How to catch Pals in Palworld

Want to know how to catch Pals in Palworld? It's done through items called Pal Spheres that you craft that operate similarly to Pokeballs in Pokemon. You weaken the Pal, throw the Sphere, and hope that the odds of catching it are on your side. Below we'll explain the process in detail, how to catch Pals in Palworld and all the things you can do to make it easier and increase the chance of catching Pals successfully.

How to catch Pals in Palworld

To catch a Pal in Palworld, you need to have a special item called a Pal Sphere, which you throw at wild Pals using the Q button (if you want to know how to get a Palworld Pal Sphere and Paldium fragments, my guide will help you there). You can also hold down the Q button while aiming a Pal Sphere at a Wild Pal in Palworld to get a percentage of how likely you are to catch the Pal if you throw it. If you throw it and fail, the Sphere is destroyed and the Pal breaks free, meaning you'll have to try again. If you succeed, the Pal is added to your party, or sent back to your Base's Palbox if your party is full.

How to catch Pals easily

There's numerous ways to increase your percentage chance of successfully catching Pals, some of the main ones we've listed below.

Lower the Wild Pal's health. Use weapons and your own captured Pals to weaken the opponent - but don't kill them altogether! The lower their health, the easier it is to catch them, but those that are dead or unconscious can't be caught. For that reason, it might be wise to withdraw your own Pals before they can get overenthusiastic and go for the kill…
Hit them in the back. This one is pretty self-explanatory - hitting a Pal in the back with a Pal Sphere, rather than doing so head-on, increases the chance of success by a decent amount.
Inflict status effects. Poison, burns, freezing and more besides - each and all of these increase the chance of success.
Bring better Pal Spheres. There are multiple kinds of better Pal Spheres than the default, such as the Mega Sphere. These are hard to get early on, usually as rare drops in chests, so make sure to save them for the Pals you really want on your team! Later on, when you start getting Palworld Ore, you'll be able to manufacture your own Mega Spheres and Giga Spheres.
Increase your level. Simply being of a higher level appears to increase the chance of every Sphere you throw - or rather, being close or exceeding the level of the Pal you want to catch.
Worship at a Statue of Power. You can find rare items throughout the world called Lifmunk Effigies - if you build a Statue of Power at your base, you can offer an Effigy to permanently increase your character's "Capture Power".

Joel Franey is a writer, journalist, podcaster and Very Tired Man with a BA from Brunel University, a Masters from Sussex University and a decade working in games journalism, often focused on guides coverage but also in reviews, features and news. His love of games is strongest when it comes to groundbreaking narratives like Disco Elysium, UnderTale and Baldur's Gate 3, as well as innovative or refined gameplay experiences like XCOM, Sifu, Arkham Asylum or Slay the Spire. He is a firm believer that the vast majority of games would be improved by adding a grappling hook, and if they already have one, they should probably add another just to be safe. You can find old work of his at Eurogamer, Gfinity, USgamer, SFX Magazine, RPS, Dicebreaker, VG247, and more.