The Velociraptor

Beast of Bermuda’s Velociraptor (also known as Velo) is a great starter dinosaur. You can either take on medium-sized dinos (or if you want to risk it, a Tyrannosaurus Rex) solo or with a pack of Velos working together. This dinosaur is designed for group play since they are small and have less health, even when compared to another dinosaur that’s only slightly larger, so teamwork is almost essential for surviving as a Velociraptor.

A Velo’s small stature provides many advantages. It can squeeze into small areas, survive some high falls, and can climb trees (and even lie down in the branches!), thus helping it stay hidden. They also have an insane jump height, can control their jumps mid-air, and have a higher stamina pool than other dinosaurs (they have 150 versus other dinosaurs’ 100).

Skills

With their high jumping skills, its ability to pounce, and a higher stamina pool than all other currently playable dinosaurs, the Velociraptor is the ninja of dinosaurs! The next highest dinosaur’s stamina is the Elasmosaurus (at 135), which is an aquatic dinosaur, thus unlikely you’ll need to have a race against one. All other dinosaurs currently playable in Beasts of Bermuda have 120 or fewer stamina, and average between 90-100.

Velociraptors have a special ability called Baby Snatcher, which is also shared with the Elasmosaurus. You must be aware, though, that when this ability is active, it will slowly drain its ability power, and it’ll be unable to attack the grabbed victim.  This ability is also especially useful to apply if you are nesting babies, so that it can carry the young ones to water and food if needed.

Weaknesses

You can’t have pros without cons, right?! The most glaring weakness of the Velociraptor is its extremely low health. Larger creatures can easily one-hit velociraptors if you are not careful. It only has 100 health, unless you put skills into survivability. Fortunately, it is possible to survive a great fall and a hit from a larger dinosaur, as we did from a high jump and an attack from a Megalosaurus, surviving with 3 HP remaining!

Velociraptors also have exceptionally low weather resistance, so putting talents into weather resistance will help you out significantly when rain and windstorms happen. One way to weather these storms more easily is to hide inside a tree branch or lie in between multiple trees/large rocks with other velociraptors. That will help keep its comfort stat up and its shelter stat to weather the effects that larger predators can cause to happen.

Talents

The velociraptor has access to some of the most diverse talents in the game, which directly influences how many different play styles you can have. This flexibility is also part of why this dinosaur is recommended during your first play-through.

The talents that the raptor has access to are as follows:

Acrobat

This talent helps lessen the damage that your raptor takes in the air. Great for when you are either jumping or falling.

Adrenaline

This talent boosts your damage when your health drops to fifty percent or lower.

Arboreal

This ability allows the velociraptor to scale trees faster. This talent currently only applies to the velociraptor and is a great talent for it! If you choose to spend three points on this skill you will be able to nest in trees for greater security.

Baby Snatcher

This trait allows velociraptors to pick up juvenile dinosaur of different species.

Brawler

This talent increases the damage that your raptor can do. It is not restricted to any one specific type of damage.

Constitution

Constitution is a skill that will allow you to increase your health. Each point raises it by ten percent, up to thirty percent. This talent can help boost your health from its vulnerable state into something that can survive attacks from larger dinosaurs.

Egg Thief

This trait allows for a few improvements on one of the base mechanics of the velociraptor. For one thing, it reduces the amount of damage necessary to break an egg. It also increases the nutrition those eggs provide. It also lowers the effects of food poisoning from rotten eggs.

Endurance

This is a great talent where it boosts your stamina pool even higher than it normally is. Even better, this increases the rate of your stamina generation! No matter what play style you intend to use, this is a must in your talent pool!

Exhausting Bite

This talent allows your attack to decrease the enemies’ health and stamina. With this, you are draining their options for either combat or retreat. The more points you spend, the greater the effect.

Good Parent

This talent allows you to have a better chance of passing on good traits to your offspring while decreasing the chance for negative ones. It also helps lower the chance of negative effects occurring if your dinosaur is stressed while carrying the egg. There is also an increased comfort level whenever you are near your offspring.

Healing

This talent increases the rate at which your raptor will regenerate. This healing ability also helps heal injuries and remove venom faster. Like many others, the more points added, the better the effect.

Long Runner

This talent reduces the amount of stamina that is drained when you sprint. It does not affect activities like jumping. This is useful for many different play styles and is worth the investment.

Nimble-Footed

Nimble-Footed is a talent that allows you to turn faster in-game. This turning is not situational either. It increases your turning speed when sprinting, swimming, etc. This is another talent that should figure into your overall play style.

Persistence

Persistence affects both how much power your dinosaur has and how quickly it recovers. This governs the use of both your attacks and your special abilities. This one gets better the more points are invested in it, like other skills.

Resilience

Resilience increases the amount of comfort that your dinosaur has at all times. Resilience can be a vital talent given the velociraptor’s size and susceptibility to weather. More points invested gives more comfort.

Scavenger

This talent increases the amount of food that you get from non-player dinosaurs. It can also allow fish to provide more food value if you have the appropriate trait.

Sharp Teeth

Sharp Teeth allows the velociraptor to deal more damage to larger prey than itself. Given the size of the raptor, this can be a great choice!

Sneaky

Sneaky is a talent that reduces the sound of both your footsteps and your breathing noises. If you invest enough points, your footsteps become completely silent when crouched.

Stoic

Stoic is a talent that provides two different but important benefits when points are applied to it. One is that the effects of being knocked back are reduced. The second is that it allows you to pick up more weight, and it reduces the weight of players when you carry them.

Stress Resistance

Stress Resistance reduces the stress that your raptor will experience when near animals that aren’t part of its pack.

Strong Legs

This talent allows you to run faster when running up a hill. If you invest three of your points into it, you run uphill the same way you do on flat land.

Strong Lungs

This talent increases your breath bar and lowers the amount of breath consumed while attacking underwater.

Sturdy

This talent allows you to take a hit that otherwise would have killed you and instead leaves you with five percent. You have to be above ninety percent healthy when you are hit for this to activate.

Swiftness

Swiftness increases your movement speed the more points you spend on it.

Vigilance

This talent makes you better whenever you are in a burrow. It reduces the stress that your raptor experiences in a burrow and heightens your vision. It also reduces the debuff that you receive in a burrow.

Weather Resistance

This talent reduces the stress that your dinosaur feels when in inclement weather. If three points are invested, it will prevent death from lightning strikes. Weather Resistance can be one of the more useful talents due to the danger of the weather in-game.

Wing Tear

This talent increases the amount of damage done to flying dinosaurs.

What are the play strategies?

Now that you know all of the talents that the velociraptor can use, we have some strategies for you to consider. You can do more with a Velo than just these, but we thought these would be a great jumping-off point for new players.

The Ninja

This play style will rely on your ability to climb trees and run away, but all you have to do is just set up ambushes. Wait for a target to come by, you and your pack can leap from the trees onto them and start attacking. With enough points in damage and surprise attacks, you should be able to take down some hefty targets.

The Thief

Thievery is a speed-based play style that focuses on scavenging kills from other players or taking eggs right out of nests. This is a play style that the raptor would excel at and is an option for those that don’t have a large pack to back them up. Much like the ninja, this is all about quickly getting in and getting out.

The Endurer

This style and strategy rely on tanking hits, so you will be putting all your available points into health and sturdiness. The thing about this is that we would only use it with a pack because it is risky and best used as a distraction. This tactic works great with either the ninja or anti-air play styles, allowing you to take some hits to distract the enemy.

Anti-Air

Anti-Air is a mix-and-match play style, but it is entirely focused on going after flying dinosaurs and their nests. The Velo’s skills can be specialized specifically thanks to their speed and damage towards flying types.

Fun Things to Do

Once the Oryctodomeus is released, Velociraptors can trespass into their burrows! By doing this, you may have an easier time getting food occasionally. While the Velo is often considered a ‘weak and skittish carnivore,’ that is at times incorrect. If you practice enough and put skills into both survival and combat, you can solo larger carnivores like the Megalosaurus, Tyrannosaurus Rex, or Acrocanthosaurus. Be aware, though, you need lots of practice to successfully pull this off! It’s best to do it in a pack to learn how to hunt more easily first.

Since Velociraptors can jump & pounce super high, this is also a skill you can take advantage of. You can use it to get away from larger predators, climb trees to have a safe place to sleep, and more. If you put points into its legs (via the Strong Legs), its high stamina pool can let it run fast uphill, saving its life if it’s being chased by a larger, slower predator.

Rating: Great Starter

Velociraptor is a great starter dino in Beasts of Bermuda! If you are new to the game, we recommend starting with something a bit easier to learn (since they’re faster to grow), and then graduating to something like Icthyovenator, Acrocanthosaurus, or another dinosaur. Due to its ability to jump super high, it can pounce onto other creatures, access out-of-reach terrains, and climb trees to sit somewhere safe (that is, until an Apatosaurus knocks down said tree!).

We’re Not Done Yet!

As we highlighted earlier, the Velo is a great starter dinosaur, and once you are familiar with the game, you can hit the ground running when playing as another dinosaur. We recommend the Velociraptor (“Velo” for short) and Acrocanthosaurus (“Acro” for short) to give you more egg-citing experiences in the Beasts of Bermuda! (Velociraptors supposedly love eggs, you see? Fast and small, eggs should be their fave food!)