Yes. Homing Pigeon is fully stackable and can work in any order.

Flyers equipped with the Homing Pigeon Leg Ring will automatically attempt to return to the closest Homing Pigeon Flag owned by the tribe (or the default return flag set for the flyer), in the event that the rider dies.

A reference to the rider is defined when the following conditions are both true:

• The flyer has a mount (ie: a player riding it)
  
• The flyer is airborn

The reference to the rider is cleared when you safely dismount from the flyer (ie: you land and dismount). In the event that you die after you have safely dismounted, the flyer will not return to a Homing Pigeon Flag. This is by design.

Alternatively you can manually recall a flyer to a flag by using the multi-use menu on the flag (hold 'E' when facing the flag) by selecting "Recall to Flag...".

You can also manually send a flyer to a flag by using the multi-use menu on a flyer equipped with the Homing Pigeon Leg Ring (hold 'E' when facing the flyer) by selecting "Homing Pigeon > Send to Flag...".


Public Homing Pigeon flags act as public rally points for any tribe's flyers equipped with the Homing Pigeon Leg Ring (useful for shared resource areas). They allow flyers to be manually sent/recalled to the flag. They do not permit auto-return flights by design, tribe's must still place their own Homing Pigeon Flags for auto-return behaviour to trigger.

In addition, Public Homing Pigeon Flags have the following characteristics:

• Can only be spawned in via an admin command.
  
• Can only be placed or demolished by an admin user.
  
• Can be placed near enemy structures.
  
• Cannot be damaged by players.

The Homing Pigeon Bird Seed can be fed to any dino that does not have a costume slot. Upon consuming the Homing Pigeon Bird Seed the dino will have their costume slot enabled. Note: You will need to close, and re-open the dino's inventory for the change in the UI to be applied.

Homing Pigeon Letters and any items skinned with the Homing Pigeon Parcel skin can be delivered to Homing Pigeon Mailboxes.

Place the items you wish to be delivered in the inventory of a flyer equipped with the Homing Pigeon Leg Ring, and use the "Send to Destination..." feature to send the flyer to a Homing Pigeon Mailbox. Upon arriving at the destination, any Homing Pigeon Letters or items skinned with the Homing Pigeon Parcel skin will be transferred from the flyer's inventory to the Mailbox's inventory. Any items that are in the flyers inventory that are not skinned with the Homing Pigeon Parcel will be left untouched and in the inventory of the flyer.

Yes. The mod uses a custom dynamic collision avoidance system, which is triggered through raycasting to steer the flyer around the obstacle. To mitigate the amount of collision avoidance the flyer has to perform, the mod creates a flight path at ~60-80% of the max world height which the flyer will fly up to before proceeding to the target flag.

Currently, the Homing Pigeon Leg Ring (which provides the core functionality of the mod) can be equipped to the following dinos from the vanilla game and DLC expansions packs:

• Pteranodon
  
• Argentavis
  
• Quetzalcoatlus
  
• Dimorphodon (Requires Homing Pigeon Bird Seed to add costume slot)
  
• Pelagornis
  
• Tapejara
  
• Ichthyornis (Requires Homing Pigeon Bird Seed to add costume slot)
  
• Giant Bee
  
• Griffin
  
• Wyvern

Other dinos added by mods are also supported. Check out the mod integrations thread to see which mods Homing Pigeon officially supports.

See this discussion thread to find out which mods Homing Pigeon has integrated support for and what mod authors need to do in order to integrate.

Keep up to date with current development by bookmarking the dev sprint board[trello.com].


The Homing Pigeon Leg Ring static mesh will visibly appear attached to the leg of the following dinos:

• Pteranodon
  
• Argentavis
  
• Quetzalcoatlus
  
• Tapejara
  
• Griffin

The reason why it only appears on a subset of dinos that the mod supports is because on the other dinos there are no suitable skeletal sockets for the leg ring's static mesh to attach to. This decision was reached so that the mod can remain stackable, the alternative would of required the mod to remap the vanilla dinos to custom dinos.

Regardless of whether the static mesh is visible on the dino or not, so long as the Homing Pigeon Leg Ring is equipped to the dino's costume slot, the mod will function as expected.

Yes. Because the mod is stackable, it should work with any custom map.

That being said, from time to time the mod may need adjusting in order to alter the flight path specifically for a given map (usually because the map author hasn't implemented the ceiling bounds of their map in a standard way like The Island or Scorched Earth has). If you come across a map which Homing Pigeon does not work on, please let me know by filing a bug on the Bugs thread, stating which map and accompanied with a link to the map's Steam Workshop page.


Yes, please take a look at the GameUserSettings.ini thread for a full list of options accompanied by an explanation of what each option does.

The Engram entries are as follows:

Homing Pigeon Flag

Homing Pigeon Flag (Public)

Homing Pigeon Leg Ring

Homing Pigeon Paper

Homing Pigeon Parcel

Homing Pigeon Mailbox

Homing Pigeon Bird Seed


I don't have any plans to support land/sea based dinos for a couple of technical reasons:

• ARK: Survival Evolved does not implement any type of navigation pathing system (such as Unreal's NavMesh). Why? I don't know, perhaps for performance reasons.
  
• Without a navigation pathing system, it would be impossible to support the returning of a land or sea based creature without it getting stuck on the terrain/environment.
  
• Implementing my own pathing system is not something I would ever wish to build given the huge technical challenge such an undertaking would require.

Some people have asked me on a related note whether I would consider implementing some kind of mechanic to "tether" a dino to a fixed point and return them should they wander too far. While this is more feasible than the first scenario described above, it would still suffer from the same technical constraints. Therefore, I have no plans to support something like this either.

Please read the following resources:

• Troubleshooting guide
  
• Known Bugs

If you are still experiencing an issue, please post on the Bugs thread, ensuring you have read the Guidelines for Bug Reports before posting.