The main aim of Palworld is to gather a party of powerful pals to take on the toughest of bosses around the islands. To do this, naturally, you’ll need to learn how to expertly catch your Pals.
Pal Capturing Basics in Palworld
Capturing Pals is pretty easy, but it does ramp up in difficulty as the wild Pals get stronger, and your own ones do, too. I’ll be providing the best way to tackle handling Pals of any strength, so you’ll be prepared for more than the early game.
With some Pal Spheres in your inventory, you can set off to capture Pals. I would practice on the local ones before venturing too far out, trust me. These Pals you can easily beat into submission with your bare hands, which is what you’ll need to do.
Make sure to not kill the thing, just beat it as close to death as possible. When holding “Q”, “RB”, or “R2”, you’ll be ready to throw your Pal Sphere. Thankfully, when aiming at a Pal yet to be captured, its capture chance will be presented. The more you beat them, the easier it’ll be to capture them.
Be careful if that Pal is with other Pals of the same species, as if you attack one, the others may also attack you, and soon you’ll be in the middle of a Pal battle. You can try to capture them all, or unleash your Pals to defeat the other lower-leveled ones. Be careful to leave at least one alive, however.
When the Pal Sphere hits your target, they’ll struggle against it. The more they fail to struggle against the current catch chance, the higher your chances become of capturing it, so soon, that Pal with only a 50% capture chance may rise to 67% in the second attempt.
If they break free, their health will remain the same, so you can keep hitting them or try again.
Be careful of the following when capturing Pals:
- Don’t throw the Pal Sphere too close to the Pal, otherwise, it might clip through them, wasting a Pal Sphere.
- Make sure you don’t have a Pal summoned during the capturing stage, otherwise, it’ll attack to kill the Pal you want to capture. Not ideal.
- Pals that have been defeated cannot be captured, so please don’t waste Pal Spheres by repeatedly bombarding the poor dead creatures.
Capturing tougher Pals in Palworld
You’ll quickly come across tougher Pals, with higher levels, more strength, and what seems to be an impossible capture chance.
There are a couple of ways to increase your Capture Power in Palworld, which I’ll detail later.
With these stronger Pals, you’ll want armor, weapons (preferably ranged ones), and Pals to help you take them down. Also, apply Pokemon logic here. If it’s a Fire Type Pal, then use water weapons or Water Type Pals to deal extra damage. If the capture chance is still incredibly low, then you can try your luck, but you’re better off defeating them for their resources.
Do note that if you capture a Pal with a higher level than you, or if a Pal levels up past you, then their stats will actually scale down to yours. This will also hinder their EXP gain dramatically. But don’t worry, their actual level still stands, but you’ll have to level up for them to benefit from their actual level.
Related: What to do if a Pal is slacking off in Palworld
What to do with Captured Pals in Palworld
Pals that you’ve captured will enter your team, or if your team is full, they’ll enter the “box.” You can access the box by interacting with a Palbox that you can unlock and build. Think of the boxes as cloud storage, where you can access them from any Palbox you place around the world. Note that these Palboxes are also the heart of a base, and there is a limit of bases. To increase that limit, level up the first Palbox that you’ll build to level 10.
You can then switch out the Pals in your team with Pals in the Palbox. From there, you can also assign the Pals to the base that the current Palbox creates, for them to get busy doing jobs and defending the base from Raids.
Also, capturing a Pal for the first time will unlock their Stats and Habitat pages in the Paldeck. Capturing the first ten of any species will reward you with a decent EXP bonus, so it is worth doing this for every species.
Note that different Pals will have different Passive Skills, that may enhance them or you. Sometimes, they’ll actually have a Passive Skill that worsens either their stats, work performance, or combat ability. Make sure to only have good workers assigned to a base, and only the strong Pals on your team. The other cowardly or brittle Pals can spend eternity in the box.
Increasing Catch Rate in Palworld
There are two ways to increase your Catch Chance in Palworld to capture tougher Pals. Firstly, you can simply use better and stronger Pal Spheres that you can find — or unlock and craft. These stronger Pal Spheres have dramatically better chances than their predecessors, and will soon become needed.
If you have more than one type of Pal Sphere in your inventory, then you can click on “2,” or “Down” on the D-Pad, to change your Pal Sphere.
You can also increase your base capture chance by increasing your Capture Power, as the game calls it, through the Statue of Power that you can unlock and build in your base. To do this, unlock the Statue of Power for 2 points at Level 6. Then, build it in your base for 20 Stone and 10 Paldium Fragments.
Interacting with the Statue of Power will allow you to use Lifmunk Effigies to increase your Catch Chance. The Statue of Power also allows you to increase the stats of Pal team members by using Pal Souls.
Getting Pal Spheres in Palworld
There is more than one way to get Pal Spheres of every type in Palworld.
The most common way of obtaining Pal Spheres is simply by crafting them at a Workbench. You may need to unlock and build better Workbenches to craft better quality Pal Spheres, though. To craft them, you’ll also need to unlock them.
You can also find Pal Spheres out and about in your travels on the ground. Simply pick them up. Just make sure you’ve got enough weight to carry them, although they’re virtually weightless.
Now that you’re fully aware of how capturing Pals works in Palworld, why don’t you check out every way to get Paldium Fragments?
