How do you increase creature capture rates?

The practical consequence is that the throw is the last thing you do, not the first. Bring the creature's health down in the fight, land a stun, and only then reach for a pod. A wild Aniimo at full strength and fully mobile is the worst moment to try.

Sleep is the other condition worth setting up. Catching an Aniimo while it is asleep improves the success rate, so a status that puts a target under is doing the same job as chipping its health down, without the risk of knocking it out by accident.

Then there is the pod itself. Aniipods come in tiers, and the higher tiers carry a higher base capture success rate. That matters most against strong creatures, where the low-tier pods are the ones bouncing off. Weakening the target and throwing a better pod are separate levers and you can pull both on the same catch.

Where to spend your best pods

Wild spawns with 9 and 10 potential now appear more often, so you will run into them regularly rather than once a week. Those are the catches to set up properly: fight the creature down, put it to sleep or stun it, and use a high-tier pod. Burning your best pods on a common you could weaken and take with anything is how people run dry right before the catch they actually wanted.

A lower-potential catch is not a write-off either. Acquired potential is raised separately, in the capability awakening tab, by spending enhancement materials on stats. So the number you catch a creature at is a starting point rather than a verdict.

Not settled: Whether weakening, a stun and sleep stack on top of each other, or whether the game only counts the strongest condition on the target, is not settled.