Palworld players think that one in-game tool designed to make catching creatures easier might be having the opposite effect entirely.
Catching Pals in Palworld is normally pretty simple: throw a Pal Sphere and cross your fingers for success. Leveling up your character, using better spheres, and lowering the target's HP are some surefire ways to increase your odds. But Lifmunk Effigies are the only items in the game that promise to improve your capture odds once you turn them in at a Statue of Power.
YouTuber Chalenor recently released an experiment to find out whether the tool was actually improving capture chances and their findings pointed toward the opposite - not only did their findings suggest Effigies didn't improve rates, but they might actively reduce them. The video provides side-by-side footage from a save file with Effigies on (left) and off (right), while the trainer tries to catch 100 low-level Pals.
According to what the game outlines, Lifmunk Effigies should have provided a success rate of 61-85% but the video above only has a 22% capture success rate. The No Effigies route actually has better odds with 59% of attempted captures leading to success, as opposed to the expected rate of 33-48%. It's not surprising to see Chalenor come to the conclusion that Lifmunk Effigies are in fact hurting your chances at catching Pals.
It's worth noting that Chalenor's experiment doesn't have the most sound scientific basis. The sample size only included 100 Pal capture attempts and didn't focus on a single Pal type of the same level. Without official word from developer Pocketpair, we won't know for sure what the problem is, but others in the comments and on the game's subreddit had similar anecdotes about dodgy post-Effigy capture rates.
The studio recently patched out our favorite glitch - the T-pose ascension - in no time, so if the tools are bugged, we can expect it to be addressed in a future update.
