a Gacha on foot, use of a ranged weapon is advised, Assault Rifles and Fabricated Sniper Rifles, for example, are effective so long as the distance between you and the Gacha is great enough so that they cannot reach you. If, by some circumstance, it does get to you, there are two outcomes: you die a gruesome death, or you manage to outwit it and escape.
Strategy
As the Gacha is usually a passive animal, there are not many reasons for one to become hostile. If you must kill one, they are extremely slow and are not capable of doing significant damage. It is advised to keep out of its range so you can hit it easily. The resources dropped by a dead Gacha are generally inferior to the contents of the crystals they produce while tamed, so there is little reason to kill them.
Weaponry
Few weapons are ineffective against the Gacha as long as you are at a safe distance.
Dangers
They are clumsy, passive creatures that pose little threat to your player; fear of a Gacha would be misplaced.
Weakness
They are slow, have a short attack range and deal minimal damage.
Taming
You can only feed a happy Gacha (without other Gachas being nearby recently). Sad Gachas will ignore you. Just simply drop something on the ground from your inventory, and it will soon eat it. The larger quantity of item dropped, the faster it is tamed. The rarer the dropped item is, the higher level it will become(affecting taming effectiveness).
Taming Food
It will eat EVERYTHING you dropped. For higher taming effectiveness, see below.
Note that the values are for optimal cases, always bring extra supplies!
For a level-dependent count of resources needed, try an external taming calculator.
Preferred Food
Structure stacks are the most effective taming food for Gachas.
The taming effectiveness depends on the number of structures eaten at once, up to 20, so any structure that has less than 20 in stack size should be avoided.
The taming effectiveness depends on the structure tier : Tek > Greenhouse > Metal > Stone > Adobe > Wood > Thatch
Foundations are far more effective than walls and other structures so the Greenhouse tier should be avoided because it doesn't have a foundation.
Taming based on other resources will be far less effective.
You may use Metal, Stone, Berries, then Meat. You will have to time the drop of the item to get it into the path of the gacha and you can drop a stack as the Gacha will pick up the whole stack and eat them continuously until tamed or out of the item. Watch their food meter when traveling long distances and supply it manually.
Conclusion : Stacks of 20 Tek Foundations will offer the highest taming efficiency possible, however most players will want to use cheaper taming food and go for stacks of 20 Metal Foundations instead, which they can farm abundantly in Orbital Supply Drops (Hard or Legendary). Players who are too weak to farm Orbital Supply Drops will use stacks of 20 Cooking Pots.
KO Strategy
The Gacha is not tamed by traditional means, but rather food and items must be dropped in front of it, they eat everything you drop! When tamed, Resource Harvesting is set to disabled by default, though Gacha babies have resource harvesting enabled from birth.
Breeding
When a male and female Gacha mate, the mother produces a Gacha baby after gestation.
The Production wheel of the new Gacha is visible from birth.
Warning: Certain foods will cause the Gacha baby to starve to death! For example, the food meter of Gachas goes down faster than Berries feed them, which means that if they eat berries, they will quickly die. It is therefore recommended to use Meat or Cooked Meat, and also ensuring that they aren't near any troughs that contain berries, since the Gachas sometimes decide to eat berries automatically even when meat is available in the trough too. Note that Stone also feeds them, but at a much slower rate than Meat.
There are many ways to raise Gacha babies. One of the easiest methods is to take advantage of the fact that Gacha babies will pick up anything from the ground, regardless of its own Weight limit. This allows you to dump a lot of meat on the ground, much more than the baby would normally be able to carry with its natural Weight, which the baby will then pick up and keep in its inventory as food. However, this feeding method is wasteful, because Gacha babies will "overeat" even when they aren't actually hungry, and will therefore waste a lot of food. If you decide to feed the baby, you should therefore only feed them via their inventory until they reach Juvenile phase (10.1%+ maturation), after which you should clear their inventory and let them eat from your Troughs instead, since they won't overeat from troughs.
An alternative method for raising Gacha babies is to feed them nothing at all. The baby's inventory must be completely empty. This causes the baby to naturally regenerate Food and Health. However, if the baby picks up anything (usually Feces), it will try to eat it, which briefly stops its natural regeneration of health/food and will quickly starve it within a few minutes. The Gacha baby must also always remain rendered (having 1 or more players nearby) throughout this entire process, because if it enters "stasis" then it will still starve to death. This can be done in intervals while you are online and near the gacha, by simply putting it in a Cryopod when you aren't nearby. Or, if you have the S+ Mod, you can simply put the Gacha babies on an S+ Hitching Post (all variants of the S+ Hitching Posts work), which will then ensure that the Gachas never enter "stasis", and you're therefore able to safely leave their rendering distance.
Upon reaching the juvenile phase (10.1%+ maturation), the Gacha baby will be able to eat from your Feeding Trough, which means that you can safely leave the Gacha or even log off, since it will simply feed itself via the trough. Alternatively, you can still opt to feed them nothing at all, and easily let them grow all the way from 0% to 100% maturation without any food, by simply placing them somewhere that's out of range of your troughs, so that they don't waste any of your trough's food.
In summary, players with the S+ Hitching Post mod can simply let the Gacha baby stay leashed, outside of your trough ranges, all the way from 0% to 100% maturation, and will never have to be within rendering distance of the Gacha. If you don't have any mods and are playing completely standard ARK, you will always have to be within rendering distance until the Gacha baby reaches 10.1%+ maturation (Juvenile phase), after which it can feed itself from your troughs. Alternatively, if you don't want to use the no-food method, you can simply feed it from 0% to 100% or 0% to 10.1% by placing lots of food in its inventory, as explained above.
Note: Contrary to popular belief, the "no food" method of raising Gacha babies does NOT require wandering enabled or any adult Gacha nearby.
Technical details: A non-adult gacha will periodically have a massive amount of health and food restored to it as long as it isn't in stasis (meaning that it's either in render distance, or is attached to an S+ Hitching Post). This effectively means they don't need food as long as they are being rendered. The eating animation (when the Gacha sits down and munches on stuff in its inventory) temporarily breaks this mechanic. Even a Gacha with thousands of food will run out in mere minutes and begin starving if this happens. That's why it's very important that the babies don't pick up and eat anything, if you want to successfully raise Gachas via the "no food" method!
Note: It appears the Gacha does not receive an imprint bonus to its Crafting Skill.
Utility
Gachas are solitary creatures, except when they have one (and only one) mate with them. If there is a same gender Gacha within 14 or less foundation range, they will become 'sad'; other than their facial expression, they will refuse to look directly at the survivor if "Ally-Looking" is on, they will not pick up items/resources dropped near them (they will make an expression with their head turned away in front rather than grabbing it), and they will very rarely produce crystal (with severe resource rate drop), or eat anything in their inventory even if Stone or other resource/item are placed inside. Moreover, if they had eaten Snow Owl Pellet, dreary flecks of light will appear behind where the lights would be.
Even if the Gacha of the same gender leaves the sadness range, the previous Gacha with the said gender will remain sad for a time unless reintroduced to the opposite gender Gacha.
Note that baby/juvenile/adolescent Gachas ignore these effects until they are adult, and adult Gachas are not affected by nearby baby/juvenile/adolescent Gachas, even if they came from different parents.
Roles
An example of the production choices for a Gacha.
Resource Spawner
The Gacha retains its ability to create resources by consuming items and transmuting them into Gacha Crystal. Each Gacha, tamed or bred, will only be able to produce 6 random resources from a large pool of potential resources, including many DLC-exclusive ones, making it a renewable source of materials that would otherwise be impossible to acquire naturally in some maps. Their production is always structured so that it can produce 3 'common' resources, 2 'uncommon' resources and 1 'rare' or 'very rare' resource as shown below, with each tier producing different quantities per Gacha Crystal. The probabilities of the very rare being selected over the rare ones is 1%. Bred Gachas are not influenced by the possible resources of the parents. Via the selection wheel, survivors can select which of the available resources that their Gacha will produce (or select Any to produce them randomly from the production wheel). Cloning a Gacha will make an exact copy of the resources from the original. In addition, Gachas will sometimes produce 'loot' of varying qualities, which will be denoted by quality-colored Gacha Crystals (white/primitive, green/ramshackle, deep blue/apprentice, though the item produced isn't necessarily of that quality but rather reflects the range of qualities possible from that Gacha Crystal).
Place resources within the Gacha's inventory and the Gacha will slowly consume them randomly to produce Gacha Crystal on their back.
The quality and type of the resource the Gacha eats will affect the Gacha Crystal's quantity of contained resources and quality of the loot. A very popular feeding method is therefore to feed them Plant Species Y Traps, which creates very high quality loot and lots of resources, since the game seems to think that Plant Species Y Traps are a "Structure" (which therefore has much higher "Gacha nutritional value" than basic resources such as Stones). Note that Preserving Salt does not extend the spoil timer of the Plant Species Y Traps.
Gachas have a Crafting Skill stat that can be improved to increase the crafting speed, quantity of resources, and quality of loot. This skill is not improved by the imprinting process. Community testing[original post deleted] has revealed that the "sweetspot" is to have 160% Crafting Skill on your Gachas if you want to focus on resource creation, since having 160% skill causes the Gacha to produce Gacha Crystals containing up-to the maximum possible amount of the desired resource. If you continue leveling Crafting Skill after that, then the Gacha will generate more and more loot, and less and less resources, and the loot (weapons and armor) will have higher quality. So if your Gacha is intended to make resources, then you should aim at having at LEAST 160% skill (having a few percent higher, such as 161.4%, is fine, but having LESS than 160% is NOT okay since the 160% level must be reached for the game to treat the Gacha as a "master resource producer"). If you instead want your Gacha to make loot (instead of resources), then you should continue to raise its Crafting Skill beyond 160%; in fact, the next "big jump" is if you somehow manage to reach 260% crafting skill, which makes the Gacha Crystals drop very little resources, but a ton of Ascendant and Mastercraft loot instead. It's not worth continuing after 260% skill when focusing on loot production. However, note that the EASIEST way to make high quality loot is actually just to have a "normal" 160% Crafting Skill amount, and then feed the Gacha Plant Species Y Traps (high quality food, see above) and Snow Owl Pellets (buff food, see below), which together allows very high quality loot to drop effortlessly, without having to invest a ton of points into Crafting Skill.
"Wander Enabled" is NOT required for the Gacha Crystal creation.
After consuming enough resources, Gacha Crystals will fall off and can be collected. A crystaline sound effect can be heard over a fair distance when this happens.
A Snow Owl Pellet will provide a one time buff that decreases the amount of resources require to build them, increases the quality of loot produced, and increases the quantity of resources inside the Gacha Crystals (by double on average). The Gacha will not eat a Snow Owl Pellet if it already has the buff, which means that it won't waste them. Snow Owl(s) can be placed to face a Gacha and it will pick up spat out Snow Owl Pellets which can save you from manually collecting and distributing them. It will always eat one first prior to eating other things to enable the buff. NOTE: It does not count as "Crystal producing food", so you will still need to feed it normal Gacha food too.
Consumption of resources is disabled when 'Sad', which occurs when they are nearby to other Gacha, unless it is only nearby one other Gacha of the opposite gender, or they sustain damage. The multi-colored 'disco lights' present when being fed Snow Owl Pellets are instead replaced by dreary flecks of light, it's face is unhappy with drooping ears and avoids looking at the players.
Sometimes the Gacha Crystals keep floating in mid-air. A Megatherium is ideal to still reach it; they are common in the Sanctuary, have a similar height to the Gacha, and the survivor can stand on its back to pick up the Gacha Crystal.
Gacha can be knocked out just like other passive tames in the game, however they cannot be tamed while unconscious.
A Gacha in a cryopod can be an alternative to the Chainsaw when it comes to gathering Sap, Blue Crystalized Sap and Red Crystalized Sap from special trees, especially Red Crystalized Sap for which the Gacha has maximum gathering efficiency. Level up Melee Damage.
Transport
While slow, the Gacha has a high stamina and a high carry weight to move items from place to place. As they can be carried by Quetzal, they can also be used for long distance transport as an alternative for Delivery Crate.
Note: Gachas will eat anything, (save poop excluding snow owl pellets and several other items) and as such, should not be used as a transport creature lest it eat the items in transport or you constantly keep the creature sad.
Poop Collector
The Gacha automatically picks-up Feces and Achatina Paste, which are among the few resources that the Gacha will not eat. Be aware that Gachas can pick-up and eat virtually everything, including weapons, blueprints and filled cryopods.
After further tests, the Gacha actually does eat Feces whenever it sits down, so it is not a reliable poop collector. This could be circumvented by filling their inventory with fiber assuming they would prioritize anything over Feces, but this needs to be tested.
Weight Reduction
The Gacha reduces the weight of the following resources by the listed amount while they are in its inventory:
This mechanic and the name Gacha are a reference to "gachapon", the Japanese toy machine in which after putting in money, a plastic egg pops out with a random collectible toy. The name is onomatopoeia of the sounds the machine makes ("Gacha " from turning the knob, "pon" from the capsule dropping down).
In lore, the person who had childhood memories of Japan that Helena Walker was referring to was Takaya Kazuma, one of the Mek pilots in-training who was from the URE. Connecting info with the fact that he was from the futuristic Panasian alliance of the URE, this implies that Japan allied with the URE in the ARK universe.
The Gacha's species name, "Macrodryadis crystallinus", means "Great dryad which crystallizes" in Latin.
The Gacha appears to eat 'anything' whilst not being ridden. when its being riden it will eat typical food items such as Meat and Berries.
One of the most common misconception of keeping their hunger up was they eat Snow Owl Pellet when their food is low. That is not the case regardless of their mood. They will eat it almost immediately as long as they are not under the buff effect.
Prior to Patch 288.113, Gacha can also potentially spew out Journeyman, Mastercraft and Ascendant Crystals which contains items beyond the cap. Items from these crystals are now found at crystal quality below Journeyman at a rare rate.
Yes
No
Region 0:
Region 2:
Region 3:
Region 4:
Region 5:
Thatch, 
Stone, and 
Wood to more advanced materials such as 
Silica Pearls, 
Silk and 
Congealed Gas Balls. In addition to the basic crafting materials that can be obtained from the Crystals, occasionally the Gacha will produce a different colored, glowing crystal of a certain quality that when opened, produces fully crafted items such as 
Wooden Tree Platforms or even something with quality such as an 
Assault Rifle.
Health
Stamina
Oxygen
Food
Weight
Melee Damage
Movement Speed
Crafting Skill
Torpidity
Cooking Pots stacks are surprisingly effective, somewhere in-between 
Metal Foundations and 
Stone Foundations.
Metal, 
Berries, then 
Meat. You will have to time the drop of the item to get it into the path of the gacha and you can drop a stack as the Gacha will pick up the whole stack and eat them continuously until tamed or out of the item. Watch their food meter when traveling long distances and supply it manually.
Tek Foundations will offer the highest taming efficiency possible, however most players will want to use cheaper taming food and go for stacks of 20 
Orbital Supply Drops (Hard or Legendary). Players who are too weak to farm Orbital Supply Drops will use stacks of 20 
Cooked Meat, and also ensuring that they aren't near any troughs that contain berries, since the Gachas sometimes decide to eat berries automatically even when meat is available in the trough too. Note that 
Feces), it will try to eat it, which briefly stops its natural regeneration of health/food and will quickly starve it within a few minutes. The Gacha baby must also always remain rendered (having 1 or more players nearby) throughout this entire process, because if it enters "stasis" then it will still starve to death. This can be done in intervals while you are online and near the gacha, by simply putting it in a Cryopod when you aren't nearby. Or, if you have the S+ Mod, you can simply put the Gacha babies on an S+ Hitching Post (all variants of the S+ Hitching Posts work), which will then ensure that the Gachas never enter "stasis", and you're therefore able to safely leave their rendering distance.
Crafting Skill.
Snow Owl Pellet, dreary flecks of light will appear behind where the lights would be.
Gacha Crystal. Each Gacha, tamed or bred, will only be able to produce 6 random resources from a large pool of potential resources, including many DLC-exclusive ones, making it a renewable source of materials that would otherwise be impossible to acquire naturally in some maps. Their production is always structured so that it can produce 3 'common' resources, 2 'uncommon' resources and 1 'rare' or 'very rare' resource as shown below, with each tier producing different quantities per Gacha Crystal. The probabilities of the very rare being selected over the rare ones is 1%. Bred Gachas are not influenced by the possible resources of the parents. Via the selection wheel, survivors can select which of the available resources that their Gacha will produce (or select Any to produce them randomly from the production wheel). Cloning a Gacha will make an exact copy of the resources from the original. In addition, Gachas will sometimes produce 'loot' of varying qualities, which will be denoted by quality-colored Gacha Crystals (white/primitive, green/ramshackle, deep blue/apprentice, though the item produced isn't necessarily of that quality but rather reflects the range of qualities possible from that Gacha Crystal).
Plant Species Y Traps, which creates very high quality loot and lots of resources, since the game seems to think that Plant Species Y Traps are a "Structure" (which therefore has much higher "Gacha nutritional value" than basic resources such as 
Preserving Salt does not extend the spoil timer of the Plant Species Y Traps.
Snow Owl(s) can be placed to face a Gacha and it will pick up spat out Snow Owl Pellets which can save you from manually collecting and distributing them. It will always eat one first prior to eating other things to enable the buff. NOTE: It does not count as "Crystal producing food", so you will still need to feed it normal Gacha food too.
Megatherium is ideal to still reach it; they are common in the Sanctuary, have a similar height to the Gacha, and the survivor can stand on its back to pick up the Gacha Crystal.
Chainsaw when it comes to gathering 
Sap, 
Blue Crystalized Sap and 
Red Crystalized Sap from special trees, especially Red Crystalized Sap for which the Gacha has maximum gathering efficiency. Level up 
Melee Damage.
Quetzal, they can also be used for long distance transport as an alternative for 
Delivery Crate.
Note: Gachas will eat anything, (save poop excluding snow owl pellets and several other items) and as such, should not be used as a transport creature lest it eat the items in transport or you constantly keep the creature sad.
Achatina Paste, 
Metal
Stone
Wood
Fungal Wood
Flint
Red Crystalized Sap
Thatch
Raw Meat
Fiber
Raw Prime Meat
Corrupted Nodule
Blue Crystalized Sap
ARK: Survival Evolved Changes
Gacha is added to the game
Custom Consumables or buff soups and dishes, and won't eat them if stored in a 
Feeding Trough
Fungal Wood
