How do you capture wild creatures?

The Anipod throw is the last step, and it is the least interesting one. What decides whether a capture lands is everything you do before it. Closing the distance without being noticed raises your success rate. Catching an Aniimo while it is asleep raises it again, which makes a sleeping target the best opportunity you will get on most creatures.

That is why studying wild specimen behaviour pays. Each creature has patterns to how it moves, feeds and rests, and reading those patterns is how you know where to stand and when to throw. Traps and the terrain are the tools for when a creature will not let you get close on its own. Set a trap on the path it keeps walking, or use the ground and cover around it to take the approach it cannot see.

Getting the creature in front of you

Every Aniimo in the game can be encountered and captured in the wild through open-world exploration. There is no separate route for the rare ones, so finding them is a question of being in the right place at the right time.

What spawns changes with the in-game day-night cycle, the weather, and special natural phenomena. Weather matters most: unique Aniimo turn up under specific conditions. If a creature is not appearing where it should, the answer is usually the clock or the sky rather than the spot.

Ecosystem nurturing and wild surges

Item quality no longer affects what you get out of ecosystem nurturing. Offering higher quality items does not produce a better wild surge, so there is nothing to gain from saving your good items for it.

Not settled: The game does not put a number on any of it. Sneaking, traps and a sleeping target all improve your odds, but by how much, and whether they stack, is not spelled out.