Summary

• Throwing Pal Spheres at a Pal's back greatly increases the chance of capturing it, making up for lower odds of catching an unweakened Pal.
• Using the back bonus is more effective on lower-level Pals, and dealing damage before disengaging from combat can optimize capture chances.
• Tossing a Pal Sphere at a Pal, even if it's unlikely to catch it, can buy time in battle, especially in boss fights.

Catching Pals in Palworld might seem like a very basic mechanic, but there's actually one way to go about it that's vastly superior to any other methods. The basic idea of capturing is similar to the way it works in Pokémon, with players throwing Pal Spheres at the creatures they want to catch after weakening them enough to stand a decent chance of succeeding. This might make it easy to assume that there are no unique complications involved in the process, but capturing Pals is one of the areas where Palworld includes a unique twist of its own.

Wasting Pal Spheres in Palworld can be frustrating, as they generally have to be crafted out of Paldium fragments, wood, and stone. Running out of Spheres and materials requires extra foraging before returning to the crafting table, so it isn't as quick of a process as popping into a Pokémon Center to restock on Pokéballs. It's also possible to find Pal Spheres as random drops in the wild, but it's generally more difficult to run across intact Spheres than it is to find the Paldium rocks that provide the necessary fragments for crafting.

Throwing Spheres At Pals' Backs Provides A Big Bonus

Although the general temptation might be to immediately engage in combat with any desired Pal, it can actually often be best to avoid an aggressive encounter altogether. Throwing a Pal Sphere at a Pal's back significantly raises the chance of catching it, and the difference can often be enough to make up for the significantly lesser odds of attempting to capture a Pal that hasn't already taken a beating. It also seems a bit nicer, for whatever that's worth, in a game where Pals can be sold on the black market, conscripted, or butchered, although it's still a bit innately underhanded in nature.

Taking advantage of the bonus achieved by throwing a sphere at a Pal's back doesn't even have to be a complete guessing game. The preview catch rate will show an indicator if a back bonus is in play, although this is still far from a guarantee that the catch will work. It's obviously still possible to fail with promising odds or succeed in spite of dismal ones, but having an indicator of a back bonus makes it easier to optimize overall Pal Sphere expenditure and decide when fighting might be better than attempting to skip out on combat.

Generally speaking, using the back bonus without engaging in combat is much less effective on higher-level Pals, as attempting to make big scores on the merits of its boost doesn't frequently pay off. One strategy that can sometimes be worthwhile is dealing damage to Pals before disengaging from combat and then attempting to sneak up on them again to add the back bonus to an already depleted health pool. This can obviously be something of a hassle to manage, but it's the best way to combine these two significant advantages that don't usually go hand-in-hand.

Wasting Pal Spheres Is Sometimes Good In Palworld

Interestingly, it can sometimes be worth it to toss a Pal Sphere at a Pal who isn't likely to get caught by it. This comes down to the fact that thrown spheres will generally capture wounded Pals for a moment, even if they quickly fail to keep it trapped. While these animations have no advantage in the turn-based combat of Pokémon, the real-time nature of Palworld completely transforms the situation. Keeping a Pal briefly occupied can be a good use of a sphere, especially if a surplus supply has already been crafted.

It's obviously best to use standard Pal Spheres for this maneuver to avoid expending more powerful ones just to secure a brief moment in battle. Mega and Giga Pal Spheres are still reasonably easy to create at the appropriate levels, but higher-level spheres start to become increasingly resource-intensive and typically need to be reserved for actual capture opportunities. Throwing spheres to buy time can be helpful for general reloading or repositioning opportunities, but it might be at its most useful in boss fights where every second can count.

The Statue Of Power Can Boost Capture Rate In Palworld

One other essential trick for capturing Pals is the Statue of Power, a more straightforward Palworld mechanic that can still be possible to ignore for all too long. The Statue of Power doesn't just provide some esoteric buff, granting (in theory) the undeniably essential boon of allowing a player to increase their overall capture power. It also makes it possible to increase various stats for Pals, and the options to boost HP, Attack, and Defense likewise assist in overall Pal capture by making combat easier.

Unfortunately, the Statue of Power boost isn't that simple at the moment, as a potential bug has recently caused some problems that would appear to lower the overall capture rate instead of increasing it. If this does turn out to be a universal problem, it's likely that developer Pocketpair will fix it in the future, but it's something to keep an eye on for the moment. The Statue of Power is still worth building just to have it accessible, as the 1 Technology Point, 20 Stone, and 10 Paldium Fragments that it requires aren't particularly hard to pool together.

It's also possible to find the Statue of Power in the wild, it just may not be as convenient as building one inside of a base.

Understanding the ins and outs of capturing Pals in Palworld can be complicated and even potentially inconsistent, so it's not something that everyone gets proficient at right away. In the long run, however, taking a few moments to learn the best techniques can save a lot of time and effort. It might seem tempting to just hit Pals with every possible attack in combat and try to grab them once they're low, but it turns out that elements like Palworld's back bonus can circumvent some of the biggest challenges in capturing Pals.