Those of you wondering how to capture people or animals in Wartales are in the right place. There are a variety of reasons and tricks to take advantage of that revolve around capturing. Such as getting a wolf or bear companion for battle.
However, it can be confusing if you’re new to Wartales or simply haven’t captured anything before. Also, it gets more complicated depending on what you’re trying to capture. Especially if you’re going after tougher animals like bears or even a ghost wolf.
How to Capture People in Wartales
Getting Chains For Capturing
The Tiltren Jail is also worth visiting if you’re trying to recruit new members.
Before you enter a battle and try to capture your own prisoner, you’ll need to go in with the right item. It doesn’t matter if they’re an outlaw or a merchant guard, you’ll need at least one “Chains” item. You can buy these from the Tiltren Jail for 20 gold each.
Once you’re ready to capture someone, hop into a battle with them. Then, you’ll need to get the person you’re capturing below half health. While you can deal damage to a person’s health without hitting their armor, I haven’t tested if their armor needs to be at 0 as well.
You can increase your chance of capturing by getting the Non-Lethal knowledge under the Crime and Chaos Path.
After the person you’re trying to capture is below half health, you’ll need at least one person engaging them in combat. If you’re worried about killing them, you can try to bait them into hitting first. However, this won’t work if it’s a ranged character since they’ll attack from afar.
Otherwise, once the unit is engaged in combat, send another person behind or next to the target. This will reveal the new action on your hot bar, “Knock Out”. After clicking the button and hovering over your target, you’ll see the success rate of your attempt. If you fail, you can try again since this doesn’t deal any damage.
You can see captured prisoners on the victory screen after battle.
Upon succeeding, they’ll be removed from the battle. At this point, you’ll need to succeed in finishing off any remaining enemies. Then, the battle will end and you’ll see the captured prisoner along with your party. You can then left-click them before clicking continue to execute or release them.
If you’d prefer to have them as a prisoner, don’t do either action. Then, you’ll see them in your camp where you can set them to any job. As long as they don’t have an injury preventing work. Also, you can sell outlaws to the Tiltren Jail for gold and to remove 20 suspicion. In the meantime, you’ll need to feed them and prevent them from escaping.
Why Can’t I Capture Someone?
One of the few reasons you can’t capture someone is if you’ve already used your action for the turn.
If you’re trying to capture a person in Wartales and aren’t seeing the Knock Out action, there are a couple of possible reasons. First, they may be a special person or leader that you can’t capture. In this case, they’ll usually have a little symbol like a buff saying so. These are often characters that provide a buff to their entire group.
Second, as previously mentioned, if the character isn’t below half-health, you won’t be able to capture them. This can make it difficult if your units are too strong compared to the enemy. However, some players like to use damage over time abilities like poison. They won’t deal as much damage and you can try to delay while it works.
How to Capture Animals in Wartales
Getting Rope For Capturing
Crafting your own rope is one way to save some money and gain Tinkering experience.
The method for capturing animals works similarly to people, however, you’ll need Rope instead of Chains. If you don’t have any, you can buy it from the Tiltren Jail for 4 gold each. But, my preferred method is to get Hemp from different locations and turn it into Rope. You can do this using a Tinkerer at a Workshop.
Make sure you don’t search for Hemp on the overworld map since it only seems to appear in static locations. Such as houses or stables, for example. You can use the Alt key to highlight interactable items like Hemp, even though it’s not always obvious. Depending on the creature you’re trying to capture, you’ll need varying amounts of Rope.
Make sure you have enough Rope if you plan on capturing larger animals in Wartales.
For example, capturing a wolf or boar may take one Rope while a pony takes three. So if you’re stuck thinking you can’t capture a bear, this is likely because you don’t have the five Rope required. Although, you can always check the Knock Out action description for how much you need. It may not be visible if you’ve already used an action this turn.
Fortunately, Rope isn’t consumed on each failed attempt so if you’re not successful, keep on trying. You’ll only consume the Rope upon a successful capture. Regardless of what animals you have in your party, ponies are the only ones that have armor. So if you’re looking for bear armor, you’ll have to rely on increasing their constitution instead.
How to Capture Ghost Animals and Others
Be careful when venturing off into those foggy areas.
Similar to how you can’t capture certain people in Wartales, you can’t capture special animals like Sikha. With that said, you may be wondering if you can capture ghost animals that only appear at night. These odd creatures appear in foggy areas that disappear during the day.
This is a unique situation where you can capture ghost animals even though it’s only during a certain quest. You’ll need to make it to the Ludern Region where you can accept The Ghost Meance quest. Professor Winfrith will give you 3 Alazar’s Chains for immediately capturing ghost animals.
When using Alazar’s Chains it doesn’t matter if you’re trying to capture a ghost wolf or ghost boar. You’ll need one for each animal regardless.
Aside from trying to capture ghost animals in Wartales, you can also capture Cardinal Mosquitoes. You’ll want to do this at least once if you’re trying to get every achievement. This is a requirement for the Beware of Bites achievement. Capturing a Cardinal Mosquito requires using the Harag Concoction.
With all that said, it’s worth mentioning that you’ll need to feed the many animals you have in your party. The one good thing is that they don’t require wages like a normal mercenary does.
How to Release Prisoners in Wartales
If you don’t want to feed a prisoner in Wartales anymore you may want to release them.
If you’re still not sure how to release prisoners, there is another method after leaving the victory screen. First, you’ll need to enter the camp area. Then, open up the prisoner’s character sheet where you’ll see a set of gears. This is below the character to the bottom right of them.
Clicking the set of gears will reveal two choices to either release the character or dismiss them. Oddly enough, there doesn’t seem to be a difference between either choice. Regardless of which you pick, the character will leave the party and disappear forever. If you’re trying to recruit them, you’ll need to wait for a question mark to appear above their head.
Only capture merchants if you’re using them for a job role or to recruit. This is because you can’t sell them to the jail.
That’s all there is to this long in-depth guide on how to capture people or animals in Wartales. There’s a lot to this simple mechanic when you really dive into it. And there’s still more information I didn’t toss in here since I thought it’d be too much. Hopefully you learned a thing or two!
Jeff is a journalist with over 10 years of experience writing, streaming, and making content about video games. With an associate degree in journalism, he’s a sucker for RPGs, survival games, roguelikes, and more.